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10th December 2012, 09:53 AM | #81 |
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Or, look at it this way:
You are an allied commander in WW2. How many of your soldiers (who are just civilians drafted for the duration of the war) would you sacrifice in order to minimize losses amongst the enemy civilians working amongst enemy industry/infrastructure? (And if you were to prioritise the lives of enemy citizens over your own, how long do you think you'd keep your job?) |
10th December 2012, 12:47 PM | #82 |
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10th December 2012, 01:27 PM | #83 |
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In a modern industrialized nation-state of the kind which existed in WWII, the distinction between civilian and military is not nearly as clear as many would like to think. There was a simple equation: no civilians, no economy; no economy, no military; no military, no war. A military cannot exist without provisions: food, water, fuel, ammunition, spare parts, equipment, armaments, personnel. Those provisions are provided by the civilians in the factories, powered by civilians operating the electricity generating plants and oil refineries, the raw resources and finished provisions transported by railways, trucks, and boats operated by civilians. If the civilians of Germany during WWII had collectively stopped working, war production would have ceased and the German military would have collapsed not long afterwards. (For all the training in the world, troops cannot effectively fight for long with ammunition and other vital supplies.) Even during ancient times armies still needed supplies, and these were often seized from local civilians rather than produced back home and shipped to the front. In short, the effort of civilians has always allowed a military to exist in the field. Without that civilian production, armies wither away relatively quickly. |
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10th December 2012, 01:31 PM | #84 |
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10th December 2012, 01:37 PM | #85 |
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You should familiarize yourself with the effects the Combined Bomber Offensive had on Germany during WWII. There were notable. In particular, the Oil and Transportation Plans were key components in ultimately crippling the German war economy (which in turn made Allied victory easier than it would have otherwise been). Now, that is not to say the Allies didn't make mistakes in prosecuting the aerial war. They certainly did. There were mistakes in tactics, a slowness to recognize that certain pre-war theories were wrong, and other issues. With the benefit of hindsight, the bombing campaign could have been waged far more effectively with fewer casualties (on both sides). But, as the saying goes, hindsight is 20/20. (Of course, if we are going to gift the Allies with the benefit of hindsight, then we ought to grant the Axis the same benefit. In which case the latter recognizes the danger of strategic bombing earlier and does much more to counteract it than it did in reality. In which case perhaps in the end casualties remain largely the same.) |
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10th December 2012, 02:15 PM | #86 |
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You appear to be having difficulty in distinguishing between moral and immoral justifications.
Try this for a mind boggling exercise: 1940: Germany invades France - thousands of French civilians die. 1944: Allies invade France - thousands of French civilians die. Now, if you really couldn't tell the moral difference between the Allied bomber campaign and terrorist attacks, then I guess you wont be able to tell the difference between those two invasions of France. |
10th December 2012, 02:19 PM | #87 |
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10th December 2012, 04:01 PM | #88 |
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10th December 2012, 06:27 PM | #89 |
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The Roman Empire ceased to be functionally democratic, but it still preserved the cultural values of the Republic, which were in turn carried over into many western feudal kingdoms.
And even accepting that the Roman Empire stopped being democratic, the principals of democracy survived in both the Roman Empire and subsequent medieval states at various levels. It was these cultural values and democratic principals, preserved in varying degrees, that ultimately led to the development of modern western civilisation. |
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10th December 2012, 06:52 PM | #90 |
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I believe the most successful war I know of was La guerre des tuques ("The War of the Tuques").
Its success, in my view, can be measured in three ways: 1. There was a total of only one death. 2. The opposing sides joined together in friendship to mourn the one loss. 3. It was entirely make-believe. |
10th December 2012, 07:56 PM | #91 |
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That's very clear. In strategic bombing campaigns, civilians are the primary target, and their elimination is the goal. It is thus not the case, as others have suggested, that they are unfortunately subject to collateral damage because they live and work in proximity to important industrial plants an other physical targets.
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10th December 2012, 08:29 PM | #92 |
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10th December 2012, 09:44 PM | #93 |
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Syria and Jordan supported terrorist attacks on common borders in the years leading up to the 1967 war. The also threatened to invade Isreal on many occasions
The Israelis attacked Egypt with a pre-emptive air strike on June 5 because their intelligence told them they were about to be attacked themselves. If the Arab nations would leave Israel alone, they will leave the Arab nations alone. Simple. |
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10th December 2012, 09:46 PM | #94 |
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10th December 2012, 11:16 PM | #95 |
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The reality is far more complicated and nuanced than that. If one is talking about the WWII experience, the first thing one must do is separate the British and American bombing efforts. After that there are all manner of details that have to be considered and placed into context. To try and reduce the subject to the simplistic rhetoric you are offering does it a great disservice. Furthermore, if the goal had really just been to kill people and nothing more, then the Allies could have done a vastly more effective job. Chemical weapons (of which the Allies had plenty) and biological weapons, for example, could have been employed. They were not. The Allies would not have wasted time, effort, and crews to attack such things as oil refineries, railway lines, aircraft engine and airframe factories, steel mills, ball bearing plants, and other similar targets. Yet they did attack such targets. If simply plastering a city area was sufficient, the Allies would not have spent the time and effort they did on trying to continually improve bombing accuracy by operational and technological means. |
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11th December 2012, 12:38 AM | #96 |
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11th December 2012, 01:04 AM | #97 |
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But that begs the question. What exactly is a civilian in a war where the complete economies and productions of nations are pitted against each other?
WWII wasn't a war of army against army. It was a war of nation against nation (or more precise nation alliance against nation alliance). Who then is a civilian in this situation of existential war? |
11th December 2012, 01:33 AM | #98 |
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International law recognises a difference. WWII was a war of government and armed forces. Germany as a nation didn't invade France as a nation. One regime invaded the territory of another, and the army of that other country was defeated and its rulers capitulated. It was a war in which regimes employed the resources of nations, their own and conquered ones. Thus Germany employed the French economy and industry. But the allies never carpet bombed French cities. They rightly went for significant targets. This indicates that the carpet bombing of Germany was a voluntary act. So was the murderous air onslaught on the unfortunate people of N Korea.
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11th December 2012, 01:51 AM | #99 |
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The war was a total war/totaler krieg, where everyone was doing his/her little bit in the ongoing struggle. It is nice that we today make a distinction between government and population, as if the two are seperate entities in the same country that have nothing to do with eachother, but that wasn't the case in WWII (isn't really now, but that is another discussion not for this topic).
Anyway. You didn't really answer my question. An few examples. Is the traindriver who delivers the ammunition to the front a civilian? How about the people who repair the tanks? Build the u-boats? And I mean when they are doing their job. Oh and about those French cities? Ever wonder why the city centre of Le Havre consists only of modern post war buidlings? |
11th December 2012, 02:36 AM | #100 |
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11th December 2012, 02:37 AM | #101 |
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Any war that's not a land war in asia, and doesn't involve going up against a sicilian when death is on the line.
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11th December 2012, 02:40 AM | #102 |
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What about the 7 Day War? Israel kicked a team of nations butts and took a bunch of land. And they were the ones attacked!!!!
If that isn't success I don't know what is! |
11th December 2012, 02:52 AM | #103 |
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11th December 2012, 02:55 AM | #104 |
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11th December 2012, 03:01 AM | #105 |
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wasn't the dang Israeli war against Egypt Syria...etc called that?
I could have mixed my war titles up... I shall google and see and return with my ,very likely, red face ETA: 6 DAY WAR..........so I was off a day! lol |
11th December 2012, 03:03 AM | #106 |
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What about the
If that isn't success I don't know what is! |
11th December 2012, 03:23 AM | #107 |
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Munition trains and military shipyards are legitimate military targets, and outwith the terms of the anti-civilian strategic bombing campaigns, thus irrelevant to this discussion.
Quote:
Quote:
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11th December 2012, 03:45 AM | #108 |
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11th December 2012, 03:53 AM | #109 |
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The Duchy of Grand Fenwick/USA War
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11th December 2012, 03:55 AM | #110 |
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11th December 2012, 04:09 AM | #111 |
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WWII
Despite it being an absolutely terrible war, the (Western) victors succeeded in implementing their political system of liberal democracy in the conquered countries. The change was genuine and didn't need to be enforced, once implemented. And it made those countries natural allies of the West. The Soviet bloc also succeeded in implementing it's political system in the countries it conquered. For many decades their populations grudgingly wore Bulgarian shoes, drove plastic cars and secretly listened to Jimi Hendrix. |
11th December 2012, 04:31 AM | #112 |
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11th December 2012, 04:44 AM | #113 |
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Hey perhaps you might want to think about this. Its a hypothetical but.... There are two identical American airliners sitting on the tarmac at a US airport. They are both going to the destination you are travelling to, both departure times are the same, as are the arrival times at your destination i.e. it doesn't matter which one you decide to get on. You see 5 young Arab men boarding plane "A" You see 5 young Israeli men boarding plane "B" I know which one I'll be boarding, do you? |
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11th December 2012, 05:08 AM | #114 |
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Whichever one I happen to have already bought the ticket for.
Seriously, I wouldn't give a crap. The differential odds of a random Arab vs a a random Israeli intending harm are so small as to be a waste of time to worry about. I'd rather spend the same time paying attention to the attitude of people boarding. |
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11th December 2012, 05:47 AM | #115 |
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i loves the little birdies they goes tweet tweet tweet hee hee i loves them they sings to each other tweet twet tweet hee hee i loves them they is so cute i love yje little birdies little birdies in the room when birfies sings ther is no gloom i lobes the little birdies they goess tweet tweet tweet hee hee hee i loves them they sings me to sleep sing me to slrrp now little birdies - The wisdom of Shemp. |
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11th December 2012, 06:42 AM | #116 |
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11th December 2012, 07:09 AM | #117 |
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If you mean profiting by winning a conflict then I'd say the various european wars against the native americans which netted the victors the entire continents.
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11th December 2012, 07:13 AM | #118 |
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The argument is simply that culture is, to a large degree, a response to circumstances: that modern democracy evolved not as a continuation of the ancient greek tradition, but rather as a response to the world as it was at the time that it developed
The fact that the individuals involved referenced old ideas and were even influenced by them doesn't suggest that those ideas were themselves instrumental in that development |
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11th December 2012, 07:15 AM | #119 |
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11th December 2012, 07:21 AM | #120 |
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