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The MSG -> Re: Innocents (12/31/2002 3:31:06 AM)
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[QUOTE]Originally posted by moore4807
[B]I am wondering when someone would bring up the A bomb, it was exactly the wholesale murder of civilians I started discussing here. [/B][/QUOTE]
Hehe, it HAS a tendency to pop up now and then, and what a can of worms it is!
[QUOTE]Originally posted by moore4807
MSG you have a logical and credible objection to this type of warfare. However it wasnt only the Germans who engaged in extermination warfare against civilians. Both the Chinese (against fellow Chinese no less), the Japanese, and even the British in India did this and it failed in nearly every case.[/B][/QUOTE]
I just brought up the first example out of my mind, thinking about Yugoslavia and occupied Russia. The list of nations not guilty of these types of atrocities would be a lot shorter than that of the guilty, perhaps even empty, but moral equivalency isnt the same as moral justification.
[QUOTE]Originally posted by moore4807
It has worked in a few particular cases, The A-Bomb, Shermans march to the sea, where resisters were killed - land was laid bare and fallow in many cases. Ghengis Kahn in the Baltic area did basically the same while swallowing whole regions (killing whole ruling families and servants) so it hasnt failed in every instance -just when you pick too large a target, your chances to succeed diminish.[/B][/QUOTE]
It can be argued that the Russian invasion of Manchuria was as large a part of the Japanese surrender as the A-bombs, and the use of them was to get Japan to surrender to the USA, and not the Soviets. While the hawks of Japan didnt wish to surrender before Fat Man and Little Boy, they didnt after either. Japan KNEW they were defeated before the nukes were used. PERHAPS they would have chosen to go down hard without them, but that is not nowhere near certain. If all the US wanted was to spare its soldiers lives Truman could just have let the Russians do it, they would have been willing...
The South surrendered because she couldnt fight. Simply put the South couldnt fight because her logistics were destroyed by Sherman's march and naval interdiction. The South did not surrender to save her civilian population.
[QUOTE]Originally posted by moore4807
Again -my problem is the ability to deter further actions while limiting retaliation against us, not an easy balancing act for anyone. Still its necessary in my mind because terrorists as a group do not seem to care about normal deterrents or conventions of warfare - so no quarter is given or asked in return.
[/B][/QUOTE]
I'm not sure this type of enemy CAN be detered this way. Family members killed by retaliation would also become martyrs. Acts like this would also make it easier to recruit for organisations like AQ, since in it would inevitably lead to "collateral damage" and prove that it doesnt matter if you are organized or not (and if it does, these guys, not us, control the local propaganda), and that the fight against the west is "justified" by our own acts.
I believe that putting more pressure on a hotspot may just as easily brew it up as extinguish it.
This is more complicated than just blowing up relatives of terrorists would fix, even if it was morally justified, wich it is not...
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