I agree - you lose the build history, ability to see the incremental changes the author intended, can't go back to the code review to see what happened on that

I agree - you lose the build history, ability to see the incremental changes the author intended, can't go back to the code review to see what happened on that specific commit. I have a very difficult time understanding the desire to use --squash and merge --ff. The problem to me seems like a presentation issue, not a data issue.