[hrothgar]

luke warm, on May 27 2007, 08:37 PM, said:

with the neutrons, the radioactivity is gone within 48 hours... let me ask you, if an enemy knew ahead of time that flying jets into our buildings would be met with either 1) their own destruction at the hands of those who presently harbor them or 2) nuclear retaliation, would they be more or less willing to launch such an attack? would a sympathetic country, such as (for example) syria be more or less willing to capture and turn over such people if they knew we would take matters in our own hands otherwise?

Comment 1: I don't think the world would differentiate much between a normal nuke and a neutron bomb. Deploying any kind of nuclear weapon for kicks and giggles is simple ridiculous

Comment 2: Last I knew, I US didn't have any enhanced radiation weapons in its arsenal. The only President who ordered any produced was Reagan. Given the half life of tritium, all of these would have been rendered inoperable a decade ago. (I also saw reports that the first President Bush scrapped all of these)

In all seriousness, the attitude that you and Mike exhibit makes me wonder whether the US deserves to survive. If the US government ever start behaving in the way that you two recommend, I think that most of the world would start siding with the terrorists...

I certainly would.

[mike777]

I am certainly not advocating genocide.
All or almost all military leaders have strong opinions on wanting to fight per the Geneva Conventions.
What strategies can we adopt from the Indian Wars that would still be successful under the Geneva Conventions? That is another question I would ask.
Korea was at best a stalemate.
Vietnam was lost.
Many believe Iraq is lost or at best unwinnable.

Perhaps an even more controversial question I would ask is can a long, bloody war be won under the Geneva Conventions or is stalemate the best option.

As I said I would ask a lot of questions and expect to make alot of errors. I would expect over the 40 years many tactics to be used and discarded. Explaining this to the public is an important function of a leader. Admitting one does not have a complete coherent winning plan for the next 40 years is another. Setting goals is important, setting up a plan to achieve those goals will involve mistakes along the way.

As I said but many seem to ignore were my comment that adopting some of the tactics would be impossible. That is a good thing not a bad thing.

Of course for those that believe the Global War on Terror is just a slogan or bumper sticker, nevermind.

[pbleighton]

Quote

I am certainly not advocating genocide.

Well, you did say:

Quote

4) fight the war akin to how we fought the American Indian wars.
5) point 4 would be very tough to get agreement to do, maybe impossible.

The war against the Native Americans was genocide. Over 90% died, many through biological warfare. The rest were put in camps. If this isn't what you had in mind, what did you mean?

Peter

[pbleighton]

Quote

Perhaps an even more controversial question I would ask is can a long, bloody war be won under the Geneva Conventions or is stalemate the best option.

The allies won WW2 , mostly complying with the conventions, and could have complied entirely and still won.

Peter

[mike777]

pbleighton, on May 27 2007, 01:22 PM, said:

Quote

Perhaps an even more controversial question I would ask is can a long, bloody war be won under the Geneva Conventions or is stalemate the best option.

The allies won WW2 , mostly complying with the conventions, and could have complied entirely and still won.

Peter

So you advocate firebombing and nukes? The utter destruction of most of Germany?
The Geneva Coventions were not followed or even close to being followed.
See how Russians killed, raped and pillaged and won the war.

With all of that said you do make an interesting point on how to win a war.

[pbleighton]

Quote

So you advocate firebombing and nukes?

No. Read my post.

Quote

The Geneva Coventions were not followed or even close to being followed.
See how Russian killed, raped and pillaged and won the war.

With all of that said you do make an interesting point on how to win a war.

I said *mostly*, towards the end there were major violations, none of which were necessary to win the war:

The Russian rape of 2 million German women.
The U.S.-led bombing of Dresden.
Nuking Japan.

None of these were necessary, the war was mostly won.

Note that your question was *could* a war be won. The answer is clearly yes, much to your apparent regret.

What did the Geneva Conventions ever do to you, that you hate them as much as you obviously do?

Peter

[mike777]

pbleighton, on May 27 2007, 01:18 PM, said:

Quote

I am certainly not advocating genocide.

Well, you did say:

Quote

4) fight the war akin to how we fought the American Indian wars.
5) point 4 would be very tough to get agreement to do, maybe impossible.

The war against the Native Americans was genocide. Over 90% died, many through biological warfare. The rest were put in camps. If this isn't what you had in mind, what did you mean?

Peter

I would ask questions.
In the Indian Wars there was involvement from civillians, miltias and regular army units. All three prongs fought heavily in the war.
One winning tactic used by the army was to go deep into the Indian home base and destroy the homes and food supply. At the very least this would break just about every rule of the Geneva Convention and result in worldwide revulsion.
It was a winning tactic.

I would just ask the questions, even cruel ones. War is about killing the bad guys not being a lawyer or a priest.

[mike777]

pbleighton, on May 27 2007, 01:30 PM, said:

Quote

So you advocate firebombing and nukes?

No. Read my post.

Quote

The Geneva Coventions were not followed or even close to being followed.
See how Russian killed, raped and pillaged and won the war.

With all of that said you do make an interesting point on how to win a war.

I said *mostly*, towards the end there were major violations, none of which were necessary to win the war:

The Russian rape of 2 million German women.
The U.S.-led bombing of Dresden.
Nuking Japan.

None of these were necessary, the war was mostly won.

Note that your question was *could* a war be won. The answer is clearly yes, much to your apparent regret.

What did the Geneva Conventions ever do to you, that you hate them as much as you obviously do?

Peter

Peter you left out many many more violations. If you really believe that the war could have been won under the Geneva Conventions, and you may be right or wrong, you have not proved your point.

At the very least I do not accept it as the accepted fact as you do. I question it.

[hrothgar]

One point that folks might want to consider:

The 4th Geneva Convention is the first which addresses the treatment of civilians. This convention wasn't adopted until 1949.

1. I would be surprised if the Allies would have created a convention that banned the tactics that they had employed just four years earlier. The 4th Convention requires that signatories restrict their targeting to military or dual use facilities, but it recognizes that military necessity might require placing civilians at risk.

2. If we want to be completely formal, nothing that took place during WWII violated the 4th Convention because none of the participants were signatories to the 4th convention.

3. Most of violations of the 4th convention such as the rapes committed by the Soviets and Germans and the collective punishment system used by the Germans didn't have a material impact on the prosecution of the war. Part of the reason that some Allied action such as firebombing Dresden are considered ethically suspect is that there was no military necessity for the attack.

Mike is pretty much caught in a Catch-22 on this one (Admittedly, he placed himself there by the way he framed the argument)

If the attack (fire bombing Tokyo) had a material impact on the prosecution of the war, then it doesn't fall under the Geneva conventions because of the exceptions for military necessity.

If an attack (firebombing Dresden) didn't have a material impact on the prosecution of the war, then - tautologically - the war could have been won without this action.

[Winstonm]

Quote

if an enemy knew ahead of time that flying jets into our buildings would be met with either 1) their own destruction at the hands of those who presently harbor them or 2) nuclear retaliation,

Doesn't it seem odd (meaning consequential) that all arguments seem to lead back to 9-11? The twin towers had been prviously attacked - as had the U.S. overseas - but without the same annihilistic retaliatory ramifications. What was it about 9-11 that changed that perception?

It is my firm belief that it was the cateclismic collapses of the towers that galvanized the American phsyche, reinforced by retaliatory rhetoric that played upon emotion rather than logic. These were vidoe clips that could be shown over and over, reinforcing the rhetoric, increasing the emotional response mechanisms.

When we talk of planes being flown into buildings, in our minds what we visualize is the collapsing buildings - as if one absolutely led to the other.

Had the towers not collapsed, I doubt seriously if Afghanistan or Iraq would have been tolerated by the public. The planes crashing would have been a terrible attack, but not so grossly war-like as seeing 220 stories come collapsing down in smoke and dust - that paints a picture of war instead of simple terrorist attack.

Think about it. If the two jets had slammed into the building, yet the buildings remained standing, how much force would Bush's words of "next time it could be a mushroom cloud" have held? But you take those same words in the context of two planes completely destroying the nation's two tallest buildings, the nations' visual remembraces of the collapsing towers, then the picture of a "mushroom cloud" is taken in the context of "how much worse" it could have been and has much more impact on the nations' psyche.

Because of this nationally reinforced psyche element of the collapses, the fact that it was the collapses rather than the attacks themselves that galvanized the nation to retaliation, it then becomes imperative to know how the collapses occured.

There is no, none, nada, zero, official explanation of how the collapses occured after the point of "global collapse" was reached. Yet scientists and engineers worldside say the collapses could not have occured as they did solely by means of airplane impacts and subsequent fires.

It was not the airplane impacts that galvalnized a nation to a cowboy-like retaliatory posture - it was the horror of the collapses. The mechanisms of the impacts have been explained - the mechanisms of collapses have been ignored.

Seems to me the horse should be ahead of the cart.

[pbleighton]

Quote

One winning tactic used by the army was to go deep into the Indian home base and destroy the homes and food supply. At the very least this would break just about every rule of the Geneva Convention and result in worldwide revulsion.
It was a winning tactic.

I would just ask the questions, even cruel ones. War is about killing the bad guys not being a lawyer or a priest.

You can't have it both ways, Mike.

Would you support this tactic, or not?

Peter

[luke warm]

hrothgar, on May 27 2007, 12:55 PM, said:

luke warm, on May 27 2007, 08:37 PM, said:

with the neutrons, the radioactivity is gone within 48 hours... let me ask you, if an enemy knew ahead of time that flying jets into our buildings would be met with either 1) their own destruction at the hands of those who presently harbor them or 2) nuclear retaliation, would they be more or less willing to launch such an attack? would a sympathetic country, such as (for example) syria be more or less willing to capture and turn over such people if they knew we would take matters in our own hands otherwise?

Comment 1: I don't think the world would differentiate much between a normal nuke and a neutron bomb. Deploying any kind of nuclear weapon for kicks and giggles is simple ridiculous

as i said richard, it depends on your goals... i happen to believe that IF we are to go to war we do so with the aim of winning as quickly and efficiently as possible, with as little loss of american life as feasible... i think the responsibility for whatever happens subsequent to an attack on america lies solely on those who launched the attack, if everyone knows ahead of time what our response will be... if you think deployment would be for "kicks and giggles" then you've misunderstood my motives.. btw, you didn't answer my hypotheticals

Quote

Comment 2:  Last I knew, I US didn't have any enhanced radiation weapons in its arsenal.  The only President who ordered any produced was Reagan.  Given the half life of tritium, all of these would have been rendered inoperable a decade ago.  (I also saw reports that the first President Bush scrapped all of these)

i know that we supposedly have destroyed our neutron arsenal, by some accounts... i also know that other accounts say the opposite... i don't know the truth of the matter

Quote

Part of the reason that some Allied action such as firebombing Dresden are considered ethically suspect is that there was no military necessity for the attack.

there is a military necessity if such bombing leads to victory with the least loss of american lives possible.. again, it depends on your goals

Quote

If the US government ever start behaving in the way that you two recommend, I think that most of the world would start siding with the terrorists... 

I certainly would.

i believe you, and i'm not surprised

winston said:

What was it about 9-11 that changed that perception? It is my firm belief that it was the cateclismic collapses of the towers that galvanized the American phsyche, reinforced by retaliatory rhetoric that played upon emotion rather than logic. These were vidoe clips that could be shown over and over, reinforcing the rhetoric, increasing the emotional response mechanisms.

sigh

[hrothgar]

luke warm, on May 27 2007, 10:38 PM, said:

btw, you didn't answer my hypotheticals

I assume that you are referring to the following:

Quote

let me ask you, if an enemy knew ahead of time that flying jets into our buildings would be met with either 1) their own destruction at the hands of those who presently harbor them or 2) nuclear retaliation, would they be more or less willing to launch such an attack? would a sympathetic country, such as (for example) syria be more or less willing to capture and turn over such people if they knew we would take matters in our own hands otherwise?

Osama bin Laden attacked the United States hoping to provoke an over-reaction. I think that that he would have been thrilled to see the US start lobbing nukes. I suspect that he would understand that the political damage that the US would do to itself would far outweigh any tactical benefit we might enjoy from the use of the nuclear weapons.

The US was able to (easily) root out and destroy the Taliban without any need to use nuclear weapons. Our problems in Afghanistan are political and not military. We failed to invest properly in that whole "nation building" thing.

Using nukes would only exacerbate the existing problems...

[Winstonm]

Quote

QUOTE (winston)
What was it about 9-11 that changed that perception? It is my firm belief that it was the cateclismic collapses of the towers that galvanized the American phsyche, reinforced by retaliatory rhetoric that played upon emotion rather than logic. These were vidoe clips that could be shown over and over, reinforcing the rhetoric, increasing the emotional response mechanisms.


sigh

Jimmy, I really do understand this response. I know it seems redundant to keep harping on the same subject.

Before dismissing completely, I would ask you question your own feelings toward Osama bin Laden and fundamental islam prior to 9-11 and afterwards. Recognize that the shocks of 9-11 came in two seperate events: first the attacks - then an hour later the collapses. Each event had seperate emotional impact.

Then ask yourself also whether your feelings would be different if the planes had hit the buildings and a couple hundred died compared to the shock caused by the total collapses of the buildings with 3000 dead. (And keep in mind those early pronouncements that tens of thousands could be dead.)

Then ask yourself whether it was the attacks or the collapses that had the most effect on your emotions.

I would venture that anyone who is truly honest about recognizing his own feelings would have to agree that it was the shock, along with the unknown but suspected severity of the increased casualites caused by the collapses, that left the huge impact on our emotions.

If we consder the attacks as A and the collapses as B, the NIST and all other governmental reports state that A=B, but they do not show proof of this claim.

All I am saying is that A=A and B=B, but because B is really the crux of our emotional responses, if A=B then show me the proof.

I do not understand how the crux of our emotional responses - the collapses - can be totally ignored and any questioning of A=B calls for exhasperation when the A=B hypothesis is complete assumption, not even looked at by the bodies given the responsibilities of investigation, while scientific minds the world over are saying that A cannot equal B.

I'm not suggesting you should accept my concepts - but I am sincerely interested in what it would take to get someone of your mindset to question the collapses.
Would an article in National Geograpic spur concern? Would it have to be Congressional hearings on the matter?

The reason I ask is because Dr. Jones and his group is now in the process of attempting to place their findings in a major, peer-reviewed scientific journal. I only wonder if that publication would be enough to cause any ripples in the non-doubting side.

[Winstonm]

The theme of this thread was that Dems Cave on Iraq - I always find it interesting when the debate follows along the lines of what to do now or how to continue the war when to me the only critical issue is what got us there in the first place.

Although only barely scratched on the surface by any investigative body, the early evidence seems to point strongly to an orchestrated and covert attempt to mislead the U.S. into war in order to fulfill an existing agenda. If this turns out to be true, then the question should not be what to do about Iraq but what to do with the criminal masterminds of this international war crime.

By their complicity in continuing the war funding, do the Congressional Democrats become co-conspirators and liable to the same punishment as the perpetrators?

No matter what we do, go or stay, bloodshed and violence will be in Iraq's future. Why not leave Iraq's troubles and the troubles of the middle east to the Iraquis and middle easteners and concentrate instead on cleaning our own house if indeed it turns out we are bing led by liars and criminals. We need to find out what is going on in America before we try to fix the rest of the world.

[mike777]

If the Indian Wars were one long act of war crimes and genocide at the very least our Presidents from Washington on and our military leaders turned a blind eye to it or encouraged it.

In the Revolutionary War the Brits certainly accused Washington of war crimes.

WWI the winning side certainly commited genocide and war crimes.

In WWII our Air Force leaders conceded if we lost the war they would be tried and convicted of war crimes. Yet FDR and Truman and Marshall and others turned a blind eye to it.

Our Marines in the Pacific shot the wounded and POW's. This also happened on D-Day.

The Union won the Civil War at the very least committing Genocide and War crimes.

No one advocates it but I fail to see a winning side in war in history that does not commit these crimes.

See the winning side in Iraq or Vietnam.

War is hell.

[pbleighton]

Quote

If the Indian Wars were one long act of war crimes and genocide at the very least our Presidents from Washington on and our military leaders turned a blind eye to it or encouraged it.

They certainly did.

Quote

See the winning side in Iraq or Vietnam.

Which side is winning in Iraq? I see lots of losers, but no winners.

Do you think historical evil justifies present or prospective evil? I do not. You appear to.

Peter

[hrothgar]

mike777, on May 28 2007, 01:06 AM, said:

WWI the winning side certainly commited genocide and war crimes.

The Union won the Civil War at the very least committing Genocide and War crimes.

No one advocates it but I fail to see a winning side in war in history that does not commit these crimes.

You don't even seem to understand the expressions that you use.

Genocide has a fairly specific meaning: It refers to a deliberate attempt to exterminate a specific ethnic group. The Nazi attempt to exterminate the Jews is (obviously) the best known example. There are others.

Genocide is not synonymous with killing large numbers of people. For example, Stalin and Mao both murdered millions of people. I don't think that these actions can properly be referred to as a "genocide" because the killings were based on class rather than ethnicity. Even you you want to extend the expression to include class or political groups - some people argue in favor of broadening the expression - there is still the element of deliberate extermination.

I don't think that you can claim that the Allies in World War I or the Union during the Civil War were genocidal. Please show me an example where any of these groups was attempting to slaughter an entire ethnic group? (Please note: I careful stated "Allied" armies. Some would claim that the Turk's policies towards the Armenians should be described as genocidal). The victorious allies certainly didn't try to exterminate all Germans or kill every last Austrian.

For what its worth, I do believe that the United States behaved in a genocidal manner towards the Native Americans. We deliberated set out to exterminate.

[luke warm]

Winstonm, on May 27 2007, 03:34 PM, said:

Quote

QUOTE (winston)
What was it about 9-11 that changed that perception? It is my firm belief that it was the cateclismic collapses of the towers that galvanized the American phsyche, reinforced by retaliatory rhetoric that played upon emotion rather than logic. These were vidoe clips that could be shown over and over, reinforcing the rhetoric, increasing the emotional response mechanisms.


sigh

Jimmy, I really do understand this response. I know it seems redundant to keep harping on the same subject.

the sigh was more sad than anything else, winston... i just have such a hard time understanding why your posts (almost all of them) point to america as the culprit, the evil one... you compare bush et al to hitler, you blame america for the collapse of buildings, etc etc

it just makes me tired, so sorry

[Winstonm]

Quote

i just have such a hard time understanding why your posts (almost all of them) point to america as the culprit,

Simple - it is American foreign policy over the past 50 years that has created the very enemy we fight. In a sense, al-Qaeda can be viewed as a revolutionary force intent on overthrowing the ruling class within their lands - and the ultimate ruler pulling the strings of the puppet is the U.S.

To believe this war is about bringing freedom and democracy to the middle east is naive to the point of near idolitizing blind faith fed by lunacy - this is nothing more than a battle of wills to see if the U.S. can dominate and impose its will on the region.

That's why no one will give up - to quit the war is to admit that the U.S. can no longer impose its will. To quit means to admit that 50 years of foreign policy has been wrong.