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The US started targeting defenseless civilians in Japan via fire bombing, and the majority of the Japan's cities had already been destroyed by the time they dep
by eceppda 10y ago
The US started targeting defenseless civilians in Japan via fire bombing, and the majority of the Japan's cities had already been destroyed by the time they deployed the atomic bombs. The attacks on civilians in Japan were the first examples of what is now standard procedure in the air force, now known as "strategic bombing".
Mark Selden, a researcher at Cornell University, wrote an excellent article detailing this: http://apjjf.org/-Mark-Selden/2414/article.html http://apjjf.org/-Mark-Selden/2414/article.html
He points out how the attacks on civilians in Dresden, for example, were met with shock by Europeans at the time. But the Americans never reacted as strongly to the same bombings in Japan.
Several cities of civilians were destroyed in the Korean War. In Vietnam city bombins and chemical weapons were deployed against civilians. Carpet bombing was the term for targeting civilians in Iraq I. Etc etc etc. It's all basically the same.
- afterburner 10y agoThis ignores the changes since Iraq War I though. Carpet bombing is no longer standard procedure, because more accurate bombing became a lot cheaper.
- eceppda 10y agoIraq II re-destroyed Baghdad and destroyed the city center Falluja. An estimated 655,000 civilians were dead by 2006 and another 2,000,000 displaced. The standard procedure of targeting civilians is still the central strategy.
- kbart 10y ago"Carpet bombing is no longer standard procedure" Really? 0. http://cursor.org/stories/casualty_count.htm http://cursor.org/stories/casualty_count.htm 1. http://www.theguardian.com/world/2001/nov/01/afghanistan.terrorism6 http://www.theguardian.com/world/2001/nov/01/afghanistan.ter... 2. https://warisboring.com/b-52s-in-massive-mid-east-carpet-bombing-exercise-cf9aaa5e06ab#.q1khlkbnx https://warisboring.com/b-52s-in-massive-mid-east-carpet-bom... etc.