One of the most striking stories my grandmother always told about WWII (she was born in '34) was how, when she walked to school, very often US fighters shot at the children walking there. There was no way this was a mistake – they were still children, the road only led to the school, no one else was walking there at the time. And still, every few days fighters shot at them, and they had to jump in a drainage canal, or similar to hide.
Seeing your friends from school being shot by fighters in front of your eyes can hurt a child a lot.
Many old people here still hold a grudge towards the allies, despite all the amazing things they did after the war to rebuild.
But if attacking civilians is the measure, then the US is a terrorist state. And has been for decades.
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There is a side that gasses jews, and a side that nukes civilians. There is a side that bombs hospitals, and a side that blows themselves up at a concert in Paris. There’s a side that massacres disabled people, and a side that shoots children.
We can’t compare, or even weigh up the sides against each other, and doing so would miss the point. But we can’t say "only terrorists kill civilians".
You can surely find many similar statements from old people from the war, though.
The US has accidentally killed plenty of civilians, of course. In the past (in World War II, for instance) they've also killed civilians deliberately. I'm not arguing that the US's hands are clean. But the US also recognizes (now, at least) that it is extremely counter-productive to kill civilians. That's why they order soldiers not to and why it is officially against the law of the United States as well as international law, and a war crime, to target civilians. It is not part of the official US strategy to target civilians - in fact it is part of the official US strategy to not target civilians. On the other hand, it is part of the official, stated strategy of ISIS, Al Qaeda, Al Shabaab, Boko Haram, and other terrorist organizations, to intentionally murder civilians in the most visible way possible.
*Edited to acknowledge current reality vs our past
And then of course, the military chain of command is exceedingly good at diluting responsibility -- generals will demand results implying but not writing down how far commanders can go; soldiers and commanders will cross many lines which no colleagues will report() and no immediate superiors will punish; the press will be strictly managed to not see anything that "national security" doesn't need us to see so our own civilian population will be morally appeased that we're being righteous, everyone is happy.
() A few will do, and then they're jailed for life as traitors.
Don't forget the extensive firebombings of numerous cities including Dresden or Tokyo (casualties estimates for the latter are in the same 100000~200000 range as the two nuclear strikes combined)
Again I'm not saying the US's hands are clean. I wholly disagree with many of the foreign military actions we've taken - especially between 2000 and 2008. What am I saying is that our policy - along with international law - have evolved considerably in the past 60 years. And I also sincerely believe that most of our armed forces in present day are doing their very best to avoid killing civilians.
I also think a lot of this is hand-waving away of the critical differences between terrorists who think it is acceptable to walk into a concert hall and gun down hundreds of people, and the militaries who are fighting those terrorists.
Nothing is simple, but there are meaningful moral differences here.
You're relieved about what's going on in Iraq? Seems like a big mess to me.
As bad as whatever the U.S. has done in the Middle East, it hasn't beheaded civilians to make political statements or committed genocide against religious and cultural minorities.
We can certainly discuss if the U.S. should pull out anyway, but I don't feel "relief" in making the least awful choice.
Have you heard of a guy called Donald Trump?
Predicting that the US will remain in the hands of some what sensible leaders seems rather naive to me.
There's some very good structural reasons to expect that, even if gets the most votes in the primaries, he may not win the Republican nomination.
OTOH, major parties have collapsed entirely before in US politics, and not having a candidate finish at least second in the Presidential general election would be a pretty big sign of collapse -- and pretty much every three-way head-to-head poll conducted with any has an independent Trump taking the #2 spot by a wide margin over the Republican.
Trump may well define the major party that replaces the Republicans.
The Drone Papers asserts ~90% of people killed by drone strikes weren't the intended target (with a wide mix of civilians, combatants, and unknown). https://theintercept.com/drone-papers/ Other sources, eg the Bureau of Investigative Journalism (https://www.thebureauinvestigates.com/category/projects/dron...), provide more granular data over time. Precision is somewhat lacking in estimates due to the inherent secrecy.
While the number of actions, targets, deaths, and total casualties varies by nation (Pakistan, Yemen, Afghanistan, Somalia...), a high rate of collateral damage is clearly an accepted part of the current strategy.
I mean, can you imagine a small group of terrorists being able to effectively target the US military? Of course not. So these people do what they can in an attempt to achieve their objectives. If the rich nations of the world were truly pushed against the wall (rather than mildly annoyed) they would likely resume killing civilians in a heartbeat.
Never mind the effects of the military campaigns themselves kill plenty of civilians even if these are not directly targeted.
That's what's so beautiful about language. We can simply redefine anyone in a war zone as an enemy combatant. Want to bomb a school or hospital? Say they were aiding insurgents. Ta da, moral high ground maintained.
It is not part of the official US strategy to target civilians
Official or not, the US's actual conduct kills a LOT of civilians - by some reckonings, our drone war has killed more civilians than it has actual enemy combatants.
I think it's fair for our hypothetical middle eastern Skywalker to look at his actual experience, rather than accepting propaganda at face value.
Every time we have collateral damage in a drone strike, every time someone's child is killed by a missile or bomb dropped by an American aircraft, that child's father is going to go to war with whomever dropped that bomb, fired that missile, sent that drone.
If instead of burning corpses, Luke had found Uncle Owen and Aunt Beru at home waiting to ground him for a month, he would have never gone with Obi-Wan.
The Empire's heavy handedness lead to its downfall.
Really? I would have blamed the Empire's downfall on not being bus proof and falling apart on the Emperor's death. Sounds like poor planning to me.
Do you have any evidence of this or are you just asserting to because it sounds nice? Intentional disregard for civilian casualties was rampant on all sides of WWII. There were about as many civilian fatalities (not including disease and famine) as there were military fatalities. The firebombing attacks during WWII were brutal.
> It is not part of the official US strategy to target civilians - in fact it is part of the official US strategy to not target civilians. On the other hand, it is part of the official, stated strategy of ISIS, Al Qaeda, Al Shebab, Boko Haram, and other terrorist organizations, to intentionally murder civilians in the most visible way possible.
Saying "we don't target civilians" doesn't get you any points. You have to actually not target civilians (or say, red cross hospitals).
I don't have evidence that what the parent said happened actually happened. I'm not saying it didn't happen but I don't have any evidence that it did. Do you?
"Saying "we don't target civilians" doesn't get you any points"
Not targeting civilians gets you a lot of points. 'Intent' vs 'non-intent' (along with 'consent' vs 'non-consent') is in my view the central concept of all ethical / moral discussions.
As for whether or not US soldiers, either disobeying orders, obeying direct orders, or obeying the orders from high up in the chain of command, actually kill civilians, yes, that is a critical part of this conversation as well. But it is much easier to stop killing civilians when it is not a stated part of our foreign policy, our military strategy, or our laws to deliberately do so. And I can't say the same thing about ISIS or Al Shabaab or terrorists in general.
You heard https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Area_bombing_directive before? The aim of your foreign policy was literally to hurt civilian morale by de-housing them and killing their friends, family, etc.
I am only glad that, after the war, you decided it would be best to help by rebuilding all that.
'The Luftwaffe, which Hitler had prohibited from bombing civilian areas in the UK, was now ordered to bomb British cities.'
So this attitude of 'total war' was not one-sided and was precipitated by Germany's "accidental" bombing of British civilian areas, followed by their expressly deliberate bombing of civilian areas.
None of this makes this right, but World War II was not the finest hour for anyone in the conflict, and people were generally responding in kind to defend themselves. This was before many of the international norms that are in place today existed.
Third, I have already said repeatedly that the US has blood on its hands, but I have also argued that our military policy has evolved considerably since 1945.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strategic_bombing_during_World...
> I’m not saying the US is bad, or good, I’m trying to say there is no "good" side in a war. No one in a war is innocent.
> There is a side that gasses jews, and a side that nukes civilians. There is a side that bombs hospitals, and a side that blows themselves up at a concert in Paris. There’s a side that massacres disabled people, and a side that shoots children.
> We can’t compare, or even weigh up the sides against each other, and doing so would miss the point. But we can’t say "only terrorists kill civilians".
Chuck Yeager admitted to participating in missions over Europe that involved strafing civilians, and more generally committing atrocities (his word) in his first autobiography. It's so baffling that this would come as a shock to you, in light of the more heavily publicized and more terrible bombing in the Pacific theatre.
One of the things that eludes the mindset of the ideologue is that you can have civil disagreements. In other words, you can disagree with someone without being a fucking dick about it.
The parent provided evidence via hearsay from his grandmother. Him providing a source for his assertion lets us make our own judgements about it's veracity.
You made a definitive statement:
> they were acting against orders, at least the orders of the high command
I assumed you had some reason, possibly just hearsay regarding similar incidents, leading you to make that assertion. If you don't have any actual reason for believing it, then you are just saying it because it sounds nice. That makes you propagandist/liar.
“Dresden, the seventh largest city in Germany and not much smaller than Manchester, is also far the largest unbombed built-up the enemy has got. In the midst of winter with refugees pouring westwards and troops to be rested, roofs are at a premium. The intentions of the attack are to hit the enemy where he will feel it most, behind an already partially collapsed front, to prevent the use of the city in the way of further advance, and incidentally to show the Russians when they arrive what Bomber Command can do.” [1]
In other words, it was specifically targeted because the civilians were conflated with "the enemy" broadly, to deny resources to refugees, to demoralize the German public, and to warn the potential Soviet enemies of Allied military prowess. Definitely a lot worse things happened in WW2, but neither British nor American hands are exactly clean when it comes to war.
[1] Source: http://www.historylearningsite.co.uk/world-war-two/the-bombi...
She died in December 2000 due to an untreated infection of her lungs.
If you have a similar story, though, go on and share!
Here's a documentary shot in 1944 that proudly and joyfully tells the story of an air squadron based in Corsica that was bombing civilian targets in northern Italy: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thunderbolt!
They bombed and shot at houses, farms, trains, people in the fields, etc. The narrator is having fun around the 26:00 mark - "Somebody in that field. Wonder who they are... No friends of mine!": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0erLVkqvPb0
This would not fall under terrorism, but under war crimes. But war crimes only matter if you lose the war, right?
Fantastic link.
What distinguishes the Rebellion from terrorism or insurgency is not just the choice of military targets, but its goals and methods. The definition of terrorism is the use of violence or intimidation in the pursuit of political aims. Terror attacks against military targets are designed to sow fear. The Rebel Alliance attacked the Death Star to deny the Empire the use of their planet-killing weapon, it's not so much that it was a military target as it was a military OBJECTIVE.
Also, if you look at the Rebels -- they're a military organization. They wear uniforms. They have bases. They aren't hiding among the civilian population. They're fighting the Empire in straight-up space battles, they aren't loading civilian ships down with explosives and blowing up Imperial bases with them.
"This is a consular ship! We're on a... diplomatic mission!". :-)
They do manage to bring the Imperial hammer down on Cloud City. They also propagandize the poor Ewoks into joining their war, which has got to be somewhere around using dolphins in warfare, ethically speaking.
As for the Ewoks -- it seems pretty clear that the Ewoks were already engaged in combat with the Empire before the Rebels arrived -- Warrick kills a stormtrooper when rescuing Leia, and Han and Luke are caught in a trap that seems like it would've been set for imperial forces. (I think one could argue that the Ewoks before the arrival of the Rebellion were operating an insurgency against the Imperial forces.)
Now that I think about it, judging from what the Ewoks do when they catch Our Heroes, they may have been hunting stormtroopers for food. There's a creepy angle on the whole thing that I'd never considered.
Attacking civilian populations during war is meant to place pressure on the government to surrender. It serves the exact same purpose that a "terrorist" is seeking to achieve by attacking civilian populations.
It's ridiculous that the only way Americans can justify their violence is through caricatures of their own behavior and through propaganda about their enemies. It should be really, really easy to justify attacking Al Qaeda or ISIS without the linguistic gymnastics, but America is so culturally bankrupt that they can't make a simple argument for an obvious good without manipulating the public.
Give us an actual threat and we'll go right back to flattening cities and firebombing civilians in no time.
(note: I'm not advocating these tactics, I just think our relative restraint is a consequence of our position in current geopolitics, not of some ethical enlightenment on our part)
As to America being "so culturally bankrupt that they can't make a simple argument for an obvious good without manipulating the public," I would have to counter that without effective propaganda mechanisms, a simple argument for an obvious good may not be palatable or worth the time of the average citizen. In other words, if the choice is between a "simple argument" that may work, and a concerted propaganda effort that will work, propaganda will win every time.
This is what I get for reading Edward Bernays' "Crystallizing Public Opinion" between bug fixes.
The concept was "morale bombing": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Area_bombing_directive
It has stuff like "the monthly bombing rate in 1944 was 90'000 tons", etc.
In general, the German article focuses more on the concept in general than about the specific directive.
Read more on the actual article that I wanted to link, https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kriegsm%C3%BCdigkeit
I've got that reading Grove's "Now it can be told." Grove's biggest fear, as he writes, was for a war to end before he can detonate a few bombs.
I haven't read the full article here, but it seems it agrees:
First I found with a quick google: "France foils terror attack on Toulon naval base"
http://www.france24.com/en/20151110-france-foils-terrorism-a...
Sherman burnt down Atlanta. We bombed Dresden. We bombed Tokyo. We pretake in psyops, we nominally follow 'hearts and minds'.
Strict civilian vs military distinction was a fiction invented and maintained by European powers leading into the modern era. It's a fiction that disintegrated once defeating field armies was no longer sufficient to ensure victory.
For one legitimate countries and their state agents also attacked unarmed civilians all the time.
And of course traditionally rebels have also attacked non-military targets.
The main difference between rebellion/revolution and terrorism is, besides intent (e.g. getting freedom for an occupied country) who gets to do the naming.