02-26-2003, 07:44 PM
(This post was last modified: 02-26-2003, 08:44 PM by Occhidiangela.)
The ERA stats, the batting averages, do not count. Winning and losing count, sort of like in arm wrestling, or sprint racing. And the civlians are not the audience watching the soldiers kill each other. They are most often the engine that drives the economy that makes the effort possible.
1. Relative casualties are irrelevant. Russia lost, by some estimates, over 20,000,000. And they won, or at least were on the winning side.
2. Viet Nam versus America, 1963-1973 . . . lost . . . around half a million to a million people. Maybe more (I wonder if we will ever really know. They were too busy fighting to win rather than counting beans, unlike certain Secretaries of Defense . . .) The US lost 55,000+ dead. By any objective measure, said some, we were winning! But war is not about body counts, it is about winning, getting what you want. Viet Nam 'won' in that the North reunified the country on its terms and got us to quit.
3. Of what use are those numbers of casualties to this discussion? None, other than to illustrate the price for victory, and the sobering reality of how many small cities of 10,000 people would get depopulated during a war.
4. The death of the civilians is not, and was not always, 'collateral damage.' Some people were working in munitions plants. If they were killed when the plant was bombed, that is hardly collateral damage. That is infliciting casualties directly on the war effort, which is part of the aim of the bombing raid, whose aim is to cripple the enemys ability to make war and thus reach exhaustion, "I quit" arrive sooner. That aspect is what makes Dresden such an interesting case study, or such a good example of why reprisals can be viewed as suboptimal war aims: There is little evidence Dresden had war significant war industires in it.
5. The bombing of Tokyo killed more people. Captial city bombed in an effort to convince the enemy to surrender, and to hamper their war effort. That is what strategic bombing is all about. Collateral damage is a fairly recent concept.
And, I need to ask you: don't you get it? There is no pretty little box to put civilians into when it is total war. What Osama and his cohorts are waging is total war. There is no such thing as colleteral damage to them. Merely damage, and if you get in the way, it sucks to be you. What we waged on Iraq in 1991 was limited war, as an express aim was to reduce, where practical, non combatant casualties. We still bombed electrical plants and buildings, and people in them still died. That is war.
The treatment of non-combatants is a different issue under the Geneva accords than your chimerical category of civilian. Non combatant protections are not absolute, and there are categories of behaviour that place a 'non combatant' into combatant status. Putting non combatants in command centers to attempt to create sanctuary is abuse of the non combatant by the party who does that, and should be prosecuted as a War Crime. Back to the human shields? The volunteered, and no one forced them to stand in the way of the bombs. If they die, they chose to be martyred for a cause they believed in. So be it.
Once again, the armed forces of a nation are an extension of that nation's will and populace, not a hired pro sports team who plays in between chalked lines. War in most emphatically not a sport, yet sport, the contesting of champions, is in some cases a ritualized form of war.
Polo anyone?
1. Relative casualties are irrelevant. Russia lost, by some estimates, over 20,000,000. And they won, or at least were on the winning side.
2. Viet Nam versus America, 1963-1973 . . . lost . . . around half a million to a million people. Maybe more (I wonder if we will ever really know. They were too busy fighting to win rather than counting beans, unlike certain Secretaries of Defense . . .) The US lost 55,000+ dead. By any objective measure, said some, we were winning! But war is not about body counts, it is about winning, getting what you want. Viet Nam 'won' in that the North reunified the country on its terms and got us to quit.
3. Of what use are those numbers of casualties to this discussion? None, other than to illustrate the price for victory, and the sobering reality of how many small cities of 10,000 people would get depopulated during a war.
4. The death of the civilians is not, and was not always, 'collateral damage.' Some people were working in munitions plants. If they were killed when the plant was bombed, that is hardly collateral damage. That is infliciting casualties directly on the war effort, which is part of the aim of the bombing raid, whose aim is to cripple the enemys ability to make war and thus reach exhaustion, "I quit" arrive sooner. That aspect is what makes Dresden such an interesting case study, or such a good example of why reprisals can be viewed as suboptimal war aims: There is little evidence Dresden had war significant war industires in it.
5. The bombing of Tokyo killed more people. Captial city bombed in an effort to convince the enemy to surrender, and to hamper their war effort. That is what strategic bombing is all about. Collateral damage is a fairly recent concept.
And, I need to ask you: don't you get it? There is no pretty little box to put civilians into when it is total war. What Osama and his cohorts are waging is total war. There is no such thing as colleteral damage to them. Merely damage, and if you get in the way, it sucks to be you. What we waged on Iraq in 1991 was limited war, as an express aim was to reduce, where practical, non combatant casualties. We still bombed electrical plants and buildings, and people in them still died. That is war.
The treatment of non-combatants is a different issue under the Geneva accords than your chimerical category of civilian. Non combatant protections are not absolute, and there are categories of behaviour that place a 'non combatant' into combatant status. Putting non combatants in command centers to attempt to create sanctuary is abuse of the non combatant by the party who does that, and should be prosecuted as a War Crime. Back to the human shields? The volunteered, and no one forced them to stand in the way of the bombs. If they die, they chose to be martyred for a cause they believed in. So be it.
Once again, the armed forces of a nation are an extension of that nation's will and populace, not a hired pro sports team who plays in between chalked lines. War in most emphatically not a sport, yet sport, the contesting of champions, is in some cases a ritualized form of war.
Polo anyone?
Cry 'Havoc' and let slip the Men 'O War!
In War, the outcome is never final. --Carl von Clausewitz--
Igitur qui desiderat pacem, praeparet bellum
John 11:35 - consider why.
In Memory of Pete
In War, the outcome is never final. --Carl von Clausewitz--
Igitur qui desiderat pacem, praeparet bellum
John 11:35 - consider why.
In Memory of Pete