US military ordered to kill stray dogs in Iraq

Thanks for making my point Ferret. Yes, civilian casualties are unavoidable, but we do not go out of our way to maximize civilian deaths like the people you'd like to turn the country over to. It's not that difficult.

Again, you made my point for me. We went after a valid target with collateral damage. The links I've posted have no goal, other than killing random people. Get the difference?

I keep making the same point over and over again, but it's apparently not sinking in.

Again, I'm not debating whether or not the nukes were necessary or not. Nagasaki and Hiroshima were both valid military targets. Briant was attempting to make the point that those deaths were all civilians and it's some sort of sick game of moral equivolance. Both cities had strategic military importance and thus were open to bombing. It's not really comparable either.

 

Is that how you see it, Gtech Jr.?

There's also the difference of a few hundred thousand dead innocent people.

 

Very interesting conversations, with very strong arguments. Though unfortunately it's 1:20 am here, i'm feeling light headed from medication, so every time I see the word Iraq, I keep thinking of Saddam Huessin from South Park

 

Gtech Jr? lol...thats to funny Rob...I see it as those were military targets that were bombed to help end WW2...also, if you will notice we have never dropped another one..instead, we have actually worked to REDUCE the number of nukes we have. However, I cannot say the same about these radical islamic fascists. What would they do with a nuke if they had it...furthermore, did the US drop one on Afghanistan, or kill Bin Laden's family? Why did they attack us in the first place? As I recall, Japan attacked us without reason as well, unprovoked by the US.

 

what difference does it make? its all just dead people, do you think the families of the dead civilians killed grieve less because their dead loved ones where collateral damage rather then intended targets?

 

If you cannot see the difference between driving a car into a market and blowing up people standing around buying apples and the death of zarqawi or someone - who is an actual legitimate target - then I guess I can see where you confusion arises from.

 

I see how we feel better about it, I don't how the families of the dead people feel better about it

 

I'm glad you prefaced it like that.

And I'm glad you like your nickname!

BTW- read this when you get time:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bombing_of_Tokyo_in_World_War_II#Firebombing

 

The whole cities weren't miliary targets.

How's this for moral equivilance:

 

I think not only LeMay's excursions over Tokyo and other points in Japan(where the air literally grew so hot, it was described as "living fire"), but the Dresden firebombing campaign will go down as a shameful blot on Allied actions, viewed by history. Hindsight is a bitch, and I certainly wasn't there. But I think it was the wrong course to take.

 

The whole cities, as you put it, were military targets all over the planet. Berlin, London, Paris. All cities were targets. No one had the ability to just target military installations. The illuminati did not see fit to give that technology to us at the time.

A Coulter quote is as good as it gets, huh? Did I ever say I liked Coulter or agreed with what she writes? Don't apply other people's thoughts to me.

 

You'd hit it though...right?

 

I'd have to disagree here, Lorien. While true that Japanese productive capacity was dispersed throughout urban areas, and a carpet bombing campaign could be justified on such grounds, the use of incendiaries, it seems pretty clear to me (especially from my reading of original source materials, e.g., Allied directives) was designed to exact as massive a civilian toll as possible; to break the will of the enemy nations to fight. Total War, by total means, without any constraint whatsoever. Particularly with Dresden, arguably a great center of "German Humanism," and older, pre-nazi culture, I can see no military justification beyond this kind of War by Terror.

 

She's too skinny. Big feet too. But yeah, I would. She has an innie, I have an outie, so it'd work out well!

 

Isn't one of the goals of a prolonged military conflict to ensure that the military cannot be replenished at a sufficient rate? This does entail casualties on the civilian population. Since you do not know when the conflict is going to end (hindsight is your friend here), as a commander for one side or the other, I'd be hard pressed to say "don't fire on this area" when everyone in that city is someone who could potentially pick up arms against you.

I think I kinda brought this up in the nagasaki/hiroshima bit earlier. Allies estimated about 3-4 million dead if a full scale invasion of japan was necessary. Those bombs killed (what?) about 300,000 people. I think I'd take the latter than the former.

There aren't any good choices; but in a war - where your nation and people are at stake - you have to take the most pallatable option.

 

Good point. Stray animals on a battlefield are potential security risks. The US in WWII trained their pets to run under tanks on command and would use them in combat to take out German tanks by placing bomb packs on the dogs and carring them on their missions. german soldiers were also ordered to kill all dogs on site. There may be something similar going on in Iraq (speculation )

 

Moral equivalence

 

I will have to pull the sources out to recall specifics.

But the fireboming raids happened long before the comparative arguments of an atom bomb v. a landing ever took place, so this isn't the argument to be made (in fact, until the final hour, the prospective advantages/disadvantages of the Bomb v. a landing force were hotly debated - Macarthur himself, as I recall, in favor of a conventional strategy).

It is very clear from Curtis, LeMay, and other Air Command leaders that the firebombing campaign's "hard variable" military benefit was nothing compared to what a conscious attack on civilian populations would do to the "enemy mindset." Again, in support of this, I refer to the specific type of bomb used - incendiary, designed to turn human beings into tiki torches, v. other, percussive ordinance, designed to destroy productive capacity.

This is also not to say that neither the Nazi nor "Hothead" regime in Tokyo would have used every means at their disposal, without constraint, obviously. Though I have my doubts about the Japanese intent prior to WWII, I have no doubts that both Hitler and Tojo would have (and did, when and where available) dropped several world's worth of incendiaries, bio-agents, nukes, whatever, with zero regard for any larger principles of "moral war." Only to say that we were not above climbing into the moral mud to achieve our ends.

 

They don't feel better about it. Their feelings are collateral damage too.
When it comes to ridding the world of someone who intends (and is capable of) killing millions of innocent people. You don't lose the "opportunity to save the world" because of a couple of innocent lives. Those lives are important and you feel remorse afterward but you save millions of lives and change the course of events.

 

Macarthur was in support of conventional tactics. So were others. I'm not really trying to make the comparison - just drawing the point that if you can possibly cause less casualties and attempt to end things more quickly; its better than dragging it on while the casualties pile up on each side.

I don't think you can win a war while wondering "what will people 50 years from now think about this" - at the time, you do what you think is necessary to win the war. When all you have are bad choices, you make the ones that are the least bad. Agree?

Do you agree that the change in the enemy mindset is a legitimate military objective. To try and end the conflict? It's not fun to look back and say "man our side did this" but every side was bombing civilian targets - it was not a concept limited to one side or the other. But remember who the aggressor was during the conflict.