Foolish questioning regarding Allied bombing against Axis targets would not even be a question if the enemy had won the war.
- Aleksander Aronowich Pechersky
leader of the Sobibor revolt, seconds before the outbreak
Posted on 05/20/2006 8:33:39 PM PDT by tbird5
Deliberately targeting civilians is widely considered terrorism nowadays, but during World War II both the Britain’s Bomber Command and the United States Army Air Force deliberately targeted civilians.
The British philosopher A. C. Grayling, in his new book Among the Dead Cities: The History and Moral Legacy of the WWII Bombing of Civilians in Germany and Japan (Walker, $25.95), points out that the two air forces combined killed perhaps 600,000 German civilians and another 200,000 Japanese. He makes the case that at least by our current standards we were terrorists, and it logically follows that the attacks were war crimes. In an age of political terror, when it is urgent to come up with a persuasive distinction between legitimate and illegitimate violence, it is hard to overstate the importance of the questions Grayling raises.
(Excerpt) Read more at americanheritage.com ...
Here is my opinion regarding rules in warfare...
Rules are enforced when there is some objective authority with sufficient retaliatory powers to coerce the parties into compliance. There is no such entity in any war that involves major powers. The pretend otherwise is stupid.
I lost two Soldiers in Iraq. If I could bring them back by slitting the throat of every man, woman, and child living in Iraq then I would do it. I would do it and then eat a hamburger and go to sleep and wake up refreshed 8 hours later.
Labeling civilians as non-combatants is stupid. They are not without sin. The German people elected Hitler and gave him the power to terrorize Europe. If their houses got burned and their children slaughtered in order to prevent more of our young men from getting killed as the US un-screwed what Germany screwed up, then so be it. That's war. Deal with it. If you don't like then don't elect sociopaths, psychos, or tyrants.
Same goes for Iraq and Afghanistan. There are over 20 million people in Iraq who let themselves be terrorized by Saddam Hussein (read "Saddam's Delusions" in the latest Foreign Affairs - even his right-hand men were terrorized). Don't expect me to shed a tear because we accidentally kill a couple of them in the process of hunting down terrorists that have attempted to fill the void created when we booted Hussein from power. They made the mess and refused to clean it up. Now people want to sharpshoot us for doing what Haji refused to do.
AC Grayling can F off and eat the next turd that lands in my toilet. I am so sick of subhuman parasites in academia who know nothing other than what their philosophy textbooks and dry reading of the Geneva conventions teach them. I would like to give this moron a rifle and drop him into the middle of some F-ed up city in Iraq and tell him walk to the nearest US Base 5 miles away - and don't shoot anyone unless they're wearing a military uniform. Then we'll see which lasts longer - his theories about the Law of Land Warfare or his basic survival instincts.
also the Imperial staff
That's a bizarre story, and it's the first time I ever heard of it. How the heck can someone launch an unmanned balloon and have it deliver explosives thousands of miles across the Pacific Ocean with any degree of accuracy at all?
Hitler and Goebbels asked for "Total War" and they got it!!!
That statement is a perfect example of why liberal teachers are going to destroy the future.
In 1945 the World didn't have to depend on history teachers to tell them what would happen if you allowed an aggressive nation to not surrender. The Japanese will was not broken and they continued to develop new weapons and they had massive oil reserves even after they surrendered. Try getting your history from books written by someone who was there, not from someone who thinks his service to this country was spitting on US Soldiers.
The German and Japaneses are self evident ...just flat out deliberate slaughter... the Italians not as much but still in pre ww2 Ethiopia... the Russian well they were teams with both side went they went in to Poland with the Germans in 39 and in the battles it 44/45 in to Germans civilian were fair game... The Chinese were alway fighting on home soil...
However none of the above had any strategic bombing force... only the Brit and American did... of the two the Brits did night time area bombing of city's... it did take a toll on civilian.... However the American went with daylight "precision" bombing it took a higher toll on aircrew and less on civilian but the aim was to take out the factory more the the cities would be more effect in the long run...high altitude daylight "precision" bombing was alway in question during that war not because of civilian death but the opposite in that many felt it was to much effort and risk going it daylight to "precision" bombing the factory...just better to go at night and carpet bomb the lot
The American also started the strategic bombing campaign of Japan also as high altitude daylight "precision" bombing but that was one extra problem over Japan...very strong high altitude winds...(it was over Japan in 44/45 that the so call "Jet Stream" first became well known) be cause of this high altitude daylight "precision" bombing over Japan was proving to be a bust... so it was switch to the Brit style night time area bombing or just call it quits (and that wasn't going to happen)
But like I stated the American probably did the most of any of major combatant of WW2 to avoid killing civilian....not that it was driven by any major degree of concerns for civilian ... it was more that the American doctrine worked on the assumption that destroying the factory's was more efficient that just killing civilian
Well at least we can agree on that. Would "Islamofacist terrorists operating with and without the help of parent governments" be specific enough?
Plus, a lot of Americans would fight if the United States were invaded. Probably the same for Canada.
And even if it was a "War Crime," consider the Marshall Plan, and the Berlin Airlift, payment in full, and then some.
Foolish questioning regarding Allied bombing against Axis targets would not even be a question if the enemy had won the war.
That said, the Japanese weren't stupid and they figured out how to use the jet stream to send their balloon bombs across the Pacific.
As a side note, the Japanese were closer in 1945 to producing an atomic bomb than Nazi Germany ever was. This says a lot for Japanese scientific abilities.
Actually, I got much of my World War II history on the lap of an old relative who served in the South Pacific.
From the late fall of 1944 through the early spring of 1945, the Japanese launched more than 9,000 of these "fusen bakudan", or fire balloons, of which 300 were found or observed in the US.
http://www.japan-101.com/history/fire_balloons_or_balloon_bombs.htm
Just because you never heard of it doesn't mean it didn't happen. And just because they weren't very accurate doesn't mean that they were a very real threat.
Mass bombings are not over - does anyone except Senator Patty Murray believe that bin Laden wouldn't use a nuclear weapon
on the West if he got his hands on one?
And the majority of Germans & collaborators supported their Fuhrer as long as he was winning the horrific war Germany began.
The US Government kept that the bombs were making it to the West Coast a top secret so the Japanese would assume they failed and give up on them. All the fires they started were kept out of the press (by a press that understood that if you leak military secrets people die).
You should really study World War II history before commenting on it.
Hey, I could use the jet stream to send balloons across the Pacific Ocean, too. What I can't do, however (and I don't understand how anyone in 1945 could have done it), is: 1) ensure that it follows a precise track that takes it directly over the U.S., and 2) runs out of air over the U.S. (as opposed to landing in the Pacific Ocean, the Atlantic Ocean in Europe, or -- heaven forbid -- floats all the way around the world and lands in Japan).
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