Using neutron bombs on taliban safehavens

The thing is, though, Tumbleweed, was victory in those wars achieved because US military leaders were unable to spare civilian lives, or despite of this fact?

Let's look at your example of WWII - isn't it true that the Germans and Japanese were just as, or perhaps even more, ruthless when it came to endangering and killing civilians than the Allies? Why then, by your reasoning, did they lose?

For example, let's take the German bombing of British cities early in the war. Hitler falsely believed that mass killings of civilians would terrorize the English populace into submission, bringing about an easy German victory. On the contrary, as far as I know it infuriated the populace, who worked and fought with even harder resolve - while the RAF, which had been at the brink of annihilation, found precious time to lick their wounds. The bombing of British cities directly led to the Germans losing the Battle of Britain.

jontg said:
No, the point of MAD is to deter an attack in the first place, by making it known that anyone who nukes us will be nuked back.
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Agreed. The Cuban missile crisis proves to me how unready the American and Soviet leaders were to start killing each others. I have a feeling Tumbleweed would've started dropping bombs and firing rockets on Cuba the second he learned missiles were stationed there - thank heaven our leaders were of more sound material.
 
Tumbleweed said:
Pacifist
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Yup, through and through. Why do you say that as if it were a bad word? Methinks the word maybe doesn't mean what you think it means.
 
And I at least consider myself a semi-pacifist--I don't think violence is capable of solving problems, only of removing them. And that does to a society what antibiotics do to the body; the immediate problem is gone, but we remain just as vulnerable if and when the same problem occurs again, and long-term use has made us dependent on it and less able to deal with things by other means, as well as contributing to the rise of new forms that can't be removed without resorting to even stronger measures, which just starts the godawful cycle over again. I do acknowledge, however, that judicious and sensible use is both acceptable and necessary; there are some problems that cannot be solved in the time we have to do so, and must therefore be made to go away.
 
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Kestrel said:
Dropping a nuke and slaughtering large numbers of innocent civilians would simply confirm to the Moslem world that we are the Great Satan. It would play directly into the hands of the terrorists.
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Far as I know, there's already a great many Muslims pissed because Bush, in his infinite wisdom, decided to call the 'war on terror' a 'Crusade', which to the Muslims meant a war to convert people to Christianity and commit unspeakable war crimes upon the region. About as tactful as someone declaring a Holocaust, in other words.
 
Jontg said:
The bombing of Tokyo, like the use of the atomic bombs, was intended to win the war as quickly as possible by breaking the Japanese civilian's will to fight...
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It should be noted that the U.S. initially tried to do the same kind of strategic bombing over Japan that it had done over Germany. It didn't work due to operational issues and the fact that Japanese industry was much more dispersed than had been the case in Germany.

If the industry is dispersed throughout the city, then the only way to knock back production is to knock out the entire city. (Even 'precision' bombing by daylight was not all that accurate: over Germany, the USAAF found that bombing visually in clear weather, on average half its bombs landed within 600 yards of the aiming point. Naturally, this means half were landing more than 600 yards away.)


Safe-Keeper said:
On the contrary, as far as I know it infuriated the populace, who worked and fought with even harder resolve - while the RAF, which had been at the brink of annihilation, found precious time to lick their wounds.
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Fighter Command was never "on the brink of annihilation" during the Battle of Britain. Yes, during some points it was getting rather hard-pressed, but it was never even close to being destroyed as a fighting force. The idea that the switch to bombing London saved the RAF is almost entirely myth.


Safe-Keeper said:
The Cuban missile crisis proves to me how unready the American and Soviet leaders were to start killing each others.
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Certainly that seems a factor. But the fact that the Soviets were greatly outnumbered in nuclear forces at the time may have played a role in them backing down also. The U.S. had a better than 5:1 superiority in ICBMs, a 2:1 superiority in SLBMs, and a more than 9:1 superiority in strategic bombers. Had the Cuban Missile Crisis led to a shooting war, the U.S. might well have been hurt, but the Soviet Union would have been utterly destroyed.
 
Assuming as Tumbleweed must be that we knew where these strongholds are, what is the advantage of using nuclear weapons as opposed to either conventional weapons?
 
are you a pacifist sledge? That sounds suspiciously like a question a pacifist might ask.
 
Absolutely. Definitely.

Maybe.

Does wanting the right to own firearms and be legally permitted to use them in self defense rule me out as a pacifist? I mean, I wouldn't shoot people much.
 
Corsair 115 said:
Fighter Command was never "on the brink of annihilation" during the Battle of Britain. Yes, during some points it was getting rather hard-pressed, but it was never even close to being destroyed as a fighting force. The idea that the switch to bombing London saved the RAF is almost entirely myth.

Certainly that seems a factor. But the fact that the Soviets were greatly outnumbered in nuclear forces at the time may have played a role in them backing down also. The U.S. had a better than 5:1 superiority in ICBMs, a 2:1 superiority in SLBMs, and a more than 9:1 superiority in strategic bombers. Had the Cuban Missile Crisis led to a shooting war, the U.S. might well have been hurt, but the Soviet Union would have been utterly destroyed.
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I stand corrected. Thanks a lot.
 
Sledge said:
Assuming as Tumbleweed must be that we knew where these strongholds are, what is the advantage of using nuclear weapons as opposed to either conventional weapons?
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Why, they´re nuclear weapons, of course. Weapons of Mass Destruction. This causes massive gratification in a mind primitive enough to think exclusively in terms of "kill, kill, kill".
 
Guerillas / insurgents are very hard to hit, mainly because they mix with the civilian population, being active some of the time and civilians the rest of the time.


There is probably nothing that would benefit any guerilla more, than being able to provoke their adversary into committing indifferent mass slaughter.


A likely scenario if they obtained a nuclear weapon, and were unable to deliver it to enemy territory, would be to detonate it on their own soil after having provoked a bombardment.

This would cause global outrage and enmity, and most of the world would not believe that they would do it to their own population..... it simply had to be "The Great Satan".
 
This may be hijacking the thread, but one of the recurring statements I've read is that it is "impossible" to win a war with airpower alone...

That's exactly what the US did, using an F-14 Tomcat fighter squadron, in Kosovo against the Serbs. We had zero ground presence there, but we beat those civilian-killing troops into dust. They eventually had to back down.

ETA: I'm not suggesting that we can win the war in Afghanistan by limiting ourselves to airpower - of course not! But when faced with a conventional enemy, the possibility is there and air superiority becomes much more valuable.
 
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Tumbleweed said:
To those of you aghast that I would risk civilian deaths in order to eradicate Al Qaeda and Taliban safe havens/ training camps/ supply lines. What a bunch of damned hypocrites you are. Ever hear of Mutual Assured Destruction? We were MORE than willing to fry tens of millions of Russian civilians for NOTHING more than REVENGE. Is or is not that so!?! Reagan blew away Gaddafi's daughter. Clinton killed many civilian is the Balkans. Hundreds of thousands of civilians were killed in Japan and Germany (Dresden?) And why? For the better good, so that violent bullies cannot prevail. If N Korea was to launch a nuke at us they would be annihilated, civilians and all, and you damned well know it - and with YOUR hefty approval. So go suck and egg for criticising me for having the same mind set. I must assume you are turn the other cheek pacifists
What we did in Afghanistan has NOT WORKED. Try something else or are we too stupid to foresee the results if we don't
And to those of you who say violence has always begetted more violence I say no crap? And guess what ya Pollyannas: It's gonna go right on staying that way as long as there are two humans still breathing. I suggest you get used to it with 5000 years of history cementing the idea. So don't go messing with me is the message, or I'll mess back
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At what point are you going to get an epiphany regarding your own ignorance? Your moral equivocation is highly offensive. And I am speaking form the point of view of somebody who has, more than once, stood and taken an oath to defend the US.

Others here have already pointed out that your understanding of MAD is in error. Also you pretend to know how the US would respond to attacks that have never happened. But once again, you really don't get it at all.

Revenge is not a legitimate military objective. The real objective of the very violent actions taken in WWII was to do what was necessary to stop the war with a favorable outcome as quickly as possible.

This does not mean that gratuitous violence did not occur or that there were leaders that were blood thirsty. The number of civilians that died in strategic bombing does raise the question as to the viability of it's usefulness in WWII. But the stated and demonstrable goal of the effort was to destroy the industrial base of the enemy as a means to and end. That end being to destroy the ability of the enemy to wage war.

Now in addition to all of the other things you don't understand, you need to study the ethics of war. A good starting place would be the criteria of a just war, which began with St. Augustine. It should not be the end of such an investigation. I was introduced to it by my instructors in army ROTC.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Just_War

Proportionality
Just war conduct should be governed by the principle of proportionality. An attack cannot be launched on a military objective in the knowledge that the incidental civilian injuries would be clearly excessive in relation to the anticipated military advantage (principle of proportionality).
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The use of nuclear weapons against an enemy armed with little more than small arms and hiding among civilians is not justified. The use of nuclear weapons against a country employing nuclear weapons is justified.

Tumbleweed, before you even think to type anymore words about what any solider thinks or does, I would suggest you think long and hard about what really goes through the minds of leaders intrusted with the responsibility for the lives of others. Things like the just war criteria may be unknown to you. It is not unknown to those who have to deal with the consequences of waging war on your behalf. You do them a disservice by implying that their thinking is as warped and ignorant as the ideas you put forth.
 
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Sporanox said:
This may be hijacking the thread, but one of the recurring statements I've read is that it is "impossible" to win a war with airpower alone...

That's exactly what the US did, using an F-14 Tomcat fighter squadron, in Kosovo against the Serbs. We had zero ground presence there, but we beat those civilian-killing troops into dust. They eventually had to back down.

ETA: I'm not suggesting that we can win the war in Afghanistan by limiting ourselves to airpower - of course not! But when faced with a conventional enemy, the possibility is there and air superiority becomes much more valuable.
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But in being giant scaredy cats the "air power alone" thing turned into a disaster for civilians, as monitors were removed ahead of the bombing and the killing squads could rampage unchecked.

If you plot the atrocities on a timescale there's a huge spike right as the bombing starts.

So yes, it turned the tide - but boots on the ground was the ethical thing to do in what was billed as an ethical war. Western aversion to casualties meant increased civilian casualties.
 
Praktik said:
But in being giant scaredy cats the "air power alone" thing turned into a disaster for civilians, as monitors were removed ahead of the bombing and the killing squads could rampage unchecked.

If you plot the atrocities on a timescale there's a huge spike right as the bombing starts.
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The bombings that actually took out the Serbian army and forced them to back down were far away from urban population centers, contrary to what you seem to believe.

The initial stages of the war did involve the bombings of strategic facilities in and around cities - and that was when civilian casualties happened. But VF-41 used LANTIRN to take out Serbian revetments, tanks, air bases, and artillery most of the time - hardly ripe territory for collateral damage.

Make no mistake. Those Tomcats really did help the civvies.
 
Praktik said:
Ya sure, just saying, boots on the ground would have been better.
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You're probably right. It took a long time to even figure out if the air plan was viable, whereas ground combat is a more tried and tested option.
 
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