Whi is Israel, in its campaign of aerial bombardment against Lebanon, dropping flyers in the area advising citizens to leave? (From this article.) I thought the whole point of bombing a city is to kill people. Is their intention to just destroy as many buildings as they can without injuring civilians? Or are they doing so they can later say “well, we warned them to leave” when the casualties start piling up?
Is this standard practice for air raid attacks? Did America do this during the Gulf War, the Iraq War or other wars? It just seems so strange to me.
I’m not taking a side in the conflict or debating anything, I just want a factual answer. I have not heard of this practice in wartime before.
They aren’t trying to kill as many Lebanese as they can. They’re trying to eliminate Hezbollah operations, stores, and positions. Hezbollah purposely places these in civilian-populated areas, hoping that if Israel goes after Hezbollah there will be an uproar over innocent civilian casualties. Israel isn’t going to let that stop them from trying to annihilate Hezbollah, but they’d just as soon not have non-combatants killed, hence the leaflets.
And yeah, the US military did that a lot in the Gulf War. They’d drop leaflettes saying “We’re gonna bomb here at such-and-such time” and at such-and-such time, the Air Force would show up and, true to their word, bomb that place (in spite of whatever defenses the Iraqis may or may not have tried to throw up at that place in the time they had).
There were also leaflette bombing missions in WWII, but I think those were mostly for propaganda drops, I’m not sure if they ever told the local civilians to duck and cover at such-and-such times.
Also, a thought: While giving warning might give the Hezbollah people time to get out of the way or to set up defenses as they may see fit, there are probably various resources they have that they can’t move easily, such as supply stockpiles, which the Israelis may still be more than happy to dispose of for them.
Another possible, if somewhat cynical, reason for dropping leaflets is to clog the roads with refugees, making it difficult for the enemy to move troops, equipment and supplies.
My brother was in Psychologal Ops in Gulf War 1. He designed the pamphlets that they dropped. (Other people translated, and other poeple did the illustrations.) In that case, the point was to gain trust with the Iraqi people. (Bomb on even days, on odd days drop pamphlets saying “We’re going to bomb you again tomorrow. Here’s how to make a white flag:…”. Surrender ensues.)
I’m not sure if that helps the discussion, I really just wanted to point out that my brother pretty much won GW1 singlehandedly.
Leaflets with general warnings were dropped throughout Japan, but they did not specifically warn that we were going to destroy Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
Among the reasons why both Hiroshima and Nagasaki were chosen was the fact that Hiroshima had never been bombed before, and Nagasaki was only lightly bombed before. This was so that the damage caused by the atomic weapons could be judged more accurately. Also, strictly military targets were excluded because it was felt that a high civilian death count would make a greater impression. This is established history.
WWII was insanely brutal. What the Japanese did in Asia, the Germans in Poland, Russia, etc., and what we did in our bombing of enemy cities continue to amaze and disgust me.
Yeah, the atomic bombs were bad by themselves, but to put them in perspective, before we dropped those two bombs, numerous Japanese cities were incinerated in firebombing raids in the previous months by formations of B-29s. Turns out, if you start enough fires all at once, they create a local weather pattern kinda like a small hurricane made out of fire (the RAF did the same thing with some help from the USAAF in Dresden, Germany earlier in the war).
