Re: The Effects of a Global Thermonuclear War in 1988 (Re: NuclearWar, 1980's)

"Carey Sublette" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote in message
news:[EMAIL PROTECTED]
>
> "M. J. Powell" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote in message
> news:[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> > In message <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>, zolota
> > <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes
> > >
> > >"Dave J" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote in message
> > >news:[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> > >>
> > >> Robert J. Kolker <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote in message
> > >> news:[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> > >> >
> > >> >
> > >> > Yang Li wrote:
> > >> >
> > >> > >
> > >> > > Do you launch anther strike at Soviet cities and population at
this
> > >> > > time? Is it morally acceptable to kill innocent civilians and
> destroy
> > >> > > their society because your own has been condemned?  Justify.
> > >> >
> > >> > Because Revenge is Sweet. Didn't you know that. Don't get mad. Get
> even.
> > >> > The Main Thing is never to be the sucker or boob that is left
holding
> > >> > the bag. Better everyone should die, than that.
> > >> >
> > >>
> > >> or you can say it in one of those well-modulated professional soldier
> > >voices
> > >> like in the Clancy movies "we need to eliminate their centers of
> > >production,
> > >> and their ability to continue to make war". We already proved we'd do
> it
> > >at
> > >> Dresden and Tokyo.
> > >
> > >Dresden had nothing to do with war production and given that the war
> ended a
> > >few weeks later it's destruction had little effect on "ability to
> continue".
> > >It was either an experiment or a warning to the red army, that's all.
> > >Unnecessary killings of civilians are war crimes, that raid was just
the
> > >most obvious.
> >
> > See:
> >
> > Letter to the Sunday Telegraph. I forgot to note the date.
> >
> ...
> >I heard and watched Stalin with his deputy Chief of Staff,
> > General Antonov, urgently ask us to bomb roads and railways to stop
> > Hitler tranferring divisions from the West. Antonov stressed the
> > importance of Dresden as a vital rail junction, saying there was a "uzel
> > svyazi" - literally, "communications knot".
> ...
> > The study is a very lengthy document, but here are its conclusions:
> >
> > III. CONCLUSION
> >
> > The foregoing historical analysis establishes the following definitive
> > answers to the
> > recurring questions concerning the February 1945 bombings of Dresden by
> > Allied
> > strategic air forces:
> > a. Dresden was a legitimate military target
> > b. Strategic objectives, of mutual importance to the Allies and the
> > Russians, underlay
> > the bombings of Dresden.
> > c. The Russians requested that the Dresden area be bombed by Allied air
> > forces.
> ...
> > g. The specific target objectives in the Dresden bombings were, for the
> > RAF Bomber
> > Command, the Dresden city area, including industrial plants,
> > communications, military
> > installations, and for the American Eighth Air Force, the Dresden
> > Marshalling Yards
> > and railway facilities.
> ...
>
> Several points (which tend to split support on opposite sides of the usual
> "pro-con" discussion of this raid):
> 1. The objective of disrupting rail traffic only required bombing the rail
> and marshalling yard, not the city. This would have been just a routine
> extension of the effective transportation campaign being conducted by the
> USAAF. Citing the military necessity of rail interdiction cannot be used
as
> cover for the area bombing of the city center by the RAF, the two were
> separate bombing operations.
> 2. The bombing of the city was a routine operation by the British, they
had
> done similar raids many times before in late 1944 and 1945. That this raid
> might cause a fire storm, the British were well aware (in fact their urban
> bombing raids were carefully designed to optimize the probability of mass
> fires), but they didn't know that it would. Most similar raids did not
cause
> fire storms. Generally people who cite the Dresden fire raid as a war
crime
> focus on the outcome, something that was not known in advance, and was
> something of a matter of happenstance. Logically, it would seem that those
> holding that this raid was a 'war crime' should hold that most (or all)
> urban bombing attacks late in the war were also war crimes (I know some
do,
> but the general tendency is to focus on this one raid).
> 3. The claims of 'war crime' for urban bombing in WWII is not supported by
> international law. Such statements are really statements of moral outrage
at
> the attacks. Their is much to be outraged about for sure, but
international
> law (codified in the Hague conventions) and the tribunals following the
war,
> did not hold them to be illegal per se(obviously the allies weren't on
> trial, but the Germans who also conducted such raids were).
> 4. On the other hand, the Hague conventions do point out that the right to
> the use of force is not unlimited, and the responsibility for weighing
> military necessity against civilian injury is well established in
> jurisprudence (the lengthy US "Law of War" field manual makes this
explicit
> for example). Thus the fact that urban bombing was not (and is not)
illegal
> does not give carte blanche to conduct such attacks. Just because the
raids
> were not illegal in principle does not make them justified. By 1945 the
> weight of necessity on the British had changed radically from the early
> inception of urban area raids, when they had no other option to strike
back
> at Germany who was launching similar attacks against them. Justifications
> based on necessity for planning and executing such raids in 1943 don't
hold
> for similar raids executed in 1945.

The stated justification for the indiscriminate RAF bombing raids in
1944-1945 was retaliation for the continuing indiscriminate and terrorizing
bombardment of civilian targets in Britain by German bombers and
particularly by the German V-1 and V-2 missiles.