Lets see how spicy things get with Russia.
So it goes . . .
- Thread starter LockyOK
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Terrorism ! how very leftie of you and how immature.
And there is the difference...whether it is sanctioned or legitimate...the American Civil War saw the first sanctioned campaign by a modern industrialised nation legitimising civilian infrastructure and lives as military targets.
Acts of barbarism and feudal warfare (where civilians were largely conscripted by their Lords to fight anyway) aside, we can all point to the sacking of cities from antiquities through to Mongols campaigns etc, however at this time cities were, as a rule, highly defended, military citadels in and of themselves.
To be fair,
"Terrorism is commonly defined as violent acts (or threat of violent acts) intended to create fear (terror), perpetrated for a religious, political, or ideological goal, and which deliberately target or disregard the safety of non-combatants (e.g., neutral military personnel or civilians)."
There are other definitions which obviously related to none state sponsored actions, but it's all pending on what definition is being used at the time.
Bombing of cities was also caused to damage moral & reduce the inclination of factions to fight, something which all groups engaged in at different levels. War isn't something you can package up into a good guy/bad guy dichotomy, it's just a long list of decimals in between - all with some good & bad in different measures.
I do agree with what your saying overall thought - bombing Dresden was no worse morally than bombing Coventry, or any other major city - no singular act of this kind is really that unique sadly. Neither would I define it as terrorism based on the popular definition - state terrorism would be a more accurate term to use.
An interesting point on the matter,
"Historian Henry Commager wrote that "Even when definitions of terrorism allow for state terrorism, state actions in this area tend to be seen through the prism of war or national self-defense, not terror.”
While states may accuse other states of state-sponsored terrorism when they support insurgencies, individuals who accuse their governments of terrorism are seen as radicals, because actions by legitimate governments are not generally seen as illegitimate. Academic writing tends to follow the definitions accepted by states. Most states use the term "terrorism" for non-state actors only."
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Which is precisely what happened in WWII for the most part, The acceptance that civilian casualties, sometimes on a large scale was legitimate collateral damage, in fact in a letter Sherman described the civilians as a 'Hostile People, and must make old and young, rich and poor, feel the hard hand of war, as well as their organised armies", so by Sherman's own words, civilians were specifically targeted as being what we would term today, as legitimate active combatants.
To Sherman's credit, he did have what he called 'special orders' which granted black refugees from his campaign to destroy cities and civilian infrastructure, land which he had confiscated, although President Johnson overturned this, and his forage teams had standing orders not to molest civilians who offered no resistance to his troops when they were essentially robbing them and destroying their farms, mills and so on, if they did then there were to be dealt with equal devastation, what we would call 'collective punishment'
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There was the Hague Convention (1899 and 1907), which was an elaboration of the subject matter discussed at the Conference of Brussels (1874)
Soldato
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I feel your use of the ACW as the point of change is incorrect though. The ACW at it's start was an odd war as many of it's instigators on both sides had a false moralistic view on how war should be fought. Across Europe and the rest of the world in various colonial conflicts there was no real sense of particular targets being "out of bounds", whether that was officially sanctioned or not.
From fairly early on the ACW at local level degenerated into a "By any means" war, really all Sherman did was have the balls to formalise what was already happening across various theatres of the conflict at below Corps level.
Examples? (Remember, we are talking about industrialised nations here, rather than inter-tribal or warfare where the 'civilians' were already combatants by definition, such as feudalism or systems where there was no formalised standing army such as the Mongols.)
Nonetheless it is point to by historians as being the first such formalisation of 'Hard War' or 'Total War' as a legitimate and acceptable facet of a campaign.
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We bombed Germany, Germany bombed us. I grew up in Plymouth, the whole city centre is now a horrific 1950/60s concrete abomination thanks to the Luftwaffe.
I don't care though, I'm aware of it and I'm aware of the terrible sacrifices that the people of both sides endured, it's in the past and wounds have healed.
Neither side needs to be sorry for what it did, that's the whole point of reconciliation and moving on.
I don't care though, I'm aware of it and I'm aware of the terrible sacrifices that the people of both sides endured, it's in the past and wounds have healed.
Neither side needs to be sorry for what it did, that's the whole point of reconciliation and moving on.
I don't really understand the sudden vitriol and wording of the opening post, to be honest. It's as though we were all discussing how great firestorms are or something.
This is like that daft PC idea of apologising for slavery.
Society moves on, we see things differently, the good thing is we really like and admire the Germans now so the situation is better.
We even quite like the Japanese although Anime is a lot to do with that.
If we glassed the ME tommorrow we'd probably still hate them in a hundred years time and we'd have '**** you' celebrations every year.
Society moves on, we see things differently, the good thing is we really like and admire the Germans now so the situation is better.
We even quite like the Japanese although Anime is a lot to do with that.
If we glassed the ME tommorrow we'd probably still hate them in a hundred years time and we'd have '**** you' celebrations every year.
I'm wondering what on earth they're teaching us in our schools??!
WW2 was our finest hour and now it's 'poor old Germans??' Is this some EU directive to re-write history?
(This is a joke and not to be taken seriosuly, jeez!)He certainly does and it's very worrying.
Soldato
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Even if Dresden is not an example of indiscriminate bombing, Hiroshima and Nagasaki must be!
As Col M said, both sides were guilty of this and we should move on.
As Col M said, both sides were guilty of this and we should move on.
I'm wondering what on earth they're teaching us in our schools??!
WW2 was our finest hour and now it's 'poor old Germans??' Is this some EU directive to re-write history?
It worries me how many people in this thread didn't really know about Dresden.
Hi, I have not engaged in acts of bombing, terrorism or any kind of targeted assaults on civilians at any level or at any stage in my life.
Bye.
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