Bombing our way to peace.

[ford_prefect42]

After any shocking event, it's pretty typical these days for people to divide into 2 camps. 1) We should kill those responsible even if it means some collateral damage. and 2) we cannot bomb our way to peace, bombings and collateral damage just radicalize

Comments

[ford_prefect42]

Yeah, one of the things I have often said is that America is Unique in having an incredibly *short* memory for pain. Whenever anyone stops actively trying to kill us, we *immediately* forgive and forget.

In ww2, there were quite a few things done that would be resoundingly decried now. You listed a few, but there was also firebombing of Tokyo (that actually killed as many people as Hiroshima or Nagasaki), attacks on the infrastructure of cities themselves (water-works being a popular favorite), attacks on support industries not directly military in nature, etcetera. And, of course, there is no way that a German sniper could shoot from an apartment building and be answered with anything less than the most effective available return fire, including a 8 inch howitzer round if available.

My big problem isn't actually that we're paralyzed. It's that we're at the magic shit spot between nonintervention and effective action. It would be *fine* to just stay out of it. It's NOT fine to go into hostile countries "sensitively". Soldiers are not police, and they cannot be expected to operate as such.

[prester_scott]

Nonintervention is not an option when war has been declared on you and you are under attack.

And we could say (some did say as WW2 was beginning in Europe) that it's not our problem because our oceans will protect us, etc., but that's very short-sighted. The reason Islamic terrorism hasn't been taken seriously by us up to now is that they're small and we're big and they can't really hurt us. But even if that is true today, ignoring the problem could easily result in a much graver threat 50 years from now.