From: Mike Lorrey (mlorrey@datamann.com)
Date: Sun Nov 25 2001 - 12:13:45 MST
CurtAdams@aol.com wrote:
>
> In a message dated 11/22/01 2:16:53 AM, ml@gondwanaland.com writes:
>
> >On Wed, Nov 21, 2001 at 09:10:40AM -0800, Lee Daniel Crocker wrote:
> >> Sure, we've done some wrong things, but nothing even
> >> remotely close to unthinkable horrors of Pearl Harbor or WTC.
> >
> >I don't know, I've thought about Pearl Harbor, WTC and far more
> >horrific events a fair bit.
> >
> >The US carried out terrorist acts against American Indians for
> >well over a century. I'm sure that a number of these, considered
> >individually, were remotely close to WTC, perhaps even worse.
>
> You needn't stretch to find worse US parallels. Dresden, Hiroshima,
> and Nagasaki were all straight-up terrorist acts - trying to force
> action onto governments/societies by killing civilians in areas of
> minimal military importance.
Quite. However, a proper examination of the Dresden incident,
specifically, will show that the US only bombed the rail yards. It was
the British who had firebombed the whole city the night before with HE
then incindiaries, and they did so because they wanted to "beat us to
it". While the US has some blame, the overwhelming blame belongs
specifically to european sources.
>
> (What the US did to the Amerinds was horrible and frequently
> genocidal. I consider it a stretch because it was so long ago,
> and because few Americans would attempt to justify it today.)
Similar to my clarification above, 75% of the deaths of amerinds from
disease occured prior to the British arrival, and 90% occured prior to
the establishment of the US government. Wholly 100% occured prior to the
acceptance of the germ theory of disease in western heath science.
Furthermore, I don't regard Hiroshima or Nagasaki to be primarily
terrorist acts. By late in the war, both the German and Japanese
governments had so thoroughly mobilized and armed their societies in
preparation for invasion of their home territories that the only people
there that could be considered 'non-combatants' under the Geneva
Conventions were those in POW camps and patients in hospitals.
Under the Geneva Conventions, when a combatant hides behind
non-combatants or in non-combatant facilities, those then become
combatant targets as well, legally.
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