The War Is Over,We Are Friends Again

[Gil Hamilton]

Yeah, actually, I DID hear about that, starting about junior high school. But then, I was a weird kid who actually paid attention in class.

And just a nitpick - Columbus himself wasn't the "mass-murderer" - he never actually reached the mainland, and never stayed long. Probably killed a bunch of natives by exposing them to European diseases, but at least in his case that wasn't intentional.

It was the later conquistadors like Cortez who did the raping, murdering, pillaging, etc. Which is not to stay that Columbus wouldn't have done it as well, under different circumstances - he might or might not - but that wasn't what happened.

Unless you have a cite for Columbus and his crews engaging in this sort of activity?...

Look up what happened on Hispanola during Columbus' settlement of the island during the second voyage to the Taino indians. 2/3rds of the population of the island was killed as a direct and indirect result of the Spanish enslaving them for gold mining and it got so bad that Columbus actually got recalled because of it.

[Montcalm]

Yeah, actually, I DID hear about that, starting about junior high school. But then, I was a weird kid who actually paid attention in class.

And just a nitpick - Columbus himself wasn't the "mass-murderer" - he never actually reached the mainland, and never stayed long. Probably killed a bunch of natives by exposing them to European diseases, but at least in his case that wasn't intentional.

It was the later conquistadors like Cortez who did the raping, murdering, pillaging, etc. Which is not to stay that Columbus wouldn't have done it as well, under different circumstances - he might or might not - but that wasn't what happened.

Unless you have a cite for Columbus and his crews engaging in this sort of activity?...

Look up what happened on Hispanola during Columbus' settlement of the island during the second voyage to the Taino indians. 2/3rds of the population of the island was killed as a direct and indirect result of the Spanish enslaving them for gold mining and it got so bad that Columbus actually got recalled because of it.

Another good point,that is something the the Columbus fans seems to push aside,anyone saw the Soprano episode?

[General Brock]

The friends again attitude is sort of the warrior/soldiers code. Not that you actually become friends, but accept that you live in peace and not hold grudges over a conflict that is over. In time, people not scarred by that experience may become friends.

I don't think it should have been applied to civillians, especially in that context. Rebuilding any kind of trust would be impossible.

[Chris OFarrell]

Starke, thats odd. I've learned all of those things in my history classes. Maybe its because i have an exceptional teacher, but things like Stalin's purges or the firebombings of Dresden were never whitewashed with me.

I'm not specifically referring to education (but then, I'm in AU, and everything at my highschool had a depressingly AU bias) but statements made and attitudes held by government. While it's ridiculous that the Japanese government wants to sweep it all under the carpet, I don't feel that the Allies have gone as far as Germany to admit their wartime actions either. I don't think I'm being very clear

Don't know whats with your education. But in my modern histroy classes I got the whole laydown on everything. We learned about the USSR's forced collectivisation and just what it cost them. We learned about what Stalin did to the German POW's. We learned about the American internment camps. We learned about the Japanese POW camps. About SS and Gastapo tactics through occupied Eurpoe. We learned about just about everything as much as that is possible for a 2 month study course.

And none of this still disproves my point. Western nations from the highest level on down do not cover up what happened. "Lets just not talk about Vietnam"? Did you miss the titanic protests through the 60's and 70's and the fact that the public was perhaps overinformed about what was going on? The phrase 'Its County X's Vietnam'?

And frankly I would say its completly subjective morality as to if the atomic bombings or the firebombing of Tokyo were war crimes. When weighed against attacks on various other Japanese outposts, like Okinawia. The fact that the military and civilian population rose against the US troops with everything from firearms down to bear hands. Would you have prefered the Marines to invade and have to kill them in personal combat? Instead of the USAAF doing it from 30,000 feet? If anything, the firebombings and atomic attacks WERE the moral choice. They saved HUGE numbers of lives on both sides.

[Chmee]

Starke, thats odd. I've learned all of those things in my history classes. Maybe its because i have an exceptional teacher, but things like Stalin's purges or the firebombings of Dresden were never whitewashed with me.

I'm not specifically referring to education (but then, I'm in AU, and everything at my highschool had a depressingly AU bias) but statements made and attitudes held by government. While it's ridiculous that the Japanese government wants to sweep it all under the carpet, I don't feel that the Allies have gone as far as Germany to admit their wartime actions either. I don't think I'm being very clear

Don't know whats with your education. But in my modern histroy classes I got the whole laydown on everything. We learned about the USSR's forced collectivisation and just what it cost them. We learned about what Stalin did to the German POW's. We learned about the American internment camps. We learned about the Japanese POW camps. About SS and Gastapo tactics through occupied Eurpoe. We learned about just about everything as much as that is possible for a 2 month study course.

And none of this still disproves my point. Western nations from the highest level on down do not cover up what happened. "Lets just not talk about Vietnam"? Did you miss the titanic protests through the 60's and 70's and the fact that the public was perhaps overinformed about what was going on? The phrase 'Its County X's Vietnam'?

And frankly I would say its completly subjective morality as to if the atomic bombings or the firebombing of Tokyo were war crimes. When weighed against attacks on various other Japanese outposts, like Okinawia. The fact that the military and civilian population rose against the US troops with everything from firearms down to bear hands. Would you have prefered the Marines to invade and have to kill them in personal combat? Instead of the USAAF doing it from 30,000 feet? If anything, the firebombings and atomic attacks WERE the moral choice. They saved HUGE numbers of lives on both sides.

I think you can make that case, sure ... but if you do, please spare us any hand-wringing over evil terrorists targeting civilians (not saying that you do that, but you see it every day, right?) ..... the country that turned terrorizing civilian populations into a frickin' art form should not get to talk about the "evil" of men who employ those tactics on a vastly smaller scale. It's either evil or a legitimate tactic of modern war, but you can't have it both ways.

[Uraniun235]

I find that my history classes were appallingly silent on President Wilson's offenses. Frankly, I think Wilson makes Bush look like a rank amateur.

[Chris OFarrell]

I think you can make that case, sure ... but if you do, please spare us any hand-wringing over evil terrorists targeting civilians (not saying that you do that, but you see it every day, right?) ..... the country that turned terrorizing civilian populations into a frickin' art form should not get to talk about the "evil" of men who employ those tactics on a vastly smaller scale. It's either evil or a legitimate tactic of modern war, but you can't have it both ways.

I am guessing the fact that you are comparing two completly different eras and *types* of war has no meaning to you?

When nation states go to war these days, civilian populations are held hostage against the ability of each side to wipe out great chunks of them in retaliation. These days using precision weapons, militaries attack militaries and try their best to leave civilians OUT of it. WW2 was a completly different type of war with entire nations throwing their efforts at each other. Experence leading upto the invasion of Jappan clearly showed the Japanese would play with their entire civilian population if necessary. You have the choice of invading on the ground and being forced to kill an order of magnitude more people and loose huge numbers of your own troops, or, you can drop a couple of atomic weapons and terrorise them into giving up, thus saving them from a fruitless defence which would have had the exact same endgame, but at a cost of far more lives on both sides.

Terrorists are NOT nation states. They do NOT have to protect and defend their own civilans, held hostage against their enemies. They do NOT generaly attack military tagets to defeat the enemy, they can not even claim that they are going to win the war regardless and a focused attack on a civilian target will save live in the long run. They play by NO rules.

Western nations SHOULD hold themselves to a higher standard, we have no NEED to attack civilian populations in modern day conflicts. We can acheive our goals through directing very specific force against key targets. Total war is something forerign to most western militaries these days, we don't attack civilian targets as it produces the exact opposite result. Hell even in WW2 strategic bombing of population centers failed to bring places to heal. It was only the combination of the Atomic Bombings showing America COULD wipe out the entire Japanese nation and the complete inability to stop them that shook the Japanese from their will to fight to the death.

The point that you appear to have COMPLETLY missed is that it is NOT a legitiment tactic of modern war because it is counter productive, completly unnecessary and something troops are not trained for. WW2 is NOT a modern war. Its history. Doctrine and strategic thinking have changed a LOT in sixty years.

[Chmee]

I think you can make that case, sure ... but if you do, please spare us any hand-wringing over evil terrorists targeting civilians (not saying that you do that, but you see it every day, right?) ..... the country that turned terrorizing civilian populations into a frickin' art form should not get to talk about the "evil" of men who employ those tactics on a vastly smaller scale. It's either evil or a legitimate tactic of modern war, but you can't have it both ways.

I am guessing the fact that you are comparing two completly different eras and *types* of war has no meaning to you?

When nation states go to war these days, civilian populations are held hostage against the ability of each side to wipe out great chunks of them in retaliation. These days using precision weapons, militaries attack militaries and try their best to leave civilians OUT of it. WW2 was a completly different type of war with entire nations throwing their efforts at each other. Experence leading upto the invasion of Jappan clearly showed the Japanese would play with their entire civilian population if necessary. You have the choice of invading on the ground and being forced to kill an order of magnitude more people and loose huge numbers of your own troops, or, you can drop a couple of atomic weapons and terrorise them into giving up, thus saving them from a fruitless defence which would have had the exact same endgame, but at a cost of far more lives on both sides.

Terrorists are NOT nation states. They do NOT have to protect and defend their own civilans, held hostage against their enemies. They do NOT generaly attack military tagets to defeat the enemy, they can not even claim that they are going to win the war regardless and a focused attack on a civilian target will save live in the long run. They play by NO rules.

Western nations SHOULD hold themselves to a higher standard, we have no NEED to attack civilian populations in modern day conflicts. We can acheive our goals through directing very specific force against key targets. Total war is something forerign to most western militaries these days, we don't attack civilian targets as it produces the exact opposite result. Hell even in WW2 strategic bombing of population centers failed to bring places to heal. It was only the combination of the Atomic Bombings showing America COULD wipe out the entire Japanese nation and the complete inability to stop them that shook the Japanese from their will to fight to the death.

The point that you appear to have COMPLETLY missed is that it is NOT a legitiment tactic of modern war because it is counter productive, completly unnecessary and something troops are not trained for. WW2 is NOT a modern war. Its history. Doctrine and strategic thinking have changed a LOT in sixty years.

Unfortunately, despite this unprecedented level of 'precision' in modern warfare, the plain fact is that we still kill civilians ... thousands of them, in Iraq. It is not the *intent* of the methods we use, and this clearly distinguishes it from the terror bombing of Japan, and I agree with you on that ... but we're still perfectly willing to use tactics that we know, for a certainty, will cause thousands of civilian deaths.

However, facing a more competent opponent than Iraq, I have little doubt that we would do what we have always done in the modern era: whatever we feel is necessary to win.

When the objective is a stable base of power amid a friendly civilian population, where the central government was as easy to topple as a Weeble, then you don't terror bomb. It's hard to imagine an opponent today which this would actually be a viable tactic against ... but times change, don't they? Doctrines suit the times.

What I said was that we, as a nation, not only participated in terror as a tactic of war, but took it to unprecedented heights of efficiency at incinerating civilians. I do not think the willingness to do that has somehow vanished from our culture, so when zealots try to compare us to our enemies by highlighting their 'barbaric' actions, I would like them to be a little more careful tossing those stones from inside this glass house.

[Enforcer Talen]

-shrugs- all war is hell. its industrailized murder. debating the ethics of one over the other is hairsplitting.

[Darth Fanboy]

What about Canada? Got some death camps or something hidden away? Wars started?

Canada has apologized for the existence of Quebec on numerous occaisions.

[Darth Wong]

I am guessing the fact that you are comparing two completly different eras and *types* of war has no meaning to you?

When nation states go to war these days, civilian populations are held hostage against the ability of each side to wipe out great chunks of them in retaliation.

If a "different type of war" functions as an excuse, then should we recognize that the terrorists are also fighting a very different kind of war and excuse them on that basis?

[Chris OFarrell]

I am guessing the fact that you are comparing two completly different eras and *types* of war has no meaning to you?

When nation states go to war these days, civilian populations are held hostage against the ability of each side to wipe out great chunks of them in retaliation.

If a "different type of war" functions as an excuse, then should we recognize that the terrorists are also fighting a very different kind of war and excuse them on that basis?

I would very much hesitate to draw lines of concurrency with terrorists. They are NOT nation states as much as they might like to pretend they are, nor do they see any need to play by the "rules". And the fact is that terrorists CAN'T fight war. So they fight asymmetric warfare, targeting what they perceive to be the weak link, the civilian population. Not generally for any military goals in war, but for a strategic goal of inducing terror, to gain a political resolution. Hiroshima, Nagasaki and others were clear exceptions to this rule in WW2, but even they were done with the object of ultimately saving more lives. Terrorists have no such objective, they simply want to induce terror in their opponents, so they through fear what they couldn't get through political, economic or conventional military means. Usually stupidly unreasonable requests.

We should not excuse them from attacking civilian targets "on the basis that they are fighting a different war". That’s bullocks. What I was saying before is that (at least Western military) strategy these days has evolved beyond that. If you can destroy an opponents military, then you have no need to destroy or directly attack their civilian population in almost all cases. You have proven you are the winner and you can occupy or even wipe out the enemy country at your leisure. Which is why we don't target civilians And incidental casualties are reduced today as well. We don't need to saturate bomb a block to take out a command centre, send a smart bomb through the window of the one house.

So in short, no. We should NOT recognise terrorists are fighting a 'different sort of war'. THEY are the people who chose to attack civilians. They don't need to, they could fight a war against military targets of their enemy. They are not even a military, or generally representative of an official nation or Government, just a splinter or extreme faction.

[Kazuaki Shimazaki]

I would very much hesitate to draw lines of concurrency with terrorists. They are NOT nation states as much as they might like to pretend they are, nor do they see any need to play by the "rules".

Would a nation state play by the rules if they felt getting outside them is needed to win? And if something is invalidated because they are not a "nation state", what about guerillas?

And the fact is that terrorists CAN'T fight war.So they fight asymmetric warfare, targeting what they perceive to be the weak link, the civilian population.

First you say they can't fight war, then you say they are engaging in assymetrical warfare?

Not generally for any military goals in war, but for a strategic goal of inducing terror, to gain a political resolution.

Clausewitz: War is a continuation of politics by other means (or something like that). The point being that wars are ultimately for political resolutions.

Hiroshima, Nagasaki and others were clear exceptions to this rule in WW2, but even they were done with the object of ultimately saving more lives.

Actually, their first priority is about saving their own lives. The enemy's lives are somewhere after that. Let's not kid ourselves.

Terrorists have no such objective, they simply want to induce terror in their opponents, so they through fear what they couldn't get through political, economic or conventional military means.

Kind of what happens when you don't have a lot of power.

Usually stupidly unreasonable requests.

What is a reasonable request? Take the Chechen terrorists. Generally, I have little sympathy for them. But what is their request? That Russia grants them independence (or what's left of them) and leaves them alone? Is wanting independence unreasonable? How about the Palestinians wanting the Israelis to do the same thing? What is reasonable in those people's POVs, letting the Russians/Israelis dominate them?

We might think those are far-reaching goals, but then we aren't the guys feeling oppressed.

What I was saying before is that (at least Western military) strategy these days has evolved beyond that. If you can destroy an opponents military, then you have no need to destroy or directly attack their civilian population in almost all cases. You have proven you are the winner and you can occupy or even wipe out the enemy country at your leisure. Which is why we don't target civilians And incidental casualties are reduced today as well. We don't need to saturate bomb a block to take out a command centre, send a smart bomb through the window of the one house.

Nice to have all the smart bombs and advanced equipment you need to fight that kind of a war on your side.

So in short, no. We should NOT recognise terrorists are fighting a 'different sort of war'. THEY are the people who chose to attack civilians. They don't need to, they could fight a war against military targets of their enemy. They are not even a military, or generally representative of an official nation or Government, just a splinter or extreme faction.

Tell the Dresden bombers to go bomb a military base, or perhaps the American bombers in general can fly low enough in daylight to hit at least the industrial area. But flying low would make them more vulnerable to AA, won't it. So they fly high, and let the bombs arc all over town...

[Zornhau]

I find this sort of debate perplexing. When was guilt inherited? I didn't drop the A-bomb, or obliterate chunks of Germany, nor did any of the Western rulers. Next people will be blaming the Italians for Masada. Pish!

However, I do feel the need to defend my grandfather's generation, and the actions of soldiers in general.

Some military actions are always evil, because they are self evidently pointless, e.g. murdering the population of an entire village as a reprisal (since it won't creates more guerillas).

Some actions are distasteful, but in context moral. It's into this category that much of the controversial WWII stuff falls

Shooting another soldier in a firefight is obviously moral if your cause is just, even if he's just a poor conscript kid who didn't deserve personally to die.

The bigger - more distasteful - stuff is just this scaled up. If it's OK to shoot Fritz the 16-year old Hitler Youth in order to win the war, why is it not OK to bomb his family? What makes him expendible and his kid sister's life always sacred, even if she lives next to a railway siding?

It's horrible, but sometimes the numbers add up such that you have to sacrifice some innocents to save many more.

Hiroshoma, for instance, saved lives on both sides. The Japanese were planning human wave suicide attacks on a national scale. We were doing them a favour.

The Dresden bombing also falls into this category. It was a transport hub. In the absence of precision bombing, the whole city was fair game. Tough. (And perhaps it did work - since we don't know what would have happened if we'd left the place standing.)

Attacks on smaller - "innocent" - German towns also fall into this unpleasant but moral category. As I recall, they resulted from an application of Game Theory. Flattening the odd non-essential target forced the Germans to spread their defences. Again, tough.

And - on a personal note - before you get too protective of German or Japanese civilian lives, go look at a real war cemetary, e.g. in Normandy, and look at the ages of the boys who died for us.

[Kurgan]

In what I've read (been awhile, so forgive me if I missed anything), Columbus's main crimes were greed and incompetance as well as being a slave holder. He enslaved Native people in order to look for gold and took advantage of their good will (I believe there were stories of his men raping Native women too), setting the stage for others to abuse them in the future. The spread of disease was an uintentional tragic side effect of his visit.