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Politics : Actual left/right wing discussion -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Augustus Gloop who wrote (6680)	5/23/2007 1:03:17 PM
From: Kevin Rose	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 10087

There is a difference between waging legitimate war, even with its inherent evil, and atrocities. As paradoxical as it seems, there ARE rules of war and conflict. I disagree with the assertion that non-strategic bombings worked in WWII. The bombings that worked were ones that targeted the ability of our enemies to make war goods. The bombings that didn't work - the firebombings of Dresden and Tokyo - were what I would consider evil acts and did nothing to hasten the end of the war. In fact, they may have even helped the enemy, who then propagandized about how 'evil' the Allies were as proof that they must fight until the bitter end. If we had lost the war, I'll bet the Axis would have put the leaders who ordered the firebombings on trial - and won. Remember, we tried German leaders for bombing civilians in Holland at the start of the war, and many fewer Dutch were killed than in Dresden. The effectiveness of the atomic bombs was not that they matched evil-for-evil, but that they showed such a technological advantage for us as to make further resistance futile. Japan was willing to carry on the war only if it could exchange their citizens lives for ours; they were not willing to commit massive suicide without inflicting at least some damage back. Now, you could make an argument that all war is evil, but that argument doesn't fly very far unless everyone agrees...