09-15-2003, 04:57 PM
Why are you asking me and what's your point?
Non-combatants die in every war, even when they are not targeted. When they are targeted, it gets bloody gory bloody fast. Consider the death of some 500,000 in Rwanda at the hands of their various countrymen, most of them easily classifiable, depending on who you were, as non-combatants. That was not an accident.
Life sucks that way, and it sucks hard.
Ask the folks in London who dealt with The Blitz, quite a few of them are still alive. The Blitz sucked.
When non-combatants are deliberately targeted, such as in the V rocket attacks on that very same London, the political fallout is different, since the political aim was different.
Consider the non-combatants killed by the Viet Minh and Viet Cong in the late 1950's: by most accounts the number 2,000 is very conservative. Let's talk about the non combatants in Viet Nam post 1975 who died in the "reeducation camps." Non combatants, dead. As to the Killing Fields of Cambodia . . . who was or was not a combatant?
When non combatants are deliberately targeted, even by crude WW II methods, the death toll runs into the tens and hundreds of thousands: see Chunking, Tokyo, Dresden.
When all is said and done body count math is irrlevant except to fuel propaganda and political emotion, which it serves well at times, and abysmally at other times.
Rarely does trying to get anything useful out of body count math do anyone any good: it can mislead policy makers, it can give one a false sense of victory or defeat (N Viet Nam 1.3 million dead as a conservative figure from 1960-1975, versus 55,000 US and 220,000 or so S Viet Nam, but they "won." Of what point that bit of body math?) and it can be used as a smoke screen for a variety of political agenda.
So my question to you would have to be:
What does your question have to do with the initial post, and more to the point, what does it have to do with my post? My post focused on non-combatant deaths in the highways, or weren't you reading it?
Non-combatants die in every war, even when they are not targeted. When they are targeted, it gets bloody gory bloody fast. Consider the death of some 500,000 in Rwanda at the hands of their various countrymen, most of them easily classifiable, depending on who you were, as non-combatants. That was not an accident.
Life sucks that way, and it sucks hard.
Ask the folks in London who dealt with The Blitz, quite a few of them are still alive. The Blitz sucked.
When non-combatants are deliberately targeted, such as in the V rocket attacks on that very same London, the political fallout is different, since the political aim was different.
Consider the non-combatants killed by the Viet Minh and Viet Cong in the late 1950's: by most accounts the number 2,000 is very conservative. Let's talk about the non combatants in Viet Nam post 1975 who died in the "reeducation camps." Non combatants, dead. As to the Killing Fields of Cambodia . . . who was or was not a combatant?
When non combatants are deliberately targeted, even by crude WW II methods, the death toll runs into the tens and hundreds of thousands: see Chunking, Tokyo, Dresden.
When all is said and done body count math is irrlevant except to fuel propaganda and political emotion, which it serves well at times, and abysmally at other times.
Rarely does trying to get anything useful out of body count math do anyone any good: it can mislead policy makers, it can give one a false sense of victory or defeat (N Viet Nam 1.3 million dead as a conservative figure from 1960-1975, versus 55,000 US and 220,000 or so S Viet Nam, but they "won." Of what point that bit of body math?) and it can be used as a smoke screen for a variety of political agenda.
So my question to you would have to be:
What does your question have to do with the initial post, and more to the point, what does it have to do with my post? My post focused on non-combatant deaths in the highways, or weren't you reading it?
Cry 'Havoc' and let slip the Men 'O War!
In War, the outcome is never final. --Carl von Clausewitz--
Igitur qui desiderat pacem, praeparet bellum
John 11:35 - consider why.
In Memory of Pete
In War, the outcome is never final. --Carl von Clausewitz--
Igitur qui desiderat pacem, praeparet bellum
John 11:35 - consider why.
In Memory of Pete