Did any report that the Democrats have formed committees to investigate the insurrections rampart on our Universities.
Have they injured law enforcement officers?
Or blocked access?
Or taken over squares or buildings.
What we have here is a full scale insurrection to overthrow Government Administrators of publicly funded schools.
Who authorized the immunity of all potential Democrat voters, whether illegally crossing the border, blocking Golden Gate Bridge or seizing building at Columbia?
"No longer can areas exist in which life can be lived in safety and tranquillity, nor can the battlefield any longer be limited to actual combatants. On the contrary, the battlefield will be limited only by the boundaries of the nations at war, and all of their citizens will become combatants, since all of them will be exposed to the aerial offensive of the enemy. There will be no distinction any longer between soldiers and civilians."
- excerpt from Giulio Douhet's TheCommand of the Air published in the 1920s
Douhet believed in total war.
His idea was that wars were against nations.
His goal in areal operations was to attack on five levels - industry, transport infrastructure, communications, government and "the will of the people".
He concluded that the greatest gain was not the destruction of the opposing military but the destruction of the government by its citizens (the people turning against the government).
This was important not only in gaining victory but sustaining that victory.
That said, his ideas were not accepted by the Italian military.
And the US did not adopt his ideas.
Lol....had he lost the war he would have, along with many others, been tried as a war criminal.
The problem, of course, is timing.
Churchill led the movement to attacking civilian infrastructure to decrease morale (in response to the London bombings).
Have you watched Apocalypse Now?
I had first thought of Conrad's Heart of Darkness in this discussion (power and morality) but the Vietnam movie loosely interprets the book and probably is more fitting.
We didn’t accept those ideas? The US fire bombed German cities. They may have said with a wink, “we are not really targeting civilians because there is a bridge in that town”, but we targeted civilian populations without doubt.
I remember being taught in the Army it’s against Geneva to shoot at paratroopers while they are in the air, so aim for the equipment on the belt.
In WW2 we did turn from avoiding civilian casualties to viewing war as being against a nation (perhaps not quite "total war", but closer than pre-WW2 standards).
That was why I mentioned Apocalypse Now (our discussion parallels Kurtz's discussion with Willard).
Destroying infrastructure (bridged, railways, etc) is not targeting civilians simply because the people are not the objective.
Those bridges would have been targeted regardless of the presence of a civilian population.
The question is whether they should be targeted if civilian casualties would occur, and then the next question is whether the opponent is using civilians to protect these strategic points.
That said, I do not believe a nation can obtain a lasting victory or peace if war is each nation targeting the military of the other.
So I'm probably closer to a total war mentality when it comes to war strategy.
It is available in Japan but it doesn't have subtitles from what I have read. No word yet on when they will have it released on DVD or streaming in the United States. The Japanese package looks very nice, with both the color and the black-and-white versions.
I am anti-war.
BUT if we are talking about war theories then a position closer to total war makes sence.
In the US it is our elected leaders who are over the military.
In such structures I am not sure tgat you can divorce the citizens from the nation when it comes to war.
The other side of the coin is non-democracy governments.
But still, the intent of total war is to galvanize the citizens against their government.
And then there are situations like WW2 when you are combating a nation that subscribes to total war.
The problem with a strict military vs military war is it resolves nothing (often war, regardless, resolves nothing).
The citizens remain loyal to a "defeated" nation and history repeats itself in some form.
That said, I am speaking of war theories.
As a Christian I am opposed to war, the death penalty, abortion, etc.
Wait a minute. An atomic bomb, not a small bomb, was dropped on a city and killed a hundred thousand people. You think they were all military? That’s ridiculous. We knew it would kill tens of thousands of civilians. We did it knowingly, and willfully, because we knew it would save our soldier’s lives to not have to take Japan by foot on land, fighting from city to city. We let them know we could wipe them out without risking our soldiers. Then, we bombed Nagasaki and killed tens of thousands of more civilians. They got the point and surrendered unconditionally.