gipper
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- Jan 8, 2011
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- #141
Is it your position that since no Axis leader was prosecuted for bombing civilians, bombing civilians is perfectly okay?Okay...since apparently you are unwilling to answer my question, I will endeavor to answer it for you.Ok, name a Japanese, Italian, or German Officer or politician who was prosecuted for a war crime over bombing. No one was prosecuted, and no one was convicted. So apparently even the fire bombing of London was not a war crime. But I'm sure Ralph and you have a long list of people prosecuted for it. I'll just hold my breath over here and wait.
Can you explain in detail how mass murder of innocents from the air, is different from mass murder of innocents on the ground?
Well, I covered that to some extent on page five of this thread.
Will Trump be a war criminal like Truman?
Either you missed it, or you just skipped it, or you forgot.
The problem with your I even mentioned how in another response, you have to go about changing an understanding of history. You can't just cherry pick the quotes, you have to account for all the information. Ralph doesn't do that. He doesn't address the lack of prosecutions at the various war crimes trials for bombing. London was firebombed. But no one was prosecuted for it. Coventry was destroyed. No prosecutions. Churches, hospitals, and other targets you were supposed to avoid were hit.
Ralph does not address the wide availability of information and evidence. He cherry picks the quote and stops. He does not put the quotes into context of the era, and he does not address the lack of prohibitions in any policy manual or war plans.
Everyone wanted to precision bomb. They couldn't do it. The technology just did not exist. It didn't exist twenty years later during Vietnam. So the best we could do was drop some bombs at the target, and as long as we were aiming for the target, we would be covered.
Let's take it back a step. Lose the mass murder hang up for a minute. Let's say someone is shooting at you. You are armed, and returning fire. You are shooting at the guy who is shooting at you. It is obviously self defense. One of your bullets misses the guy and travels down the road striking a child who is in her front yard playing on a tricycle. It kills her. Have you murdered her? Have you committed manslaughter.
Our laws say no. Your intent was to hit the baddie who was trying to kill you. If he had not tried to kill you, you would not have fired your weapon. Your action was a result of his action. His instigation of the incident is what led to the death of that little girl.
This is why police snipers are not charged when they shoot the hostage. This is why cops are not prosecuted when they shoot the hostage. The law says that any deaths are the responsibility of the baddie who started it. If a hostage dies, even if it's at the hands of the police, it's the fault of the baddie. So long as you can say you were shooting at the baddie you're covered.
The example that was given to me as a child was let's say you are cleaning out a stable. Some kid throws a lit firecracker into the stable. You see this firecracker come in the window, and you grab it and turn and throw it out another window. It strikes another person and detonates and injures that person. You are not responsible for that harm, because you were acting to prevent the firework for startling the animals, and potentially harming one of them, or starting a fire. You would not have thrown the firecracker out the window if someone else had not thrown it in. Your reaction was intended to save, not harm.
The same is true of bombing. The intent was to harm the enemy ability to conduct war. Road junctions were valid military targets for every military. Those road junctions were in the middle of cities. So you have to bomb the cities to try and slow or stop the flow of war materials to the enemy. Railroads were similarly targeted.
Tell you what, let's fast forward to today. The M-16 replaced the M-14 rifle. The .30 caliber bullet was a killing round. It was intended to kill the enemy with a single shot. The round that replaced it was the .223 caliber, or 5.56 MM. This was intended to wound the enemy. The round created what is called a Militarily Significant Wound. That means that the guy who gets shot, is now hurt, and screaming, and needs medical attention. Do you think that was done because we are humane and don't want to kill the enemy?
It was done because of the cold calculation that one wounded takes at least three, probably four enemy out of the battle. A screaming comrade that is in agony is horrible for morale. You have to get him out of there. That means two people to put him on a stretcher and carry him to the medics. Well there is the medic who goes along and possibly someone to carry the weapons and equipment of the guys carrying the stretcher. So one wounded soldier takes more off the battlefield than a dead soldier. The dead guy doesn't scream in pain, but the wounded guy does.
We use the smaller cartridge not because we are merciful, but because we are cruel. We know that untreated that wound will become infected, and then the enemy gets to watch their friend die slowly with the stench of gangrene filling the air. The smell of death. The stench of rotting flesh. If the enemy does not have access to adequate medical facilities, then their wounded friend will probably die from the wound, slowly, agonizingly.
This is the 21st Century, a hundred years after the First World War, and we still do things like that, and not only is it perfectly legal under the laws of war, it's encouraged. We are supposed to use metal jacketed bullets to make it easier for doctors to heal the wounded. What it means is that without hollowpoint or expanding or exploding bullets that the enemies moral is affected as the guy screams in agony calling for his mother desperate for a little succor.
Answer me this question. How is the Atomic Bomb significantly worse than the firebombing of the cites which both sides did many times. At what point do you reach the maximum amount of suffering? At what point does the needle get pegged? Is it the Soviets in Leningrad who turned to cannibalism to survive? Is it the little German girl who asks her mother "are we getting dead now" as the bombs and fires raged closer to the shelter? Is it the wife who buried the buttock of her husband, identifiable as his because of his watch that was melted to the skin?
How much suffering is the limit? What is worse? Running out of the shelter because the air is being sucked out and finding yourself stuck to the streets that have been liquified by the heat and screaming as you are burned to death? Is it the concussion that destroyed your lungs and allow you to slowly choke to death as you drown on dry land? Is it the heat and blast of an atomic bomb? Of people throwing themselves into a river desperate for some relief from the agony?
That's the problem with Ralph's ideals. It utterly ignores the entire war, and the horrors that were experienced by so many. A German Soldier on the eastern front wrote "Pain is universal" as he came to understand exactly what was happening. He saw the enemy suffering, and he saw himself, and his friends suffering.
At some point, the suffering is maxed out. There just isn't any way to suffer any more. One of the Generals who was quoted after the war said that the best thing about the Atomic Bomb was it stopped the firebombing. For him, that was the worse. He has a point. The bombers would come back and the skins of the bombers would be stinking like the roasted flesh of people. You could smell the death according to reports.
Show me the policy that prohibited bombing of the cities. Show me the convention agreement that prohibited it. Show me something other than a handful of asinine quotes taken out of context. Show me how it fits into the larger picture. Show me how we have been viewing the incident wrong. You can't just ignore everything else. You have to address it. You have to show where the information was incorrect, or just not considered correctly.
This is where Ralph drops the ball. He ignores the tons of evidence, and the sheer incredible volume of information.
WAITING>>>>
Can you PLEASE explain in detail how mass murder of innocents from the air, is different from mass murder of innocents on the ground?
You believe the following as an answer to my question....it is okay for America to murder innocents to win a war, but it is not okay for any other nation to do the same.
Does that sound hypocritical to you?
Name who was prosecuted on the Axis side for bombing. Waiting. Remember we held the war trials and prosecuted. Who did we prosecute for bombing civilians?