Why Do So Many Countries Discount Their Own War Crimes But Condemn Other States So Vociferously?

[Evilroddy]

In war its very rare for there to be a black and white situation. Sometimes its as crazy as a bunch of inbred monarchs taking their countrymen to the meat grinder to one up eachother. (Ah my hatred of monarchy, one of the things that remained constant through my life )

bomberfox:

I agree that there are many grey zones created by the fog of war and that sometimes atrocities happen without an intention to do so. However there are plenty of war crimes which have occurred in the 21st Century and which have clearly been carried out deliberately and with intention. What do we do about those deliberate war crimes (WCs) and crimes against humanity (CsAH) which are happening right now from Colombia, to Sudan, to Egypt, to Ukraine, to Afghanistan, to Myanmar, to the Philippines? Do we just ignore them because 108 years ago some callous European royals decided to plunge half of a continent and many other places around the rest of the globe into a world war? For me the answer is no.

One of the reasons i dont harp on the bombing of Dresden anymore is well if you dont want your cities bombed to hell, dont wage a totally pointless and delusional total war.

How many of those people killed in Dresden had any power to effect the decisions of the Nazi state that followed from the 1933 election? They had no choice in going to war with Poland in September of 1939. They had no choice in the British and the French declarations of war which followed the German invasion of Poland. They had no say in Germany negotiating an alliance with Imperial Japan and subsequently declaring war on the USA after Pearl Harbour.

25-35,000 residents of the city died in the three days of bombing and the fire storm started on the first night by the RAF. The city was packed with Eastern European and German refugees and we have no clear idea how many were immolated in the hell-fires of the burning city. The numbers of residents and refugees killed range from 80,000 up to 225,000 dead but nobody really knows the true extent of the butcher's bill. The stated purposes of the raids were to break civillian morale through the dual RAF policies of "dehousing" and "terror bombing" and to overwhelm the transportation, communications and medical capacities of the Elbe and Saxony regions with dead, dying, burned, wounded and fleeing refugees. There was little of military value to target in and around Dresden, certainly not enough to justify the horrific casualties inflicted on the civilian residential and refugee populations there.

But that was almost 80 years ago. The atrocities continue to occur today. Why do we do nothing? Why do we let them continue to happen? Why do we retreat into cynical resignation and turn away from such crimes, both when they are committed by our rivals and our own? Why do we perpetuate man's inhumanity towards man? WTF is wrong with us all? In democracies we have the power to change things at least on behalf of our own states. But we do almost nothing and thus are complicit in every crime committed by our state and its agents. How do we live with that and look ourselves in the mirror every morning?

Cheers of pathos and be well.
Evilroddy.

 

[Evilroddy]

When i learned more about the conflict in Bosnia, ive kind of come around to thinking that maybe intervening wasnt all that bad but i still remain largely ignorant of the conflict (i was just a kid back during the Clinton years.)

bomberfox:

It was terrible. Pointless violence from valley to valley.

In terms of prosecuting war crimes, well we have the UN, which is ironically the spitting example of small and weak government. As far as the UN goes, its got no teeth to prosecute on its own and heavily favors letting its member states off the hook.

Agreed. So why not build the political will and inertia from the bottom up to construct the investigative, legal, enforcement and penal capacity to do it better? Why do nothing.

Cheers of pathos and be well.
Evilroddy.

 

[bomberfox]

bomberfox:

It was terrible. Pointless violence from valley to valley.

Agreed. So why not build the political will and inertia from the bottom up to construct the investigative, legal, enforcement and penal capacity to do it better? Why do nothing.

Cheers of pathos and be well.
Evilroddy.

Oh i wasnt suggesting do nothing. Just stating how the current situation contributes to the circumstances your op describes.

 

[bomberfox]

bomberfox:

I agree that there are many grey zones created by the fog of war and that sometimes atrocities happen without an intention to do so. However there are plenty of war crimes which have occurred in the 21st Century and which have clearly been carried out deliberately and with intention. What do we do about those deliberate war crimes (WCs) and crimes against humanity (CsAH) which are happening right now from Colombia, to Sudan, to Egypt, to Ukraine, to Afghanistan, to Myanmar, to the Philippines? Do we just ignore them because 108 years ago some callous European royals decided to plunge half of a continent and many other places around the rest of the globe into a world war? For me the answer is no.

How many of those people killed in Dresden had any power to effect the decisions of the Nazi state that followed from the 1933 election? They had no choice in going to war with Poland in September of 1939. They had no choice in the British and the French declarations of war which followed the German invasion of Poland. They had no say in Germany negotiating an alliance with Imperial Japan and subsequently declaring war on the USA after Pearl Harbour.

25-35,000 residents of the city died in the three days of bombing and the fire storm started on the first night by the RAF. The city was packed with Eastern European and German refugees and we have no clear idea how many were immolated in the hell-fires of the burning city. The numbers of residents and refugees killed range from 80,000 up to 225,000 dead but nobody really knows the true extent of the butcher's bill. The stated purposes of the raids were to break civillian morale through the dual RAF policies of "dehousing" and "terror bombing" and to overwhelm the transportation, communications and medical capacities of the Elbe and Saxony regions with dead, dying, burned, wounded and fleeing refugees. There was little of military value to target in and around Dresden, certainly not enough to justify the horrific casualties inflicted on the civilian residential and refugee populations there.

But that was almost 80 years ago. The atrocities continue to occur today. Why do we do nothing? Why do we let them continue to happen? Why do we retreat into cynical resignation and turn away from such crimes, both when they are committed by our rivals and our own? Why do we perpetuate man's inhumanity towards man? WTF is wrong with us all? In democracies we have the power to change things at least on behalf of our own states. But we do almost nothing and thus are complicit in every crime committed by our state and its agents. How do we live with that and look ourselves in the mirror every morning?

Cheers of pathos and be well.
Evilroddy.

The thing that should be understood about nazi Germany is this was a total war situation for them. Awful awful shit happens during total war. The nazi machine was almost all encompassing so firebombing infrastructure was not out of the question. Im not unsympathetic but the German people did ultimately bring about this kind of consideration.

Had Germany not undertook a total war march i might be more sympathetic but not annihilating Germany and helping it rebuild and reunite when its pursuit was the total annihilation of their perceived enemies puts the allies on higher moral footing.

 

[Evilroddy]

Oh i wasnt suggesting do nothing. Just stating how the current situation contributes to the circumstances your op describes.

bomberfox:

That heartens me. Thank you. Now what do you think can be done? No need to reply in haste. Give it time and then come back. You're always welcome!

Cheers and be well.
Evilroddy.

 

[Evilroddy]

The thing that should be understood about nazi Germany is this was a total war situation for them. Awful awful shit happens during total war. The nazi machine was almost all encompassing so firebombing infrastructure was not out of the question. Im not unsympathetic but the German people did ultimately bring about this kind of consideration.

Had Germany not undertook a total war march i might be more sympathetic but not annihilating Germany and helping it rebuild and reunite when its pursuit was the total annihilation of their perceived enemies puts the allies on higher moral footing.

bomberfox:

I do see where you're coming from and much of what you say was correct in my opinion. But the British/UK electorate did have the political power and responsibility for electing the Churchill Governemt and thus they bear more responsibility for the decisions and actions of PM Winston Churchill and Air-Marshall Sir Arthur "Bomber" Harris. The German townsfolk and the Eastern European refugees of Dresden had no such power and thus less responsibility. Thus the moral fall of the U.K. electorate and their representatives was greater from that higher footing. The American Army Airforce at least tried to use precision day-time bombing to limit unintentional harm at considerable risk to their own aircrews, so I am more inclined to follow your reasoning and conclusions with respect to American culpability during a total war.

Cheers and be well.
Evilroddy.

 

[Chagos]

The thing that should be understood about nazi Germany is this was a total war situation for them. Awful awful shit happens during total war. The nazi machine was almost all encompassing so firebombing infrastructure was not out of the question. Im not unsympathetic but the German people did ultimately bring about this kind of consideration.

Had Germany not undertook a total war march i might be more sympathetic but not annihilating Germany and helping it rebuild and reunite when its pursuit was the total annihilation of their perceived enemies puts the allies on higher moral footing.

Frankly, I propose that carpet bombing whole civilian habitats is/was less an issue of moral footing than it is/was of expediency. Certainly with those that have/had to decide on the presumably best military strategy for defeating the enemy.

Every military leadership has in mind to inflict the most damage upon enemy forces, while limiting own casualties to the lowest possible numbers.

The irony of such "total slaughter" lies in achieving the exact opposite effect to what is envisaged, namely that the civilian population thus afflicted will rise against it leadership in any effort to stop the carnage.

Anybody with half a brain in the UK at the time will have seen how the Blitz on its cities served to strengthen popular resolve, rather than weakening it. Yet by some undeclared assumption that the average German would be somewhat inferior in fiber to the average Brit, Harris and Co. proceeded along exactly the same lines as had the German Blitz and in that process achieved precisely nothing in damaging the German war industry, while indeed imposing enormous suffering upon Fritz der Klemptner (the German equivalent of Joe the Plumber).

The current barraging of Ukraine is no different, laying the country to waste in the absence of military capacity to currently defeat its forces has been standard military practice since the times of the Mongols and before.

It's inexcusable as I'd be the first to point out, but it IS.

When we set upon each other in homicidal frenzy (justified in our respective minds but nobody else's), morality has long since left the theatre.

 

[Chagos]

bomberfox:

I do see where you're coming from and much of what you say was correct in my opinion. But the British/UK electorate did have the political power and responsibility for electing the Churchill Governemt and thus they bear more responsibility for the decisions and actions of PM Winston Churchill and Air-Marshall Sir Arthur "Bomber" Harris. The German townsfolk and the Eastern European refugees of Dresden had no such power and thus less responsibility. Thus the moral fall of the U.K. electorate and their representatives was greater from that higher footing. The American Army Airforce at least tried to use precision day-time bombing to limit unintentional harm at considerable risk to their own aircrews, so I am more inclined to follow your reasoning and conclusions with respect to American culpability during a total war.

Cheers and be well.
Evilroddy.

I'll point here that "when the flags of patriotism are a-fluttering, morality disappears down the gun barrels" .

For further assessment see my previous post (# 32).

Just to add: singling out any party as having done the "morally better" bombing isn't really cutting it. The USAF strategists simply saw that RAF night bombings were, in their inherent inaccuracy, ineffective at sufficiently damaging the German war industry. USAF day-time bombings didn't achieve that goal either but still caused more damage to industry than the RAF had.

Where USAF had the edge on RAF was the realization that bombing the civilian population into submission (to the point of Germans overthrowing the Nazi overlords) was a pipe dream. It wasn't the bombings that instigated the failed coup against Hitler, it was the successful Normandy landing.

And that coup attempt came from within the military, not the civilian quarter.

 

[bomberfox]

I'll point here that "when the flags of patriotism are a-fluttering, morality disappears down the gun barrels" .

For further assessment see my previous post (# 32).

Just to add: singling out any party as having done the "morally better" bombing isn't really cutting it. The USAF strategists simply saw that RAF night bombings were, in their inherent inaccuracy, ineffective at sufficiently damaging the German war industry. USAF day-time bombings didn't achieve that goal either but still caused more damage to industry than the RAF had.

Where USAF had the edge on RAF was the realization that bombing the civilian population into submission (to the point of Germans overthrowing the Nazi overlords) was a pipe dream. It wasn't the bombings that instigated the failed coup against Hitler, it was the successful Normandy landing.

And that coup attempt came from within the military, not the civilian quarter.

Yep i dont mean to say that bombings have a positive effect on resistance morale, thats not what bombings are for especially when you often have to carpet bomb an area. There isnt a morally superior bombing, i meant to say that what happened afterward and the fact that the allies were not in it for total annihilation makes the allies the better faction.