Pepper sprayed for public safety.

[taxwonk]

Originally Posted by Oliver_Wendell_Ramone

This would make a great thread title, but I'm not sure if it's more appropriate here or on the FB.

Really, I would think the Adult Board, but we've most of us left our adolescence behind (even the delayed portion) so the Adult Board may expire without ever rolling over.

[Tyrone Slothrop]

Originally Posted by Not Bob

Nope. And, all apologies to Kurt Vonnegut, Dresden was a legitimate military target. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bombing...n_World_War_II Tokyo, I think we can all agree, was as well.

There were legitimate military targets in those cities, but the cities were not legitimate military targets. A city is a large collection of buildings where many people live, most of them not soldiers.

Were civilians deliberately targeted? Only Bomber Harris and Churchill can know as to Dresden; Curtis LeMay and FDR as to Tokyo can answer that, but it seems (other than to revisionist historians and well, understandably, the Germans and Japanese) clear that there were legitimate military reasons for targeting those two towns.

Why is that the standard? Why not recklessness?

And when we firebombed Tokyo, we were trying to burn the city down. That sounds pretty deliberate.

A better analogy might be the deliberate assasination of Admiral Yamamoto. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Vengeance

To all of which I say, whatever. The biggest shame of WWII for the US is not Dresden, Tokyo, Hiroshima, or Nagasaki -- it was the concentration camps blessed by the Korematsu decison. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Korematsu_v._United_States

Agree with the Yamamoto thing, but I'm not sure why you think confining Americans in the desert was worse than fire-bombing Japanese in Tokyo.

[Tyrone Slothrop]

Originally Posted by Sidd Finch

Spot-on. Despite the reliance on Wikipedia.

The dilemma we are facing now is that we have a set of "rules of war" that arose from a civilization, such as it was, where wars were fought by professional soldiers carrying out their duties and obligations as citizens. It was okay to kill them on the battlefield, but if captured you had to treat them a certain way because they were no longer combatants and they shouldn't be personally punished for doing their national duty. In contrast, if they were out of uniform then all bets (or most) were off. As wars expanded to become "total" -- i.e., where the entire nation, including its industrial base, was part of the war effort -- then the rules expanded to include bombing of Dresden, etc.

From that Wikipedia page:

An RAF memo issued to airmen on the night of the attack said:

We weren't just bombing factories.

[Sidd Finch]

Originally Posted by Tyrone Slothrop

From that Wikipedia page:


We weren't just bombing factories.

No, we were bombing an entire city that was part of an entire war effort in a total war. A city that was "an industrial city of first-class importance," that provided "shelter to workers, refugees, and troops alike," and that "house[d] the administrative services displaced from other areas." All of that -- even the sheltering of refugees, to an extent -- was part of the German war effort. We were trying to disrupt and destroy that. We were also trying to bomb Germany into submission, not only to win that war but to demonstrate that Germany could not survive another war.

In the context of that war at that time, this doesn't trouble me. Nor does the notion that we were treating German lives as worth less than American lives (and British, French, and Russian lives). They were worth less, because the nation of which they were part had devalued them. There's an interesting discussion about this entire topic in The Storm of War (a book that is worth reading overall). It won't change your view but perhaps would soften it a little.

None of this has much to do with fighting against stateless actors, except in the most attenuated sense.

[Tyrone Slothrop]

Originally Posted by Sidd Finch

No, we were bombing an entire city that was part of an entire war effort in a total war. A city that was "an industrial city of first-class importance," that provided "shelter to workers, refugees, and troops alike," and that "house[d] the administrative services displaced from other areas." All of that -- even the sheltering of refugees, to an extent -- was part of the German war effort. We were trying to disrupt and destroy that. We were also trying to bomb Germany into submission, not only to win that war but to demonstrate that Germany could not survive another war.

In the context of that war at that time, this doesn't trouble me. Nor does the notion that we were treating German lives as worth less than American lives (and British, French, and Russian lives). They were worth less, because the nation of which they were part had devalued them. There's an interesting discussion about this entire topic in The Storm of War (a book that is worth reading overall). It won't change your view but perhaps would soften it a little.

None of this has much to do with fighting against stateless actors, except in the most attenuated sense.

I think it has a lot to do with fighting against stateless actors. If you can convince yourself that it is OK to destroy a city (because the lives of the people living there have been devalued by their own government?), then it's pretty easy to accept collateral damage to kill stateless actors. You just have to tell yourself that all's fair in war, and it's just another kind of war.

[Sidd Finch]

Originally Posted by Tyrone Slothrop

I think it has a lot to do with fighting against stateless actors. If you can convince yourself that it is OK to destroy a city (because the lives of the people living there have been devalued by their own government?), then it's pretty easy to accept collateral damage to kill stateless actors. You just have to tell yourself that all's fair in war, and it's just another kind of war.

I do accept collateral damage to kill stateless actors.

I don't think destroying German cities was collateral. It was actually the goal.

[Tyrone Slothrop]

Romney loves Big Bird, and wants to shut down PBS.
Romney loves teachers, and wants to bust their unions.
Romney is like a teenage boy: when he says he “loves” something, what he means is that he’s looking for a chance to screw it.

Someone at RBC

[Hank Chinaski]

Originally Posted by Sidd Finch

I do accept collateral damage to kill stateless actors.

I don't think destroying German cities was collateral. It was actually the goal.

Dresden was like Sherman's March just from the sky. And to keep stuff in perspective the Germans had bombed London without any concern and the Japanese had so raped other Asian people that Chinese and Koreans hate them to this day.

[Hank Chinaski]

Originally Posted by Tyrone Slothrop

Someone at RBC

No Romney is like a dad with a 28 year old Big Bird living at home and he wants him to get a job and move out on his own.

[Tyrone Slothrop]

Originally Posted by Hank Chinaski

No Romney is like a dad with a 28 year old Big Bird living at home and he wants him to get a job and move out on his own.

Nice.

[Tyrone Slothrop]

Originally Posted by Hank Chinaski

Dresden was like Sherman's March just from the sky. And to keep stuff in perspective the Germans had bombed London without any concern and the Japanese had so raped other Asian people that Chinese and Koreans hate them to this day.

Your point is that Yemenis and Pakistanis are going to be holding a grudge for a while?

[Sidd Finch]

Originally Posted by Tyrone Slothrop

Your point is that Yemenis and Pakistanis are going to be holding a grudge for a while?

I thought his point is that Georgia is still pissy about Sherman's March.

[Hank Chinaski]

Originally Posted by Sidd Finch

I thought his point is that Georgia is still pissy about Sherman's March.

I told a story in Louisville (which isn't really the South but they think they are). The story was about a woman working out a grudge against her Ex. I'm telling it and the audience is loving the story, until I say "I was afraid she'd stop this grudge march to the sea. After that no one laughed at all. Yankees cannot bring it up. although, at the time, I owned a condo in Savannah, so you'd think I'd get some slack?

[Greedy,Greedy,Greedy]

Originally Posted by Hank Chinaski

Dresden was like Sherman's March just from the sky. And to keep stuff in perspective the Germans had bombed London without any concern and the Japanese had so raped other Asian people that Chinese and Koreans hate them to this day.

Yeah, and they'd both done a bunch of other pretty bad shit, too.

The "total war" concept Sidd has seems kinda useful at first, but, really, it's just war. Once upon a time, I bought the notion that WWII changed the concept of war in a way that required we start thinking about it differently - the whole total war stuff that was used to say Dresden was particularly bad but justified and we needed a UN afterwards to keep it from happening again because war is now worse than ever before.

But, then I read the Mahabharata and realized that the Bramashira has been with us a long time. Sherman marched to the sea. War sucks. It targets civilians and children and innocent passers by. It brings on famine and disease that decimate populations wholesale. It's genocidal by nature.

Unless you've got a blue-throated god hanging around at your beck and call, once you start a war, you've got to figure out how to justify to yourself the civilian casualties, the Gitmo detainees, the bombed wedding parties, etc., because starting a war summons them all.

[Sidd Finch]

Originally Posted by Greedy,Greedy,Greedy

Yeah, and they'd both done a bunch of other pretty bad shit, too.

The "total war" concept Sidd has seems kinda useful at first, but, really, it's just war. Once upon a time, I bought the notion that WWII changed the concept of war in a way that required we start thinking about it differently - the whole total war stuff that was used to say Dresden was particularly bad but justified and we needed a UN afterwards to keep it from happening again because war is now worse than ever before.

But, then I read the Mahabharata and realized that the Bramashira has been with us a long time. Sherman marched to the sea. War sucks. It targets civilians and children and innocent passers by. It brings on famine and disease that decimate populations wholesale. It's genocidal by nature.

Unless you've got a blue-throated god hanging around at your beck and call, once you start a war, you've got to figure out how to justify to yourself the civilian casualties, the Gitmo detainees, the bombed wedding parties, etc., because starting a war summons them all.

WWII changed everything. Developed countries could no longer survive wars against each other. Even the wealthiest and most powerful people cannot avoid the risk of complete destruction. This more than anything is why there has been peace in Europe since 1945. (The developed countries instead have fought by proxy elsewhere.)

But, yes -- everything you say about why you shouldn't start wars, I agree with.