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 ...
Why didn't he write a book about a war criminal who commanded a seal team in Viet Nam that butchered woman and children, came home, ran as a Left wing "War Hero" and was elected Senator, retired after being on a panel that was critical of our treatment of terrorist prisoners and now heads an extreme left wing college in New York City?
I'm going to get tarred and feathered for saying it, but to me, the term "war crime" seems like a complete contradiction.
If you look at the history of warfare, it's long been a meaningless term. Now, in my opinion, it's just a hindrance that drags wars on continuously and is a tool used to turn a nation against its own troops.
Usually total war is used to describe the complete society of a country going to war: military, economy, and culture/etc.
Plus, occasionally the killing of those civilians can end a war with less people getting killed than would have happened without those civilians getting killed.
Not only NO...but Hell no! Times change so do standards and the so called "facts" of history.
I was almost 13 when the war ended.
Everyone,kids and adults alike,would cheer when German and Japanese cities were bombed. It was war fatigue and everyone knew someone in the war.
War does strange things to people.
Sad !
Still, two wrongs don't make a right. The killing of a few civilians (such as those used to run the war machine) could result in less casualties for both sides when the war is ended. Killing civilians as a tit for tat measure could be wrong.
They object to Conservatism. They object to Religion (those that insist on traditional morality). They object to anyone who has a strong set of moral beliefs and sticks by them. Bottom line, they object to anyone other than themselves, the self-appointed, "intellectual" elite, in positions of power. All the ranting and raving about racism, sexism, homophobia, etc. is all window dressing to cover the fact that they believe they are the ruling class and how dare anyone vote for anyone other than them.
Ok then. Tell me what you would have done. Japan was beaten militarily and economically, this is true. But their morale most certainly was not beaten. When they realized that their air force was no match for us, they started purposely flying their planes into ships - surely you heard of the kamikazes. They were as fanatical an enemy as you could have imgained and viewed their emperor as a god. The only way they would have stopped fighting was if their god/emperor would have told them to - and the only way to do that was to show him just what kind of destruction we could bring down. Remember, we warned the emperor what would happen if he didn't do the sane thing and accept defeat, he didn't listen.
So the choice was end the war with bloodshed quickly, or end the war with even more bloodshed slowly.
Grayling is either incompetent or dishonest. Our Army targeted military installations and production with bombs, and we didn't have "smart" guided bombs back then. Grayling and all other anti-American, western European appeasers of Nazis and terrorists should listen to those whose country saved his.
Fascists like Grayling show all the more that western Europe is bound for dhimmitude, unless we rescue it again.
I have to respectfully disagree about the firebombing of Japanese cities during World War II. The resaon is simple: a huge fraction of Japanese war industry was done in small shops scattered all over large metropolitan areas, and before World War II most Japanese cities were extremely vulnerable to fires due to most of the buildings being made of wood. That's why when Americans bombed Tokyo on the night of March 9-10, 1945 it burned 16 square miles of the city and likely severely hampered the many shops building war materiel there.
More '60s generation "historians" fleshing out the "what ifs" that occur to them while tripping on 'shrooms.
The major plant in Cologne that had been owned by the Ford Motor Company (actually Ford Werke, the German subsidiary of the company), for example, had gone unscathed through so many Allied bombing raids during the war that it became a place of refuge for the city's residents whenever the air raid sirens sounded.
Dresden probably had much more casualties than coventry as lots of civilian refugees from the eastern part of Germany were supposed to have gone to Dresden.
Grayling is a mendacious creep.
Several alert posters already mentioned Nanking, Coventry, and other atrocities by Axis nations who happened pile one war crime onto another.
I'm willing to wager that Grayling doesn't mention that many civilians were TARGETED during the Japanese raid on Pearl Harbor.
From Wiki, Anthony Clifford Grayling has also written on the topics of ...the legalisation of drugs, euthanasia, secularism, and human rights.
Anyone surprised?
.
I guess it's time to have war without killing anyone. It would be called "pattycake".
I always have a hard time with people who want to judge the behavior of those of another era according to their own, contemporary mores.
I find them self-righteous and chauvinistic, and when they threathen their descendants with punishment, it's downright frightening.
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