War etiquette?

[Space cat]

I simply cannot see how you can have 'rules of war'.

I agree that it's a bit of a contradiction. What seems to happen is that opposing forces come to some kind of agreement on what is or isn't 'fair play'. Going back to my history O-level (failed) I remember that, during WWI, British generals initially rejected machine guns on the grounds that they were 'not gentlemanly'. Unfortunately for them, the Germans had other ideas!

The problem is a simple one: he who has the best weapons will probably win. And so we got flame throwers, poison gas, etc, etc - but if you think WWI was bad, the Boer war was far worse. Unable to defeat the Boers in a fair fight, we, who like to call ourselves civilized, rounded up civilians and starved them to death.

Something else happened during WWI; there were sporadic outbreaks of peace. Without any formal agreement, both sides avoided shelling each other at certain times of the day so that they could all have a rest. I suspect that many of the unwritten 'rules of war' grew up in this way. It's only recently that a more formal set of these 'rules' have been written down in the Geneva convention though, as Thermo points out, not everybody follows it.

Moreover, such agreements only work when both sides have similar ideas of what is and isn't acceptable. Here in Europe, we had a general agreement that prisoners should be treated humanly. This may go back to the knights' code of chivalry if not further. Over in the Far East, they didn't see it this way. Prisoners were there to be tortured to death for a laugh. My father-in-law fought in WWII and he once told me how we tried to fight the Japanese by our rules but, after a while, we got so disgusted with the little s*ds that we killed them on sight. This is an example of how war tends to drag everybody down to the lowest level.

 

[Bahco]

The British and USA did not think about rules of war when they killed over 50 thousand in Dresden.

It was not even a military target but wanton bombing!

I'm glad I never had to go to war and kill anyone.

 

[Homesafe]

Some say it could well have exceeded a 100 thousand,
and many more victims were unnacounted for.

WAR what is it good for?? OIL for one thing

 

[dextrous]

Trying to remember who said that war was a bad thing before, during and after

 

[Homesafe]

Trying to remember who said that war was a bad thing before, during and after

I hav'nt got the faintest what you're trying to say.

 

[dextrous]

Trying to remember who said that war was a bad thing before, during and after

I hav'nt got the faintest what you're trying to say.

Fair enough, not my best post.

Planning to have a war is a bad idea. Being in a war is a bad thing. The consequences of a war are bad.

 

[Johnmelad502]

Trying to remember who said that war was a bad thing before, during and after

You did!

 

[dextrous]

Trying to remember who said that war was a bad thing before, during and after

You did!

So it was. Silly old me

 

[securespark]

germany had occupied iceland.

Didn't know freezers were so well established back then.

 

[Lincsbodger]

The British and USA did not think about rules of war when they killed over 50 thousand in Dresden.

It was not even a military target but wanton bombing!

I'm glad I never had to go to war and kill anyone.

Oh ******, the old Dresden thing.

First of all, at the time we were engaged in Total War. That meant doing whatever you had to do to wipe out the other side. The germans invented area bombing when they launched the Blitz on the East End, so we were simply giving them back what the ydid to us - except we were far better at it.

The area bombing strategy was the only strategy the RAF had. It was not possible to do precision bombing, we simply didnt have the technology, even with the Norden Bombsight, H2S and OBOE, the americans found that out on 14 October 1943 when they tried to take out the ball bearing factory at Schweinfurt in daylight and lost 25% of there front line force. They abandoned precision bombing after that.

BY the time we got to Dresden, we had bombed the **** out of germany, and had already wiped out the top 60 targets. It would have been unacceptable for Harris to stop at that point, so he simply continued Operation Pointblank and bombed the third priority targets on the list. Apart from that, harris had a front line force of 1000 bomber by then, had he not used them in the pursuit of victory he would have been accused of cowardice.

Its easy to criticise the RAF in hindsight, but you wernt there, my family was, we did what we judged we had to do at the time, and thats why we won, we were better at the strategy the germans invented in the type of war they wanted to fight. If the germans didnt want Dresden firebombing they should have stopped at the border to the Sudentenland eight years previously, or at he border to Austria, or Poland, or Belgium or France.

No one made the germans invade the rest of Europe. But we made them take the consequences so they wouldnt try it again. And it worked.

 

[dextrous]

Lincs, just for clarity - do you have no problem with collateral damage in an armed conflict, including the 2 h-bombs used to conclude Japanese aggression?

 

[Lincsbodger]

Lincs, just for clarity - do you have no problem with collateral damage in an armed conflict, including the 2 h-bombs used to conclude Japanese aggression?

Well as I said, war is war. There is no morality in war, and the attempts at putting rules on war is hypocritical delusionism. Ever since 1914, war has been total war, that is every member of a society contributes directly or indirectly to the nations war effort, so every member is essentially a military target. Whats the difference between bombing a ship, bombing the shipyard where its made, or bombing the houses of the people who make the ship inthe shipyard? None, as far as i can see. You still take out the ship.

If the americans had been forced to invade japan, he Japanese would have fought for every inch of the motherland, and the americans would have been forced to fight a guerrilla war against women and children, and every building and road would have cost them dear. The atomic bombing of Japan saved a million american lives and shortened the war by years. It cost the japanese under half a million lives. Bargain, the world was half a million humans up on the deal.

 

[Thermo]

Lincs, just for clarity - do you have no problem with collateral damage in an armed conflict, including the 2 h-bombs used to conclude Japanese aggression?

i dont. Saved more of our lives and theirs that would have been lost if we had invaded the mainland. As for dresden, it was a major railway point for the german forces, with large numbers of troops going through the city. None of it was nice, none of it was good, but at the time people had to make choices. It wasnt about clean smart weapons, it was a different time and a different set of circumstances.

 

[joinerjohn]

The bombing of Hiroshima and then Nagasaki a few days later, certainly won the war and foreshortened it by maybe many months.
What we should worry about today, is the fact that we have probably 2 or 3 nations on this planet who would be prepared to use nuclear weapons against their perceived enemies and sod the consequences. North Korea being one. Iran, if it ever gets the H Bomb would be quite prepared to nuke Israel, who would then be forced to retaliate and remove Tehran from the planet. The Muslim world would rise in anger and Pakistan would feel they had to stick up for Islam , then the escalation would only end when we were all either dead or dying from radiation exposure. Etiquette would be thrown out of the window.
Frightening really, although I don't lose any sleep over it.

 

[Lincsbodger]

The bombing of Hiroshima and then Nagasaki a few days later, certainly won the war and foreshortened it by maybe many months.
What we should worry about today, is the fact that we have probably 2 or 3 nations on this planet who would be prepared to use nuclear weapons against their perceived enemies and s** the consequences. North Korea being one. Iran, if it ever gets the H Bomb would be quite prepared to nuke Israel, who would then be forced to retaliate and remove Tehran from the planet. The Muslim world would rise in anger and Pakistan would feel they had to stick up for Islam , then the escalation would only end when we were all either dead or dying from radiation exposure. Etiquette would be thrown out of the window.
Frightening really, although I don't lose any sleep over it.

Nah. The west is not going to get involved in a nuclear exchange for anyone. But if the middle east wants to have a game, then let them, no one west of GMT+4 will stop them. I do think an israeli-iran limited exchange is the most likely scenario, tho. I also suspect Hezbollah might find one heading its way as well in that eventuality

The west has learned about the infrastructure and civilian casualties you would incur by even a limited nuclear exchange. No one in the middle east has the ability to drop a long range ICBM on us or the US, so no one here will retaliate.