This theory is a couple of years old. More of that "Them dirty krauts deserved to die" stuff the armchair commandos love to spout.
I asked him when I was about 12 or so( we always watched anything we could on TV about WWII), how he felt about bombing cities and the bombs could hit schools and hospitals. He replied that we were at war with Germans and Germany, not just soldiers. He related the stories of his buddies bailing out and the Hitler youth running to the fields to stick the airmen with pitchforks. He also talked of the soldiers in prison camps that got no medical care, and in fact were experimented on and tortured. He taught me that when you are at war, you kill, and kill, and kill, until the enemy surrenders. The Germans were just glad to be alive after we got through with them and were manageable after the war. Just killing the soldiers, would not pacify the people back home and we would still be fighting guerrilla's to this day.
Same with Japan. We knew there would be millions of casualties trying to storm the Japanese mainland. We ended the war by ONLY killing a few 10's of thousands. More people died in the fire bombings than in Hiroshima and Nagasaki combined. It did show the Japanese however that we had superior technology and they had no chance. They had the same attitude as the people we fight today. They would commit suicide before surrender and they would have been a terrible foe for our soldiers to try to discriminate the women and children from the "enemy".
The first Gulf War was fought correctly. We overwhelmed them with firepower and they surrendered in droves. The mistake was to not go into Baghdad then, and hang the SOB when we had the chance. That was the difference between Colin Powell and Swartzkoff. We will NEVER be allowed to win a UN war.
The Iraq war could end in a week, if Bush had the gonads to tell Baghdad that they will pacify or be wiped off the map. The carpet bombing of Sadr city would be a wake up call, that everyone in the US isn't a wussy. You could hear all the protests and whining form every corner, but in reality, what are they going to do about it. They won't help us, so F them.
The biggest pain I feel over this war is we sent young men over there to die and bleed, and were not committed to win the war at all costs, INCLUDING NUKES. An American soldier should never think his life is so cheap we can throw it away and then barter a half ass-ed deal down the road. Just ask a Korean vet what they think was accomplished or a Viet Nam Vet. We were lulled into felling we won the Korean war because they went behind some fictitious line on a map. They are still there, they never surrendered, and as you can see, they are still a pain in our ass. If we don't get some sort of "no doubt about it", bonified, kick ass victory in Iraq, we will be haunted by that failure for decades to come. Bin Laden himself has used the Viet Nam defeat to prove we can't stomach a "real" war". The Dems will prove him right and we will be attacked until we are willing to kill women, children, dogs, and livestock, along with the throat cutters until they say "we quit".
I'm a fat, broke down, bad back, retired guy, but the enemy should know if they come here, I will kill them until they kill me. It would be a mistake to let me live because I was a "harmless" old man. They will receive no mercy from me as long as they are in my country. We, as Americans, must realize they feel the same about us. We shouldn't expect to be treated well because they are women and children. They will tie TNT to their baby's diaper and send them to the US soldiers camp. They must believe they will not survive as a race of people if they don't pacify. That would actually end the war quicker and with fewer casualties on both sides. They have yet to believe we are really serious. Maybe we aren't.
I spent last week with a guy from Dresden, and he never brought the bombing up.
He was here buying $$millions of American manufactured products.
There were key war materiel plants scattered in and around Dresden. The Kurt Vonnegut revisionists always omit this fact when disparaging the reasons for destroying the city.
How come no one ever mentions the Nazi bombings of Warsaw or Rotterdam?
One of the most amazing things about WWII that I realize, as I learn more and more about that war is why the Nazis never used nerve gas on London.
One of the most amazing things about WWII that I realize, as I learn more and more about that war is why the Nazis never used nerve gas on London.