Technotranscendence wrote:
> On Friday, May 26, 2000 3:32 AM Michael S. Lorrey retroman@turbont.net
> wrote:
> > Any infrastructure facilities are strategic targets. TV station =
> > propaganda and military coordination capability that was in fact seized
> > by the milosevik government. The commuter train happened to be crossing
> > a bridge that was targeted, the train was not the target.
>
> No time to comment on everything this morning, but the above point of view
> clearly means Lorrey means anything and everything can be redefined as a
> military target. In other words, any war is always total war and any nation
> engaging in war that thinks it has right on its side -- and what nation
> going to war claims it doesn't -- can bomb and kill indiscriminately.
No, that is NOT what I mean. You cannot specifically target civilians, private
buildings that don't contribute to the war effort (and propaganda is a
contribution to the war effort, so a TV station IS a legitimate target),
hospitals, schools, prisons, etc. However, there is a difference between
targeting a non-combatant, and accidentally killing a non-combatant through
collateral damage while in the course of attacking a legitimate target. Any
civilian with brains will stay as far away from any military target as possible.
Bridges are and always have been considered primary military targets.
> I recall the bombing of the train bridge. The pilot saw the train after
> dropping his first load and went back and bombed again. The NATO spokesman
> claimed, "He bombed in good faith." What, pray tell, would bombing in "bad
> faith" be?
Bombing in bad faith is specifically bombing a target that you are aware has a
large number of non-combatants in the target zone. This is called an atrocity.
If you drop a bomb, knowing the target is clear, and while the bomb is dropping
a non-combatant runs into the target area, that is not an atrocity, that is
stupidity on the part of the non-combatant.
> > There was a very good documentary done on Dresden not too long ago. The
> > British were the ones who specifically ran a two wave HE and incindiary
> > mission against Dresden, while the Americans came along later with a
> > targeted mission against a neighboring military facility.
>
> The Soviets actually asked the British and Americans to target the city.
> Tens of thousands were killed. The military targets in Dresden were road
> and rail centers. In order to minimize civilian and refugee deaths, all
> that would have been necessary was targeting these outside the city. The
> bombing took place in February of 1945. The war ended a few months later.
> This was not material to ending the war -- any more than turning over people
> to the Soviets after the war was material to keeping the peace.
General 'Bomber' Harris was the British commander in charge of the British
bombing raid, he heard the Americans were going to target a few military targets
around Dresden, and he was so competetive that he HAD to bomb Dresden first, so
he sent up the British mission. I do happen to think that Harris should have
been tried for war crimes, as a matter of fact.
> > Now, are you saying the Germans were housing POWs in the city, as human
> > shields? That, in itself, is a war crime.
>
> The Germans, to my knowledge, did not know Dresden was going to be bombed.
> Up until February of 1945, to my knowledge, Dresden had never been heavily
> bombed AND it was not a military center -- being mainly an "arts" Mecca.
They didn't know when any place was going to be bombed. That is not an excuse.
Most all POW camps were built outside population centers and away from
industrial sites to avoid that kind of thing.
Note: We frequently bombed military industrial facilities where Jewish slave
laborers worked. Should we be blamed for their deaths?
>
>
> [big snip I'll to get to later...]
> > We don't kill the kids.
>
> Who is this "we"? Is Lorrey calling the shots down at the Pentagon?
You are blaming America in general, and I am an American, so it is 'we'. I note
that you avoid replying to the rest of my comments here.
> [another big snip I'll to get to later...]
> > > Notably, Saddam has not been stopped. He continues to rule and seek
> ways to
> > > expand his power, the coalition against fell apart mainly because of the
> > > US's and Britain's highhanded policy in the region, and the general
> lesson
> > > every other nation and people is being taught is that might makes right.
> > > Kosovo is much the same. Milosevic is still in power, now the KLA is
> > > killing Kosovar Serbs, the genocide that never was is generally ignored
> > > because it's not news, Serbia might be bombed out but it's army is
> intact,
> > > and Russia used the American strategy to its advantage in Chechnya.
> (How
> > > the two -- Chechnya and Yugoslavia -- are different is one that will
> have to
> > > be explained to me.)
> >
> > Well, there is little difference, with the sole exception being that
> > Serbs started killing ethnic albanians first,
>
> Yes, I recall some 45 people were killed before the bombings began. And, of
> course, the claims of the KLA Are to be beleived while any Serb sources are
> total liars. Genocide on a scale to match... Waco not Hitler. I suppose
> that justifies bombing all of Yugoslavia AND killing thousands of civilians
> in the process.
There were far more than 45 people killed. Where are you getting your
information? By the time we started bombing, there were hundreds of thousands as
refugees and thousands of people killed, raped, and being used as human shields.
> Also, the bombing against Yugoslavia seems to not have stopped the killings
> in the region, but escalated them. Was this the goal? I don't think so.
> One should, after all, go to war with the notion to making things better.
> In other words, one fights because one thinks that the peace afterwards will
> be better than the peace before the fight. This should make war the means
> to a higher end and actual military actions can then be measured against
> whether they work toward this end or detract from it.
If the Serbs did not want what is happening to them now, they should not have
given free reign to those who perpetrated the slaughter and rape of thousands of
ethnic albanians. What comes around goes around.
> Yugoslavia is interesting in another way. The US had no vital interest
> there. It did not affect any US allies in a big way. (If it did, why has
> the trouble in the Balkans for the last ten years not bothered them?) Also,
> US policy in the region has been markedly pro-Islamic and pro-German. I'm
> not trying to bring a conspiracy angle in here, but it's strange to see the
> US standing by while Croatia cleansed itself of Serbs by the tens of
> thousands, while not being able stand Serbia hold on to Kosovo and the death
> toll being orders of magnitude smaller. (Croatia is a nation which
> celebrates its alliance to Nazi Germany and exterminated approximately a
> third of its population during WW2. This does NOT mean I'm prepared to
> support a bombing campaign against Croatia TV and rail lines, civilians or
> no.)
Croatia did not slaughter thousands of Serbs, they evicted them. They also
received a good number of Croats that were evicted from other areas. Tudjman
wais not a saint, he was a thug as well. Most Americans, and I'm sure our
government as well, does not consider any of the leaders in the former
Yugoslavic states to be nice people. They are all thugs and bullies. All we can
do (and what the Europeans should have been doing but were to lazy and self
involved to pull their heads out of their asses) is try to keep the peace in a
very volatile situation, or else we might as will blockade the whole area and
give them all the guns they want so they can shoot it out until they've settled
their differences. These are the only two real options.
Once again, Europe is asking us to pull their nuts out of the fire, and if we
don't do it just the way they want us to, they try to blame us for the whole
thing. Sometimes I think we should tell them all to piss off.
> > while in Chechnya, the
> > Chechens started killing Russians first. While Serbia is small enough
> > that we can do something about it, there is little we can do about
> > Russia except diplomatic protests.
>
> My point was that Russia could make the same claims about Chechnya that
> Lorrey could make about Yugoslavia. In fact, the Russian policy with the
> Near Abroad and breakaway republics like Chechnya and Ingushtia has been to
> claim that ethnic Russians are being persecuted -- a claim not completely
> without merit -- and use this as a pretext for intervention.
Of course. And given the level to which fundamentalist Muslim terrorists are
percolating and penetrating in the 'Stans' these days, I'd be very worried and
willing to take action too if I were in the Kremlin.
> > > It's a shame that the American people will have to pay for these
> mistakes --
> > > and not the politicians who make them. But that's the nature of the
> beast.
> >
> > How are we going to pay for them?
>
> Americans will pay through blood and treasure, of course. With the former,
> there is terrorism and war which will claim American lives. I'm not saying
> this is a justification for this, but merely human nature. The orphaned
> Iraqi or Serbian kid who turns to terrorism is not going to think about
> morality the same way Lorrey (I hope!) and I do. He or she is mostly going
> to be motivated by revenge against the US. That urge would not be there if
> the US had either a) stayed the f*ck out it or b) been a little more
> restrained and civilized in flexing its muscles.
Funny, until we started bombing, bleeding hearts like you were crying that we
were not doing enough to stop Milosevik. When are you ever going to be
satisfied?
> The treasure part includes property lost to terrorism and war as well as
> taxes paid to fund the current policy of military adventurism of the US.
> But also, the price will be paid in many other ways -- a less stable world,
> for one.
As long as there are people who hate their neighbors just because they go to a
different church or have a different accent, and are willing to kill them for
these differences, then the world will be less stable. Its did not start with
us, and cannot be blamed on us.
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Thu Jul 27 2000 - 14:11:41 MDT