The Truth About Civilian Deaths in Gaza, by Scipio
News flash! Since the American Civil War, in every war, world-wide since, both great and small, civilian deaths have always outnumbered combatant deaths. If you don’t want or can’t stomach civilian deaths, then outlaw war. Good luck with that. The League of Nations actually outlawed war at the beginning of the 20th century. Followed closely behind that noble proclamation was WW II which saw 15 million combat deaths and 35 million civilian deaths.
https://diplomacy.state.gov/the-kellogg-briand-pact/
Toward the end of WW II, the Allies fire bombed Dresden Germany, a purely civilian target. The death toll exceeded Hiroshima and Nagasaki combined, yet you rarely hear about it. It was equal, in my opinion, in cruelty to what the Germans did to the Jews but on a smaller scale.
The Dresden bombing took place at the end of the war, and it had no strategic value for the Allies. A similar, but not as large a fire bombing, took place against civilians in Frankfurt Germany previously. Dresden wasn’t a one off. I have an acquaintance who was a WW II German citizen living in Frankfurt at the time. She was a teenager, and she told me first hand of the horrors of the fires, running out of her burning house with her hair on fire. How the streets were on fire all around her and her desperate attempt to find a street to escape the flames and how she almost starved to death the following six months.
Dresden was simply revenge on the German people for starting WW II. Up until Dresden, many Germans were sympathetic to the Allies approaching victory. They thought the Allies distinguished German citizens from the NAZI government. They were wrong. After Dresden many Germans in the post-war period looked at the Allies with disdain because of what happened in Dresden. The Allies had literally burned their own moral capital.
https://www.armstrongeconomics.com/world-news/war/civilian-always-die-in-war-war-is-hell/
Today you hear impassioned cries wanting civilians to be spared in Gaza, but the truth is, more civilians will die as a result of war than combatants, that’s why America’s Civil War General Sherman said, “War is all hell”.
Americans need not point accusatory fingers at Japan’s rape of Nanking, or Cambodia’s “Killing Fields” or Israel’s Gaza operations, we have to remember our own Dresden. If more people understood war is “All Hell” as Sherman said, not just “Hell” then perhaps we would be more reluctant to go to war.
Scipio; former 2nd Infantry Division Infantry Sgt E-5
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GUNS N GEAR
My parents were in their early teens during WW2. I remember my mother telling me how the general attitude was win this war whatever it takes and get our family home. WW2 touched every household, probably the last war we have fought to do so. Every family sacrificed in some way. And my folks were adamant about whatever it took to win was fine by them. My dad fought in Korea then served in the army of occupation in Germany ’53-’55. He got along well with the Germans and spoke fondly of them. The German army guys he dealt with were more concerned about the Russians than anything else.
If I remember correctly Vonnegut used Dresden as the backdrop for Slaughter House 5, and the final adventures of Billy Pilgrim. There was no strategic target or was more of a payback for all the V-1, V-2 and other aerial raids done against the British earlier.
Flattening cities is a western fetish since at least Carthage. The Soviets rightly saw no military utility in it other than the wreckage caused by artillery duels (they didn’t even get a strategic bomber until they back engineered a B 29 in 1949). Many in the so called patriot movement idolize wackos like LeMay and jizz to carpet bombing videos.
That said , I don’t really care what these wackos do to each other. I do care that we are seen as supplying , aiding and abetting one side with sub zero national benefit and no say in the matter. The Russians and Ukrainians are engaged in much bigger operations but the Israelis managed to kill more civilians in a few weeks, while Israeli public figures wax genocidal on TV. This shitshow isn’t just ‘the war is hell’ trope. It’s Eschatological madness and mass murder with even water being blockaded. Traveling under a US passport gets dodgier by the month. This might ruffle some feathers – https://matthewehret.substack.com/p/sir-henry-kissinger-midwife-to-new