Human Shields and Choice

[--Pete]

Hi,

The other one was the most barbaric crime in history.

One of the most barbaric crimes in history, certainly. *The* most? Probably not. Read about how Tamerlane treated Persia, Afghanistan and Northern India. Or what Genghis Khan did to the Arab world. Or the Roman "final solution" for Carthage.

Again, we arrogantly think that everything near us in history is the worst, the best, the biggest, the most important. Actually, all it usually is is recent.

--Pete

[Moldran]

One of the most barbaric crimes in history, certainly. *The* most? Probably not. Read about how Tamerlane treated Persia, Afghanistan and Northern India. Or what Genghis Khan did to the Arab world. Or the Roman "final solution" for Carthage.
Again, we arrogantly think that everything near us in history is the worst, the best, the biggest, the most important. Actually, all it usually is is recent.

I regard the Holocaust as *the* most barbaric crime in history.
There are alot of terrible mass-killings in human history, and in some, maybe even more people got killed. But in almost all cases, people were killed "for a rational purpose" (power, goods, etc), as cynical as it may sound. The Holocaust is historically unique, because it combines the modern industrial execution with the specifically ideological motivation. As some people say, it is the culmination of anti-enlightenment.

Moldran

[Taeme]

I regard the Holocaust as *the* most barbaric crime in history.

Nice to see people still put that long gone conflict on a pedastal.

[Dani]

Serious scientists estimate the total number of victims who died in the bombing of dresden to be ~40,000. That 135,000 stuff definately is nothing more than propaganda. Propaganda that many people like to believe recently.

Either you've been duped by the revisionists yourself, or you're lying. I've read dozens of books on WW2 big picture, and more than that specialized, couple of which were specifically on the topic of the airwar, and the 135k estimate tends to be on the low side. Some go up to 250k when including "nonimmediate" deaths.
Since you put forth so radical a claim, I'd like to hear the names of these "serious scientists".

There are many things I tend to think I know more of than I actually do, but WW2 is not one of them. Frankly I'm a bit outraged by that number you proposed, as it feels like that very same revisionism you were ready to lump the bulk of WW2 historians in.

<edit: Further on the same post I quoted from, you still insist Dresden was to break the morale of Germans. I take it you ignore the reality of the situation as was explained by myself and another poster or two previously. Is it so hard to accept, that the "good guys" have their own skeletons in their closets?>

[Dani]

But in almost all cases, people were killed "for a rational purpose" (power, goods, etc), as cynical as it may sound. The Holocaust is historically unique, because it combines the modern industrial execution with the specifically ideological motivation.

First of all, it's "nazi holocaust", not "the Holocaust". In some historical textbooks or essays you will encounter holocaust that and holocaust this, which have nothing to do with Germany.
That aside, it was conducted for exactly those reasons you mentioned. Power, this being political and probably personal as well; and material (or rather economical) gains. Aside from the efficiency, brutality and scope of it's execution, the nazi holocaust is not very different from for example the recent ethnic cleansing in Jugoslavia. My personal belief is, that politicians have used, and continue to use individual racial fears and prejudices to further their own political power, even should they in some cases not harbor those prejudices themselves. Unlike many, I don't blame religion or ideology for the world's woes, I blame politicians who have since antique manipulated peoples' negative aspects for their own gain.

Finally, I'd like to say, not necessarily related to the thread, that the nazis also didn't target specifically one ethnic group, but several at once. It really is a shame, that many people tend to forget the romi and slavs, not to mention the dozen other groups the nazis targeted; some with as great percentage, and some with even greater numbers than the jews.

Hrm, sorry, rambling again... :P

[FoxBat]

Was the fire bombing of Dresden strategically necessary?&nbsp; Maybe not, but you might find a Brit or two in 1945 who felt it was emotionally necessary.

This revisionism strikes me as naive in the extreme.&nbsp; War takes emotion to successfully conduct, it takes, really, all you have to win when it is an all or nothing struggle.

Revisionism may be invalid for the purposes of assigning moral blame to people, or expecting them to be capable of having behaved any differently.

However, it's essential to "learning from one's mistakes." It rarely appears as a mistake at the time of decision. In as much as revisionism may prevent similar occurences in the future, it is valid.

While we ourselves may have made similar decisions in X general's shoes, that does not mean we should not look to shaping future situations and understandings so that the same decision is never repeated. It is this very tactic by which slavery, racism, women's rights, and many other "injustices" have become morally questionable after so many years of it being just a given.

[kandrathe]

And even when discussion has worked, it required the knowledge on the part of both sides that each was willing to use force if some mutually acceptable compromised could not be reached. The threat of force is what generated those compromises.

I whole-heartedly concur. I find ironically, that the positions of France, Germany, Russia and China on the security council are undermining a unified strong world voice against Iraq's WMD. A strong unified UN security council might have convinced Saddam to capitulate to the inspections, but this show of weakness will only embolden him, and draw us closer toward real war. Likewise, the massive peace protests organized around the globe only feed Mr. Saddam's sense of security with his regime's past history and future plans.

I was sure that when this first came up 6 months ago, that the US was just sabre rattling to get Iraq to pay attention. Now, with the UN so tragically failing to enforce any of its resolutions, the inclinations of those in the Bush administration who called for unilateral action are being justified. Now I don't see how the UN security council can get out of the deadlock it is in, so ultimately that means two things. No UN, and back to war as the means of settling international disputes.

[goldfish]

I have always been of the opinion that if the Germans had firebombed an allied city in the way Dresden was firebombed, the people responsible would have been tried for war crimes. War crimes trials, however, tend to focus on the losers of wars.

[Occhidiangela]

Do you understand what total war is when conducted by industrialized nations? It is the total strength of one nation against another. Try reading in depth on the theories of war that were developed between 1918 and 1939 before you judge anyone. You have to understand that you are the beneficiary of a perspective of 50 years of modern nations realizing that, having invented the most efficient means of exterminating one another, that limited war may be a better course of action if war is to be waged at all.

The industrial might and morale of the enemy is targeted so that they quit. They quit when they have had enough. That was the belief by the leader of every nation running the fight in WW II. (Your red herring on rape is irrelevant, as not nation of the West put rape into the Op Plan. The lack of discipline of the Soviet troops in Eastern Europe, and Germany, however, has been documented by some.)

Thus every city was a center of economic power, or a population center. The theories of Douhet were plagerized or developed in parallel by Mitchell, and others, and had a great audience in strategic thinking. The nationalism, the mood of "us versus them" in 1944 was something that I do not believe you have a clue about. It carried over into the Cold War, but thankfully, the leaders of both the West and the East never pushed The Red Button. That allowed a different approach to slowly grow over two generations.

Once again, you confuse murder with war, and you pretend that there is something magically different about a military base than a city when war is declared. In the context of total war, the directing of your entire economy toward victory (we had rationing all over the country for four years in America, tires were incredibly hard to get, scrap metal drives took place in every town and city) you don't pull any punches, you play to win.

The purpose of the Pearl Harbor attack was a pre emptive strike to cripple American Naval power so that Japan could create a cordon in depth in the Pacific and keep American out of their "turf." The purpose was to start a war, but to hit such a hard blow that the US would not have stomach to fight. And, it was to buy time to establish the dominance in the Southern Asian economic area, Singapore etc, where there was oil for Japan's economy.

The purpose of Hiroshima was To End The War. Similar idea, really, but with a twist. It was to end the war now that it had already started and cost the blood of millions.

My country versus your country. You bring everything, mobilize your economy for the express purpose of winning, since coming in second in a war is an unnacceptable choice for the national leader. The other guy does the same. What is remarkable is that most nations, absent the Japanese, showed remarkable restraint even so, but given the grossly inaccurate targeting available to bombers in WW II, you had to take out a quadrant of a city to knock out its industrial capacity.

Was Dresden necesssary? I repeat, as you missed my point, it was deemed politically necessary, for internal morale. It was a reprisal.

Do I think it had to happen? It happened. Politics runs war, and the political decision was to conduct a reprisal for the bombing of England's non industrial centers and the terror weapons V-1 and V-2. Again, the Germans opened that can of worms with their V weapon attacks. Contrast this to the lack of use of gas. All of the major powers had gas capability in WW II, but did not use it For Fear or Reprisal! You can claim that reprisal are not justified, but it is fear of reprisal that makes deterrence work. And guess what? In the nuclear age, deterrence kept us from World War III.

Quid Pro Quo. Dresden was payback for cities all over England.

[Dani]

<Quotes from Occhi.>

Was Dresden necesssary?&nbsp; I repeat, as you missed my point, it was deemed politically necessary, for internal morale.&nbsp; It was a reprisal.

Not so much for internal morale as a show of force to the Soviets.

Quid Pro Quo.&nbsp; Dresden was payback for cities all over England.

Ahem, you kinda make it sounds like Dresden was the only city the Western allies terrorbombed in Europe. It just stands out because one raid made the city into an inferno, and because the reasons indeed were not aimed for the war, but rather for after the war. IIRC Berlin beats any other city more than two to one in (tonnage of) bombs received.

I am of the opinion, that if our modern morales condemn some action now, we should not try to defend same actions that have been done in the past. Also in many ways I feel slightly sick when westerners downplay these events. It's easy to talk when you haven't been burned. Compare British Empire + Commonwealth casualties in the war. 450k military, 60k civilians.
Over two million civilians were killed by allied air raids. That's a bit too much collateral damage even in a total war for the side that has tried to look "clean".

Why don't you just accept that noone got out clean from that war, except maybe the finns who fought both of the despots, neither by their own choice, and who were the only axis nation not to
give up their jews. (And they were the only nation dumb enough to pay their war reparations in full.)

[Roland]

equate to stupidity?

except maybe the finns who were the only nation dumb enough to pay their war reparations in full.

[Dani]

I'm not particularly fond of creative quoting. The war reparations part was in parenthesis for a reason. Please don't do so obvious misquotes.

[--Pete]

Hi,

OK, No creative quotes. You said:

Why don't you just accept that noone got out clean from that war, except maybe the finns who fought both of the despots, neither by their own choice, and who were the only axis nation not to give up their jews. (And they were the only nation dumb enough to pay their war reparations in full.)

Now, that's the whole paragraph. So, to repeat Roland's question, "Since when does honor equate to stupidity"? Is it "stupid" in your view to repay your debts? Remind me not to lend you any money. What else is "stupid" in your view? Keeping your word? Meeting your commitments? Obeying the law if you can get away with it? Telling the truth?

Please answer, I'm really interested in your view of ethics. I feel like I've come to know you much better from that one paragraph.

--Pete

[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?

[Roland]

I'm not particularly fond of creative quoting.

And that matters how? There was no creative quoting. You stated that because Finland repayed it's war reparations, it was stupid. I quoted that.

The war reparations part was in parenthesis for a reason.

Oh? And what reason was that? I don't see any reason. Maybe because there was none? At least, certainly not the "reason" you are claiming.

Please don't do so obvious misquotes.

First of all, there was no misquote. Second of all, there's nothing "obvious" except how you're making an issue out of nothing. You stated, quite simply (as I said above) that Finland was stupid for paying back its war reparations in full. Nothing more, nothing less. My comment? "Since when does honor equal stupidity?" You have no valid argument against that? Fine. Don't try and cloud the issue.

[Occhidiangela]

And you will note that in the interim, the policies of the Western Governments has generally been to eschew reprisals. The Lesson Has Been Learned. What I completely disagree with is the attempt of some who have posted in this thread to ignore the Why of the decision, and to attempt to see through a 2003 lens a 1945 decision. Thus my refrain: it was a political decision, made for political reasons. Was it morally pure, and could the assets so used have been better used elsewhere? Probably not, and probably.

Reprisal. This makes for an interesting topic of discussion regarding what the U.S. did in Afghanistan in regards the Taliban. Having harbored and supported our enemy, we took them out.

The semantic question is: was that a reprisal? And if so, does it matter if it is justified? I think it was justified, however, I realize that some do not agree with that stance.

[Tommi]

Actually, the war debts were a lucky strike here in Finland, as strange as it may sound. We had to start serious efforts to pay them, which resulted in a large scale forest and metallurgy industry. They are today main industries here along with telecommunications (Nokia).

And you know, we had Joseph Stalin leading our neighbor country, the Soviet Union, by then. It was better to pay the debts, I guess. =)

Cheers,

Tommi

[ak404]

Politically, Occhi, I believe the decisions were hard, but needed to be made. They were not morally pure, but that's the nature of war; that's why we try to avoid it.

The problem I have now is why, in 2003, we seem to not be learning anything from 1945.

Back onto the thought of civilian casualties, it might do one to remember that the economic sanctions have already killed off quite a bit of Iraqi civilians, so in a sense, war has already begun. I wonder why the US is so impatient to stop nickel-and-diming an impoverished nation to death and go for the sucker punch: it's not an act of defense, and it's certainly not humanitarian, so why?

If the willing shields wish to be martyrs to the cause, then so be it - not a lot of people have been willing to die for peaceful beliefs lately, and they make the statement they want to make: governments no longer care about their populations. If a few Americans die, #$%& 'em: they're only Americans, after all. Nothing makes them special...given Dubbie's treatment of his home ground and the amount of useful information regarding Iraq, I'm certainly inclined to believe that he doesn't think much of Americans at all. If a few civilians die, #$%& 'em, they got in the way. The problem is, Dubbie won't own up to that logic: he says civilian deaths will be minimized, but the strategy calls for constant bombing and a "shock and awe" strategy. The two seem not to mix.

[Jarulf]

>100,000 dead in hiroshima was not 'murder,' it was an
>act of war.

Come on are you serious? OK, the word "murder" might not be the best but still. Who is to decide when something is an "act of war"? You? The winner? The one doing it? Killing 100k civilians is inexcusable in my opinion, and is as far as I am concerned (together with Nagasaki) one of the biggest act of terrorism in modern time.

One can put in all kind of excuses to justify it but that doesn't really change much do it? You can do that for ANYTHING. Was the destruction of WTC an action of war? Wy not, al-qaida consider themselves at war with USA. Remember that one of the targets that day was actually a military building, yet that is supposedly called an act of terrorism too. By the same ones that claim killing hundrads of thousands of civilians in Hiroshima and Nagasaki was competely justified and just an act of war. Sheesh.

[Jester]

"And meanwhile, they prepare for war -- a war the pacifists will be more than willing to let someone else fight in and die in."

Pacifists are not "more than willing" to let people fight and die in wars. They'd really rather nobody fight or die. Given the slightest recourse, a pacifist is obliged to prevent war by any reasonable means. However, since they don't have mind control devices, and are forbidden to use violence, that doesn't exactly leave a lot of room for maneuvering when two sets of people decide to punch holes in each other, or experiment with making people combust.

And, of course, how would you reconcile the thread topic with the idea that pacifists would rather other people take the bullets, when this is about people who are deliberately moving from safety to danger just to make a point? Call them stupid, fine. They probably are. But I think you're talking about cowards, not pacifists. If that's what you mean, then say it. I'd certainly agree with you, presuming that were the case.

Jester