Afghan "train, advise and assist" 1984 style

[barbos]

All parties held the absurd idea that when we bomb them, it will terrify them into suing for peace; While recognising that when they bomb us, it only hardens our resolve to never surrender.

That's not all, you bomb them to improve your own morale. Soviet Union bombed Berlin in august 1941. That had little military impact, but was necessary for morale, considering the state of the Red Army at the time.

 

[funinspace]

Yeah, there's nothing quite like genocide to win over the hearts and minds when nation building...

Who said anything about "genocide"? Did the Allies engage in "genocide" during WWII by waging a "no more half measures, Walter" kind of war on Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan?

I tell you what, why don't you describe just how you would execute on 'killing the Taliban'? The Taliban aren't green aliens. They were largely made up from the ethnic Pashtun's. Evidently, over the intervening years, they have made gains in expanding their growth in popularity within other ethnic grouping from within Afghanistan. They don't wear placards, that say 'TALIBAN' on the front, and 'Just Shoot Me' on the back. And our soldiers being sent there were not exactly learning any Dari or Pashto.

WWII could be argued to have had elements of genocide within it, but it also was a war that consumed pretty much everyone's whole economy to fight, it truly was balls to the wall. Afghanistan nor Vietnam were absolutely not a case of an all out battle for the US. And we dropped more bomb tonnage in SE Asia trying to 'subdue' the enemy from 20,000 feet than in WWII, yet it is a clear example of how that just doesn't work. And I don't know what else one calls indiscriminate bombing from 20,000 feet with B-52's...

And you are the one who started talking tactical nuclear weapons. So again, why don't you describe just how you would execute on 'killing the Taliban'?

 

[Politesse]

If the Chinese are considered Allies, they absolutely had genocidal intent with respect to any Japanese people remaining within their borders by the end of the war. This went both ways, obviously, the Japanese military was infamously cruel during the occupation. But if the question was "were Allied nations willing to commit genocide in territories they controlled", I would answer "at least in some cases".

And this idea American conservatives have that you can "bomb <<them>> to the stone age" whenever you have a political dispute with someone is a policy that would result in genocidal actions in the present, no matter what historians may decide about the past. You cannot advocate mass killings on a grand scale, then claim lily-white innocence when it turns out you've erased entire cultures in your bloodlust-fueled purge. No one will care, in retrospect, about the hairs they try to split about intent vs. effect. The truth is that if you're in a position where you're trying to explain why your actions weren't "technically" genocide according to Encyclopedia Britannica definition of genocide (and get angry and defensive when someone suggests using the UN's definition instead), you've already done something very, very bad, the stain of which won't be erased with a semantic debate. No one will care about your technicalities unless they already want to believe that what you did was somehow justified.

 

[Jarhyn]

If the Chinese are considered Allies, they absolutely had genocidal intent with respect to any Japanese people remaining within their borders by the end of the war. This went both ways, obviously, the Japanese military was infamously cruel during the occupation. But if the question was "were Allied nations willing to commit genocide in territories they controlled", I would answer "at least in some cases".

And this idea American conservatives have that you can "bomb <<them>> to the stone age" whenever you have a political dispute with someone is a policy that would result in genocidal actions in the present, no matter what historians may decide about the past. You cannot advocate mass killings on a grand scale, then claim lily-white innocence when it turns out you've erased entire cultures in your bloodlust-fueled purge. No one will care, in retrospect, about the hairs they try to split about intent vs. effect. The truth is that if you're in a position where you're trying to explain why your actions weren't "technically" genocide according to Encyclopedia Britannica definition of genocide (and get angry and defensive when someone suggests using the UN's definition instead), you've already done something very, very bad, the stain of which won't be erased with a semantic debate. No one will care about your technicalities unless they already want to believe that what you did was somehow justified.

This. So much of this.