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Location: where you sip the tea of the breasts of the spinsters of Utica
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Horrifying deaths like that are commonplace in military conflicts, which is why I'm against war except in true self-defense, but never before have I seen executions being shown graphically as propaganda FOR one side ..... it used to be that propaganda showed the ENEMY as inhuman monsters.
And yet they seem to have no shortage of sociopaths and religious nutters flooding in as recruits, they seem to have counted correctly on the recruitment value of such killings. It does give me some pause to wonder about the human species.
I stopped wondering about the human capacity for violence in "Nam. Nothing has surprised me since except the astonishing misreading of Western psychology by the Islamic fundamentalist freaks. Maybe in their culture being a ruthless executioner is a way of showing how dedicated a Believer you are but it only serves to disgust, frighten and anger most folks in the West.
Perhaps they forget such military campaigns as the Invasion of France by the Allies, Operation Barbarossa by the Germans or Stalin's response. Or the US Pacific war against Japan that ended with nuking two cities. We Westerners are not unfamiliar with how to wage total war but we do know how. We just have not been enraged and insulted enough to want to.
Until the Fundamentalist terrorists really get us enraged I strongly suggest we get out of the entire Middle East and let them destroy themselves in their never ending internal strife and war. No matter what happens on the surface the oil will still be there underground and effectively up for grabs after the Arabs finish killing each other.
It's not new. The tactics have been exported and globalized. Mexican death squads recently burned alive 43 students. In El Salvador and Honduras, it's been occurring for over 30 years. Stop a bus of tourists and burn them alive in the bus.
It's time for a coalition to take these throwbacks to task (the fact that the US sp***ed its wad on an unnecessary war in Iraq doesn't help - the same has been a gift to the Islamists) - the US, UK, France, Germany, Australia, Canada, and even Japan (perhaps its time to re-work that constitution).
It's not new. The tactics have been exported and globalized. Mexican death squads recently burned alive 43 students. In El Salvador and Honduras, it's been occurring for over 30 years. …........
…...actually more than 30 years.
One of the most horrendous war crimes in history was Gen. Curtis LeMay's firebombing of Japan, starting with Tokyo and continuing in city after city. He didn't think strategic bombing was getting the job done fast enough.
Hundreds of thousands (at least 500,000, possibly as many as a million) of non-combatants, children, women and old men were burned to death. In LeMay's own words: "scorched and boiled and baked to death."
Other LeMay quotes on the subject: “Killing Japanese didn't bother me very much at that time... I suppose if I had lost the war, I would have been tried as a war criminal.... it doesn't bother me so much to be killing the so-called innocent bystanders.”
One of the most horrendous war crimes in history was Gen. Curtis LeMay's firebombing of Japan, starting with Tokyo and continuing in city after city. He didn't think strategic bombing was getting the job done fast enough.
Hundreds of thousands (at least 500,000, possibly as many as a million) of non-combatants, children, women and old men were burned to death. In LeMay's own words: "scorched and boiled and baked to death."
Other LeMay quotes on the subject: “Killing Japanese didn't bother me very much at that time... I suppose if I had lost the war, I would have been tried as a war criminal.... it doesn't bother me so much to be killing the so-called innocent bystanders.”
.
That was the objective of 'total war' at the time. You not only had to defeat and destroy the enemy's army & equipment, you also had to destroy their ability to manufacturer and support that war... which involved the civilian population. There weren't any 'smart' weapons (bombs) in those days, and accuracy for pinpoint targets was hit & miss. It's questionable that the carpet bombing of cities during WW2 had the desired effect of demoralizing the enemy population, but it did contribute to making the continuation of the war much more difficult.
For the record, we weren't the only ones to carry out carpet/fire bombing of civilian targets. The British carried out an extensive campaign of night incendiary bombing of German cities for nearly 3 years in Europe. A few of those missions actually killed more people than our A-bombs did. You can call it war crimes if you like, but it did help shorten the war.
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