Honour in Combat

[Krautman]

Andreas,

On bombing: I believe when you explicitly say it was no war crime, then you have a reasonable theoretical background to do so. When I call it a war crime, it is more out of intuition, I do not know too much about the Geneva convention, or what else is your statement's background. It's not that I entirely condemn what the western Allies did- they had to win the war. Had they known in advance that the bombing of civilians would be much less effective in bringing Germany down than anticipated, I believe they hadn't done it at all, and concentrated on factories and railway lines etc. To them, it was a means, and not the purpose, which the Holocaust was to Hitler.

I was not alluding to McNamara's views on Vietnam at all, but to his feeling of the role he had in the strategic bombing campaigns of WWII. I saw the movie (The Fog of War, basically a long interview with McN.) during a stay with friends in the US, at the Santa Barbara Film Festival 2003. Thus, it is quite a while ago, but if I remember correctly, McNamara helped work out all these strategies at which altitude bombers fly (his decision forced the bomber crews to fly lower than their new bombers could- increased danger, but also increased accuracy), and which bombs they should throw first. He tried to figure out, by trial and error, which method worked "better", e.g. incendiary bombs, then explosives: People are supposed to rush onto the street to extinguish the fires, where then they are killed by the explosives. As far as I can remember, he felt quite uneasy about this work afterwards, and said that he surely would have been convicted as a war criminal had the allies lost, and, probably, rightly so.

Greetings

Krautman

[Tagwyn]

The only honor in war is killing the enemy until he/she surrenders. The dishonor is not killilng him/her but allowing them to kill another of your comrades. When you serve in a bombardment wing deployed and ready to strike, you cannot be concerned about who might be beneath your bombs. To apply judicial paradigms to war is to try to apply rules to Hell itself. One side wins, the other side dies or surrenders. I so served and I was ready to kill when properly ordered to do so. Radical Islam understands and institutionalizes this principle. Sura 9:5, Koran et.al. ad nauseum. Tag

[Krautman]

Tagwyn, you sound like a 16th century Samurai. Honour and combat exclude one another in modern warfare, I think.

Andreas, the current legal situation, as google told me, considers area bombardment a war crime. Rightly so, if you'd ask the inhabitants of Wesel in 1945.

War crime or not, that's a futile discussion. If area bombing is not, why was offensive land war, until then a legitimate means of policy, declared a war crime, punishable by death, at Nürnberg?

[Krautman]

Originally posted by Tagwyn:

To apply judicial paradigms to war is to try to apply rules to Hell itself. One side wins, the other side dies or surrenders. I so served and I was ready to kill when properly ordered to do so.

That's a nice first approach towards an excuse not to maintain halfway decent human behaviour in war. Probably these sentences are heard quite a lot in military courtrooms. Were you merely ready to kill or rather longing to kill?

[John D Salt]

Originally posted by Krautman:

Tagwyn, you sound like a 16th century Samurai. Honour and combat exclude one another in modern warfare, I think.

I disagree. Honour that is applicable only when it's easy to do so isn't a terribly worthwhile kind of honour, IMO.

Originally posted by Krautman:

Andreas, the current legal situation, as google told me, considers area bombardment a war crime. Rightly so, if you'd ask the inhabitants of Wesel in 1945.

The idea that all area bombardment is a war-crime is, I think, a mistake. Please post your source for believing that it is.

Indiscriminate or reckless attack of civilian objects is now a war crime, certainly. However, given the presence of actively resisting enemy forces in the city, I doubt that anyone would consider a bombardment such as that on Wesel to be illegal even under the modern convention, which acknowledges "military necessity".

Originally posted by Krautman:

War crime or not, that's a futile discussion. If area bombing is not, why was offensive land war, until then a legitimate means of policy, declared a war crime, punishable by death, at Nürnberg?

You seem to be quite badly confused about both the facts of history and your line of argument.

Waging wars of aggression was outlawed by the Kellog-Briand pact of 1928, an international agreement to which Germany was a signatory.

Aerial bombardment was not outlawed by any such international agreement.

The reason one was illegal and the other wasn't was the usual reason for such a state of affairs, namely that a law was passed prohibiting one, but no law was passed prohibiting the other.

I'm not sure what gives you the idea that there is some kind of coupling between the two questions.

All the best,

John.

[JonS]

Krautman seems to be engaging in "Argument by exhaustion". One month later, same line of discussion, heck it's even the same thread!

BTW, the Wesel link in Krautmans post above has this interesting comment on it:

Walls of houses of Wesel still stand, as do the churches, but a great part of the town was destroyed when the German commander forced the Allied troops to fight their way street by street through the ruins. Germany, 1945

It seems the Germans blame the Germans, not the Allies, for the destruction of Wesel.

[John Kettler]

Andreas,

The statement you quote is certainly tendentious, and the writer may indeed have fabricated his evidence, thus joining an illustrious group of politicians, scientists, military officials, clergy, etc., but those people may also have been/be real, may have said something to someone else, written letters home about what they saw, may have kept diaries, etc. History's funny in that things can pop up hundred and even thousands of years after the fact which shed stunning new light on old matters. Only a few decades ago, the diary recording Confederate plans to attack and destroy the Union ironclad Cairo surfaced after being found in an old box in someone's attic.

Tagwyn,

If you go way back to the top of this thread you'll find that I discussed the Catholic Church's moral views on just and unjust war, particularly the doctrine of the unintended consequence as it applies to targets with innocents in them. What I said was that the Church viewed area bombing as abhorrent, morally repellent, and instructed priests to refuse absolution to crews who continued to do this.

Your notion of the acceptability of unbridled warfare strikes me as being fundamentally unacceptable and maybe even insane. Even Genghis Khan gave a city or region a chance to surrender before attacking in full force, and to this day we are dealing with the consequences of guerre a outrance, at a little island in the Hebrides used to test the anthrax bomb Churchill ordered prepared for use on Germany, should Germany use gas against Britain. The spores there are still active, which is why the island, when last seen, was off limits. In the 1980s some environmentalists, wishing to make a point, visited the place in full biohazard gear, took soil samples, securely bagged them, boxed them, and sent them with cover letters to certain MPs.

Great was the consternation when tests at Porton Down found viable anthrax spores!

As ugly as the history of warfare is, I feel fairly safe in asserting that there has largely been a consistent effort to limit the effects. Even in ancient times, we find parley, surrender negotiations, terms and the like, with the Punic Wars forming a fine example of the processes at work. I suspect also that the almost ritualized nature of warfare in the late 1600s and down to the early 1800s was a direct response to the unbridled savagery and wholesale destruction of the Wars of the Reformation and Counter Reformation, as so chillingly depicted in the film "The Last Valley," which was based on James Clavell's novel of that name. War certainly has its uses, but if the object is anything other than utter annihilation of the foe and all he has, it must be harnessed, directed, and circumscribed in its effects. Clausewitz merely formalized this realization in his famous dictum about war and politics.

We have now reached a point, having miraculously avoided nuclear incineration of the planet during the Cold War despite something on the order of one hundred threats total from both sides to use nuclear weapons, that we can literally cause the sun to become unstable and go nova, thanks? to scalar weapons (see same at www.cheniere.org )Don't you think it's time to rein in the weapons--

while we're still alive to do so?!

Regards,

John Kettler

[JonS]

Originally posted by John Kettler:

a little island in the Hebrides used to test the anthrax bomb Churchill ordered prepared for use on Germany, should Germany use gas against Britain. The spores there are still active, which is why the island, when last seen, was off limits.

John, if you are going insist on being a shill for the neo-nazis and holocaust deniers, I'm going to insist that you at least attempt to get your facts straight.

[John Kettler]

JonS,

I strenuously object to your characterization of me, a cheap shot amounting to a veiled ad hominem attack. And that's being hypercharitable!

Concerning the link, while I'm gratified that public outcry did eventually force Her Majesty's government to attempt decontamination of/decontaminate Gruinard Island (I did not remember that part of the story when I posted, but the link reminded me of something I'd heard of only in passing quite some time ago), I'm squarely with the archaeologist as far as not gadding about the place sans biohazard suit and vaccination.

The Soviets, who arguably were the bleeding edge of both biowarfare and decontamination techniques

(see Ken Alibek and BIOHAZARD), had a biowarfare lab explosion in Sverdlovsk during the Cold War, resulting in a major anthrax/weaponized bioengineered anthrax release, falsely reported as an "animal anthrax" outbreak. Even their very best decontamination methods (such as the TMS-65 truck mounted jet engine spraying high temperature antibiologicals) couldn't get the spores out of the pavement, forcing wholesale repaving of every road in the release zone.

For the record, I've had to deal with this disgusting stuff professionally, seeing as how I was charged with proposing and analyzing aircrew protection and decontamination issues for the Rockwell entry in what eventually was won by the Lockheed/Martin F-22A Raptor. We were explicitly required to develop means of operating and decontaminating the aircraft and providing crew protection in an NBC environment. I believe this was a first in American aircraft design requirements.

Regards,

John Kettler

[ March 13, 2006, 04:13 PM: Message edited by: John Kettler ]

[Krautman]

[ March 13, 2006, 04:00 AM: Message edited by: Krautman ]

[Krautman]

Originally posted by John D Salt:

The idea that all area bombardment is a war-crime is, I think, a mistake. Please post your source for believing that it is.

Sorry, it's a German language source. Geneva convention (1977 amendment)

The translation could be paraphrased as:

2. "neither the civil populace nor individual civilians may be subjected to attacks. Application or threat of violence aiming for spreading terror among the populace is prohibited."

4. "Attacks not distinguishing between military and civilian targets are prohibited."

"Attacks not directed against a specific military target are prohibited"

5. "Attacks falling under point 4. are specifically:

"Bormbardment on several military targets in an area which contains civilian objects when the whole area is treated as a target."

Yes, I know this is 1977. As of now, these bombings are a war crime.

Originally posted by John D Salt:

Indiscriminate or reckless attack of civilian objects is now a war crime, certainly. However, given the presence of actively resisting enemy forces in the city, I doubt that anyone would consider a bombardment such as that on Wesel to be illegal even under the modern convention, which acknowledges "military necessity".

I bet the "actively resisting enemy force" was a target from 1942, when the bombing campaign began, on to 1945. What you couldn't get, because it was written in German, was that this pic and the text came from an multi-language/English site. I guess someone wanted the viewers to understand why the allies did this to Wesel and gave that ridiculous apology "there were these evil German forces in there using the civilians as a shield". But Wesel was bombed long before any allied soldier set foot into Germany.

Originally posted by John D Salt:Waging wars of aggression was outlawed by the Kellog-Briand pact of 1928, an international agreement to which Germany was a signatory.

Be it far from me to defend the horrible crimes the Germans committed, but the country which signed, if your info is correct at all, was the Weimar Republic. Nürnberg is considered a sad episode of jurisdiction, at least by former law official and historian Sebastian Haffner, on the grounds that there was no real legal basis to some of the verdicts.

Originally posted by John D Salt:Aerial bombardment was not outlawed by any such international agreement.

The Haager Landkriegsordnung (Art. 25) prohibits the bombardment of cities and villages no matter with which means it is conducted. (yes, artillery, not aerial, was meant- it was 1907)

[ March 13, 2006, 04:04 AM: Message edited by: Krautman ]

[Andreas]

That prohibition only applies to undefended cities or villages, i.e. not to any of the German cities (including Dresden) or indeed other cities (such as Warsaw, Rotterdam, or Stalingrad) that were turned into rubble.

All the best

Andreas

[76mm]

John Kettler:

You make assertions which are not quite correct. While the two examples below are trivial, it makes me wonder what more material issues you give the same treatment:

Even in ancient times, we find parley, surrender negotiations, terms and the like, with the Punic Wars forming a fine example of the processes at work

I find this a very curious statement, especially because at the end of the Punic Wars Carthage was utterly burned and destroyed and its inhabitants exiled. Prior to this end, Rome offered harsh terms to the Carthaginians if they gave up hostages (children of the most prominent citizens) and all of their arms. Once Carthage had delivered its hostages and arms, the Romans announced that they had retracted their harsh terms and now insisted on even harsher terms--unconditional surrender--and the city was then destroyed following the siege. Is this the kind of "fine example" of civilized warfare that you have in mind?

as so chillingly depicted in the film "The Last Valley," which was based on James Clavell's novel of that name

James Clavell is the director of that film and did not write a novel of that name.

As I said--trivial examples--but if you pass this stuff off as fact it makes me even more dubious about your other outlandish assertions.

[Krautman]

Originally posted by Andreas:

That prohibition only applies to undefended cities or villages, i.e. not to any of the German cities (including Dresden) or indeed other cities (such as Warsaw, Rotterdam, or Stalingrad) that were turned into rubble.

All the best

Andreas

Yes, but "undefended" in this context of 1907 means "no armed ground forces, which could counterattack our own forces any moment, are located there". Can you associate FlaK batteries in a city in central Germany, which are entirely defensive in nature, with this "armed and potentially offensive ground forces" category? I admit it is difficult to decide though.

Greetings

Krautman

[John D Salt]

Originally posted by Krautman:

[snips] Yes, but "undefended" in this context of 1907 means "no armed ground forces, which could counterattack our own forces any moment, are located there". Can you associate FlaK batteries in a city in central Germany, which are entirely defensive in nature, with this "armed and potentially offensive ground forces" category? I admit it is difficult to decide though.

Hard to see what the difficulty is. You appear to be arguing that a place can be considered undefended because the only defences it has are, ummmm, defensive in nature.

What grass mod are you smoking?

All the best,

John.

[JonS]

John,

there was nothing veiled about it. If you want to peddle this tosh, so be it, but expect to be called on it.

Your world seems upside down. You can't be bothered researching the mundane, easy, obvious, honest, and true stuff. Is it beneath you somehow? It took me all of about 5 minutes to use the search feature at BBC news, using the terms Scotland and anthrax to come up with that story about an event that really did happen, and was a key part of a previous post.

But no. Apparently 'reseach' is for the uninformed plebs and cattle that make up most of our society. It appears that you'd rather just 'believe' any old tosh that comes down the line. King Tigers on Moon Base Alpha. Armies of undead Nazis on ice in Antarctica. Mind control. Programs to make the sun go nova which are so very super-secret that you know about them. And I could go on. FOr page after mind numbing page of tosh and drivel and kookery and pseudo-scientific rubbish.

And underlying it all is a barely concealed racist agenda. Whether you buy that agenda or not is immaterial. You are attempting to peddle it. And that makes you a shill.

You are so credulous it beggars belief. I sometimes wonder what happened in your life that made you go over the edge.

Regards

Jon

[flamingknives]

Carry on here, mayhaps?

[Krautman]

Originally posted by John D Salt:

</font><blockquote>quote:</font><hr />Originally posted by Krautman:

[snips] Yes, but "undefended" in this context of 1907 means "no armed ground forces, which could counterattack our own forces any moment, are located there". Can you associate FlaK batteries in a city in central Germany, which are entirely defensive in nature, with this "armed and potentially offensive ground forces" category? I admit it is difficult to decide though.

Hard to see what the difficulty is. You appear to be arguing that a place can be considered undefended because the only defences it has are, ummmm, defensive in nature.

What grass mod are you smoking?

</font>

[flamingknives]

Use the other thread damnit!