Gotta respect the Canadian Armies. Since the draft ended in the US we don’t have any decent human targets.
Sgt Schwartz
What if the assholes are flying planes and drop bombs where non-combatants are?
Thank you, I think we are basically on the same page and I was interested to see if we were.
I thank God, who I do not really believe in, that I never had to be in a situation to be a killer. My battles were all small and without bloodshed and involved dealing with idiots or electric motors that did not want to run.
Jim
You know, ideally, in a war, if nobody got killed it would work the way you seem to see it. For the most part, however, in the real world, Soldiers are called upon to restore peace in an area rocked by violence. Sometimes that means killing the people causing the violence. It doesn’t mean that “might is right.” It does mean that the area is secured. You may not like the end result, but at least for the time being, the violence is stopped.
I don’t agree with genocide. I don’t think what the NAZI’s did was right, but I also have a hard time believing that the common soldier supported killing all the Jewish people.
As an aside, I do remember how you wished death on me. For the record, I am still alive.
Sgt Schwartz
I don’t fucking know. I know that the targets are planned. People should not die innocently, but for some reason we can’t gove our battle plans to the enemy. :rolleyes:
Sgt Schwartz
You mean like Poland in 1939, right? OK, you’ve got me with that one. But how many others can you think of?
You seemed very emphatic, but now you don’t know. Your second sentence appears to suggest that one is a soldier not a murderer if one’s intention is not to hit innocents. So WWII bomber pilots bombing European cities like London or Dresden were murderers presumably, were they?
Somalia, Haiti, and Louisiana (there was a lot of peace keeping stateside if you don’t remember.)
Sgt Schwartz
No, they were killers doing a foul duty. War was different then. Terror bombing was used by both sides and Dresden and London both represented legit military targets in addition to the terror factor.
Jim
…
No, I meant to imply that innocents may be killed if they are located at a strategic target. Identifying the targets ahead of time and warning people not to got to work that day is the job of PsyOps. The people that destroy strategic targets are not murderers. They are winning the war.
Sgt Schwartz
Should I give more examples, or would you just go on re-writing the rules to accommodate?
Sure, was my statement wrong? I think I would make the same defense of most bombing runs.
Jim
So the residential areas of European cities were strategic targets?
Soldiers are sent to restore peace, or to conquer, or to defend, or for various other reasons. Sometimes they are forced to killed the people causing the violence; sometimes they are the ones causing the violence; soldiers are not automatically on the side of Truth and Justice, despite what you seem to believe. And I never said that all killing by soldiers is murder.
If the “area is secured” by troops beating and killing to terrorize the populace into submission - and armies have been known to do that like it or not - and they are doing so under orders, then you once again have soldiers committing murder while performing their duty.
Well, I expect many or most of them did; the Nazis were elected. Nor does it really matter what they supported if they actually went and did it; that would just make them cowards as well as murderers.
You could try, Jim. The amount of ordinance dropped on North Vietnam was more than dropped during the whole of WWII. I suppose you’d say it was all “strategic” but that quickly becomes meaningless: every mother you kill is a potential mother of soldiers, stopping production of food helps the war effort, etc etc. You can always think of a reason to say it’s strategic. The reality is that it is “strategic” to bomb civilians. That’s why “terrorists” do it. That’s why the US did it and probably still does it.
Bye the way, Sgt, do you consider that bombers (like the IRA) who hit pubs with soldiers in them and who phoned in warnings, were soldiers or terrorists?
{bolding mine}
Holy OG, I never thought I would find a middle ground with you. You do agree that not all killing by Soldiers equals murder.
On the second point, look at the LAPD, sometimes people overstep their bounds. There are some lawbreakers in the peace keeping community. I hope those fucktards (God I love the Pit) are prosecuted.
On your final point, at least in the US Army, we are trained on what is a legal order and what has to be obeyed. I will make no apologies for the conduct of the Nazi’s, but I doubt the Soldiers had a choice about which orders to obey.
Sgt Schwartz
{bolding mine}
Holy OG, I never thought I would find a middle ground with you. You do agree that not all killing by Soldiers equals murder.
On the second point, look at the LAPD, sometimes people overstep their bounds. There are some lawbreakers in the peace keeping community. I hope those fucktards (God I love the Pit) are prosecuted.
On your final point, at least in the US Army, we are trained on what is a legal order and what has to be obeyed. I will make no apologies for the conduct of the Nazi’s, but I doubt the Soldiers had a choice about which orders to obey.
Sgt Schwartz
Well, I have a tough time with Vietnam; it appeared to be as unlawful a war as our current little fiasco. We seem to be doing a much better job of avoiding the bombing of civilians and made up for it by touching off extreme insurrection and violence and basically set off a religious war. So blame our leaders and not the soldiers in Iraq. Back to Vietnam, I believe the pilots that flew over and bombed Cambodia in particular were in dereliction of duty and following clearly unlawful orders and should have objected.
I will defend the atomic bombs for as long as you like however.
Jim
You may be interested in reading *Hitler’s Willing Executioners *by Daniel Jonah Goldhagen. It’s mostly about the civillian participants in the Holocaust but it also has a fair bit about German soldiers.