A depressing thread

[OneFootInTheGrave]

it was just a matter of time to close the war out.

But how much time? There were people being moved from concentration camp to concentration camp as the German battle lines receded. Matters of time were very significant to them!

You stand by "no impact." That the 7th-biggest city in Germany was doing nothing whatsoever to help the German war effort. I find this implausible, and so did a lot of people. Maybe Dresden wasn't doing enough to help the war effort to be worth bombing - in which case the Allies made a mistake - but it looks to me like you want to find a mistake. Like you're trying to interpret the facts as uncharitably as possible towards the Allied command so that you can have your one clear-cut example.

You have the comments from Churchill, earlier in the thread - today no politican would dare to be so blunt about the "error". Do Allies need to be blameless in their war conduct? There was a war, they were the good guys, but the "good guys" also need to learn from their mistakes, covering them up is doing a disservice to everyone and most certainly the victims, whcih if I recalled correctly Oerdin implied that they were "collaborators" eariler in the thread, even today 60 years after the act!

There are very good reasons to own up to the mistakes, and that is what makes life, society better at all levels... including owning up that drone strikes are essientally proxy murder of questionable value, even though that is harder to judge as it is happening right now without the benefit of hindsight, which is available for Dresden.

The OP for example should help you better appreciate that fact and question the validity of actions that your own army does in your own name, half-way around the world.

[regexcellent]

No problem on SA - they had propaganda against them, which is just a fact, but in this particular case it was on the "good" side so to speak.

I don't have time right now to respond to the rest of your post but I disagree about this; in the Border War, South Africa was on the good side. It was able to successfully establish a workable democracy in an independent South-West Africa. And in its actions against Communist forces in Angola it was fighting on our side in the last of the proxy wars of the Cold War. Not only that, it won.

[OneFootInTheGrave]

Well - I would say that the war and propaganda contributed to the eventual fall of Apartheid, so in that sense "good"... but OK.

[regexcellent]

No, I mean that the cause the South Africans were fighting for was good. It had nothing to do with apartheid, and sanctions would not have been any easier on South Africa if it hadn't been fighting that war. Indeed, we should have done things to encourage it, like allowed them to purchase modern fighter jets that could go toe-to-toe with Cuban MiG-29s. As it is they did pretty well with what they had.

[Jaguar]

You have the comments from Churchill, earlier in the thread - today no politican would dare to be so blunt about the "error". Do Allies need to be blameless in their war conduct?

Of course not. But it seems like you need them not to be. You went so far as to say that Dresden had "no impact" on the war effort - which is almost certainly inaccurate - just so you could feel like there was a clear-cut mistake.

I've been willing to say that the Allies might have made a mistake, but you're stretching the historical details to try to push people into believing it. Please don't.

[OneFootInTheGrave]

Are there good people who died in Dresden? Sure. Does that matter? Only if there was a better alternative.

This is where we started from... you moved away from Oerdins "collaborators" to "better alternative".

Anyhow, I have typed quite a bit to demonstrate that not firebombing was a better alternative, as it was not a needed action to close out the war, which was the main goal, Kentonio quoted the British leader back then in support that this was not "better", and was not in allied interest.

To go though

Why focus on those people? Why the 25,000?

Why did you choose those words? Why choose the words "no impact?"

To get to:

I've been willing to say that the Allies might have made a mistake, but you're stretching the historical details to try to push people into believing it. Please don't.

I could ask (to start with Oerdin), "Why do you think they were all collaborators?", Or with you "Why should we not focus on a decision which was a death sentence to 25k people without much effect in the outcome of the war?" or "How was this not a mistake in Allied act?" or "How was I stretching historical detal?".

Ultimately the point of Dreseden and also current drone strikes - it is - unnecessary murder of civilians. This is not a conduct of war of a side who wants to "protect" people, rather the one which thinks indiscriminate murder is fine, which changes perception, makes it impossible to win "hearts and minds" - does it not? There is a difference between killing soldiers, military targets and random murder of refugees or villagers. It is a difference which, for some of you educated Americans, is very hard to grasp.

In that sense Dresden is "better" than drone strikes, as even though a magnitude more people have been killed, the allies behaved in such manner for a relatively short time, the war was won and after the war the conduct was excellent, so other than the actual people who lost relatives or limbs in Dresden - the society at large was fine.

In Pakistan however, you remind the locals who you are day in day out, for years now, they do not need a mad fundie cleric to tell them that US is the devil, they know it very well. The question is only, whether they value their own life enough not to go and sacrifice themselves to kill some US solders or civilians if they get a chance or not. While at home the civilians like you, DD, Oerdin and many others sit in the chair and repeat "this is the only way".

Well it's not, there is a whole other way to fight "terrorism" which is the traditional way through intelligence networks and actual poilice/intelligence officers deployment on the ground. Totally different from waging a war half way around the globe and killing people, detroying their property, making sure that they hate you for next century, while wandering at home "Why do they hate our freedom so much?" .

[kentonio]

I'd be cautious of backing the allies too strongly over Dresden, Bomber Harris was deeply morally questionable.

"I do not personally regard the whole of the remaining cities of Germany as worth the bones of one British Grenadier"

[molly bloom]

Of course not. But it seems like you need them not to be. You went so far as to say that Dresden had "no impact" on the war effort - which is almost certainly inaccurate - just so you could feel like there was a clear-cut mistake.

I've been willing to say that the Allies might have made a mistake, but you're stretching the historical details to try to push people into believing it. Please don't.

Unfortunately there has been a whole propaganda industry around the bombing of Dresden- started by Goebbels and continued during the Cold War by the East Germans. Dresden was not simply 'Florence' or 'Siena' in Saxony, churning out pretty china bibelots and gewgaws- it was a major communications hub for the German military and manufactured various important items for the German war effort- Frederick Taylor's book

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Dresden-Tuesday-13-February-1945/dp/0747570841/ref=pd_sim_b_1/280-5308687-8862469

is well worth reading, as it corrects the lies and propaganda disseminated in David Irving's 'The Destruction Of Dresden'- he simply amplified casualties from the bombing by adding a zero, if memory serves- and Taylor even quotes from Dresden's own authorities from their pre-war publications, of how proud they were of their city's industry.

The prevailing theory of bombing at the time was to reduce civilian morale and thus hamper the German war effort. According to Goebbels himself, this actually did happen, and precious manpower and resources were used equipping anti-aircraft measures and emergency crews to deal with the bigger raids.

I suspect if you had asked many ordinary residents of London's Docklands or East End, of Coventry or Plymouth if they'd rather the Allied bombed only military targets, the answer would have been politely negative. I do own up to some slight bias- I was born and grew up in Coventry.

[kentonio]

You're the tool; Yemen is fighting them and is anything but a safe haven, and Yemen isn't turning down help from other countries (SUCH AS US) which are helping them eradicate the terrorists there. We make drone strikes all the time in Yemen.

I was talking about the Dhofar rebellion in Oman, a great example of a successful hearts and minds campaign that didn't involve blowing up loads of innocent people.

If Vietnam hadn't become Communist it's doubtful Cambodia and Laos would have either; also, the Vietnamese Communists themselves slaughtered more than a hundred thousand people in "re-education camps."

So countries aren't allowed to pick their own political systems? Incidently as the US-Vietnam war ended up killing about 2-2.5m civilians, and involved the US using napalm, chemical weapons and a host of other rather nasty tactics I'd be careful about trying to play the morals card.

Seriously, trying to defend that war is not a winning position.

In Laos what happened would today probably be termed ethnic cleansing.

American use of agent orange would be classed as a breach of a ton of conventions including Geneva and would be termed by everyone as a war crime, whats your point?

Somehow you managed to misread my writing as supporting the idea of killing babies or something. Obviously it's something we should minimize, but not at the expense of passing up valuable targets in external strikes.

In other words you do support the killing of babies as long as you hit what you consider legitimate targets at the same time. That's a repulsive view that belongs in the last century, not this one.

And I am quite explicitly not equating us with the Taliban; I am saying we are not equivalent with the Taliban because they do things that are far worse than we do, such as kill lots more innocent people.

You both kill innocent people and you personally it seems have no problem with that if it advances your military goals.

Incidentally, when innocent people are killed in Pakistan, the people in Afghanistan, who are already very tribal amongst themselves, probably don't care all too much and more than likely won't even hear about it.

Couple of things, firstly Afghanis are not all stoneage village dwellers who have no contact with the outside world, people have widespread family and tribal links that often cross borders and telephones, and radio and TV and many ways of hearing what is happening in the region. They certainly do care. Secondly the reason the Taliban are able to operate cross border is because they have support from the Pakistanis in thsoe border regions. You think they don't care about their families and children being murdered?

This is so typical of US operations, and the reason why you are historically so bloody terrible at fighting insurgencies.

Please do not construe this as me saying it's open season on civilians in Pakistan.

Just the ones who happen to be passing when you target someone, or who get blown up by accident when your intel is bad?

I was using a real example; this actually happened in the Battle of Mogadishu and our troops did shoot back.

I'm not going to judge him for what he did, it wouldn't be right or fair having not been in that situation. A lot of people would not have taken the shot though.

[Kuciwalker]

So countries aren't allowed to pick their own political systems?

No, not if the choice is communism any more than if the choice is national socialism.

[Wezil]

What about a religious theocracy?

[Wezil]

Absolute monarchy?

[kentonio]

No, not if the choice is communism any more than if the choice is national socialism.

Countries aren't allowed to pick communism as a government type if the people choose? Says who exactly? You think if a country adopted communism today that America would get away with doing a damn thing about it?

[Hauldren Collider]

Yes. And I would absolutely support military intervention to prevent a communist from taking power somewhere.

[DaShi]

That's a ridiculous statement that demonstrates no understanding of U.S. foreign policy over the last 50 years.