The Evening Standard tonight had a double page feature on Labour's problems in its London heartland. The main focus was on the threat to Wes Streeting in Ilford North whose majority in 2019 was 5,200 and now faces an Independent candidate with links to pro-Palestine groups whose own campaign may be helped by the inclusion of some parts of Ilford South into the newly-redrawn constituency.
The Standard also confirmed what I'd heard - that Councillor Mirza and the Newham Independents are going to stand candidates in both East Ham and West Ham & Beckton against Stephen Timms and Lyn Brown respectively. Another likely challenge to Labour is in Bethnal Green & Bow from an Aspire candidate.
It seems unlikely Labour will lose any of these seats and treating "the muslim vote" as a single homogenous entity is unwise. Respect got 20% in 2005 in East Ham and I suspect that's about where any pro-Palestine anti-Labour candidate will end up later this year.
Losing Wes Streeting from the next (likely) Cabinet of the UK would be a disaster for the whole country frankly. Someone needs to sort out the mess of the NHS and he seems like he might be up for the task. Prepared to reform and learn from other countries.
One can only hope if he loses Ilford then a quick peerage and Cabinet will happen.
We are in the unusual situation where all the major parties are pro-Israel, but a large number of voters are either pro-Palestine or neutral. However, Starmer is so scared of being called anti-semitic by the Tories, he is in danger of losing a lot of his natural supporters. Between dissatisfied Tories and dissatisfied Labour supporters, we could have an exceptionally low turnout at the GE.
The Evening Standard tonight had a double page feature on Labour's problems in its London heartland. The main focus was on the threat to Wes Streeting in Ilford North whose majority in 2019 was 5,200 and now faces an Independent candidate with links to pro-Palestine groups whose own campaign may be helped by the inclusion of some parts of Ilford South into the newly-redrawn constituency.
The Standard also confirmed what I'd heard - that Councillor Mirza and the Newham Independents are going to stand candidates in both East Ham and West Ham & Beckton against Stephen Timms and Lyn Brown respectively. Another likely challenge to Labour is in Bethnal Green & Bow from an Aspire candidate.
It seems unlikely Labour will lose any of these seats and treating "the muslim vote" as a single homogenous entity is unwise. Respect got 20% in 2005 in East Ham and I suspect that's about where any pro-Palestine anti-Labour candidate will end up later this year.
Number of Muslims in London 2001 607k 2011 1m 2021 1.7m
So I’d think that the percentage of votes in big Muslim areas could be higher than 20
Unfortunately this is a by-election dominated by a quarrel in a far-away country between people of whom we know far, far too much.
There are conflicts all around the world that don't get a fraction of the spotlight or attention that this one has had. I wonder what is so unique about this one conflict, that every moment becomes headline news unlike all the others?
The physical carnage, the huge civilian casualties, the mass displacement of people, the resulting humanitarian disaster, the inflictor of all this being a regime supported by the west - these do make for a big story.
"the inflictor of all this being a regime supported by the west".
I think you might need to understand that this awful conflict was blatantly started by Hamas who "inflicted" rape torture and murder on innocent people.
There is a reasonable argument that the Israeli response has been disproportionate, but the "infliction" was initiated by Hamas terrorists.
As you have been an occasional apologist for Corbyn (and probably indirectly voted for him to be PM) I guess this is hard to recognise?
I know who started the fire. Hamas did. Oct 7th was unspeakable. It's now 13th February and Israel has wreaked a mighty vengeance for it.
Justifiable response to a threat deemed existential? Or barbaric collective punishment of the population of Gaza?
I think the latter.
I think you'll find that war does involve what useful idiots such as yourself would call "collective punishment".
Collective punishment is a war crime under Article 33 of the Geneva Convention. People who make excuses for it are idiots, useful or otherwise.
That's why I put it in quotation marks. Or perhaps Kinabalu thinks what Israel is doing is a war crime.
Well many of us do.
Yes hugely important that arseholes on the internet think something or other.
The arseholes being those who defend the murder of civilians as a necessary evil.
You suit the description perfectly.
It's war, Dickie boy. Look it up in the dictionary.
Indeed hence war crimes. Look them up yourself.
I suspect the proportion of military combatants to civilians was far smaller ratio in the Hamburg firestorm and the levelling of Dresden. But we weren't on trial at Nuremburg.
Is it a free pass for war crimes if you win the war?
Nope. Many commentators these days consider Dresden as a war crime. Indeed there is no escaping that for Harris as his explicit stated aim of breaking the German spirit by targeting civilians is specifically addressed as a war crime today.
The UK, and importantly in this debate, Israel both signed up to the post WW2 international rules on the conduct of war which outlawed many of the things both sides did in WW2 and which Israel and Russia are both doing now.
Personally I think only idiots living without the fear of Nazi tyranny consider Dresden a war crime. Why Dresden and not every single bombing raid that Bomber Command mounted? Because like it or not, Bomber Command wanted to achieve Dresden results EVERY time they set out. Dresden stands out as it was late in the war, and was highly successful, due to the firestorm. But many, many allied soldiers died after Dresden. Many Jews and other captives of the Nazis died after Dresden. Germany could have surrendered and stopped it all.
Because it was clear that it would not work. It was part of this ridiculous idea of British moral superiority. We had not cracked under the Blitz because we were British. But johnny foreigner is not made of the same stuff and so was bound to be broken by our bombing his cities flat.
Harris explicitly pushed this idea - that he could win the war by breaking the German spirit. It was clear in hindsight (and to many at the time) that it was a fallacy and that is one of the reasons that it was outlawed after the war. The whole campaign of targetting German civilian population would today be considered criminal and put in the same category as the use of poison gas.
I’m sorry but I disagree. It did work, just not by damaging morale. See the effort Germany had to put into defending the Reich, rather than fighting the Russians. See the D-Day campaign and after for why winning air superiority was so crucial. The battle of the bulge only got as far as it did because the allies could not fly due to the weather. When the weather cleared the fighter-bombers returned and wreaked havoc.
Morale bombing failed, yes, but the Bombing War as a whole played a significant role in the allied victory. Singling out Dresden as ‘special’ is just nonsense, as Bomber Command, and the 8th Air Force tried to achieve similar results every time. Is Hamburg a war crime? What about Schweinfurt?
I don't get the chance to join the morning debates but it was interesting to see the tired old meme of how "left" or "right" wing past and future Government were or might be.
Apart from the accident of location which allowed the initial coining of the terms, the truth is those divisions belong to the 20th century and don't really apply now.
I prefer terms like reforming - there have been three truly reforming Governments since 1900 - Asquith's from 1906, Attlee's from 1945 and Thatcher's in 1979. Each in its own way fundamentally transformed Britain - I'm not arguing whether for good or ill.
The truth is radical thinking isn't usually popular and only becomes so when there is a general recognition something has to change - that was certainly the case in 1945 after the war and in 1979 when we all knew the post war Butskellite concensus had failed. The question now is whether we have reached a similar point in 2024.
It's interesting to note how often a few individuals come on here and opine how bad things aren't. We had someone this morning almost praising the Government for presiding over full employment.
I'd offer this thought - if 20 people are chasing 10 jobs you have an unemployment problem. If 10 people are chasing 10 jobs you have full employment. If 5 people are chasing 10 jobs you also have full employment but you have 5 vacancies which means either finding an alternative labour source or accepting these jobs and the productivity they bring, the growth they create and the tax receipts they produce will all not exist.
If creating more jobs represents economic growth and we can't fill those jobs it's hardly surprising we don't see any growth. Perhaps in time technological progress (including AI) will reduce those back to 5 jobs and we'll be back in full employment but what we currently have isn't full employment but under employment.
The Evening Standard tonight had a double page feature on Labour's problems in its London heartland. The main focus was on the threat to Wes Streeting in Ilford North whose majority in 2019 was 5,200 and now faces an Independent candidate with links to pro-Palestine groups whose own campaign may be helped by the inclusion of some parts of Ilford South into the newly-redrawn constituency.
The Standard also confirmed what I'd heard - that Councillor Mirza and the Newham Independents are going to stand candidates in both East Ham and West Ham & Beckton against Stephen Timms and Lyn Brown respectively. Another likely challenge to Labour is in Bethnal Green & Bow from an Aspire candidate.
It seems unlikely Labour will lose any of these seats and treating "the muslim vote" as a single homogenous entity is unwise. Respect got 20% in 2005 in East Ham and I suspect that's about where any pro-Palestine anti-Labour candidate will end up later this year.
I'd rather we lose seats than having to keep Hamas sympathisers on side.
Hamas proxies standing in London and Lancashire. BJP proxies standing in Leicester. It's all very depressing and needs to be stopped.
Unfortunately this is a by-election dominated by a quarrel in a far-away country between people of whom we know far, far too much.
There are conflicts all around the world that don't get a fraction of the spotlight or attention that this one has had. I wonder what is so unique about this one conflict, that every moment becomes headline news unlike all the others?
The physical carnage, the huge civilian casualties, the mass displacement of people, the resulting humanitarian disaster, the inflictor of all this being a regime supported by the west - these do make for a big story.
"the inflictor of all this being a regime supported by the west".
I think you might need to understand that this awful conflict was blatantly started by Hamas who "inflicted" rape torture and murder on innocent people.
There is a reasonable argument that the Israeli response has been disproportionate, but the "infliction" was initiated by Hamas terrorists.
As you have been an occasional apologist for Corbyn (and probably indirectly voted for him to be PM) I guess this is hard to recognise?
I know who started the fire. Hamas did. Oct 7th was unspeakable. It's now 13th February and Israel has wreaked a mighty vengeance for it.
Justifiable response to a threat deemed existential? Or barbaric collective punishment of the population of Gaza?
I think the latter.
I think you'll find that war does involve what useful idiots such as yourself would call "collective punishment".
Collective punishment is a war crime under Article 33 of the Geneva Convention. People who make excuses for it are idiots, useful or otherwise.
That's why I put it in quotation marks. Or perhaps Kinabalu thinks what Israel is doing is a war crime.
Well many of us do.
Yes hugely important that arseholes on the internet think something or other.
The arseholes being those who defend the murder of civilians as a necessary evil.
You suit the description perfectly.
It's war, Dickie boy. Look it up in the dictionary.
Indeed hence war crimes. Look them up yourself.
I suspect the proportion of military combatants to civilians was far smaller ratio in the Hamburg firestorm and the levelling of Dresden. But we weren't on trial at Nuremburg.
Is it a free pass for war crimes if you win the war?
Nope. Many commentators these days consider Dresden as a war crime. Indeed there is no escaping that for Harris as his explicit stated aim of breaking the German spirit by targeting civilians is specifically addressed as a war crime today.
The UK, and importantly in this debate, Israel both signed up to the post WW2 international rules on the conduct of war which outlawed many of the things both sides did in WW2 and which Israel and Russia are both doing now.
Personally I think only idiots living without the fear of Nazi tyranny consider Dresden a war crime. Why Dresden and not every single bombing raid that Bomber Command mounted? Because like it or not, Bomber Command wanted to achieve Dresden results EVERY time they set out. Dresden stands out as it was late in the war, and was highly successful, due to the firestorm. But many, many allied soldiers died after Dresden. Many Jews and other captives of the Nazis died after Dresden. Germany could have surrendered and stopped it all.
Because it was clear that it would not work. It was part of this ridiculous idea of British moral superiority. We had not cracked under the Blitz because we were British. But johnny foreigner is not made of the same stuff and so was bound to be broken by our bombing his cities flat.
Harris explicitly pushed this idea - that he could win the war by breaking the German spirit. It was clear in hindsight (and to many at the time) that it was a fallacy and that is one of the reasons that it was outlawed after the war. The whole campaign of targetting German civilian population would today be considered criminal and put in the same category as the use of poison gas.
I’m sorry but I disagree. It did work, just not by damaging morale. See the effort Germany had to put into defending the Reich, rather than fighting the Russians. See the D-Day campaign and after for why winning air superiority was so crucial. The battle of the bulge only got as far as it did because the allies could not fly due to the weather. When the weather cleared the fighter-bombers returned and wreaked havoc.
Morale bombing failed, yes, but the Bombing War as a whole played a significant role in the allied victory. Singling out Dresden as ‘special’ is just nonsense, as Bomber Command, and the 8th Air Force tried to achieve similar results every time. Is Hamburg a war crime? What about Schweinfurt?
I hear on the grape vine that the Lib Dems are not going to actively campaign in Rochdale so I've laid off my 100/1 bet on the Lib Dems.
That leaves Labour or Workers Party. Rochdale is 74% white. Fairly working class. I lived there for a time and my three children were born there.
I suspect many will vote Ali. They won't care what he said about Israel. I also suspect many local Labour activists will give him a hand. With no other Labour candidate on the ballot I suspect Ali will win it decisively and I have bet accordingly.
I don't see how the drip of anti-semitic revelations will necessarily play badly for Lab. Sympathy for Israel and therefore the Jews must be at an all-time low in the UK (and elsewhere throughout Europe and the world) and people have shown that sympathy for Hamas and the Gazans is very strong.
I don't see that Lab will suffer all that much. The Jewish Labour Movement may bleat on about this or that but overall I would say it would at best/worst be neutral for Lab, perhaps a slight positive.
This may put me in a minority but I have a lot of sympathy for Jewish students at Birmingham University facing demands from pro-Palestinian students that they should be thrown off campus. And very little sympathy for any political party which seeks to get votes from the sort of people who make or support these demands.
Sympathy for the students, rather than for the demands they be thrown out, I hope ?
Sympathy for the students facing demands that they be expelled. No sympathy at all for those making the expulsion demands. Quite a lot of contempt for them, actually.
One of the women is a refugee from Gaza who is apparently seeking asylum here because she was being persecuted by Hamas in Gaza and is now worried that her criminal conviction might adversely affect her claim.
The Evening Standard tonight had a double page feature on Labour's problems in its London heartland. The main focus was on the threat to Wes Streeting in Ilford North whose majority in 2019 was 5,200 and now faces an Independent candidate with links to pro-Palestine groups whose own campaign may be helped by the inclusion of some parts of Ilford South into the newly-redrawn constituency.
The Standard also confirmed what I'd heard - that Councillor Mirza and the Newham Independents are going to stand candidates in both East Ham and West Ham & Beckton against Stephen Timms and Lyn Brown respectively. Another likely challenge to Labour is in Bethnal Green & Bow from an Aspire candidate.
It seems unlikely Labour will lose any of these seats and treating "the muslim vote" as a single homogenous entity is unwise. Respect got 20% in 2005 in East Ham and I suspect that's about where any pro-Palestine anti-Labour candidate will end up later this year.
Losing Wes Streeting from the next (likely) Cabinet of the UK would be a disaster for the whole country frankly. Someone needs to sort out the mess of the NHS and he seems like he might be up for the task. Prepared to reform and learn from other countries.
One can only hope if he loses Ilford then a quick peerage and Cabinet will happen.
We are in the unusual situation where all the major parties are pro-Israel, but a large number of voters are either pro-Palestine or neutral. However, Starmer is so scared of being called anti-semitic by the Tories, he is in danger of losing a lot of his natural supporters. Between dissatisfied Tories and dissatisfied Labour supporters, we could have an exceptionally low turnout at the GE.
Strange how sexist, homophobic, antisemites are considered to be our natural supporters. Don't we stand against all that stuff?
The Evening Standard tonight had a double page feature on Labour's problems in its London heartland. The main focus was on the threat to Wes Streeting in Ilford North whose majority in 2019 was 5,200 and now faces an Independent candidate with links to pro-Palestine groups whose own campaign may be helped by the inclusion of some parts of Ilford South into the newly-redrawn constituency.
The Standard also confirmed what I'd heard - that Councillor Mirza and the Newham Independents are going to stand candidates in both East Ham and West Ham & Beckton against Stephen Timms and Lyn Brown respectively. Another likely challenge to Labour is in Bethnal Green & Bow from an Aspire candidate.
It seems unlikely Labour will lose any of these seats and treating "the muslim vote" as a single homogenous entity is unwise. Respect got 20% in 2005 in East Ham and I suspect that's about where any pro-Palestine anti-Labour candidate will end up later this year.
Losing Wes Streeting from the next (likely) Cabinet of the UK would be a disaster for the whole country frankly. Someone needs to sort out the mess of the NHS and he seems like he might be up for the task. Prepared to reform and learn from other countries.
One can only hope if he loses Ilford then a quick peerage and Cabinet will happen.
We are in the unusual situation where all the major parties are pro-Israel, but a large number of voters are either pro-Palestine or neutral. However, Starmer is so scared of being called anti-semitic by the Tories, he is in danger of losing a lot of his natural supporters. Between dissatisfied Tories and dissatisfied Labour supporters, we could have an exceptionally low turnout at the GE.
Strange how sexist, homophobic, antisemites are considered to be our natural supporters. Don't we stand against all that stuff?
I don't see how the drip of anti-semitic revelations will necessarily play badly for Lab. Sympathy for Israel and therefore the Jews must be at an all-time low in the UK (and elsewhere throughout Europe and the world) and people have shown that sympathy for Hamas and the Gazans is very strong.
I don't see that Lab will suffer all that much. The Jewish Labour Movement may bleat on about this or that but overall I would say it would at best/worst be neutral for Lab, perhaps a slight positive.
This may put me in a minority but I have a lot of sympathy for Jewish students at Birmingham University facing demands from pro-Palestinian students that they should be thrown off campus. And very little sympathy for any political party which seeks to get votes from the sort of people who make or support these demands.
Sympathy for the students, rather than for the demands they be thrown out, I hope ?
Sympathy for the students facing demands that they be expelled. No sympathy at all for those making the expulsion demands. Quite a lot of contempt for them, actually.
One of the women is a refugee from Gaza who is apparently seeking asylum here because she was being persecuted by Hamas in Gaza and is now worried that her criminal conviction might adversely affect her claim.
Persecuted by Hamas and yet celebrating their atrocities.
Trying to get back in their good books, I suppose.
Unfortunately this is a by-election dominated by a quarrel in a far-away country between people of whom we know far, far too much.
There are conflicts all around the world that don't get a fraction of the spotlight or attention that this one has had. I wonder what is so unique about this one conflict, that every moment becomes headline news unlike all the others?
The physical carnage, the huge civilian casualties, the mass displacement of people, the resulting humanitarian disaster, the inflictor of all this being a regime supported by the west - these do make for a big story.
"the inflictor of all this being a regime supported by the west".
I think you might need to understand that this awful conflict was blatantly started by Hamas who "inflicted" rape torture and murder on innocent people.
There is a reasonable argument that the Israeli response has been disproportionate, but the "infliction" was initiated by Hamas terrorists.
As you have been an occasional apologist for Corbyn (and probably indirectly voted for him to be PM) I guess this is hard to recognise?
I know who started the fire. Hamas did. Oct 7th was unspeakable. It's now 13th February and Israel has wreaked a mighty vengeance for it.
Justifiable response to a threat deemed existential? Or barbaric collective punishment of the population of Gaza?
I think the latter.
I think you'll find that war does involve what useful idiots such as yourself would call "collective punishment".
Collective punishment is a war crime under Article 33 of the Geneva Convention. People who make excuses for it are idiots, useful or otherwise.
That's why I put it in quotation marks. Or perhaps Kinabalu thinks what Israel is doing is a war crime.
Well many of us do.
Yes hugely important that arseholes on the internet think something or other.
The arseholes being those who defend the murder of civilians as a necessary evil.
You suit the description perfectly.
It's war, Dickie boy. Look it up in the dictionary.
Indeed hence war crimes. Look them up yourself.
I suspect the proportion of military combatants to civilians was far smaller ratio in the Hamburg firestorm and the levelling of Dresden. But we weren't on trial at Nuremburg.
Is it a free pass for war crimes if you win the war?
Nope. Many commentators these days consider Dresden as a war crime. Indeed there is no escaping that for Harris as his explicit stated aim of breaking the German spirit by targeting civilians is specifically addressed as a war crime today.
The UK, and importantly in this debate, Israel both signed up to the post WW2 international rules on the conduct of war which outlawed many of the things both sides did in WW2 and which Israel and Russia are both doing now.
Personally I think only idiots living without the fear of Nazi tyranny consider Dresden a war crime. Why Dresden and not every single bombing raid that Bomber Command mounted? Because like it or not, Bomber Command wanted to achieve Dresden results EVERY time they set out. Dresden stands out as it was late in the war, and was highly successful, due to the firestorm. But many, many allied soldiers died after Dresden. Many Jews and other captives of the Nazis died after Dresden. Germany could have surrendered and stopped it all.
I know very little about WW2. But was Bomber Command strategy basically predicated on the idea that bombing Germany out of the war would save the innumerable slaughter witnessed in WW1?
Yep. Harris wanted to defeat Germany without the need for any British soldiers to land on the continent, other than to accept the surrender. There have been many arguments over the years about whether Bomber Command was worth the money and resources (materials and men) that it took. Max Hastings thought not in his book on the bomber war. Others disagree. Certainly the bombing campaign tied up tens if not hundreds of thousands of Germans defending the Reich who could have been fighting in the East. And combined with the 8th airforce’s campaign, the Allies achieved air dominance over the Luftwaffe, making D-Day much easier and restricting German movements to night time, to avoid being attacked from the air. By the end of 44 and into 45 the German transport system was wrecked, so moving anything was hard, including troops, tanks etc.
Sadly the idea that you could depress the morale of a nation under a fascist authoritarian regime was false. Even if a German housewife wanted to end the war after her house was destroyed, there was no mechanism for her to achieve it. And the Blitz had shown the resilience of the Brits under the bomb.
But ultimately strategic bombing contributed to winning the war and to describe one target destroyed as a war crime is infantile rubbish.
There were lots of things done on both sides in both wars which would now be considered war crimes. The whole point of civilisation is that we develop and learn from our mistakes.
My view is that war is never desirable, but once one is engaged, there’s no point in half measures.
Ultimately one has to do what is needful, to win. There is nothing worse than defeat.
The Evening Standard tonight had a double page feature on Labour's problems in its London heartland. The main focus was on the threat to Wes Streeting in Ilford North whose majority in 2019 was 5,200 and now faces an Independent candidate with links to pro-Palestine groups whose own campaign may be helped by the inclusion of some parts of Ilford South into the newly-redrawn constituency.
The Standard also confirmed what I'd heard - that Councillor Mirza and the Newham Independents are going to stand candidates in both East Ham and West Ham & Beckton against Stephen Timms and Lyn Brown respectively. Another likely challenge to Labour is in Bethnal Green & Bow from an Aspire candidate.
It seems unlikely Labour will lose any of these seats and treating "the muslim vote" as a single homogenous entity is unwise. Respect got 20% in 2005 in East Ham and I suspect that's about where any pro-Palestine anti-Labour candidate will end up later this year.
Number of Muslims in London 2001 607k 2011 1m 2021 1.7m
So I’d think that the percentage of votes in big Muslim areas could be higher than 20
Unfortunately this is a by-election dominated by a quarrel in a far-away country between people of whom we know far, far too much.
There are conflicts all around the world that don't get a fraction of the spotlight or attention that this one has had. I wonder what is so unique about this one conflict, that every moment becomes headline news unlike all the others?
The physical carnage, the huge civilian casualties, the mass displacement of people, the resulting humanitarian disaster, the inflictor of all this being a regime supported by the west - these do make for a big story.
"the inflictor of all this being a regime supported by the west".
I think you might need to understand that this awful conflict was blatantly started by Hamas who "inflicted" rape torture and murder on innocent people.
There is a reasonable argument that the Israeli response has been disproportionate, but the "infliction" was initiated by Hamas terrorists.
As you have been an occasional apologist for Corbyn (and probably indirectly voted for him to be PM) I guess this is hard to recognise?
I know who started the fire. Hamas did. Oct 7th was unspeakable. It's now 13th February and Israel has wreaked a mighty vengeance for it.
Justifiable response to a threat deemed existential? Or barbaric collective punishment of the population of Gaza?
I think the latter.
I think you'll find that war does involve what useful idiots such as yourself would call "collective punishment".
Collective punishment is a war crime under Article 33 of the Geneva Convention. People who make excuses for it are idiots, useful or otherwise.
That's why I put it in quotation marks. Or perhaps Kinabalu thinks what Israel is doing is a war crime.
Well many of us do.
Yes hugely important that arseholes on the internet think something or other.
The arseholes being those who defend the murder of civilians as a necessary evil.
You suit the description perfectly.
It's war, Dickie boy. Look it up in the dictionary.
Indeed hence war crimes. Look them up yourself.
I suspect the proportion of military combatants to civilians was far smaller ratio in the Hamburg firestorm and the levelling of Dresden. But we weren't on trial at Nuremburg.
Is it a free pass for war crimes if you win the war?
Nope. Many commentators these days consider Dresden as a war crime. Indeed there is no escaping that for Harris as his explicit stated aim of breaking the German spirit by targeting civilians is specifically addressed as a war crime today.
The UK, and importantly in this debate, Israel both signed up to the post WW2 international rules on the conduct of war which outlawed many of the things both sides did in WW2 and which Israel and Russia are both doing now.
Personally I think only idiots living without the fear of Nazi tyranny consider Dresden a war crime. Why Dresden and not every single bombing raid that Bomber Command mounted? Because like it or not, Bomber Command wanted to achieve Dresden results EVERY time they set out. Dresden stands out as it was late in the war, and was highly successful, due to the firestorm. But many, many allied soldiers died after Dresden. Many Jews and other captives of the Nazis died after Dresden. Germany could have surrendered and stopped it all.
Because it was clear that it would not work. It was part of this ridiculous idea of British moral superiority. We had not cracked under the Blitz because we were British. But johnny foreigner is not made of the same stuff and so was bound to be broken by our bombing his cities flat.
Harris explicitly pushed this idea - that he could win the war by breaking the German spirit. It was clear in hindsight (and to many at the time) that it was a fallacy and that is one of the reasons that it was outlawed after the war. The whole campaign of targetting German civilian population would today be considered criminal and put in the same category as the use of poison gas.
It was ignorance as much as arrogance. Fascinating commentary from physicist Freeman Dyson here:
https://www.technologyreview.com/2006/11/01/227625/a-failure-of-intelligence/ … Bomber Command had a similar problem in evaluating the effectiveness of bombing. Aircrew frequently reported the destruction of targets when photographs showed they had missed by several miles. The navy ORS was extremely effective and made great contributions to winning the war against the U-boats in the Atlantic. But Blackett had two enormous advantages. First, he was a world-renowned scientist (who would later win a Nobel Prize), with a safe job in the academic world, so he could threaten to resign if his advice was not followed. Second, he had been a navy officer in World War I and was respected by the admirals he advised. Basil Dickins, the chief of our ORS at Bomber Command, had neither of these advantages. He was a civil servant with no independent standing. He could not threaten to resign, and Sir Arthur Harris had no respect for him. His career depended on telling Sir Arthur things that Sir Arthur wanted to hear. So that is what he did. He gave Sir Arthur information rather than advice. He never raised serious questions about Sir Arthur’s tactics and strategy…
Unfortunately this is a by-election dominated by a quarrel in a far-away country between people of whom we know far, far too much.
There are conflicts all around the world that don't get a fraction of the spotlight or attention that this one has had. I wonder what is so unique about this one conflict, that every moment becomes headline news unlike all the others?
The physical carnage, the huge civilian casualties, the mass displacement of people, the resulting humanitarian disaster, the inflictor of all this being a regime supported by the west - these do make for a big story.
"the inflictor of all this being a regime supported by the west".
I think you might need to understand that this awful conflict was blatantly started by Hamas who "inflicted" rape torture and murder on innocent people.
There is a reasonable argument that the Israeli response has been disproportionate, but the "infliction" was initiated by Hamas terrorists.
As you have been an occasional apologist for Corbyn (and probably indirectly voted for him to be PM) I guess this is hard to recognise?
I know who started the fire. Hamas did. Oct 7th was unspeakable. It's now 13th February and Israel has wreaked a mighty vengeance for it.
Justifiable response to a threat deemed existential? Or barbaric collective punishment of the population of Gaza?
I think the latter.
I think you'll find that war does involve what useful idiots such as yourself would call "collective punishment".
Collective punishment is a war crime under Article 33 of the Geneva Convention. People who make excuses for it are idiots, useful or otherwise.
That's why I put it in quotation marks. Or perhaps Kinabalu thinks what Israel is doing is a war crime.
Well many of us do.
Yes hugely important that arseholes on the internet think something or other.
The arseholes being those who defend the murder of civilians as a necessary evil.
You suit the description perfectly.
It's war, Dickie boy. Look it up in the dictionary.
Indeed hence war crimes. Look them up yourself.
I suspect the proportion of military combatants to civilians was far smaller ratio in the Hamburg firestorm and the levelling of Dresden. But we weren't on trial at Nuremburg.
Is it a free pass for war crimes if you win the war?
Nope. Many commentators these days consider Dresden as a war crime. Indeed there is no escaping that for Harris as his explicit stated aim of breaking the German spirit by targeting civilians is specifically addressed as a war crime today.
The UK, and importantly in this debate, Israel both signed up to the post WW2 international rules on the conduct of war which outlawed many of the things both sides did in WW2 and which Israel and Russia are both doing now.
Personally I think only idiots living without the fear of Nazi tyranny consider Dresden a war crime. Why Dresden and not every single bombing raid that Bomber Command mounted? Because like it or not, Bomber Command wanted to achieve Dresden results EVERY time they set out. Dresden stands out as it was late in the war, and was highly successful, due to the firestorm. But many, many allied soldiers died after Dresden. Many Jews and other captives of the Nazis died after Dresden. Germany could have surrendered and stopped it all.
Because it was clear that it would not work. It was part of this ridiculous idea of British moral superiority. We had not cracked under the Blitz because we were British. But johnny foreigner is not made of the same stuff and so was bound to be broken by our bombing his cities flat.
Harris explicitly pushed this idea - that he could win the war by breaking the German spirit. It was clear in hindsight (and to many at the time) that it was a fallacy and that is one of the reasons that it was outlawed after the war. The whole campaign of targetting German civilian population would today be considered criminal and put in the same category as the use of poison gas.
It was ignorance as much as arrogance. Fascinating commentary from physicist Freeman Dyson here:
https://www.technologyreview.com/2006/11/01/227625/a-failure-of-intelligence/ … Bomber Command had a similar problem in evaluating the effectiveness of bombing. Aircrew frequently reported the destruction of targets when photographs showed they had missed by several miles. The navy ORS was extremely effective and made great contributions to winning the war against the U-boats in the Atlantic. But Blackett had two enormous advantages. First, he was a world-renowned scientist (who would later win a Nobel Prize), with a safe job in the academic world, so he could threaten to resign if his advice was not followed. Second, he had been a navy officer in World War I and was respected by the admirals he advised. Basil Dickins, the chief of our ORS at Bomber Command, had neither of these advantages. He was a civil servant with no independent standing. He could not threaten to resign, and Sir Arthur Harris had no respect for him. His career depended on telling Sir Arthur things that Sir Arthur wanted to hear. So that is what he did. He gave Sir Arthur information rather than advice. He never raised serious questions about Sir Arthur’s tactics and strategy…
This makes pretty clear that the targeting of civilans was deliberate policy : … We succeeded in raising firestorms only twice, once in Hamburg and once more in Dresden in 1945, where between 25,000 and 60,000 people perished (the numbers are still debated). The Germans had good air raid shelters and warning systems and did what they were told. As a result, only a few thousand people were killed in a typical major attack. But when there was a firestorm, people were asphyxiated or roasted inside their shelters, and the number killed was more than 10 times greater. Every time Bomber Command attacked a city, we were trying to raise a firestorm, but we never learnt why we so seldom succeeded…
Interesting to see what passes for humour in the Starmy Army. Tbf Sweeney (at one point my MP) was against Corbyn, for Corbyn and then against him again, so he's lightning fast on the humour front.
Unfortunately this is a by-election dominated by a quarrel in a far-away country between people of whom we know far, far too much.
There are conflicts all around the world that don't get a fraction of the spotlight or attention that this one has had. I wonder what is so unique about this one conflict, that every moment becomes headline news unlike all the others?
The physical carnage, the huge civilian casualties, the mass displacement of people, the resulting humanitarian disaster, the inflictor of all this being a regime supported by the west - these do make for a big story.
"the inflictor of all this being a regime supported by the west".
I think you might need to understand that this awful conflict was blatantly started by Hamas who "inflicted" rape torture and murder on innocent people.
There is a reasonable argument that the Israeli response has been disproportionate, but the "infliction" was initiated by Hamas terrorists.
As you have been an occasional apologist for Corbyn (and probably indirectly voted for him to be PM) I guess this is hard to recognise?
I know who started the fire. Hamas did. Oct 7th was unspeakable. It's now 13th February and Israel has wreaked a mighty vengeance for it.
Justifiable response to a threat deemed existential? Or barbaric collective punishment of the population of Gaza?
I think the latter.
I think you'll find that war does involve what useful idiots such as yourself would call "collective punishment".
Collective punishment is a war crime under Article 33 of the Geneva Convention. People who make excuses for it are idiots, useful or otherwise.
That's why I put it in quotation marks. Or perhaps Kinabalu thinks what Israel is doing is a war crime.
Well many of us do.
Yes hugely important that arseholes on the internet think something or other.
The arseholes being those who defend the murder of civilians as a necessary evil.
You suit the description perfectly.
It's war, Dickie boy. Look it up in the dictionary.
Indeed hence war crimes. Look them up yourself.
I suspect the proportion of military combatants to civilians was far smaller ratio in the Hamburg firestorm and the levelling of Dresden. But we weren't on trial at Nuremburg.
Is it a free pass for war crimes if you win the war?
Nope. Many commentators these days consider Dresden as a war crime. Indeed there is no escaping that for Harris as his explicit stated aim of breaking the German spirit by targeting civilians is specifically addressed as a war crime today.
The UK, and importantly in this debate, Israel both signed up to the post WW2 international rules on the conduct of war which outlawed many of the things both sides did in WW2 and which Israel and Russia are both doing now.
Personally I think only idiots living without the fear of Nazi tyranny consider Dresden a war crime. Why Dresden and not every single bombing raid that Bomber Command mounted? Because like it or not, Bomber Command wanted to achieve Dresden results EVERY time they set out. Dresden stands out as it was late in the war, and was highly successful, due to the firestorm. But many, many allied soldiers died after Dresden. Many Jews and other captives of the Nazis died after Dresden. Germany could have surrendered and stopped it all.
Because it was clear that it would not work. It was part of this ridiculous idea of British moral superiority. We had not cracked under the Blitz because we were British. But johnny foreigner is not made of the same stuff and so was bound to be broken by our bombing his cities flat.
Harris explicitly pushed this idea - that he could win the war by breaking the German spirit. It was clear in hindsight (and to many at the time) that it was a fallacy and that is one of the reasons that it was outlawed after the war. The whole campaign of targetting German civilian population would today be considered criminal and put in the same category as the use of poison gas.
It was ignorance as much as arrogance. Fascinating commentary from physicist Freeman Dyson here:
https://www.technologyreview.com/2006/11/01/227625/a-failure-of-intelligence/ … Bomber Command had a similar problem in evaluating the effectiveness of bombing. Aircrew frequently reported the destruction of targets when photographs showed they had missed by several miles. The navy ORS was extremely effective and made great contributions to winning the war against the U-boats in the Atlantic. But Blackett had two enormous advantages. First, he was a world-renowned scientist (who would later win a Nobel Prize), with a safe job in the academic world, so he could threaten to resign if his advice was not followed. Second, he had been a navy officer in World War I and was respected by the admirals he advised. Basil Dickins, the chief of our ORS at Bomber Command, had neither of these advantages. He was a civil servant with no independent standing. He could not threaten to resign, and Sir Arthur Harris had no respect for him. His career depended on telling Sir Arthur things that Sir Arthur wanted to hear. So that is what he did. He gave Sir Arthur information rather than advice. He never raised serious questions about Sir Arthur’s tactics and strategy…
The biggest (and most bizarre mistake) was not reading Harris into Ultra.
Giving him the Fish decrypts of the German reports on the results of the various raids would have transformed strategy - a positive feedback loop on what worked.
Unfortunately this is a by-election dominated by a quarrel in a far-away country between people of whom we know far, far too much.
There are conflicts all around the world that don't get a fraction of the spotlight or attention that this one has had. I wonder what is so unique about this one conflict, that every moment becomes headline news unlike all the others?
The physical carnage, the huge civilian casualties, the mass displacement of people, the resulting humanitarian disaster, the inflictor of all this being a regime supported by the west - these do make for a big story.
"the inflictor of all this being a regime supported by the west".
I think you might need to understand that this awful conflict was blatantly started by Hamas who "inflicted" rape torture and murder on innocent people.
There is a reasonable argument that the Israeli response has been disproportionate, but the "infliction" was initiated by Hamas terrorists.
As you have been an occasional apologist for Corbyn (and probably indirectly voted for him to be PM) I guess this is hard to recognise?
I know who started the fire. Hamas did. Oct 7th was unspeakable. It's now 13th February and Israel has wreaked a mighty vengeance for it.
Justifiable response to a threat deemed existential? Or barbaric collective punishment of the population of Gaza?
I think the latter.
I think you'll find that war does involve what useful idiots such as yourself would call "collective punishment".
Collective punishment is a war crime under Article 33 of the Geneva Convention. People who make excuses for it are idiots, useful or otherwise.
That's why I put it in quotation marks. Or perhaps Kinabalu thinks what Israel is doing is a war crime.
Well many of us do.
Yes hugely important that arseholes on the internet think something or other.
The arseholes being those who defend the murder of civilians as a necessary evil.
You suit the description perfectly.
It's war, Dickie boy. Look it up in the dictionary.
Indeed hence war crimes. Look them up yourself.
I suspect the proportion of military combatants to civilians was far smaller ratio in the Hamburg firestorm and the levelling of Dresden. But we weren't on trial at Nuremburg.
Is it a free pass for war crimes if you win the war?
Nope. Many commentators these days consider Dresden as a war crime. Indeed there is no escaping that for Harris as his explicit stated aim of breaking the German spirit by targeting civilians is specifically addressed as a war crime today.
The UK, and importantly in this debate, Israel both signed up to the post WW2 international rules on the conduct of war which outlawed many of the things both sides did in WW2 and which Israel and Russia are both doing now.
Personally I think only idiots living without the fear of Nazi tyranny consider Dresden a war crime. Why Dresden and not every single bombing raid that Bomber Command mounted? Because like it or not, Bomber Command wanted to achieve Dresden results EVERY time they set out. Dresden stands out as it was late in the war, and was highly successful, due to the firestorm. But many, many allied soldiers died after Dresden. Many Jews and other captives of the Nazis died after Dresden. Germany could have surrendered and stopped it all.
Because it was clear that it would not work. It was part of this ridiculous idea of British moral superiority. We had not cracked under the Blitz because we were British. But johnny foreigner is not made of the same stuff and so was bound to be broken by our bombing his cities flat.
Harris explicitly pushed this idea - that he could win the war by breaking the German spirit. It was clear in hindsight (and to many at the time) that it was a fallacy and that is one of the reasons that it was outlawed after the war. The whole campaign of targetting German civilian population would today be considered criminal and put in the same category as the use of poison gas.
I’m sorry but I disagree. It did work, just not by damaging morale. See the effort Germany had to put into defending the Reich, rather than fighting the Russians. See the D-Day campaign and after for why winning air superiority was so crucial. The battle of the bulge only got as far as it did because the allies could not fly due to the weather. When the weather cleared the fighter-bombers returned and wreaked havoc.
Morale bombing failed, yes, but the Bombing War as a whole played a significant role in the allied victory. Singling out Dresden as ‘special’ is just nonsense, as Bomber Command, and the 8th Air Force tried to achieve similar results every time. Is Hamburg a war crime? What about Schweinfurt?
That wasn’t Dyson’s view. And he was better placed than most to make the judgment. … A week after the final attack on Berlin, we suffered an even more crushing defeat. We attacked Nuremberg with 795 bombers and lost 94, a loss rate of almost 12 percent. It was then clear to everybody that such losses were unsustainable. Sir Arthur reluctantly abandoned his dream of winning the War by himself. Bomber Command stopped flying so deep into Germany and spent the summer of 1944 giving tactical support to the Allied armies that were, by then, invading France.
The history of the 20th century has repeatedly shown that strategic bombing by itself does not win wars. If Britain had decided in 1936 to put its main effort into building ships instead of bombers, the invasion of France might have been possible in 1943 instead of 1944, and the war in Europe might have ended in 1944 instead of 1945. But in 1943, we had the bombers, and we did not have the ships, and the problem was to do the best we could with what we had...
The Evening Standard tonight had a double page feature on Labour's problems in its London heartland. The main focus was on the threat to Wes Streeting in Ilford North whose majority in 2019 was 5,200 and now faces an Independent candidate with links to pro-Palestine groups whose own campaign may be helped by the inclusion of some parts of Ilford South into the newly-redrawn constituency.
The Standard also confirmed what I'd heard - that Councillor Mirza and the Newham Independents are going to stand candidates in both East Ham and West Ham & Beckton against Stephen Timms and Lyn Brown respectively. Another likely challenge to Labour is in Bethnal Green & Bow from an Aspire candidate.
It seems unlikely Labour will lose any of these seats and treating "the muslim vote" as a single homogenous entity is unwise. Respect got 20% in 2005 in East Ham and I suspect that's about where any pro-Palestine anti-Labour candidate will end up later this year.
Losing Wes Streeting from the next (likely) Cabinet of the UK would be a disaster for the whole country frankly. Someone needs to sort out the mess of the NHS and he seems like he might be up for the task. Prepared to reform and learn from other countries.
One can only hope if he loses Ilford then a quick peerage and Cabinet will happen.
We are in the unusual situation where all the major parties are pro-Israel, but a large number of voters are either pro-Palestine or neutral. However, Starmer is so scared of being called anti-semitic by the Tories, he is in danger of losing a lot of his natural supporters. Between dissatisfied Tories and dissatisfied Labour supporters, we could have an exceptionally low turnout at the GE.
Strange how sexist, homophobic, antisemites are considered to be our natural supporters. Don't we stand against all that stuff?
Because everyone who is critical of Israel is a sexist, homophobic antisemite... See what I mean about shutting down debate?
The Evening Standard tonight had a double page feature on Labour's problems in its London heartland. The main focus was on the threat to Wes Streeting in Ilford North whose majority in 2019 was 5,200 and now faces an Independent candidate with links to pro-Palestine groups whose own campaign may be helped by the inclusion of some parts of Ilford South into the newly-redrawn constituency.
The Standard also confirmed what I'd heard - that Councillor Mirza and the Newham Independents are going to stand candidates in both East Ham and West Ham & Beckton against Stephen Timms and Lyn Brown respectively. Another likely challenge to Labour is in Bethnal Green & Bow from an Aspire candidate.
It seems unlikely Labour will lose any of these seats and treating "the muslim vote" as a single homogenous entity is unwise. Respect got 20% in 2005 in East Ham and I suspect that's about where any pro-Palestine anti-Labour candidate will end up later this year.
Number of Muslims in London 2001 607k 2011 1m 2021 1.7m
So I’d think that the percentage of votes in big Muslim areas could be higher than 20
Labour have lost two local by elections in Newham to the pro-Palestine Newham Independents. However, the Newham Wards with the larger muslim populations are moving into either Stratford & Bow or West Ham & Beckton.
The fact remains "the muslim vote" isn't a single thing and it's disingenuous to suggest otherwise. Nor, on the other hand, can we assume non-muslims wouldn't be attracted to a pro-Palestine independent as people of all faiths and none came out in opposition to the Iraq War in 2005.
The Evening Standard tonight had a double page feature on Labour's problems in its London heartland. The main focus was on the threat to Wes Streeting in Ilford North whose majority in 2019 was 5,200 and now faces an Independent candidate with links to pro-Palestine groups whose own campaign may be helped by the inclusion of some parts of Ilford South into the newly-redrawn constituency.
The Standard also confirmed what I'd heard - that Councillor Mirza and the Newham Independents are going to stand candidates in both East Ham and West Ham & Beckton against Stephen Timms and Lyn Brown respectively. Another likely challenge to Labour is in Bethnal Green & Bow from an Aspire candidate.
It seems unlikely Labour will lose any of these seats and treating "the muslim vote" as a single homogenous entity is unwise. Respect got 20% in 2005 in East Ham and I suspect that's about where any pro-Palestine anti-Labour candidate will end up later this year.
Losing Wes Streeting from the next (likely) Cabinet of the UK would be a disaster for the whole country frankly. Someone needs to sort out the mess of the NHS and he seems like he might be up for the task. Prepared to reform and learn from other countries.
One can only hope if he loses Ilford then a quick peerage and Cabinet will happen.
We are in the unusual situation where all the major parties are pro-Israel, but a large number of voters are either pro-Palestine or neutral. However, Starmer is so scared of being called anti-semitic by the Tories, he is in danger of losing a lot of his natural supporters. Between dissatisfied Tories and dissatisfied Labour supporters, we could have an exceptionally low turnout at the GE.
Strange how sexist, homophobic, antisemites are considered to be our natural supporters. Don't we stand against all that stuff?
There are ca. 270,000 Jews in Britain. So a very tiny minority. Parties could ignore them. But Labour, in particular, is always saying it is in favour of vulnerable marginalised communities. And this community is particularly vulnerable at the moment and marginalised. So Labour should be very strongly on its side and against those who seek to attack Jews here. The issue is not whether the attacks fall into some definition of anti-semitism but simply that attacks on the vulnerable are wrong. This should not be difficult for Labour or the LibDems or any party really.
Unfortunately this is a by-election dominated by a quarrel in a far-away country between people of whom we know far, far too much.
There are conflicts all around the world that don't get a fraction of the spotlight or attention that this one has had. I wonder what is so unique about this one conflict, that every moment becomes headline news unlike all the others?
The physical carnage, the huge civilian casualties, the mass displacement of people, the resulting humanitarian disaster, the inflictor of all this being a regime supported by the west - these do make for a big story.
"the inflictor of all this being a regime supported by the west".
I think you might need to understand that this awful conflict was blatantly started by Hamas who "inflicted" rape torture and murder on innocent people.
There is a reasonable argument that the Israeli response has been disproportionate, but the "infliction" was initiated by Hamas terrorists.
As you have been an occasional apologist for Corbyn (and probably indirectly voted for him to be PM) I guess this is hard to recognise?
I know who started the fire. Hamas did. Oct 7th was unspeakable. It's now 13th February and Israel has wreaked a mighty vengeance for it.
Justifiable response to a threat deemed existential? Or barbaric collective punishment of the population of Gaza?
I think the latter.
I think you'll find that war does involve what useful idiots such as yourself would call "collective punishment".
Collective punishment is a war crime under Article 33 of the Geneva Convention. People who make excuses for it are idiots, useful or otherwise.
That's why I put it in quotation marks. Or perhaps Kinabalu thinks what Israel is doing is a war crime.
Well many of us do.
Yes hugely important that arseholes on the internet think something or other.
The arseholes being those who defend the murder of civilians as a necessary evil.
You suit the description perfectly.
It's war, Dickie boy. Look it up in the dictionary.
Indeed hence war crimes. Look them up yourself.
I suspect the proportion of military combatants to civilians was far smaller ratio in the Hamburg firestorm and the levelling of Dresden. But we weren't on trial at Nuremburg.
Is it a free pass for war crimes if you win the war?
Nope. Many commentators these days consider Dresden as a war crime. Indeed there is no escaping that for Harris as his explicit stated aim of breaking the German spirit by targeting civilians is specifically addressed as a war crime today.
The UK, and importantly in this debate, Israel both signed up to the post WW2 international rules on the conduct of war which outlawed many of the things both sides did in WW2 and which Israel and Russia are both doing now.
Personally I think only idiots living without the fear of Nazi tyranny consider Dresden a war crime. Why Dresden and not every single bombing raid that Bomber Command mounted? Because like it or not, Bomber Command wanted to achieve Dresden results EVERY time they set out. Dresden stands out as it was late in the war, and was highly successful, due to the firestorm. But many, many allied soldiers died after Dresden. Many Jews and other captives of the Nazis died after Dresden. Germany could have surrendered and stopped it all.
Because it was clear that it would not work. It was part of this ridiculous idea of British moral superiority. We had not cracked under the Blitz because we were British. But johnny foreigner is not made of the same stuff and so was bound to be broken by our bombing his cities flat.
Harris explicitly pushed this idea - that he could win the war by breaking the German spirit. It was clear in hindsight (and to many at the time) that it was a fallacy and that is one of the reasons that it was outlawed after the war. The whole campaign of targetting German civilian population would today be considered criminal and put in the same category as the use of poison gas.
It was ignorance as much as arrogance. Fascinating commentary from physicist Freeman Dyson here:
https://www.technologyreview.com/2006/11/01/227625/a-failure-of-intelligence/ … Bomber Command had a similar problem in evaluating the effectiveness of bombing. Aircrew frequently reported the destruction of targets when photographs showed they had missed by several miles. The navy ORS was extremely effective and made great contributions to winning the war against the U-boats in the Atlantic. But Blackett had two enormous advantages. First, he was a world-renowned scientist (who would later win a Nobel Prize), with a safe job in the academic world, so he could threaten to resign if his advice was not followed. Second, he had been a navy officer in World War I and was respected by the admirals he advised. Basil Dickins, the chief of our ORS at Bomber Command, had neither of these advantages. He was a civil servant with no independent standing. He could not threaten to resign, and Sir Arthur Harris had no respect for him. His career depended on telling Sir Arthur things that Sir Arthur wanted to hear. So that is what he did. He gave Sir Arthur information rather than advice. He never raised serious questions about Sir Arthur’s tactics and strategy…
This makes pretty clear that the targeting of civilans was deliberate policy : … We succeeded in raising firestorms only twice, once in Hamburg and once more in Dresden in 1945, where between 25,000 and 60,000 people perished (the numbers are still debated). The Germans had good air raid shelters and warning systems and did what they were told. As a result, only a few thousand people were killed in a typical major attack. But when there was a firestorm, people were asphyxiated or roasted inside their shelters, and the number killed was more than 10 times greater. Every time Bomber Command attacked a city, we were trying to raise a firestorm, but we never learnt why we so seldom succeeded…
Targeting of workers making weapons to kill allied soldiers would fit just as well. And the firestorm didn’t just kill people it destroyed buildings.
None of this is nice. But being gassed at Auschwitz was pretty below the belt too, as was being rounded up and burned to death in a church (Oradour) or taken to a ravine, stripped naked and shot, including the children.
I’m comfortable with everything that was done to defeat Germany. I’m sorry others can’t see that. I’ve read accounts of Dresden, and Hamburg, and it sounds horrifying. I hope it never happens again, and I hope I never get to experience it. But it doesn’t make it a war crime.
Unfortunately this is a by-election dominated by a quarrel in a far-away country between people of whom we know far, far too much.
There are conflicts all around the world that don't get a fraction of the spotlight or attention that this one has had. I wonder what is so unique about this one conflict, that every moment becomes headline news unlike all the others?
The physical carnage, the huge civilian casualties, the mass displacement of people, the resulting humanitarian disaster, the inflictor of all this being a regime supported by the west - these do make for a big story.
"the inflictor of all this being a regime supported by the west".
I think you might need to understand that this awful conflict was blatantly started by Hamas who "inflicted" rape torture and murder on innocent people.
There is a reasonable argument that the Israeli response has been disproportionate, but the "infliction" was initiated by Hamas terrorists.
As you have been an occasional apologist for Corbyn (and probably indirectly voted for him to be PM) I guess this is hard to recognise?
I know who started the fire. Hamas did. Oct 7th was unspeakable. It's now 13th February and Israel has wreaked a mighty vengeance for it.
Justifiable response to a threat deemed existential? Or barbaric collective punishment of the population of Gaza?
I think the latter.
I think you'll find that war does involve what useful idiots such as yourself would call "collective punishment".
Collective punishment is a war crime under Article 33 of the Geneva Convention. People who make excuses for it are idiots, useful or otherwise.
That's why I put it in quotation marks. Or perhaps Kinabalu thinks what Israel is doing is a war crime.
Well many of us do.
Yes hugely important that arseholes on the internet think something or other.
The arseholes being those who defend the murder of civilians as a necessary evil.
You suit the description perfectly.
It's war, Dickie boy. Look it up in the dictionary.
Indeed hence war crimes. Look them up yourself.
I suspect the proportion of military combatants to civilians was far smaller ratio in the Hamburg firestorm and the levelling of Dresden. But we weren't on trial at Nuremburg.
Is it a free pass for war crimes if you win the war?
Nope. Many commentators these days consider Dresden as a war crime. Indeed there is no escaping that for Harris as his explicit stated aim of breaking the German spirit by targeting civilians is specifically addressed as a war crime today.
The UK, and importantly in this debate, Israel both signed up to the post WW2 international rules on the conduct of war which outlawed many of the things both sides did in WW2 and which Israel and Russia are both doing now.
Personally I think only idiots living without the fear of Nazi tyranny consider Dresden a war crime. Why Dresden and not every single bombing raid that Bomber Command mounted? Because like it or not, Bomber Command wanted to achieve Dresden results EVERY time they set out. Dresden stands out as it was late in the war, and was highly successful, due to the firestorm. But many, many allied soldiers died after Dresden. Many Jews and other captives of the Nazis died after Dresden. Germany could have surrendered and stopped it all.
Because it was clear that it would not work. It was part of this ridiculous idea of British moral superiority. We had not cracked under the Blitz because we were British. But johnny foreigner is not made of the same stuff and so was bound to be broken by our bombing his cities flat.
Harris explicitly pushed this idea - that he could win the war by breaking the German spirit. It was clear in hindsight (and to many at the time) that it was a fallacy and that is one of the reasons that it was outlawed after the war. The whole campaign of targetting German civilian population would today be considered criminal and put in the same category as the use of poison gas.
It was ignorance as much as arrogance. Fascinating commentary from physicist Freeman Dyson here:
https://www.technologyreview.com/2006/11/01/227625/a-failure-of-intelligence/ … Bomber Command had a similar problem in evaluating the effectiveness of bombing. Aircrew frequently reported the destruction of targets when photographs showed they had missed by several miles. The navy ORS was extremely effective and made great contributions to winning the war against the U-boats in the Atlantic. But Blackett had two enormous advantages. First, he was a world-renowned scientist (who would later win a Nobel Prize), with a safe job in the academic world, so he could threaten to resign if his advice was not followed. Second, he had been a navy officer in World War I and was respected by the admirals he advised. Basil Dickins, the chief of our ORS at Bomber Command, had neither of these advantages. He was a civil servant with no independent standing. He could not threaten to resign, and Sir Arthur Harris had no respect for him. His career depended on telling Sir Arthur things that Sir Arthur wanted to hear. So that is what he did. He gave Sir Arthur information rather than advice. He never raised serious questions about Sir Arthur’s tactics and strategy…
This makes pretty clear that the targeting of civilans was deliberate policy : … We succeeded in raising firestorms only twice, once in Hamburg and once more in Dresden in 1945, where between 25,000 and 60,000 people perished (the numbers are still debated). The Germans had good air raid shelters and warning systems and did what they were told. As a result, only a few thousand people were killed in a typical major attack. But when there was a firestorm, people were asphyxiated or roasted inside their shelters, and the number killed was more than 10 times greater. Every time Bomber Command attacked a city, we were trying to raise a firestorm, but we never learnt why we so seldom succeeded…
Targeting of workers making weapons to kill allied soldiers would fit just as well. And the firestorm didn’t just kill people it destroyed buildings.
None of this is nice. But being gassed at Auschwitz was pretty below the belt too, as was being rounded up and burned to death in a church (Oradour) or taken to a ravine, stripped naked and shot, including the children.
I’m comfortable with everything that was done to defeat Germany. I’m sorry others can’t see that. I’ve read accounts of Dresden, and Hamburg, and it sounds horrifying. I hope it never happens again, and I hope I never get to experience it. But it doesn’t make it a war crime.
Under the then existing laws of war, it wasn’t. But it was both morally, and practically, deeply questionable.
Unfortunately this is a by-election dominated by a quarrel in a far-away country between people of whom we know far, far too much.
There are conflicts all around the world that don't get a fraction of the spotlight or attention that this one has had. I wonder what is so unique about this one conflict, that every moment becomes headline news unlike all the others?
The physical carnage, the huge civilian casualties, the mass displacement of people, the resulting humanitarian disaster, the inflictor of all this being a regime supported by the west - these do make for a big story.
"the inflictor of all this being a regime supported by the west".
I think you might need to understand that this awful conflict was blatantly started by Hamas who "inflicted" rape torture and murder on innocent people.
There is a reasonable argument that the Israeli response has been disproportionate, but the "infliction" was initiated by Hamas terrorists.
As you have been an occasional apologist for Corbyn (and probably indirectly voted for him to be PM) I guess this is hard to recognise?
I know who started the fire. Hamas did. Oct 7th was unspeakable. It's now 13th February and Israel has wreaked a mighty vengeance for it.
Justifiable response to a threat deemed existential? Or barbaric collective punishment of the population of Gaza?
I think the latter.
I think you'll find that war does involve what useful idiots such as yourself would call "collective punishment".
Collective punishment is a war crime under Article 33 of the Geneva Convention. People who make excuses for it are idiots, useful or otherwise.
That's why I put it in quotation marks. Or perhaps Kinabalu thinks what Israel is doing is a war crime.
Well many of us do.
Yes hugely important that arseholes on the internet think something or other.
The arseholes being those who defend the murder of civilians as a necessary evil.
You suit the description perfectly.
It's war, Dickie boy. Look it up in the dictionary.
Indeed hence war crimes. Look them up yourself.
I suspect the proportion of military combatants to civilians was far smaller ratio in the Hamburg firestorm and the levelling of Dresden. But we weren't on trial at Nuremburg.
Is it a free pass for war crimes if you win the war?
Nope. Many commentators these days consider Dresden as a war crime. Indeed there is no escaping that for Harris as his explicit stated aim of breaking the German spirit by targeting civilians is specifically addressed as a war crime today.
The UK, and importantly in this debate, Israel both signed up to the post WW2 international rules on the conduct of war which outlawed many of the things both sides did in WW2 and which Israel and Russia are both doing now.
Personally I think only idiots living without the fear of Nazi tyranny consider Dresden a war crime. Why Dresden and not every single bombing raid that Bomber Command mounted? Because like it or not, Bomber Command wanted to achieve Dresden results EVERY time they set out. Dresden stands out as it was late in the war, and was highly successful, due to the firestorm. But many, many allied soldiers died after Dresden. Many Jews and other captives of the Nazis died after Dresden. Germany could have surrendered and stopped it all.
Because it was clear that it would not work. It was part of this ridiculous idea of British moral superiority. We had not cracked under the Blitz because we were British. But johnny foreigner is not made of the same stuff and so was bound to be broken by our bombing his cities flat.
Harris explicitly pushed this idea - that he could win the war by breaking the German spirit. It was clear in hindsight (and to many at the time) that it was a fallacy and that is one of the reasons that it was outlawed after the war. The whole campaign of targetting German civilian population would today be considered criminal and put in the same category as the use of poison gas.
I’m sorry but I disagree. It did work, just not by damaging morale. See the effort Germany had to put into defending the Reich, rather than fighting the Russians. See the D-Day campaign and after for why winning air superiority was so crucial. The battle of the bulge only got as far as it did because the allies could not fly due to the weather. When the weather cleared the fighter-bombers returned and wreaked havoc.
Morale bombing failed, yes, but the Bombing War as a whole played a significant role in the allied victory. Singling out Dresden as ‘special’ is just nonsense, as Bomber Command, and the 8th Air Force tried to achieve similar results every time. Is Hamburg a war crime? What about Schweinfurt?
That wasn’t Dyson’s view. And he was better placed than most to make the judgment. … A week after the final attack on Berlin, we suffered an even more crushing defeat. We attacked Nuremberg with 795 bombers and lost 94, a loss rate of almost 12 percent. It was then clear to everybody that such losses were unsustainable. Sir Arthur reluctantly abandoned his dream of winning the War by himself. Bomber Command stopped flying so deep into Germany and spent the summer of 1944 giving tactical support to the Allied armies that were, by then, invading France.
The history of the 20th century has repeatedly shown that strategic bombing by itself does not win wars. If Britain had decided in 1936 to put its main effort into building ships instead of bombers, the invasion of France might have been possible in 1943 instead of 1944, and the war in Europe might have ended in 1944 instead of 1945. But in 1943, we had the bombers, and we did not have the ships, and the problem was to do the best we could with what we had...
And yet invading France in 1943 would have been against a Luftwaffe that was still capable of inflicting severe damage, and against a German army that was significantly stronger. Churchill was desperate NOT to invade in 43. About the only advantage would have been the much less complete Atlantic Wall.
I totally agree that strategic bombing did not win the war alone. No one thinks it did, or indeed could. But it played a huge part. German industry was massively hindered. Transport was destroyed. The Das Reich panzer division took an age to get from southern France to Normandy, mainly due to air power of the allies, won by strategic bombing, notably the 8th who actively sought to destroy Luftwaffe fighters, using bombers as bait.
Unfortunately this is a by-election dominated by a quarrel in a far-away country between people of whom we know far, far too much.
There are conflicts all around the world that don't get a fraction of the spotlight or attention that this one has had. I wonder what is so unique about this one conflict, that every moment becomes headline news unlike all the others?
The physical carnage, the huge civilian casualties, the mass displacement of people, the resulting humanitarian disaster, the inflictor of all this being a regime supported by the west - these do make for a big story.
"the inflictor of all this being a regime supported by the west".
I think you might need to understand that this awful conflict was blatantly started by Hamas who "inflicted" rape torture and murder on innocent people.
There is a reasonable argument that the Israeli response has been disproportionate, but the "infliction" was initiated by Hamas terrorists.
As you have been an occasional apologist for Corbyn (and probably indirectly voted for him to be PM) I guess this is hard to recognise?
I know who started the fire. Hamas did. Oct 7th was unspeakable. It's now 13th February and Israel has wreaked a mighty vengeance for it.
Justifiable response to a threat deemed existential? Or barbaric collective punishment of the population of Gaza?
I think the latter.
I think you'll find that war does involve what useful idiots such as yourself would call "collective punishment".
Collective punishment is a war crime under Article 33 of the Geneva Convention. People who make excuses for it are idiots, useful or otherwise.
That's why I put it in quotation marks. Or perhaps Kinabalu thinks what Israel is doing is a war crime.
Well many of us do.
Yes hugely important that arseholes on the internet think something or other.
The arseholes being those who defend the murder of civilians as a necessary evil.
You suit the description perfectly.
It's war, Dickie boy. Look it up in the dictionary.
Indeed hence war crimes. Look them up yourself.
I suspect the proportion of military combatants to civilians was far smaller ratio in the Hamburg firestorm and the levelling of Dresden. But we weren't on trial at Nuremburg.
Is it a free pass for war crimes if you win the war?
Nope. Many commentators these days consider Dresden as a war crime. Indeed there is no escaping that for Harris as his explicit stated aim of breaking the German spirit by targeting civilians is specifically addressed as a war crime today.
The UK, and importantly in this debate, Israel both signed up to the post WW2 international rules on the conduct of war which outlawed many of the things both sides did in WW2 and which Israel and Russia are both doing now.
Personally I think only idiots living without the fear of Nazi tyranny consider Dresden a war crime. Why Dresden and not every single bombing raid that Bomber Command mounted? Because like it or not, Bomber Command wanted to achieve Dresden results EVERY time they set out. Dresden stands out as it was late in the war, and was highly successful, due to the firestorm. But many, many allied soldiers died after Dresden. Many Jews and other captives of the Nazis died after Dresden. Germany could have surrendered and stopped it all.
I know very little about WW2. But was Bomber Command strategy basically predicated on the idea that bombing Germany out of the war would save the innumerable slaughter witnessed in WW1?
Yep. Harris wanted to defeat Germany without the need for any British soldiers to land on the continent, other than to accept the surrender. There have been many arguments over the years about whether Bomber Command was worth the money and resources (materials and men) that it took. Max Hastings thought not in his book on the bomber war. Others disagree. Certainly the bombing campaign tied up tens if not hundreds of thousands of Germans defending the Reich who could have been fighting in the East. And combined with the 8th airforce’s campaign, the Allies achieved air dominance over the Luftwaffe, making D-Day much easier and restricting German movements to night time, to avoid being attacked from the air. By the end of 44 and into 45 the German transport system was wrecked, so moving anything was hard, including troops, tanks etc.
Sadly the idea that you could depress the morale of a nation under a fascist authoritarian regime was false. Even if a German housewife wanted to end the war after her house was destroyed, there was no mechanism for her to achieve it. And the Blitz had shown the resilience of the Brits under the bomb.
But ultimately strategic bombing contributed to winning the war and to describe one target destroyed as a war crime is infantile rubbish.
There were lots of things done on both sides in both wars which would now be considered war crimes. The whole point of civilisation is that we develop and learn from our mistakes.
My view is that war is never desirable, but once one is engaged, there’s no point in half measures.
Ultimately one has to do what is needful, to win. There is nothing worse than defeat.
Hallelujah.
This is what I referred to earlier. The UK hasn't been in a war for a very long time. We have had operations in Afghan, Iraq, Bosnia, for example, where at the end of the day we could always say fuck it and go home. Indeed that is exactly what we did mostly.
The likes of Richard "Dickie Boy" Tyndall is mistaking such actions with actual war.
If you are losing or think you might lose a war what on earth do you care about "the rules". A ridiculous concept in any case.
Unfortunately this is a by-election dominated by a quarrel in a far-away country between people of whom we know far, far too much.
There are conflicts all around the world that don't get a fraction of the spotlight or attention that this one has had. I wonder what is so unique about this one conflict, that every moment becomes headline news unlike all the others?
The physical carnage, the huge civilian casualties, the mass displacement of people, the resulting humanitarian disaster, the inflictor of all this being a regime supported by the west - these do make for a big story.
"the inflictor of all this being a regime supported by the west".
I think you might need to understand that this awful conflict was blatantly started by Hamas who "inflicted" rape torture and murder on innocent people.
There is a reasonable argument that the Israeli response has been disproportionate, but the "infliction" was initiated by Hamas terrorists.
As you have been an occasional apologist for Corbyn (and probably indirectly voted for him to be PM) I guess this is hard to recognise?
I know who started the fire. Hamas did. Oct 7th was unspeakable. It's now 13th February and Israel has wreaked a mighty vengeance for it.
Justifiable response to a threat deemed existential? Or barbaric collective punishment of the population of Gaza?
I think the latter.
I think you'll find that war does involve what useful idiots such as yourself would call "collective punishment".
Collective punishment is a war crime under Article 33 of the Geneva Convention. People who make excuses for it are idiots, useful or otherwise.
That's why I put it in quotation marks. Or perhaps Kinabalu thinks what Israel is doing is a war crime.
Well many of us do.
Yes hugely important that arseholes on the internet think something or other.
The arseholes being those who defend the murder of civilians as a necessary evil.
You suit the description perfectly.
It's war, Dickie boy. Look it up in the dictionary.
Indeed hence war crimes. Look them up yourself.
I suspect the proportion of military combatants to civilians was far smaller ratio in the Hamburg firestorm and the levelling of Dresden. But we weren't on trial at Nuremburg.
Is it a free pass for war crimes if you win the war?
Nope. Many commentators these days consider Dresden as a war crime. Indeed there is no escaping that for Harris as his explicit stated aim of breaking the German spirit by targeting civilians is specifically addressed as a war crime today.
The UK, and importantly in this debate, Israel both signed up to the post WW2 international rules on the conduct of war which outlawed many of the things both sides did in WW2 and which Israel and Russia are both doing now.
Personally I think only idiots living without the fear of Nazi tyranny consider Dresden a war crime. Why Dresden and not every single bombing raid that Bomber Command mounted? Because like it or not, Bomber Command wanted to achieve Dresden results EVERY time they set out. Dresden stands out as it was late in the war, and was highly successful, due to the firestorm. But many, many allied soldiers died after Dresden. Many Jews and other captives of the Nazis died after Dresden. Germany could have surrendered and stopped it all.
I know very little about WW2. But was Bomber Command strategy basically predicated on the idea that bombing Germany out of the war would save the innumerable slaughter witnessed in WW1?
Yep. Harris wanted to defeat Germany without the need for any British soldiers to land on the continent, other than to accept the surrender. There have been many arguments over the years about whether Bomber Command was worth the money and resources (materials and men) that it took. Max Hastings thought not in his book on the bomber war. Others disagree. Certainly the bombing campaign tied up tens if not hundreds of thousands of Germans defending the Reich who could have been fighting in the East. And combined with the 8th airforce’s campaign, the Allies achieved air dominance over the Luftwaffe, making D-Day much easier and restricting German movements to night time, to avoid being attacked from the air. By the end of 44 and into 45 the German transport system was wrecked, so moving anything was hard, including troops, tanks etc.
Sadly the idea that you could depress the morale of a nation under a fascist authoritarian regime was false. Even if a German housewife wanted to end the war after her house was destroyed, there was no mechanism for her to achieve it. And the Blitz had shown the resilience of the Brits under the bomb.
But ultimately strategic bombing contributed to winning the war and to describe one target destroyed as a war crime is infantile rubbish.
There were lots of things done on both sides in both wars which would now be considered war crimes. The whole point of civilisation is that we develop and learn from our mistakes.
My view is that war is never desirable, but once one is engaged, there’s no point in half measures.
Ultimately one has to do what is needful, to win. There is nothing worse than defeat.
Chemical warfare? Biological warfare? Terrorising an occupied population with retaliatory executions and the use of rape as a tool of suppression?
We draw the line somewhere and where International Law has currently drawn it seems a pretty good place to me.
(By the way I am not accusing Israel of any of these just pointing out that your 'half measures' might be very much open to interpretation).
The Evening Standard tonight had a double page feature on Labour's problems in its London heartland. The main focus was on the threat to Wes Streeting in Ilford North whose majority in 2019 was 5,200 and now faces an Independent candidate with links to pro-Palestine groups whose own campaign may be helped by the inclusion of some parts of Ilford South into the newly-redrawn constituency.
The Standard also confirmed what I'd heard - that Councillor Mirza and the Newham Independents are going to stand candidates in both East Ham and West Ham & Beckton against Stephen Timms and Lyn Brown respectively. Another likely challenge to Labour is in Bethnal Green & Bow from an Aspire candidate.
It seems unlikely Labour will lose any of these seats and treating "the muslim vote" as a single homogenous entity is unwise. Respect got 20% in 2005 in East Ham and I suspect that's about where any pro-Palestine anti-Labour candidate will end up later this year.
Number of Muslims in London 2001 607k 2011 1m 2021 1.7m
So I’d think that the percentage of votes in big Muslim areas could be higher than 20
Labour have lost two local by elections in Newham to the pro-Palestine Newham Independents. However, the Newham Wards with the larger muslim populations are moving into either Stratford & Bow or West Ham & Beckton.
The fact remains "the muslim vote" isn't a single thing and it's disingenuous to suggest otherwise. Nor, on the other hand, can we assume non-muslims wouldn't be attracted to a pro-Palestine independent as people of all faiths and none came out in opposition to the Iraq War in 2005.
Some people are agitating to make it a single thing
Unfortunately this is a by-election dominated by a quarrel in a far-away country between people of whom we know far, far too much.
There are conflicts all around the world that don't get a fraction of the spotlight or attention that this one has had. I wonder what is so unique about this one conflict, that every moment becomes headline news unlike all the others?
The physical carnage, the huge civilian casualties, the mass displacement of people, the resulting humanitarian disaster, the inflictor of all this being a regime supported by the west - these do make for a big story.
"the inflictor of all this being a regime supported by the west".
I think you might need to understand that this awful conflict was blatantly started by Hamas who "inflicted" rape torture and murder on innocent people.
There is a reasonable argument that the Israeli response has been disproportionate, but the "infliction" was initiated by Hamas terrorists.
As you have been an occasional apologist for Corbyn (and probably indirectly voted for him to be PM) I guess this is hard to recognise?
I know who started the fire. Hamas did. Oct 7th was unspeakable. It's now 13th February and Israel has wreaked a mighty vengeance for it.
Justifiable response to a threat deemed existential? Or barbaric collective punishment of the population of Gaza?
I think the latter.
I think you'll find that war does involve what useful idiots such as yourself would call "collective punishment".
Collective punishment is a war crime under Article 33 of the Geneva Convention. People who make excuses for it are idiots, useful or otherwise.
That's why I put it in quotation marks. Or perhaps Kinabalu thinks what Israel is doing is a war crime.
Well many of us do.
Yes hugely important that arseholes on the internet think something or other.
The arseholes being those who defend the murder of civilians as a necessary evil.
You suit the description perfectly.
It's war, Dickie boy. Look it up in the dictionary.
Indeed hence war crimes. Look them up yourself.
I suspect the proportion of military combatants to civilians was far smaller ratio in the Hamburg firestorm and the levelling of Dresden. But we weren't on trial at Nuremburg.
Is it a free pass for war crimes if you win the war?
Nope. Many commentators these days consider Dresden as a war crime. Indeed there is no escaping that for Harris as his explicit stated aim of breaking the German spirit by targeting civilians is specifically addressed as a war crime today.
The UK, and importantly in this debate, Israel both signed up to the post WW2 international rules on the conduct of war which outlawed many of the things both sides did in WW2 and which Israel and Russia are both doing now.
Personally I think only idiots living without the fear of Nazi tyranny consider Dresden a war crime. Why Dresden and not every single bombing raid that Bomber Command mounted? Because like it or not, Bomber Command wanted to achieve Dresden results EVERY time they set out. Dresden stands out as it was late in the war, and was highly successful, due to the firestorm. But many, many allied soldiers died after Dresden. Many Jews and other captives of the Nazis died after Dresden. Germany could have surrendered and stopped it all.
I know very little about WW2. But was Bomber Command strategy basically predicated on the idea that bombing Germany out of the war would save the innumerable slaughter witnessed in WW1?
Yep. Harris wanted to defeat Germany without the need for any British soldiers to land on the continent, other than to accept the surrender. There have been many arguments over the years about whether Bomber Command was worth the money and resources (materials and men) that it took. Max Hastings thought not in his book on the bomber war. Others disagree. Certainly the bombing campaign tied up tens if not hundreds of thousands of Germans defending the Reich who could have been fighting in the East. And combined with the 8th airforce’s campaign, the Allies achieved air dominance over the Luftwaffe, making D-Day much easier and restricting German movements to night time, to avoid being attacked from the air. By the end of 44 and into 45 the German transport system was wrecked, so moving anything was hard, including troops, tanks etc.
Sadly the idea that you could depress the morale of a nation under a fascist authoritarian regime was false. Even if a German housewife wanted to end the war after her house was destroyed, there was no mechanism for her to achieve it. And the Blitz had shown the resilience of the Brits under the bomb.
But ultimately strategic bombing contributed to winning the war and to describe one target destroyed as a war crime is infantile rubbish.
There were lots of things done on both sides in both wars which would now be considered war crimes. The whole point of civilisation is that we develop and learn from our mistakes.
My view is that war is never desirable, but once one is engaged, there’s no point in half measures.
Ultimately one has to do what is needful, to win. There is nothing worse than defeat.
Hallelujah.
This is what I referred to earlier. The UK hasn't been in a war for a very long time. We have had operations in Afghan, Iraq, Bosnia, for example, where at the end of the day we could always say fuck it and go home. Indeed that is exactly what we did mostly.
The likes of Richard "Dickie Boy" Tyndall is mistaking such actions with actual war.
If you are losing or think you might lose a war what on earth do you care about "the rules". A ridiculous concept in any case.
I will be sure to remind you in future that you advocated for murdering children.
The Evening Standard tonight had a double page feature on Labour's problems in its London heartland. The main focus was on the threat to Wes Streeting in Ilford North whose majority in 2019 was 5,200 and now faces an Independent candidate with links to pro-Palestine groups whose own campaign may be helped by the inclusion of some parts of Ilford South into the newly-redrawn constituency.
The Standard also confirmed what I'd heard - that Councillor Mirza and the Newham Independents are going to stand candidates in both East Ham and West Ham & Beckton against Stephen Timms and Lyn Brown respectively. Another likely challenge to Labour is in Bethnal Green & Bow from an Aspire candidate.
It seems unlikely Labour will lose any of these seats and treating "the muslim vote" as a single homogenous entity is unwise. Respect got 20% in 2005 in East Ham and I suspect that's about where any pro-Palestine anti-Labour candidate will end up later this year.
Number of Muslims in London 2001 607k 2011 1m 2021 1.7m
So I’d think that the percentage of votes in big Muslim areas could be higher than 20
According to the 2021 census the number of Muslims in London was 1,318,755.
Where do your figures come from?
Quite obviously London Muslims are a diverse community and not of one mind politically.
The Evening Standard tonight had a double page feature on Labour's problems in its London heartland. The main focus was on the threat to Wes Streeting in Ilford North whose majority in 2019 was 5,200 and now faces an Independent candidate with links to pro-Palestine groups whose own campaign may be helped by the inclusion of some parts of Ilford South into the newly-redrawn constituency.
The Standard also confirmed what I'd heard - that Councillor Mirza and the Newham Independents are going to stand candidates in both East Ham and West Ham & Beckton against Stephen Timms and Lyn Brown respectively. Another likely challenge to Labour is in Bethnal Green & Bow from an Aspire candidate.
It seems unlikely Labour will lose any of these seats and treating "the muslim vote" as a single homogenous entity is unwise. Respect got 20% in 2005 in East Ham and I suspect that's about where any pro-Palestine anti-Labour candidate will end up later this year.
Losing Wes Streeting from the next (likely) Cabinet of the UK would be a disaster for the whole country frankly. Someone needs to sort out the mess of the NHS and he seems like he might be up for the task. Prepared to reform and learn from other countries.
One can only hope if he loses Ilford then a quick peerage and Cabinet will happen.
We are in the unusual situation where all the major parties are pro-Israel, but a large number of voters are either pro-Palestine or neutral. However, Starmer is so scared of being called anti-semitic by the Tories, he is in danger of losing a lot of his natural supporters. Between dissatisfied Tories and dissatisfied Labour supporters, we could have an exceptionally low turnout at the GE.
Strange how sexist, homophobic, antisemites are considered to be our natural supporters. Don't we stand against all that stuff?
There are ca. 270,000 Jews in Britain. So a very tiny minority. Parties could ignore them. But Labour, in particular, is always saying it is in favour of vulnerable marginalised communities. And this community is particularly vulnerable at the moment and marginalised. So Labour should be very strongly on its side and against those who seek to attack Jews here. The issue is not whether the attacks fall into some definition of anti-semitism but simply that attacks on the vulnerable are wrong. This should not be difficult for Labour or the LibDems or any party really.
Criticising Israel and attacking British Jews are two entirely distinct things. The first is totally fine, the second is totally wrong. People who can't do the first without doing the second need to shut up. People who conflate the two to try to shut down the first should also shut up.
What possibly to glean from this given how the by-election stands.
Con vote retention level tends to be quite close between LEs and typical by-elections, so possibly they can still sneak into the low 20s, but RefUK and Galloway will nibble a little.
LD 17.5% is their likely vote baseline in the by-election now, and they can get themselves a good bit higher on transferred Labour votes. I reckon 25-30% is possible
Rochdale is 19th most Muslim constituency at 23%. Galloway's best vote shares have closely matched Muslim populations where he has stood, it's obviously not that neat, but good rule of thumb. But Labour will squeeze a bit so I reckon around 20%
RefUK will be squeezed badly, maybe 6%.
Retained Labour will make up most of the difference which suggests around 22%.
Unfortunately this is a by-election dominated by a quarrel in a far-away country between people of whom we know far, far too much.
There are conflicts all around the world that don't get a fraction of the spotlight or attention that this one has had. I wonder what is so unique about this one conflict, that every moment becomes headline news unlike all the others?
The physical carnage, the huge civilian casualties, the mass displacement of people, the resulting humanitarian disaster, the inflictor of all this being a regime supported by the west - these do make for a big story.
"the inflictor of all this being a regime supported by the west".
I think you might need to understand that this awful conflict was blatantly started by Hamas who "inflicted" rape torture and murder on innocent people.
There is a reasonable argument that the Israeli response has been disproportionate, but the "infliction" was initiated by Hamas terrorists.
As you have been an occasional apologist for Corbyn (and probably indirectly voted for him to be PM) I guess this is hard to recognise?
I know who started the fire. Hamas did. Oct 7th was unspeakable. It's now 13th February and Israel has wreaked a mighty vengeance for it.
Justifiable response to a threat deemed existential? Or barbaric collective punishment of the population of Gaza?
I think the latter.
I think you'll find that war does involve what useful idiots such as yourself would call "collective punishment".
Collective punishment is a war crime under Article 33 of the Geneva Convention. People who make excuses for it are idiots, useful or otherwise.
That's why I put it in quotation marks. Or perhaps Kinabalu thinks what Israel is doing is a war crime.
Well many of us do.
Yes hugely important that arseholes on the internet think something or other.
The arseholes being those who defend the murder of civilians as a necessary evil.
You suit the description perfectly.
It's war, Dickie boy. Look it up in the dictionary.
Indeed hence war crimes. Look them up yourself.
I suspect the proportion of military combatants to civilians was far smaller ratio in the Hamburg firestorm and the levelling of Dresden. But we weren't on trial at Nuremburg.
Is it a free pass for war crimes if you win the war?
Nope. Many commentators these days consider Dresden as a war crime. Indeed there is no escaping that for Harris as his explicit stated aim of breaking the German spirit by targeting civilians is specifically addressed as a war crime today.
The UK, and importantly in this debate, Israel both signed up to the post WW2 international rules on the conduct of war which outlawed many of the things both sides did in WW2 and which Israel and Russia are both doing now.
Personally I think only idiots living without the fear of Nazi tyranny consider Dresden a war crime. Why Dresden and not every single bombing raid that Bomber Command mounted? Because like it or not, Bomber Command wanted to achieve Dresden results EVERY time they set out. Dresden stands out as it was late in the war, and was highly successful, due to the firestorm. But many, many allied soldiers died after Dresden. Many Jews and other captives of the Nazis died after Dresden. Germany could have surrendered and stopped it all.
I know very little about WW2. But was Bomber Command strategy basically predicated on the idea that bombing Germany out of the war would save the innumerable slaughter witnessed in WW1?
Yep. Harris wanted to defeat Germany without the need for any British soldiers to land on the continent, other than to accept the surrender. There have been many arguments over the years about whether Bomber Command was worth the money and resources (materials and men) that it took. Max Hastings thought not in his book on the bomber war. Others disagree. Certainly the bombing campaign tied up tens if not hundreds of thousands of Germans defending the Reich who could have been fighting in the East. And combined with the 8th airforce’s campaign, the Allies achieved air dominance over the Luftwaffe, making D-Day much easier and restricting German movements to night time, to avoid being attacked from the air. By the end of 44 and into 45 the German transport system was wrecked, so moving anything was hard, including troops, tanks etc.
Sadly the idea that you could depress the morale of a nation under a fascist authoritarian regime was false. Even if a German housewife wanted to end the war after her house was destroyed, there was no mechanism for her to achieve it. And the Blitz had shown the resilience of the Brits under the bomb.
But ultimately strategic bombing contributed to winning the war and to describe one target destroyed as a war crime is infantile rubbish.
There were lots of things done on both sides in both wars which would now be considered war crimes. The whole point of civilisation is that we develop and learn from our mistakes.
My view is that war is never desirable, but once one is engaged, there’s no point in half measures.
Ultimately one has to do what is needful, to win. There is nothing worse than defeat.
If the price is 2.3 million Gazans including women and children?
Israel have the right to defend themselves against Hamas. Benjamin Netanyahu does not have the right to save his liberty and political career by the mass killing of Gazan women and children. That is not anti-Semitic but it does demonstrate my utter contempt for a sociopath who happens to be Prime Minister of Israel.
The Evening Standard tonight had a double page feature on Labour's problems in its London heartland. The main focus was on the threat to Wes Streeting in Ilford North whose majority in 2019 was 5,200 and now faces an Independent candidate with links to pro-Palestine groups whose own campaign may be helped by the inclusion of some parts of Ilford South into the newly-redrawn constituency.
The Standard also confirmed what I'd heard - that Councillor Mirza and the Newham Independents are going to stand candidates in both East Ham and West Ham & Beckton against Stephen Timms and Lyn Brown respectively. Another likely challenge to Labour is in Bethnal Green & Bow from an Aspire candidate.
It seems unlikely Labour will lose any of these seats and treating "the muslim vote" as a single homogenous entity is unwise. Respect got 20% in 2005 in East Ham and I suspect that's about where any pro-Palestine anti-Labour candidate will end up later this year.
Losing Wes Streeting from the next (likely) Cabinet of the UK would be a disaster for the whole country frankly. Someone needs to sort out the mess of the NHS and he seems like he might be up for the task. Prepared to reform and learn from other countries.
One can only hope if he loses Ilford then a quick peerage and Cabinet will happen.
We are in the unusual situation where all the major parties are pro-Israel, but a large number of voters are either pro-Palestine or neutral. However, Starmer is so scared of being called anti-semitic by the Tories, he is in danger of losing a lot of his natural supporters. Between dissatisfied Tories and dissatisfied Labour supporters, we could have an exceptionally low turnout at the GE.
Strange how sexist, homophobic, antisemites are considered to be our natural supporters. Don't we stand against all that stuff?
Because everyone who is critical of Israel is a sexist, homophobic antisemite... See what I mean about shutting down debate?
Homophobic, sexist, anti-Semites are in a war with and want to destroy Israel. And you, for that matter if they got their hands on you.
What exactly is the debate that is being shut down.
Let's hear people speak up for homophobic, sexist, anti-Semites. Have I got that right.
Unfortunately this is a by-election dominated by a quarrel in a far-away country between people of whom we know far, far too much.
There are conflicts all around the world that don't get a fraction of the spotlight or attention that this one has had. I wonder what is so unique about this one conflict, that every moment becomes headline news unlike all the others?
The physical carnage, the huge civilian casualties, the mass displacement of people, the resulting humanitarian disaster, the inflictor of all this being a regime supported by the west - these do make for a big story.
"the inflictor of all this being a regime supported by the west".
I think you might need to understand that this awful conflict was blatantly started by Hamas who "inflicted" rape torture and murder on innocent people.
There is a reasonable argument that the Israeli response has been disproportionate, but the "infliction" was initiated by Hamas terrorists.
As you have been an occasional apologist for Corbyn (and probably indirectly voted for him to be PM) I guess this is hard to recognise?
I know who started the fire. Hamas did. Oct 7th was unspeakable. It's now 13th February and Israel has wreaked a mighty vengeance for it.
Justifiable response to a threat deemed existential? Or barbaric collective punishment of the population of Gaza?
I think the latter.
I think you'll find that war does involve what useful idiots such as yourself would call "collective punishment".
Collective punishment is a war crime under Article 33 of the Geneva Convention. People who make excuses for it are idiots, useful or otherwise.
That's why I put it in quotation marks. Or perhaps Kinabalu thinks what Israel is doing is a war crime.
Well many of us do.
Yes hugely important that arseholes on the internet think something or other.
The arseholes being those who defend the murder of civilians as a necessary evil.
You suit the description perfectly.
It's war, Dickie boy. Look it up in the dictionary.
Indeed hence war crimes. Look them up yourself.
I suspect the proportion of military combatants to civilians was far smaller ratio in the Hamburg firestorm and the levelling of Dresden. But we weren't on trial at Nuremburg.
Is it a free pass for war crimes if you win the war?
Nope. Many commentators these days consider Dresden as a war crime. Indeed there is no escaping that for Harris as his explicit stated aim of breaking the German spirit by targeting civilians is specifically addressed as a war crime today.
The UK, and importantly in this debate, Israel both signed up to the post WW2 international rules on the conduct of war which outlawed many of the things both sides did in WW2 and which Israel and Russia are both doing now.
Personally I think only idiots living without the fear of Nazi tyranny consider Dresden a war crime. Why Dresden and not every single bombing raid that Bomber Command mounted? Because like it or not, Bomber Command wanted to achieve Dresden results EVERY time they set out. Dresden stands out as it was late in the war, and was highly successful, due to the firestorm. But many, many allied soldiers died after Dresden. Many Jews and other captives of the Nazis died after Dresden. Germany could have surrendered and stopped it all.
Because it was clear that it would not work. It was part of this ridiculous idea of British moral superiority. We had not cracked under the Blitz because we were British. But johnny foreigner is not made of the same stuff and so was bound to be broken by our bombing his cities flat.
Harris explicitly pushed this idea - that he could win the war by breaking the German spirit. It was clear in hindsight (and to many at the time) that it was a fallacy and that is one of the reasons that it was outlawed after the war. The whole campaign of targetting German civilian population would today be considered criminal and put in the same category as the use of poison gas.
It was ignorance as much as arrogance. Fascinating commentary from physicist Freeman Dyson here:
https://www.technologyreview.com/2006/11/01/227625/a-failure-of-intelligence/ … Bomber Command had a similar problem in evaluating the effectiveness of bombing. Aircrew frequently reported the destruction of targets when photographs showed they had missed by several miles. The navy ORS was extremely effective and made great contributions to winning the war against the U-boats in the Atlantic. But Blackett had two enormous advantages. First, he was a world-renowned scientist (who would later win a Nobel Prize), with a safe job in the academic world, so he could threaten to resign if his advice was not followed. Second, he had been a navy officer in World War I and was respected by the admirals he advised. Basil Dickins, the chief of our ORS at Bomber Command, had neither of these advantages. He was a civil servant with no independent standing. He could not threaten to resign, and Sir Arthur Harris had no respect for him. His career depended on telling Sir Arthur things that Sir Arthur wanted to hear. So that is what he did. He gave Sir Arthur information rather than advice. He never raised serious questions about Sir Arthur’s tactics and strategy…
This makes pretty clear that the targeting of civilans was deliberate policy : … We succeeded in raising firestorms only twice, once in Hamburg and once more in Dresden in 1945, where between 25,000 and 60,000 people perished (the numbers are still debated). The Germans had good air raid shelters and warning systems and did what they were told. As a result, only a few thousand people were killed in a typical major attack. But when there was a firestorm, people were asphyxiated or roasted inside their shelters, and the number killed was more than 10 times greater. Every time Bomber Command attacked a city, we were trying to raise a firestorm, but we never learnt why we so seldom succeeded…
Targeting of workers making weapons to kill allied soldiers would fit just as well. And the firestorm didn’t just kill people it destroyed buildings.
None of this is nice. But being gassed at Auschwitz was pretty below the belt too, as was being rounded up and burned to death in a church (Oradour) or taken to a ravine, stripped naked and shot, including the children.
I’m comfortable with everything that was done to defeat Germany. I’m sorry others can’t see that. I’ve read accounts of Dresden, and Hamburg, and it sounds horrifying. I hope it never happens again, and I hope I never get to experience it. But it doesn’t make it a war crime.
Dresden, whatever you think of it, pales into insignificance beside Operation Meetinghouse, the firebombing of Tokyo a month later, which is estimated to have killed at least 100,000 people, a death toll not far removed from that later reached at Hiroshima.
I'm curious from a historical perspective - by March 1945, the Americans showed they could destroy any and every Japanese city at whim and inflict massive casualties yet the Japanese didn't at that point yield. Hiroshima, albeit a single device of an unknown magnitude, produced, one could argue, a death toll akin to a fire bombing raid and that didn't immediately force the Japanese surrender.
Was it the second A-Bomb or was it the defeat of the Kwantung Army in Manchuria which persuaded Hirohito and others final defeat was at hand?
The Evening Standard tonight had a double page feature on Labour's problems in its London heartland. The main focus was on the threat to Wes Streeting in Ilford North whose majority in 2019 was 5,200 and now faces an Independent candidate with links to pro-Palestine groups whose own campaign may be helped by the inclusion of some parts of Ilford South into the newly-redrawn constituency.
The Standard also confirmed what I'd heard - that Councillor Mirza and the Newham Independents are going to stand candidates in both East Ham and West Ham & Beckton against Stephen Timms and Lyn Brown respectively. Another likely challenge to Labour is in Bethnal Green & Bow from an Aspire candidate.
It seems unlikely Labour will lose any of these seats and treating "the muslim vote" as a single homogenous entity is unwise. Respect got 20% in 2005 in East Ham and I suspect that's about where any pro-Palestine anti-Labour candidate will end up later this year.
Losing Wes Streeting from the next (likely) Cabinet of the UK would be a disaster for the whole country frankly. Someone needs to sort out the mess of the NHS and he seems like he might be up for the task. Prepared to reform and learn from other countries.
One can only hope if he loses Ilford then a quick peerage and Cabinet will happen.
We are in the unusual situation where all the major parties are pro-Israel, but a large number of voters are either pro-Palestine or neutral. However, Starmer is so scared of being called anti-semitic by the Tories, he is in danger of losing a lot of his natural supporters. Between dissatisfied Tories and dissatisfied Labour supporters, we could have an exceptionally low turnout at the GE.
Strange how sexist, homophobic, antisemites are considered to be our natural supporters. Don't we stand against all that stuff?
Because everyone who is critical of Israel is a sexist, homophobic antisemite... See what I mean about shutting down debate?
Homophobic, sexist, anti-Semites are in a war with and want to destroy Israel. And you, for that matter if they got their hands on you.
What exactly is the debate that is being shut down.
Let's hear people speak up for homophobic, sexist, anti-Semites. Have I got that right.
Unfortunately this is a by-election dominated by a quarrel in a far-away country between people of whom we know far, far too much.
There are conflicts all around the world that don't get a fraction of the spotlight or attention that this one has had. I wonder what is so unique about this one conflict, that every moment becomes headline news unlike all the others?
The physical carnage, the huge civilian casualties, the mass displacement of people, the resulting humanitarian disaster, the inflictor of all this being a regime supported by the west - these do make for a big story.
"the inflictor of all this being a regime supported by the west".
I think you might need to understand that this awful conflict was blatantly started by Hamas who "inflicted" rape torture and murder on innocent people.
There is a reasonable argument that the Israeli response has been disproportionate, but the "infliction" was initiated by Hamas terrorists.
As you have been an occasional apologist for Corbyn (and probably indirectly voted for him to be PM) I guess this is hard to recognise?
I know who started the fire. Hamas did. Oct 7th was unspeakable. It's now 13th February and Israel has wreaked a mighty vengeance for it.
Justifiable response to a threat deemed existential? Or barbaric collective punishment of the population of Gaza?
I think the latter.
I think you'll find that war does involve what useful idiots such as yourself would call "collective punishment".
Collective punishment is a war crime under Article 33 of the Geneva Convention. People who make excuses for it are idiots, useful or otherwise.
That's why I put it in quotation marks. Or perhaps Kinabalu thinks what Israel is doing is a war crime.
Well many of us do.
Yes hugely important that arseholes on the internet think something or other.
The arseholes being those who defend the murder of civilians as a necessary evil.
You suit the description perfectly.
It's war, Dickie boy. Look it up in the dictionary.
Indeed hence war crimes. Look them up yourself.
I suspect the proportion of military combatants to civilians was far smaller ratio in the Hamburg firestorm and the levelling of Dresden. But we weren't on trial at Nuremburg.
Is it a free pass for war crimes if you win the war?
Nope. Many commentators these days consider Dresden as a war crime. Indeed there is no escaping that for Harris as his explicit stated aim of breaking the German spirit by targeting civilians is specifically addressed as a war crime today.
The UK, and importantly in this debate, Israel both signed up to the post WW2 international rules on the conduct of war which outlawed many of the things both sides did in WW2 and which Israel and Russia are both doing now.
Personally I think only idiots living without the fear of Nazi tyranny consider Dresden a war crime. Why Dresden and not every single bombing raid that Bomber Command mounted? Because like it or not, Bomber Command wanted to achieve Dresden results EVERY time they set out. Dresden stands out as it was late in the war, and was highly successful, due to the firestorm. But many, many allied soldiers died after Dresden. Many Jews and other captives of the Nazis died after Dresden. Germany could have surrendered and stopped it all.
I know very little about WW2. But was Bomber Command strategy basically predicated on the idea that bombing Germany out of the war would save the innumerable slaughter witnessed in WW1?
Yep. Harris wanted to defeat Germany without the need for any British soldiers to land on the continent, other than to accept the surrender. There have been many arguments over the years about whether Bomber Command was worth the money and resources (materials and men) that it took. Max Hastings thought not in his book on the bomber war. Others disagree. Certainly the bombing campaign tied up tens if not hundreds of thousands of Germans defending the Reich who could have been fighting in the East. And combined with the 8th airforce’s campaign, the Allies achieved air dominance over the Luftwaffe, making D-Day much easier and restricting German movements to night time, to avoid being attacked from the air. By the end of 44 and into 45 the German transport system was wrecked, so moving anything was hard, including troops, tanks etc.
Sadly the idea that you could depress the morale of a nation under a fascist authoritarian regime was false. Even if a German housewife wanted to end the war after her house was destroyed, there was no mechanism for her to achieve it. And the Blitz had shown the resilience of the Brits under the bomb.
But ultimately strategic bombing contributed to winning the war and to describe one target destroyed as a war crime is infantile rubbish.
There were lots of things done on both sides in both wars which would now be considered war crimes. The whole point of civilisation is that we develop and learn from our mistakes.
My view is that war is never desirable, but once one is engaged, there’s no point in half measures.
Ultimately one has to do what is needful, to win. There is nothing worse than defeat.
Hallelujah.
This is what I referred to earlier. The UK hasn't been in a war for a very long time. We have had operations in Afghan, Iraq, Bosnia, for example, where at the end of the day we could always say fuck it and go home. Indeed that is exactly what we did mostly.
The likes of Richard "Dickie Boy" Tyndall is mistaking such actions with actual war.
If you are losing or think you might lose a war what on earth do you care about "the rules". A ridiculous concept in any case.
I will be sure to remind you in future that you advocated for murdering children.
You would rather have lost the second world war than bomb Dresden.
Unfortunately this is a by-election dominated by a quarrel in a far-away country between people of whom we know far, far too much.
There are conflicts all around the world that don't get a fraction of the spotlight or attention that this one has had. I wonder what is so unique about this one conflict, that every moment becomes headline news unlike all the others?
The physical carnage, the huge civilian casualties, the mass displacement of people, the resulting humanitarian disaster, the inflictor of all this being a regime supported by the west - these do make for a big story.
"the inflictor of all this being a regime supported by the west".
I think you might need to understand that this awful conflict was blatantly started by Hamas who "inflicted" rape torture and murder on innocent people.
There is a reasonable argument that the Israeli response has been disproportionate, but the "infliction" was initiated by Hamas terrorists.
As you have been an occasional apologist for Corbyn (and probably indirectly voted for him to be PM) I guess this is hard to recognise?
I know who started the fire. Hamas did. Oct 7th was unspeakable. It's now 13th February and Israel has wreaked a mighty vengeance for it.
Justifiable response to a threat deemed existential? Or barbaric collective punishment of the population of Gaza?
I think the latter.
I think you'll find that war does involve what useful idiots such as yourself would call "collective punishment".
Collective punishment is a war crime under Article 33 of the Geneva Convention. People who make excuses for it are idiots, useful or otherwise.
That's why I put it in quotation marks. Or perhaps Kinabalu thinks what Israel is doing is a war crime.
Well many of us do.
Yes hugely important that arseholes on the internet think something or other.
The arseholes being those who defend the murder of civilians as a necessary evil.
You suit the description perfectly.
It's war, Dickie boy. Look it up in the dictionary.
Indeed hence war crimes. Look them up yourself.
I suspect the proportion of military combatants to civilians was far smaller ratio in the Hamburg firestorm and the levelling of Dresden. But we weren't on trial at Nuremburg.
Is it a free pass for war crimes if you win the war?
Nope. Many commentators these days consider Dresden as a war crime. Indeed there is no escaping that for Harris as his explicit stated aim of breaking the German spirit by targeting civilians is specifically addressed as a war crime today.
The UK, and importantly in this debate, Israel both signed up to the post WW2 international rules on the conduct of war which outlawed many of the things both sides did in WW2 and which Israel and Russia are both doing now.
Personally I think only idiots living without the fear of Nazi tyranny consider Dresden a war crime. Why Dresden and not every single bombing raid that Bomber Command mounted? Because like it or not, Bomber Command wanted to achieve Dresden results EVERY time they set out. Dresden stands out as it was late in the war, and was highly successful, due to the firestorm. But many, many allied soldiers died after Dresden. Many Jews and other captives of the Nazis died after Dresden. Germany could have surrendered and stopped it all.
I know very little about WW2. But was Bomber Command strategy basically predicated on the idea that bombing Germany out of the war would save the innumerable slaughter witnessed in WW1?
Yep. Harris wanted to defeat Germany without the need for any British soldiers to land on the continent, other than to accept the surrender. There have been many arguments over the years about whether Bomber Command was worth the money and resources (materials and men) that it took. Max Hastings thought not in his book on the bomber war. Others disagree. Certainly the bombing campaign tied up tens if not hundreds of thousands of Germans defending the Reich who could have been fighting in the East. And combined with the 8th airforce’s campaign, the Allies achieved air dominance over the Luftwaffe, making D-Day much easier and restricting German movements to night time, to avoid being attacked from the air. By the end of 44 and into 45 the German transport system was wrecked, so moving anything was hard, including troops, tanks etc.
Sadly the idea that you could depress the morale of a nation under a fascist authoritarian regime was false. Even if a German housewife wanted to end the war after her house was destroyed, there was no mechanism for her to achieve it. And the Blitz had shown the resilience of the Brits under the bomb.
But ultimately strategic bombing contributed to winning the war and to describe one target destroyed as a war crime is infantile rubbish.
There were lots of things done on both sides in both wars which would now be considered war crimes. The whole point of civilisation is that we develop and learn from our mistakes.
My view is that war is never desirable, but once one is engaged, there’s no point in half measures.
Ultimately one has to do what is needful, to win. There is nothing worse than defeat.
Hallelujah.
This is what I referred to earlier. The UK hasn't been in a war for a very long time. We have had operations in Afghan, Iraq, Bosnia, for example, where at the end of the day we could always say fuck it and go home. Indeed that is exactly what we did mostly.
The likes of Richard "Dickie Boy" Tyndall is mistaking such actions with actual war.
If you are losing or think you might lose a war what on earth do you care about "the rules". A ridiculous concept in any case.
Indeed. Just war theory goes out the window when the nation is facing an existential threat. Then you do whatever it takes to avoid defeat.
Unfortunately this is a by-election dominated by a quarrel in a far-away country between people of whom we know far, far too much.
There are conflicts all around the world that don't get a fraction of the spotlight or attention that this one has had. I wonder what is so unique about this one conflict, that every moment becomes headline news unlike all the others?
The physical carnage, the huge civilian casualties, the mass displacement of people, the resulting humanitarian disaster, the inflictor of all this being a regime supported by the west - these do make for a big story.
"the inflictor of all this being a regime supported by the west".
I think you might need to understand that this awful conflict was blatantly started by Hamas who "inflicted" rape torture and murder on innocent people.
There is a reasonable argument that the Israeli response has been disproportionate, but the "infliction" was initiated by Hamas terrorists.
As you have been an occasional apologist for Corbyn (and probably indirectly voted for him to be PM) I guess this is hard to recognise?
I know who started the fire. Hamas did. Oct 7th was unspeakable. It's now 13th February and Israel has wreaked a mighty vengeance for it.
Justifiable response to a threat deemed existential? Or barbaric collective punishment of the population of Gaza?
I think the latter.
I think you'll find that war does involve what useful idiots such as yourself would call "collective punishment".
Collective punishment is a war crime under Article 33 of the Geneva Convention. People who make excuses for it are idiots, useful or otherwise.
That's why I put it in quotation marks. Or perhaps Kinabalu thinks what Israel is doing is a war crime.
Well many of us do.
Yes hugely important that arseholes on the internet think something or other.
The arseholes being those who defend the murder of civilians as a necessary evil.
You suit the description perfectly.
It's war, Dickie boy. Look it up in the dictionary.
Indeed hence war crimes. Look them up yourself.
I suspect the proportion of military combatants to civilians was far smaller ratio in the Hamburg firestorm and the levelling of Dresden. But we weren't on trial at Nuremburg.
Is it a free pass for war crimes if you win the war?
Nope. Many commentators these days consider Dresden as a war crime. Indeed there is no escaping that for Harris as his explicit stated aim of breaking the German spirit by targeting civilians is specifically addressed as a war crime today.
The UK, and importantly in this debate, Israel both signed up to the post WW2 international rules on the conduct of war which outlawed many of the things both sides did in WW2 and which Israel and Russia are both doing now.
Personally I think only idiots living without the fear of Nazi tyranny consider Dresden a war crime. Why Dresden and not every single bombing raid that Bomber Command mounted? Because like it or not, Bomber Command wanted to achieve Dresden results EVERY time they set out. Dresden stands out as it was late in the war, and was highly successful, due to the firestorm. But many, many allied soldiers died after Dresden. Many Jews and other captives of the Nazis died after Dresden. Germany could have surrendered and stopped it all.
Because it was clear that it would not work. It was part of this ridiculous idea of British moral superiority. We had not cracked under the Blitz because we were British. But johnny foreigner is not made of the same stuff and so was bound to be broken by our bombing his cities flat.
Harris explicitly pushed this idea - that he could win the war by breaking the German spirit. It was clear in hindsight (and to many at the time) that it was a fallacy and that is one of the reasons that it was outlawed after the war. The whole campaign of targetting German civilian population would today be considered criminal and put in the same category as the use of poison gas.
I’m sorry but I disagree. It did work, just not by damaging morale. See the effort Germany had to put into defending the Reich, rather than fighting the Russians. See the D-Day campaign and after for why winning air superiority was so crucial. The battle of the bulge only got as far as it did because the allies could not fly due to the weather. When the weather cleared the fighter-bombers returned and wreaked havoc.
Morale bombing failed, yes, but the Bombing War as a whole played a significant role in the allied victory. Singling out Dresden as ‘special’ is just nonsense, as Bomber Command, and the 8th Air Force tried to achieve similar results every time. Is Hamburg a war crime? What about Schweinfurt?
That wasn’t Dyson’s view. And he was better placed than most to make the judgment. … A week after the final attack on Berlin, we suffered an even more crushing defeat. We attacked Nuremberg with 795 bombers and lost 94, a loss rate of almost 12 percent. It was then clear to everybody that such losses were unsustainable. Sir Arthur reluctantly abandoned his dream of winning the War by himself. Bomber Command stopped flying so deep into Germany and spent the summer of 1944 giving tactical support to the Allied armies that were, by then, invading France.
The history of the 20th century has repeatedly shown that strategic bombing by itself does not win wars. If Britain had decided in 1936 to put its main effort into building ships instead of bombers, the invasion of France might have been possible in 1943 instead of 1944, and the war in Europe might have ended in 1944 instead of 1945. But in 1943, we had the bombers, and we did not have the ships, and the problem was to do the best we could with what we had...
And yet invading France in 1943 would have been against a Luftwaffe that was still capable of inflicting severe damage, and against a German army that was significantly stronger. Churchill was desperate NOT to invade in 43. About the only advantage would have been the much less complete Atlantic Wall.
I totally agree that strategic bombing did not win the war alone. No one thinks it did, or indeed could. But it played a huge part. German industry was massively hindered. Transport was destroyed. The Das Reich panzer division took an age to get from southern France to Normandy, mainly due to air power of the allies, won by strategic bombing, notably the 8th who actively sought to destroy Luftwaffe fighters, using bombers as bait.
Actually no. The Das Reich movement is a perfect example of the idiocy of bombing as a tool. The French were opposed to it and condemned it both before and after the event and in the end it was as much the actions of a few people - both resistance and the Jedburgh teams - that stopped the trains. Blowing up the tracks and junctions killed alot of French civilians bt was largely pointless because the German plan to move Das Reich by train had aready been abandoned when all the rolling stock was sabotaged.
Unfortunately this is a by-election dominated by a quarrel in a far-away country between people of whom we know far, far too much.
There are conflicts all around the world that don't get a fraction of the spotlight or attention that this one has had. I wonder what is so unique about this one conflict, that every moment becomes headline news unlike all the others?
The physical carnage, the huge civilian casualties, the mass displacement of people, the resulting humanitarian disaster, the inflictor of all this being a regime supported by the west - these do make for a big story.
"the inflictor of all this being a regime supported by the west".
I think you might need to understand that this awful conflict was blatantly started by Hamas who "inflicted" rape torture and murder on innocent people.
There is a reasonable argument that the Israeli response has been disproportionate, but the "infliction" was initiated by Hamas terrorists.
As you have been an occasional apologist for Corbyn (and probably indirectly voted for him to be PM) I guess this is hard to recognise?
I know who started the fire. Hamas did. Oct 7th was unspeakable. It's now 13th February and Israel has wreaked a mighty vengeance for it.
Justifiable response to a threat deemed existential? Or barbaric collective punishment of the population of Gaza?
I think the latter.
I think you'll find that war does involve what useful idiots such as yourself would call "collective punishment".
Collective punishment is a war crime under Article 33 of the Geneva Convention. People who make excuses for it are idiots, useful or otherwise.
That's why I put it in quotation marks. Or perhaps Kinabalu thinks what Israel is doing is a war crime.
Well many of us do.
Yes hugely important that arseholes on the internet think something or other.
The arseholes being those who defend the murder of civilians as a necessary evil.
You suit the description perfectly.
It's war, Dickie boy. Look it up in the dictionary.
Indeed hence war crimes. Look them up yourself.
I suspect the proportion of military combatants to civilians was far smaller ratio in the Hamburg firestorm and the levelling of Dresden. But we weren't on trial at Nuremburg.
Is it a free pass for war crimes if you win the war?
Nope. Many commentators these days consider Dresden as a war crime. Indeed there is no escaping that for Harris as his explicit stated aim of breaking the German spirit by targeting civilians is specifically addressed as a war crime today.
The UK, and importantly in this debate, Israel both signed up to the post WW2 international rules on the conduct of war which outlawed many of the things both sides did in WW2 and which Israel and Russia are both doing now.
Personally I think only idiots living without the fear of Nazi tyranny consider Dresden a war crime. Why Dresden and not every single bombing raid that Bomber Command mounted? Because like it or not, Bomber Command wanted to achieve Dresden results EVERY time they set out. Dresden stands out as it was late in the war, and was highly successful, due to the firestorm. But many, many allied soldiers died after Dresden. Many Jews and other captives of the Nazis died after Dresden. Germany could have surrendered and stopped it all.
I know very little about WW2. But was Bomber Command strategy basically predicated on the idea that bombing Germany out of the war would save the innumerable slaughter witnessed in WW1?
Yep. Harris wanted to defeat Germany without the need for any British soldiers to land on the continent, other than to accept the surrender. There have been many arguments over the years about whether Bomber Command was worth the money and resources (materials and men) that it took. Max Hastings thought not in his book on the bomber war. Others disagree. Certainly the bombing campaign tied up tens if not hundreds of thousands of Germans defending the Reich who could have been fighting in the East. And combined with the 8th airforce’s campaign, the Allies achieved air dominance over the Luftwaffe, making D-Day much easier and restricting German movements to night time, to avoid being attacked from the air. By the end of 44 and into 45 the German transport system was wrecked, so moving anything was hard, including troops, tanks etc.
Sadly the idea that you could depress the morale of a nation under a fascist authoritarian regime was false. Even if a German housewife wanted to end the war after her house was destroyed, there was no mechanism for her to achieve it. And the Blitz had shown the resilience of the Brits under the bomb.
But ultimately strategic bombing contributed to winning the war and to describe one target destroyed as a war crime is infantile rubbish.
There were lots of things done on both sides in both wars which would now be considered war crimes. The whole point of civilisation is that we develop and learn from our mistakes.
My view is that war is never desirable, but once one is engaged, there’s no point in half measures.
Ultimately one has to do what is needful, to win. There is nothing worse than defeat.
If the price is 2.3 million Gazans including women and children?
Israel have the right to defend themselves against Hamas. Benjamin Netanyahu does not have the right to save his liberty and political career by the mass killing of Gazan women and children. That is not anti-Semitic but it does demonstrate my utter contempt for a sociopath who happens to be Prime Minister of Israel.
Bloody hell is the death toll up to 2.3m already.
What's your market 2.2m-2.4m? Can I please sell at 2.2m at a pound a life.
The Evening Standard tonight had a double page feature on Labour's problems in its London heartland. The main focus was on the threat to Wes Streeting in Ilford North whose majority in 2019 was 5,200 and now faces an Independent candidate with links to pro-Palestine groups whose own campaign may be helped by the inclusion of some parts of Ilford South into the newly-redrawn constituency.
The Standard also confirmed what I'd heard - that Councillor Mirza and the Newham Independents are going to stand candidates in both East Ham and West Ham & Beckton against Stephen Timms and Lyn Brown respectively. Another likely challenge to Labour is in Bethnal Green & Bow from an Aspire candidate.
It seems unlikely Labour will lose any of these seats and treating "the muslim vote" as a single homogenous entity is unwise. Respect got 20% in 2005 in East Ham and I suspect that's about where any pro-Palestine anti-Labour candidate will end up later this year.
Losing Wes Streeting from the next (likely) Cabinet of the UK would be a disaster for the whole country frankly. Someone needs to sort out the mess of the NHS and he seems like he might be up for the task. Prepared to reform and learn from other countries.
One can only hope if he loses Ilford then a quick peerage and Cabinet will happen.
Sticking reject politicians who cannot win their own constituency into the Lords is the sort of thing that brings the Lords into disrepute.
I am very suspicious of Streeting. All I have seem from him is superficial gimmicks and a ruthless personal ambition. I don't think he cares much about the job.
The Evening Standard tonight had a double page feature on Labour's problems in its London heartland. The main focus was on the threat to Wes Streeting in Ilford North whose majority in 2019 was 5,200 and now faces an Independent candidate with links to pro-Palestine groups whose own campaign may be helped by the inclusion of some parts of Ilford South into the newly-redrawn constituency.
The Standard also confirmed what I'd heard - that Councillor Mirza and the Newham Independents are going to stand candidates in both East Ham and West Ham & Beckton against Stephen Timms and Lyn Brown respectively. Another likely challenge to Labour is in Bethnal Green & Bow from an Aspire candidate.
It seems unlikely Labour will lose any of these seats and treating "the muslim vote" as a single homogenous entity is unwise. Respect got 20% in 2005 in East Ham and I suspect that's about where any pro-Palestine anti-Labour candidate will end up later this year.
Losing Wes Streeting from the next (likely) Cabinet of the UK would be a disaster for the whole country frankly. Someone needs to sort out the mess of the NHS and he seems like he might be up for the task. Prepared to reform and learn from other countries.
One can only hope if he loses Ilford then a quick peerage and Cabinet will happen.
We are in the unusual situation where all the major parties are pro-Israel, but a large number of voters are either pro-Palestine or neutral. However, Starmer is so scared of being called anti-semitic by the Tories, he is in danger of losing a lot of his natural supporters. Between dissatisfied Tories and dissatisfied Labour supporters, we could have an exceptionally low turnout at the GE.
Strange how sexist, homophobic, antisemites are considered to be our natural supporters. Don't we stand against all that stuff?
There are ca. 270,000 Jews in Britain. So a very tiny minority. Parties could ignore them. But Labour, in particular, is always saying it is in favour of vulnerable marginalised communities. And this community is particularly vulnerable at the moment and marginalised. So Labour should be very strongly on its side and against those who seek to attack Jews here. The issue is not whether the attacks fall into some definition of anti-semitism but simply that attacks on the vulnerable are wrong. This should not be difficult for Labour or the LibDems or any party really.
Criticising Israel and attacking British Jews are two entirely distinct things. The first is totally fine, the second is totally wrong. People who can't do the first without doing the second need to shut up. People who conflate the two to try to shut down the first should also shut up.
I have said nothing about Israel. Only about attacks on Jews here.
But it seems to me that a lot of people seem to want to justify or ignore attacks on Jews here by referencing Israel, which seems to me to be wrong.
Unfortunately this is a by-election dominated by a quarrel in a far-away country between people of whom we know far, far too much.
There are conflicts all around the world that don't get a fraction of the spotlight or attention that this one has had. I wonder what is so unique about this one conflict, that every moment becomes headline news unlike all the others?
The physical carnage, the huge civilian casualties, the mass displacement of people, the resulting humanitarian disaster, the inflictor of all this being a regime supported by the west - these do make for a big story.
"the inflictor of all this being a regime supported by the west".
I think you might need to understand that this awful conflict was blatantly started by Hamas who "inflicted" rape torture and murder on innocent people.
There is a reasonable argument that the Israeli response has been disproportionate, but the "infliction" was initiated by Hamas terrorists.
As you have been an occasional apologist for Corbyn (and probably indirectly voted for him to be PM) I guess this is hard to recognise?
I know who started the fire. Hamas did. Oct 7th was unspeakable. It's now 13th February and Israel has wreaked a mighty vengeance for it.
Justifiable response to a threat deemed existential? Or barbaric collective punishment of the population of Gaza?
I think the latter.
I think you'll find that war does involve what useful idiots such as yourself would call "collective punishment".
Collective punishment is a war crime under Article 33 of the Geneva Convention. People who make excuses for it are idiots, useful or otherwise.
That's why I put it in quotation marks. Or perhaps Kinabalu thinks what Israel is doing is a war crime.
Well many of us do.
Yes hugely important that arseholes on the internet think something or other.
The arseholes being those who defend the murder of civilians as a necessary evil.
You suit the description perfectly.
It's war, Dickie boy. Look it up in the dictionary.
Indeed hence war crimes. Look them up yourself.
I suspect the proportion of military combatants to civilians was far smaller ratio in the Hamburg firestorm and the levelling of Dresden. But we weren't on trial at Nuremburg.
Is it a free pass for war crimes if you win the war?
Nope. Many commentators these days consider Dresden as a war crime. Indeed there is no escaping that for Harris as his explicit stated aim of breaking the German spirit by targeting civilians is specifically addressed as a war crime today.
The UK, and importantly in this debate, Israel both signed up to the post WW2 international rules on the conduct of war which outlawed many of the things both sides did in WW2 and which Israel and Russia are both doing now.
Personally I think only idiots living without the fear of Nazi tyranny consider Dresden a war crime. Why Dresden and not every single bombing raid that Bomber Command mounted? Because like it or not, Bomber Command wanted to achieve Dresden results EVERY time they set out. Dresden stands out as it was late in the war, and was highly successful, due to the firestorm. But many, many allied soldiers died after Dresden. Many Jews and other captives of the Nazis died after Dresden. Germany could have surrendered and stopped it all.
Because it was clear that it would not work. It was part of this ridiculous idea of British moral superiority. We had not cracked under the Blitz because we were British. But johnny foreigner is not made of the same stuff and so was bound to be broken by our bombing his cities flat.
Harris explicitly pushed this idea - that he could win the war by breaking the German spirit. It was clear in hindsight (and to many at the time) that it was a fallacy and that is one of the reasons that it was outlawed after the war. The whole campaign of targetting German civilian population would today be considered criminal and put in the same category as the use of poison gas.
I’m sorry but I disagree. It did work, just not by damaging morale. See the effort Germany had to put into defending the Reich, rather than fighting the Russians. See the D-Day campaign and after for why winning air superiority was so crucial. The battle of the bulge only got as far as it did because the allies could not fly due to the weather. When the weather cleared the fighter-bombers returned and wreaked havoc.
Morale bombing failed, yes, but the Bombing War as a whole played a significant role in the allied victory. Singling out Dresden as ‘special’ is just nonsense, as Bomber Command, and the 8th Air Force tried to achieve similar results every time. Is Hamburg a war crime? What about Schweinfurt?
That wasn’t Dyson’s view. And he was better placed than most to make the judgment. … A week after the final attack on Berlin, we suffered an even more crushing defeat. We attacked Nuremberg with 795 bombers and lost 94, a loss rate of almost 12 percent. It was then clear to everybody that such losses were unsustainable. Sir Arthur reluctantly abandoned his dream of winning the War by himself. Bomber Command stopped flying so deep into Germany and spent the summer of 1944 giving tactical support to the Allied armies that were, by then, invading France.
The history of the 20th century has repeatedly shown that strategic bombing by itself does not win wars. If Britain had decided in 1936 to put its main effort into building ships instead of bombers, the invasion of France might have been possible in 1943 instead of 1944, and the war in Europe might have ended in 1944 instead of 1945. But in 1943, we had the bombers, and we did not have the ships, and the problem was to do the best we could with what we had...
And yet invading France in 1943 would have been against a Luftwaffe that was still capable of inflicting severe damage, and against a German army that was significantly stronger. Churchill was desperate NOT to invade in 43. About the only advantage would have been the much less complete Atlantic Wall.
I totally agree that strategic bombing did not win the war alone. No one thinks it did, or indeed could. But it played a huge part. German industry was massively hindered. Transport was destroyed. The Das Reich panzer division took an age to get from southern France to Normandy, mainly due to air power of the allies, won by strategic bombing, notably the 8th who actively sought to destroy Luftwaffe fighters, using bombers as bait.
Read the whole of the Dyson article. He was smarter than either of us, and he was there to analyse it. He simply doesn’t believe the “strategic bombing” of cities worked. Which was why it was eventually abandoned.
Whereas the accurate targeted bombing of oil supplies almost certainly did.
Unfortunately this is a by-election dominated by a quarrel in a far-away country between people of whom we know far, far too much.
There are conflicts all around the world that don't get a fraction of the spotlight or attention that this one has had. I wonder what is so unique about this one conflict, that every moment becomes headline news unlike all the others?
The physical carnage, the huge civilian casualties, the mass displacement of people, the resulting humanitarian disaster, the inflictor of all this being a regime supported by the west - these do make for a big story.
"the inflictor of all this being a regime supported by the west".
I think you might need to understand that this awful conflict was blatantly started by Hamas who "inflicted" rape torture and murder on innocent people.
There is a reasonable argument that the Israeli response has been disproportionate, but the "infliction" was initiated by Hamas terrorists.
As you have been an occasional apologist for Corbyn (and probably indirectly voted for him to be PM) I guess this is hard to recognise?
I know who started the fire. Hamas did. Oct 7th was unspeakable. It's now 13th February and Israel has wreaked a mighty vengeance for it.
Justifiable response to a threat deemed existential? Or barbaric collective punishment of the population of Gaza?
I think the latter.
I think you'll find that war does involve what useful idiots such as yourself would call "collective punishment".
Collective punishment is a war crime under Article 33 of the Geneva Convention. People who make excuses for it are idiots, useful or otherwise.
That's why I put it in quotation marks. Or perhaps Kinabalu thinks what Israel is doing is a war crime.
Well many of us do.
Yes hugely important that arseholes on the internet think something or other.
The arseholes being those who defend the murder of civilians as a necessary evil.
You suit the description perfectly.
It's war, Dickie boy. Look it up in the dictionary.
Indeed hence war crimes. Look them up yourself.
I suspect the proportion of military combatants to civilians was far smaller ratio in the Hamburg firestorm and the levelling of Dresden. But we weren't on trial at Nuremburg.
Is it a free pass for war crimes if you win the war?
Nope. Many commentators these days consider Dresden as a war crime. Indeed there is no escaping that for Harris as his explicit stated aim of breaking the German spirit by targeting civilians is specifically addressed as a war crime today.
The UK, and importantly in this debate, Israel both signed up to the post WW2 international rules on the conduct of war which outlawed many of the things both sides did in WW2 and which Israel and Russia are both doing now.
Personally I think only idiots living without the fear of Nazi tyranny consider Dresden a war crime. Why Dresden and not every single bombing raid that Bomber Command mounted? Because like it or not, Bomber Command wanted to achieve Dresden results EVERY time they set out. Dresden stands out as it was late in the war, and was highly successful, due to the firestorm. But many, many allied soldiers died after Dresden. Many Jews and other captives of the Nazis died after Dresden. Germany could have surrendered and stopped it all.
I know very little about WW2. But was Bomber Command strategy basically predicated on the idea that bombing Germany out of the war would save the innumerable slaughter witnessed in WW1?
Yep. Harris wanted to defeat Germany without the need for any British soldiers to land on the continent, other than to accept the surrender. There have been many arguments over the years about whether Bomber Command was worth the money and resources (materials and men) that it took. Max Hastings thought not in his book on the bomber war. Others disagree. Certainly the bombing campaign tied up tens if not hundreds of thousands of Germans defending the Reich who could have been fighting in the East. And combined with the 8th airforce’s campaign, the Allies achieved air dominance over the Luftwaffe, making D-Day much easier and restricting German movements to night time, to avoid being attacked from the air. By the end of 44 and into 45 the German transport system was wrecked, so moving anything was hard, including troops, tanks etc.
Sadly the idea that you could depress the morale of a nation under a fascist authoritarian regime was false. Even if a German housewife wanted to end the war after her house was destroyed, there was no mechanism for her to achieve it. And the Blitz had shown the resilience of the Brits under the bomb.
But ultimately strategic bombing contributed to winning the war and to describe one target destroyed as a war crime is infantile rubbish.
There were lots of things done on both sides in both wars which would now be considered war crimes. The whole point of civilisation is that we develop and learn from our mistakes.
My view is that war is never desirable, but once one is engaged, there’s no point in half measures.
Ultimately one has to do what is needful, to win. There is nothing worse than defeat.
Hallelujah.
This is what I referred to earlier. The UK hasn't been in a war for a very long time. We have had operations in Afghan, Iraq, Bosnia, for example, where at the end of the day we could always say fuck it and go home. Indeed that is exactly what we did mostly.
The likes of Richard "Dickie Boy" Tyndall is mistaking such actions with actual war.
If you are losing or think you might lose a war what on earth do you care about "the rules". A ridiculous concept in any case.
I will be sure to remind you in future that you advocated for murdering children.
You would rather have lost the second world war than bomb Dresden.
Bombing Dresden made not one iota of difference to the outcome of WW2.
Unfortunately this is a by-election dominated by a quarrel in a far-away country between people of whom we know far, far too much.
There are conflicts all around the world that don't get a fraction of the spotlight or attention that this one has had. I wonder what is so unique about this one conflict, that every moment becomes headline news unlike all the others?
The physical carnage, the huge civilian casualties, the mass displacement of people, the resulting humanitarian disaster, the inflictor of all this being a regime supported by the west - these do make for a big story.
"the inflictor of all this being a regime supported by the west".
I think you might need to understand that this awful conflict was blatantly started by Hamas who "inflicted" rape torture and murder on innocent people.
There is a reasonable argument that the Israeli response has been disproportionate, but the "infliction" was initiated by Hamas terrorists.
As you have been an occasional apologist for Corbyn (and probably indirectly voted for him to be PM) I guess this is hard to recognise?
I know who started the fire. Hamas did. Oct 7th was unspeakable. It's now 13th February and Israel has wreaked a mighty vengeance for it.
Justifiable response to a threat deemed existential? Or barbaric collective punishment of the population of Gaza?
I think the latter.
I think you'll find that war does involve what useful idiots such as yourself would call "collective punishment".
Collective punishment is a war crime under Article 33 of the Geneva Convention. People who make excuses for it are idiots, useful or otherwise.
That's why I put it in quotation marks. Or perhaps Kinabalu thinks what Israel is doing is a war crime.
Well many of us do.
Yes hugely important that arseholes on the internet think something or other.
The arseholes being those who defend the murder of civilians as a necessary evil.
You suit the description perfectly.
It's war, Dickie boy. Look it up in the dictionary.
Indeed hence war crimes. Look them up yourself.
I suspect the proportion of military combatants to civilians was far smaller ratio in the Hamburg firestorm and the levelling of Dresden. But we weren't on trial at Nuremburg.
Is it a free pass for war crimes if you win the war?
Nope. Many commentators these days consider Dresden as a war crime. Indeed there is no escaping that for Harris as his explicit stated aim of breaking the German spirit by targeting civilians is specifically addressed as a war crime today.
The UK, and importantly in this debate, Israel both signed up to the post WW2 international rules on the conduct of war which outlawed many of the things both sides did in WW2 and which Israel and Russia are both doing now.
Personally I think only idiots living without the fear of Nazi tyranny consider Dresden a war crime. Why Dresden and not every single bombing raid that Bomber Command mounted? Because like it or not, Bomber Command wanted to achieve Dresden results EVERY time they set out. Dresden stands out as it was late in the war, and was highly successful, due to the firestorm. But many, many allied soldiers died after Dresden. Many Jews and other captives of the Nazis died after Dresden. Germany could have surrendered and stopped it all.
Because it was clear that it would not work. It was part of this ridiculous idea of British moral superiority. We had not cracked under the Blitz because we were British. But johnny foreigner is not made of the same stuff and so was bound to be broken by our bombing his cities flat.
Harris explicitly pushed this idea - that he could win the war by breaking the German spirit. It was clear in hindsight (and to many at the time) that it was a fallacy and that is one of the reasons that it was outlawed after the war. The whole campaign of targetting German civilian population would today be considered criminal and put in the same category as the use of poison gas.
I’m sorry but I disagree. It did work, just not by damaging morale. See the effort Germany had to put into defending the Reich, rather than fighting the Russians. See the D-Day campaign and after for why winning air superiority was so crucial. The battle of the bulge only got as far as it did because the allies could not fly due to the weather. When the weather cleared the fighter-bombers returned and wreaked havoc.
Morale bombing failed, yes, but the Bombing War as a whole played a significant role in the allied victory. Singling out Dresden as ‘special’ is just nonsense, as Bomber Command, and the 8th Air Force tried to achieve similar results every time. Is Hamburg a war crime? What about Schweinfurt?
That wasn’t Dyson’s view. And he was better placed than most to make the judgment. … A week after the final attack on Berlin, we suffered an even more crushing defeat. We attacked Nuremberg with 795 bombers and lost 94, a loss rate of almost 12 percent. It was then clear to everybody that such losses were unsustainable. Sir Arthur reluctantly abandoned his dream of winning the War by himself. Bomber Command stopped flying so deep into Germany and spent the summer of 1944 giving tactical support to the Allied armies that were, by then, invading France.
The history of the 20th century has repeatedly shown that strategic bombing by itself does not win wars. If Britain had decided in 1936 to put its main effort into building ships instead of bombers, the invasion of France might have been possible in 1943 instead of 1944, and the war in Europe might have ended in 1944 instead of 1945. But in 1943, we had the bombers, and we did not have the ships, and the problem was to do the best we could with what we had...
And yet invading France in 1943 would have been against a Luftwaffe that was still capable of inflicting severe damage, and against a German army that was significantly stronger. Churchill was desperate NOT to invade in 43. About the only advantage would have been the much less complete Atlantic Wall.
I totally agree that strategic bombing did not win the war alone. No one thinks it did, or indeed could. But it played a huge part. German industry was massively hindered. Transport was destroyed. The Das Reich panzer division took an age to get from southern France to Normandy, mainly due to air power of the allies, won by strategic bombing, notably the 8th who actively sought to destroy Luftwaffe fighters, using bombers as bait.
Actually no. The Das Reich movement is a perfect example of the idiocy of bombing as a tool. The French were opposed to it and condemned it both before and after the event and in the end it was as much the actions of a few people - both resistance and the Jedburgh teams - that stopped the trains. Blowing up the tracks and junctions killed alot of French civilians bt was largely pointless because the German plan to move Das Reich by train had aready been abandoned when all the rolling stock was sabotaged.
The Germans couldn’t move by day because of relentless attacks fighter-bombers (Jabos). That’s air supremacy. Of course other factors affected the Das Reich, but bombing was always just one part of the picture. And yes, I’m sure the French didn’t want to be bombed, but that was a price to pay for them getting their country back, and they have held that grudge ever since.
This makes pretty clear that the targeting of civilans was deliberate policy : … We succeeded in raising firestorms only twice, once in Hamburg and once more in Dresden in 1945, where between 25,000 and 60,000 people perished (the numbers are still debated). The Germans had good air raid shelters and warning systems and did what they were told. As a result, only a few thousand people were killed in a typical major attack. But when there was a firestorm, people were asphyxiated or roasted inside their shelters, and the number killed was more than 10 times greater. Every time Bomber Command attacked a city, we were trying to raise a firestorm, but we never learnt why we so seldom succeeded…
Modelling fire is very challenging, much harder than modelling explosions. So for quite a long time nuclear weapon effects modelled blast and radiation, and didn't really account for fire. When fire modelling improved it was realised that in some circumstances a nuclear weapon might cause more deaths due to fire than anything else.
Unfortunately this is a by-election dominated by a quarrel in a far-away country between people of whom we know far, far too much.
There are conflicts all around the world that don't get a fraction of the spotlight or attention that this one has had. I wonder what is so unique about this one conflict, that every moment becomes headline news unlike all the others?
The physical carnage, the huge civilian casualties, the mass displacement of people, the resulting humanitarian disaster, the inflictor of all this being a regime supported by the west - these do make for a big story.
"the inflictor of all this being a regime supported by the west".
I think you might need to understand that this awful conflict was blatantly started by Hamas who "inflicted" rape torture and murder on innocent people.
There is a reasonable argument that the Israeli response has been disproportionate, but the "infliction" was initiated by Hamas terrorists.
As you have been an occasional apologist for Corbyn (and probably indirectly voted for him to be PM) I guess this is hard to recognise?
I know who started the fire. Hamas did. Oct 7th was unspeakable. It's now 13th February and Israel has wreaked a mighty vengeance for it.
Justifiable response to a threat deemed existential? Or barbaric collective punishment of the population of Gaza?
I think the latter.
I think you'll find that war does involve what useful idiots such as yourself would call "collective punishment".
Collective punishment is a war crime under Article 33 of the Geneva Convention. People who make excuses for it are idiots, useful or otherwise.
That's why I put it in quotation marks. Or perhaps Kinabalu thinks what Israel is doing is a war crime.
Well many of us do.
Yes hugely important that arseholes on the internet think something or other.
The arseholes being those who defend the murder of civilians as a necessary evil.
You suit the description perfectly.
It's war, Dickie boy. Look it up in the dictionary.
Indeed hence war crimes. Look them up yourself.
I suspect the proportion of military combatants to civilians was far smaller ratio in the Hamburg firestorm and the levelling of Dresden. But we weren't on trial at Nuremburg.
Is it a free pass for war crimes if you win the war?
Nope. Many commentators these days consider Dresden as a war crime. Indeed there is no escaping that for Harris as his explicit stated aim of breaking the German spirit by targeting civilians is specifically addressed as a war crime today.
The UK, and importantly in this debate, Israel both signed up to the post WW2 international rules on the conduct of war which outlawed many of the things both sides did in WW2 and which Israel and Russia are both doing now.
Personally I think only idiots living without the fear of Nazi tyranny consider Dresden a war crime. Why Dresden and not every single bombing raid that Bomber Command mounted? Because like it or not, Bomber Command wanted to achieve Dresden results EVERY time they set out. Dresden stands out as it was late in the war, and was highly successful, due to the firestorm. But many, many allied soldiers died after Dresden. Many Jews and other captives of the Nazis died after Dresden. Germany could have surrendered and stopped it all.
I know very little about WW2. But was Bomber Command strategy basically predicated on the idea that bombing Germany out of the war would save the innumerable slaughter witnessed in WW1?
Yep. Harris wanted to defeat Germany without the need for any British soldiers to land on the continent, other than to accept the surrender. There have been many arguments over the years about whether Bomber Command was worth the money and resources (materials and men) that it took. Max Hastings thought not in his book on the bomber war. Others disagree. Certainly the bombing campaign tied up tens if not hundreds of thousands of Germans defending the Reich who could have been fighting in the East. And combined with the 8th airforce’s campaign, the Allies achieved air dominance over the Luftwaffe, making D-Day much easier and restricting German movements to night time, to avoid being attacked from the air. By the end of 44 and into 45 the German transport system was wrecked, so moving anything was hard, including troops, tanks etc.
Sadly the idea that you could depress the morale of a nation under a fascist authoritarian regime was false. Even if a German housewife wanted to end the war after her house was destroyed, there was no mechanism for her to achieve it. And the Blitz had shown the resilience of the Brits under the bomb.
But ultimately strategic bombing contributed to winning the war and to describe one target destroyed as a war crime is infantile rubbish.
There were lots of things done on both sides in both wars which would now be considered war crimes. The whole point of civilisation is that we develop and learn from our mistakes.
My view is that war is never desirable, but once one is engaged, there’s no point in half measures.
Ultimately one has to do what is needful, to win. There is nothing worse than defeat.
Hallelujah.
This is what I referred to earlier. The UK hasn't been in a war for a very long time. We have had operations in Afghan, Iraq, Bosnia, for example, where at the end of the day we could always say fuck it and go home. Indeed that is exactly what we did mostly.
The likes of Richard "Dickie Boy" Tyndall is mistaking such actions with actual war.
If you are losing or think you might lose a war what on earth do you care about "the rules". A ridiculous concept in any case.
I will be sure to remind you in future that you advocated for murdering children.
You would rather have lost the second world war than bomb Dresden.
Do you really think we would not have won the war without firebombing Dresden in February 1945?
The Evening Standard tonight had a double page feature on Labour's problems in its London heartland. The main focus was on the threat to Wes Streeting in Ilford North whose majority in 2019 was 5,200 and now faces an Independent candidate with links to pro-Palestine groups whose own campaign may be helped by the inclusion of some parts of Ilford South into the newly-redrawn constituency.
The Standard also confirmed what I'd heard - that Councillor Mirza and the Newham Independents are going to stand candidates in both East Ham and West Ham & Beckton against Stephen Timms and Lyn Brown respectively. Another likely challenge to Labour is in Bethnal Green & Bow from an Aspire candidate.
It seems unlikely Labour will lose any of these seats and treating "the muslim vote" as a single homogenous entity is unwise. Respect got 20% in 2005 in East Ham and I suspect that's about where any pro-Palestine anti-Labour candidate will end up later this year.
Losing Wes Streeting from the next (likely) Cabinet of the UK would be a disaster for the whole country frankly. Someone needs to sort out the mess of the NHS and he seems like he might be up for the task. Prepared to reform and learn from other countries.
One can only hope if he loses Ilford then a quick peerage and Cabinet will happen.
We are in the unusual situation where all the major parties are pro-Israel, but a large number of voters are either pro-Palestine or neutral. However, Starmer is so scared of being called anti-semitic by the Tories, he is in danger of losing a lot of his natural supporters. Between dissatisfied Tories and dissatisfied Labour supporters, we could have an exceptionally low turnout at the GE.
Strange how sexist, homophobic, antisemites are considered to be our natural supporters. Don't we stand against all that stuff?
There are ca. 270,000 Jews in Britain. So a very tiny minority. Parties could ignore them. But Labour, in particular, is always saying it is in favour of vulnerable marginalised communities. And this community is particularly vulnerable at the moment and marginalised. So Labour should be very strongly on its side and against those who seek to attack Jews here. The issue is not whether the attacks fall into some definition of anti-semitism but simply that attacks on the vulnerable are wrong. This should not be difficult for Labour or the LibDems or any party really.
Criticising Israel and attacking British Jews are two entirely distinct things. The first is totally fine, the second is totally wrong. People who can't do the first without doing the second need to shut up. People who conflate the two to try to shut down the first should also shut up.
But our very own @nico679, one of yours, a homophobic-sympathising, sexist-sympathising, anti-semite-sympathising lefty like yourself said the following:
"The biggest recruiting sergeant for anti-Semitism is Netenyahu and his disgusting cabinet"
He directly said that criticism of Israel leads to anti-semitism. So no, it appears that it is not two entirely distinct thing.
Unfortunately this is a by-election dominated by a quarrel in a far-away country between people of whom we know far, far too much.
There are conflicts all around the world that don't get a fraction of the spotlight or attention that this one has had. I wonder what is so unique about this one conflict, that every moment becomes headline news unlike all the others?
The physical carnage, the huge civilian casualties, the mass displacement of people, the resulting humanitarian disaster, the inflictor of all this being a regime supported by the west - these do make for a big story.
"the inflictor of all this being a regime supported by the west".
I think you might need to understand that this awful conflict was blatantly started by Hamas who "inflicted" rape torture and murder on innocent people.
There is a reasonable argument that the Israeli response has been disproportionate, but the "infliction" was initiated by Hamas terrorists.
As you have been an occasional apologist for Corbyn (and probably indirectly voted for him to be PM) I guess this is hard to recognise?
I know who started the fire. Hamas did. Oct 7th was unspeakable. It's now 13th February and Israel has wreaked a mighty vengeance for it.
Justifiable response to a threat deemed existential? Or barbaric collective punishment of the population of Gaza?
I think the latter.
I think you'll find that war does involve what useful idiots such as yourself would call "collective punishment".
Collective punishment is a war crime under Article 33 of the Geneva Convention. People who make excuses for it are idiots, useful or otherwise.
That's why I put it in quotation marks. Or perhaps Kinabalu thinks what Israel is doing is a war crime.
Well many of us do.
Yes hugely important that arseholes on the internet think something or other.
The arseholes being those who defend the murder of civilians as a necessary evil.
You suit the description perfectly.
It's war, Dickie boy. Look it up in the dictionary.
Indeed hence war crimes. Look them up yourself.
I suspect the proportion of military combatants to civilians was far smaller ratio in the Hamburg firestorm and the levelling of Dresden. But we weren't on trial at Nuremburg.
Is it a free pass for war crimes if you win the war?
Nope. Many commentators these days consider Dresden as a war crime. Indeed there is no escaping that for Harris as his explicit stated aim of breaking the German spirit by targeting civilians is specifically addressed as a war crime today.
The UK, and importantly in this debate, Israel both signed up to the post WW2 international rules on the conduct of war which outlawed many of the things both sides did in WW2 and which Israel and Russia are both doing now.
Personally I think only idiots living without the fear of Nazi tyranny consider Dresden a war crime. Why Dresden and not every single bombing raid that Bomber Command mounted? Because like it or not, Bomber Command wanted to achieve Dresden results EVERY time they set out. Dresden stands out as it was late in the war, and was highly successful, due to the firestorm. But many, many allied soldiers died after Dresden. Many Jews and other captives of the Nazis died after Dresden. Germany could have surrendered and stopped it all.
Because it was clear that it would not work. It was part of this ridiculous idea of British moral superiority. We had not cracked under the Blitz because we were British. But johnny foreigner is not made of the same stuff and so was bound to be broken by our bombing his cities flat.
Harris explicitly pushed this idea - that he could win the war by breaking the German spirit. It was clear in hindsight (and to many at the time) that it was a fallacy and that is one of the reasons that it was outlawed after the war. The whole campaign of targetting German civilian population would today be considered criminal and put in the same category as the use of poison gas.
It was ignorance as much as arrogance. Fascinating commentary from physicist Freeman Dyson here:
https://www.technologyreview.com/2006/11/01/227625/a-failure-of-intelligence/ … Bomber Command had a similar problem in evaluating the effectiveness of bombing. Aircrew frequently reported the destruction of targets when photographs showed they had missed by several miles. The navy ORS was extremely effective and made great contributions to winning the war against the U-boats in the Atlantic. But Blackett had two enormous advantages. First, he was a world-renowned scientist (who would later win a Nobel Prize), with a safe job in the academic world, so he could threaten to resign if his advice was not followed. Second, he had been a navy officer in World War I and was respected by the admirals he advised. Basil Dickins, the chief of our ORS at Bomber Command, had neither of these advantages. He was a civil servant with no independent standing. He could not threaten to resign, and Sir Arthur Harris had no respect for him. His career depended on telling Sir Arthur things that Sir Arthur wanted to hear. So that is what he did. He gave Sir Arthur information rather than advice. He never raised serious questions about Sir Arthur’s tactics and strategy…
This makes pretty clear that the targeting of civilans was deliberate policy : … We succeeded in raising firestorms only twice, once in Hamburg and once more in Dresden in 1945, where between 25,000 and 60,000 people perished (the numbers are still debated). The Germans had good air raid shelters and warning systems and did what they were told. As a result, only a few thousand people were killed in a typical major attack. But when there was a firestorm, people were asphyxiated or roasted inside their shelters, and the number killed was more than 10 times greater. Every time Bomber Command attacked a city, we were trying to raise a firestorm, but we never learnt why we so seldom succeeded…
Targeting of workers making weapons to kill allied soldiers would fit just as well. And the firestorm didn’t just kill people it destroyed buildings.
None of this is nice. But being gassed at Auschwitz was pretty below the belt too, as was being rounded up and burned to death in a church (Oradour) or taken to a ravine, stripped naked and shot, including the children.
I’m comfortable with everything that was done to defeat Germany. I’m sorry others can’t see that. I’ve read accounts of Dresden, and Hamburg, and it sounds horrifying. I hope it never happens again, and I hope I never get to experience it. But it doesn’t make it a war crime.
Under the then existing laws of war, it wasn’t. But it was both morally, and practically, deeply questionable.
Indeed and the point I made right at the start was that it was as a result of the WW2 experience that civilised countries around the world - including the UK and Israel - choose to sign up to a new set of laws outlawing certain behaviour in war.
Maybe Topping and others think those laws should only apply to nasty evil foreigners and not to us morally upstanding British and our brave allies.
The Evening Standard tonight had a double page feature on Labour's problems in its London heartland. The main focus was on the threat to Wes Streeting in Ilford North whose majority in 2019 was 5,200 and now faces an Independent candidate with links to pro-Palestine groups whose own campaign may be helped by the inclusion of some parts of Ilford South into the newly-redrawn constituency.
The Standard also confirmed what I'd heard - that Councillor Mirza and the Newham Independents are going to stand candidates in both East Ham and West Ham & Beckton against Stephen Timms and Lyn Brown respectively. Another likely challenge to Labour is in Bethnal Green & Bow from an Aspire candidate.
It seems unlikely Labour will lose any of these seats and treating "the muslim vote" as a single homogenous entity is unwise. Respect got 20% in 2005 in East Ham and I suspect that's about where any pro-Palestine anti-Labour candidate will end up later this year.
Losing Wes Streeting from the next (likely) Cabinet of the UK would be a disaster for the whole country frankly. Someone needs to sort out the mess of the NHS and he seems like he might be up for the task. Prepared to reform and learn from other countries.
One can only hope if he loses Ilford then a quick peerage and Cabinet will happen.
We are in the unusual situation where all the major parties are pro-Israel, but a large number of voters are either pro-Palestine or neutral. However, Starmer is so scared of being called anti-semitic by the Tories, he is in danger of losing a lot of his natural supporters. Between dissatisfied Tories and dissatisfied Labour supporters, we could have an exceptionally low turnout at the GE.
Strange how sexist, homophobic, antisemites are considered to be our natural supporters. Don't we stand against all that stuff?
There are ca. 270,000 Jews in Britain. So a very tiny minority. Parties could ignore them. But Labour, in particular, is always saying it is in favour of vulnerable marginalised communities. And this community is particularly vulnerable at the moment and marginalised. So Labour should be very strongly on its side and against those who seek to attack Jews here. The issue is not whether the attacks fall into some definition of anti-semitism but simply that attacks on the vulnerable are wrong. This should not be difficult for Labour or the LibDems or any party really.
Criticising Israel and attacking British Jews are two entirely distinct things. The first is totally fine, the second is totally wrong. People who can't do the first without doing the second need to shut up. People who conflate the two to try to shut down the first should also shut up.
I have said nothing about Israel. Only about attacks on Jews here.
But it seems to me that a lot of people seem to want to justify or ignore attacks on Jews here by referencing Israel, which seems to me to be wrong.
That would indeed be wrong although I have never personally seen that happen.
Unfortunately this is a by-election dominated by a quarrel in a far-away country between people of whom we know far, far too much.
There are conflicts all around the world that don't get a fraction of the spotlight or attention that this one has had. I wonder what is so unique about this one conflict, that every moment becomes headline news unlike all the others?
The physical carnage, the huge civilian casualties, the mass displacement of people, the resulting humanitarian disaster, the inflictor of all this being a regime supported by the west - these do make for a big story.
"the inflictor of all this being a regime supported by the west".
I think you might need to understand that this awful conflict was blatantly started by Hamas who "inflicted" rape torture and murder on innocent people.
There is a reasonable argument that the Israeli response has been disproportionate, but the "infliction" was initiated by Hamas terrorists.
As you have been an occasional apologist for Corbyn (and probably indirectly voted for him to be PM) I guess this is hard to recognise?
I know who started the fire. Hamas did. Oct 7th was unspeakable. It's now 13th February and Israel has wreaked a mighty vengeance for it.
Justifiable response to a threat deemed existential? Or barbaric collective punishment of the population of Gaza?
I think the latter.
I think you'll find that war does involve what useful idiots such as yourself would call "collective punishment".
Collective punishment is a war crime under Article 33 of the Geneva Convention. People who make excuses for it are idiots, useful or otherwise.
That's why I put it in quotation marks. Or perhaps Kinabalu thinks what Israel is doing is a war crime.
Well many of us do.
Yes hugely important that arseholes on the internet think something or other.
The arseholes being those who defend the murder of civilians as a necessary evil.
You suit the description perfectly.
It's war, Dickie boy. Look it up in the dictionary.
Indeed hence war crimes. Look them up yourself.
I suspect the proportion of military combatants to civilians was far smaller ratio in the Hamburg firestorm and the levelling of Dresden. But we weren't on trial at Nuremburg.
Is it a free pass for war crimes if you win the war?
Nope. Many commentators these days consider Dresden as a war crime. Indeed there is no escaping that for Harris as his explicit stated aim of breaking the German spirit by targeting civilians is specifically addressed as a war crime today.
The UK, and importantly in this debate, Israel both signed up to the post WW2 international rules on the conduct of war which outlawed many of the things both sides did in WW2 and which Israel and Russia are both doing now.
Personally I think only idiots living without the fear of Nazi tyranny consider Dresden a war crime. Why Dresden and not every single bombing raid that Bomber Command mounted? Because like it or not, Bomber Command wanted to achieve Dresden results EVERY time they set out. Dresden stands out as it was late in the war, and was highly successful, due to the firestorm. But many, many allied soldiers died after Dresden. Many Jews and other captives of the Nazis died after Dresden. Germany could have surrendered and stopped it all.
I know very little about WW2. But was Bomber Command strategy basically predicated on the idea that bombing Germany out of the war would save the innumerable slaughter witnessed in WW1?
Yep. Harris wanted to defeat Germany without the need for any British soldiers to land on the continent, other than to accept the surrender. There have been many arguments over the years about whether Bomber Command was worth the money and resources (materials and men) that it took. Max Hastings thought not in his book on the bomber war. Others disagree. Certainly the bombing campaign tied up tens if not hundreds of thousands of Germans defending the Reich who could have been fighting in the East. And combined with the 8th airforce’s campaign, the Allies achieved air dominance over the Luftwaffe, making D-Day much easier and restricting German movements to night time, to avoid being attacked from the air. By the end of 44 and into 45 the German transport system was wrecked, so moving anything was hard, including troops, tanks etc.
Sadly the idea that you could depress the morale of a nation under a fascist authoritarian regime was false. Even if a German housewife wanted to end the war after her house was destroyed, there was no mechanism for her to achieve it. And the Blitz had shown the resilience of the Brits under the bomb.
But ultimately strategic bombing contributed to winning the war and to describe one target destroyed as a war crime is infantile rubbish.
There were lots of things done on both sides in both wars which would now be considered war crimes. The whole point of civilisation is that we develop and learn from our mistakes.
My view is that war is never desirable, but once one is engaged, there’s no point in half measures.
Ultimately one has to do what is needful, to win. There is nothing worse than defeat.
Hallelujah.
This is what I referred to earlier. The UK hasn't been in a war for a very long time. We have had operations in Afghan, Iraq, Bosnia, for example, where at the end of the day we could always say fuck it and go home. Indeed that is exactly what we did mostly.
The likes of Richard "Dickie Boy" Tyndall is mistaking such actions with actual war.
If you are losing or think you might lose a war what on earth do you care about "the rules". A ridiculous concept in any case.
I will be sure to remind you in future that you advocated for murdering children.
The narrative by a number of posters on here this evening including the clown who believes he has called you out in the above post, is quite frankly disgusting.
Are they immoral or just thick political partisans? I hope and suspect the latter.
As a point of order. Hamas are a vile death cult and need to be extinguished. Netanyahu is a disgusting racist who hates Arabs and is comfortable to see them die horribly and in eye watering numbers. But if it adds some votes to the UK Conservative Party, all to the good, eh?
I wouldn't chose to rub shoulders with some of these w***ers in real life, so the question is why am I engaging with them on line?
Unfortunately this is a by-election dominated by a quarrel in a far-away country between people of whom we know far, far too much.
There are conflicts all around the world that don't get a fraction of the spotlight or attention that this one has had. I wonder what is so unique about this one conflict, that every moment becomes headline news unlike all the others?
The physical carnage, the huge civilian casualties, the mass displacement of people, the resulting humanitarian disaster, the inflictor of all this being a regime supported by the west - these do make for a big story.
"the inflictor of all this being a regime supported by the west".
I think you might need to understand that this awful conflict was blatantly started by Hamas who "inflicted" rape torture and murder on innocent people.
There is a reasonable argument that the Israeli response has been disproportionate, but the "infliction" was initiated by Hamas terrorists.
As you have been an occasional apologist for Corbyn (and probably indirectly voted for him to be PM) I guess this is hard to recognise?
I know who started the fire. Hamas did. Oct 7th was unspeakable. It's now 13th February and Israel has wreaked a mighty vengeance for it.
Justifiable response to a threat deemed existential? Or barbaric collective punishment of the population of Gaza?
I think the latter.
I think you'll find that war does involve what useful idiots such as yourself would call "collective punishment".
Collective punishment is a war crime under Article 33 of the Geneva Convention. People who make excuses for it are idiots, useful or otherwise.
That's why I put it in quotation marks. Or perhaps Kinabalu thinks what Israel is doing is a war crime.
Well many of us do.
Yes hugely important that arseholes on the internet think something or other.
The arseholes being those who defend the murder of civilians as a necessary evil.
You suit the description perfectly.
It's war, Dickie boy. Look it up in the dictionary.
Indeed hence war crimes. Look them up yourself.
I suspect the proportion of military combatants to civilians was far smaller ratio in the Hamburg firestorm and the levelling of Dresden. But we weren't on trial at Nuremburg.
Is it a free pass for war crimes if you win the war?
Nope. Many commentators these days consider Dresden as a war crime. Indeed there is no escaping that for Harris as his explicit stated aim of breaking the German spirit by targeting civilians is specifically addressed as a war crime today.
The UK, and importantly in this debate, Israel both signed up to the post WW2 international rules on the conduct of war which outlawed many of the things both sides did in WW2 and which Israel and Russia are both doing now.
Personally I think only idiots living without the fear of Nazi tyranny consider Dresden a war crime. Why Dresden and not every single bombing raid that Bomber Command mounted? Because like it or not, Bomber Command wanted to achieve Dresden results EVERY time they set out. Dresden stands out as it was late in the war, and was highly successful, due to the firestorm. But many, many allied soldiers died after Dresden. Many Jews and other captives of the Nazis died after Dresden. Germany could have surrendered and stopped it all.
Because it was clear that it would not work. It was part of this ridiculous idea of British moral superiority. We had not cracked under the Blitz because we were British. But johnny foreigner is not made of the same stuff and so was bound to be broken by our bombing his cities flat.
Harris explicitly pushed this idea - that he could win the war by breaking the German spirit. It was clear in hindsight (and to many at the time) that it was a fallacy and that is one of the reasons that it was outlawed after the war. The whole campaign of targetting German civilian population would today be considered criminal and put in the same category as the use of poison gas.
I’m sorry but I disagree. It did work, just not by damaging morale. See the effort Germany had to put into defending the Reich, rather than fighting the Russians. See the D-Day campaign and after for why winning air superiority was so crucial. The battle of the bulge only got as far as it did because the allies could not fly due to the weather. When the weather cleared the fighter-bombers returned and wreaked havoc.
Morale bombing failed, yes, but the Bombing War as a whole played a significant role in the allied victory. Singling out Dresden as ‘special’ is just nonsense, as Bomber Command, and the 8th Air Force tried to achieve similar results every time. Is Hamburg a war crime? What about Schweinfurt?
That wasn’t Dyson’s view. And he was better placed than most to make the judgment. … A week after the final attack on Berlin, we suffered an even more crushing defeat. We attacked Nuremberg with 795 bombers and lost 94, a loss rate of almost 12 percent. It was then clear to everybody that such losses were unsustainable. Sir Arthur reluctantly abandoned his dream of winning the War by himself. Bomber Command stopped flying so deep into Germany and spent the summer of 1944 giving tactical support to the Allied armies that were, by then, invading France.
The history of the 20th century has repeatedly shown that strategic bombing by itself does not win wars. If Britain had decided in 1936 to put its main effort into building ships instead of bombers, the invasion of France might have been possible in 1943 instead of 1944, and the war in Europe might have ended in 1944 instead of 1945. But in 1943, we had the bombers, and we did not have the ships, and the problem was to do the best we could with what we had...
And yet invading France in 1943 would have been against a Luftwaffe that was still capable of inflicting severe damage, and against a German army that was significantly stronger. Churchill was desperate NOT to invade in 43. About the only advantage would have been the much less complete Atlantic Wall.
I totally agree that strategic bombing did not win the war alone. No one thinks it did, or indeed could. But it played a huge part. German industry was massively hindered. Transport was destroyed. The Das Reich panzer division took an age to get from southern France to Normandy, mainly due to air power of the allies, won by strategic bombing, notably the 8th who actively sought to destroy Luftwaffe fighters, using bombers as bait.
Read the whole of the Dyson article. He was smarter than either of us, and he was there to analyse it. He simply doesn’t believe the “strategic bombing” of cities worked. Which was why it was eventually abandoned.
Whereas the accurate targeted bombing of oil supplies almost certainly did.
Whether he was wrong or right I wouldn't necessarily rely on contemporary accounts to provide the last word about the value of something in the grand scheme of things, and given the broad sweep of history.
Unfortunately this is a by-election dominated by a quarrel in a far-away country between people of whom we know far, far too much.
There are conflicts all around the world that don't get a fraction of the spotlight or attention that this one has had. I wonder what is so unique about this one conflict, that every moment becomes headline news unlike all the others?
The physical carnage, the huge civilian casualties, the mass displacement of people, the resulting humanitarian disaster, the inflictor of all this being a regime supported by the west - these do make for a big story.
"the inflictor of all this being a regime supported by the west".
I think you might need to understand that this awful conflict was blatantly started by Hamas who "inflicted" rape torture and murder on innocent people.
There is a reasonable argument that the Israeli response has been disproportionate, but the "infliction" was initiated by Hamas terrorists.
As you have been an occasional apologist for Corbyn (and probably indirectly voted for him to be PM) I guess this is hard to recognise?
I know who started the fire. Hamas did. Oct 7th was unspeakable. It's now 13th February and Israel has wreaked a mighty vengeance for it.
Justifiable response to a threat deemed existential? Or barbaric collective punishment of the population of Gaza?
I think the latter.
I think you'll find that war does involve what useful idiots such as yourself would call "collective punishment".
Collective punishment is a war crime under Article 33 of the Geneva Convention. People who make excuses for it are idiots, useful or otherwise.
That's why I put it in quotation marks. Or perhaps Kinabalu thinks what Israel is doing is a war crime.
Well many of us do.
Yes hugely important that arseholes on the internet think something or other.
The arseholes being those who defend the murder of civilians as a necessary evil.
You suit the description perfectly.
It's war, Dickie boy. Look it up in the dictionary.
Indeed hence war crimes. Look them up yourself.
I suspect the proportion of military combatants to civilians was far smaller ratio in the Hamburg firestorm and the levelling of Dresden. But we weren't on trial at Nuremburg.
Is it a free pass for war crimes if you win the war?
Nope. Many commentators these days consider Dresden as a war crime. Indeed there is no escaping that for Harris as his explicit stated aim of breaking the German spirit by targeting civilians is specifically addressed as a war crime today.
The UK, and importantly in this debate, Israel both signed up to the post WW2 international rules on the conduct of war which outlawed many of the things both sides did in WW2 and which Israel and Russia are both doing now.
Personally I think only idiots living without the fear of Nazi tyranny consider Dresden a war crime. Why Dresden and not every single bombing raid that Bomber Command mounted? Because like it or not, Bomber Command wanted to achieve Dresden results EVERY time they set out. Dresden stands out as it was late in the war, and was highly successful, due to the firestorm. But many, many allied soldiers died after Dresden. Many Jews and other captives of the Nazis died after Dresden. Germany could have surrendered and stopped it all.
I know very little about WW2. But was Bomber Command strategy basically predicated on the idea that bombing Germany out of the war would save the innumerable slaughter witnessed in WW1?
Yep. Harris wanted to defeat Germany without the need for any British soldiers to land on the continent, other than to accept the surrender. There have been many arguments over the years about whether Bomber Command was worth the money and resources (materials and men) that it took. Max Hastings thought not in his book on the bomber war. Others disagree. Certainly the bombing campaign tied up tens if not hundreds of thousands of Germans defending the Reich who could have been fighting in the East. And combined with the 8th airforce’s campaign, the Allies achieved air dominance over the Luftwaffe, making D-Day much easier and restricting German movements to night time, to avoid being attacked from the air. By the end of 44 and into 45 the German transport system was wrecked, so moving anything was hard, including troops, tanks etc.
Sadly the idea that you could depress the morale of a nation under a fascist authoritarian regime was false. Even if a German housewife wanted to end the war after her house was destroyed, there was no mechanism for her to achieve it. And the Blitz had shown the resilience of the Brits under the bomb.
But ultimately strategic bombing contributed to winning the war and to describe one target destroyed as a war crime is infantile rubbish.
There were lots of things done on both sides in both wars which would now be considered war crimes. The whole point of civilisation is that we develop and learn from our mistakes.
My view is that war is never desirable, but once one is engaged, there’s no point in half measures.
Ultimately one has to do what is needful, to win. There is nothing worse than defeat.
If the price is 2.3 million Gazans including women and children?
Israel have the right to defend themselves against Hamas. Benjamin Netanyahu does not have the right to save his liberty and political career by the mass killing of Gazan women and children. That is not anti-Semitic but it does demonstrate my utter contempt for a sociopath who happens to be Prime Minister of Israel.
Bloody hell is the death toll up to 2.3m already.
What's your market 2.2m-2.4m? Can I please sell at 2.2m at a pound a life.
You really are quite a disgusting individual. Why am I even engaging with such a heartless idiot?
Unfortunately this is a by-election dominated by a quarrel in a far-away country between people of whom we know far, far too much.
There are conflicts all around the world that don't get a fraction of the spotlight or attention that this one has had. I wonder what is so unique about this one conflict, that every moment becomes headline news unlike all the others?
The physical carnage, the huge civilian casualties, the mass displacement of people, the resulting humanitarian disaster, the inflictor of all this being a regime supported by the west - these do make for a big story.
"the inflictor of all this being a regime supported by the west".
I think you might need to understand that this awful conflict was blatantly started by Hamas who "inflicted" rape torture and murder on innocent people.
There is a reasonable argument that the Israeli response has been disproportionate, but the "infliction" was initiated by Hamas terrorists.
As you have been an occasional apologist for Corbyn (and probably indirectly voted for him to be PM) I guess this is hard to recognise?
I know who started the fire. Hamas did. Oct 7th was unspeakable. It's now 13th February and Israel has wreaked a mighty vengeance for it.
Justifiable response to a threat deemed existential? Or barbaric collective punishment of the population of Gaza?
I think the latter.
I think you'll find that war does involve what useful idiots such as yourself would call "collective punishment".
Collective punishment is a war crime under Article 33 of the Geneva Convention. People who make excuses for it are idiots, useful or otherwise.
That's why I put it in quotation marks. Or perhaps Kinabalu thinks what Israel is doing is a war crime.
Well many of us do.
Yes hugely important that arseholes on the internet think something or other.
The arseholes being those who defend the murder of civilians as a necessary evil.
You suit the description perfectly.
It's war, Dickie boy. Look it up in the dictionary.
Indeed hence war crimes. Look them up yourself.
I suspect the proportion of military combatants to civilians was far smaller ratio in the Hamburg firestorm and the levelling of Dresden. But we weren't on trial at Nuremburg.
Is it a free pass for war crimes if you win the war?
Nope. Many commentators these days consider Dresden as a war crime. Indeed there is no escaping that for Harris as his explicit stated aim of breaking the German spirit by targeting civilians is specifically addressed as a war crime today.
The UK, and importantly in this debate, Israel both signed up to the post WW2 international rules on the conduct of war which outlawed many of the things both sides did in WW2 and which Israel and Russia are both doing now.
Personally I think only idiots living without the fear of Nazi tyranny consider Dresden a war crime. Why Dresden and not every single bombing raid that Bomber Command mounted? Because like it or not, Bomber Command wanted to achieve Dresden results EVERY time they set out. Dresden stands out as it was late in the war, and was highly successful, due to the firestorm. But many, many allied soldiers died after Dresden. Many Jews and other captives of the Nazis died after Dresden. Germany could have surrendered and stopped it all.
I know very little about WW2. But was Bomber Command strategy basically predicated on the idea that bombing Germany out of the war would save the innumerable slaughter witnessed in WW1?
Yep. Harris wanted to defeat Germany without the need for any British soldiers to land on the continent, other than to accept the surrender. There have been many arguments over the years about whether Bomber Command was worth the money and resources (materials and men) that it took. Max Hastings thought not in his book on the bomber war. Others disagree. Certainly the bombing campaign tied up tens if not hundreds of thousands of Germans defending the Reich who could have been fighting in the East. And combined with the 8th airforce’s campaign, the Allies achieved air dominance over the Luftwaffe, making D-Day much easier and restricting German movements to night time, to avoid being attacked from the air. By the end of 44 and into 45 the German transport system was wrecked, so moving anything was hard, including troops, tanks etc.
Sadly the idea that you could depress the morale of a nation under a fascist authoritarian regime was false. Even if a German housewife wanted to end the war after her house was destroyed, there was no mechanism for her to achieve it. And the Blitz had shown the resilience of the Brits under the bomb.
But ultimately strategic bombing contributed to winning the war and to describe one target destroyed as a war crime is infantile rubbish.
There were lots of things done on both sides in both wars which would now be considered war crimes. The whole point of civilisation is that we develop and learn from our mistakes.
My view is that war is never desirable, but once one is engaged, there’s no point in half measures.
Ultimately one has to do what is needful, to win. There is nothing worse than defeat.
Hallelujah.
This is what I referred to earlier. The UK hasn't been in a war for a very long time. We have had operations in Afghan, Iraq, Bosnia, for example, where at the end of the day we could always say fuck it and go home. Indeed that is exactly what we did mostly.
The likes of Richard "Dickie Boy" Tyndall is mistaking such actions with actual war.
If you are losing or think you might lose a war what on earth do you care about "the rules". A ridiculous concept in any case.
I will be sure to remind you in future that you advocated for murdering children.
The narrative by a number of posters on here this evening including the clown who believes he has called you out in the above post, is quite frankly disgusting.
Are they immoral or just thick political partisans? I hope and suspect the latter.
As a point of order. Hamas are a vile death cult and need to be extinguished. Netanyahu is a disgusting racist who hates Arabs and is comfortable to see them die horribly and in eye watering numbers. But if it adds some votes to the UK Conservative Party, all to the good, eh?
I wouldn't chose to rub shoulders with some of these w***ers in real life, so the question is why am I engaging with them on line?
So you are supporting Netanyahu's war aims.
"Hamas are a vile death cult and need to be extinguished"
How would you go about this tricksy task? Arch comment them to death? Internet chat room them into submission?
Unfortunately this is a by-election dominated by a quarrel in a far-away country between people of whom we know far, far too much.
There are conflicts all around the world that don't get a fraction of the spotlight or attention that this one has had. I wonder what is so unique about this one conflict, that every moment becomes headline news unlike all the others?
The physical carnage, the huge civilian casualties, the mass displacement of people, the resulting humanitarian disaster, the inflictor of all this being a regime supported by the west - these do make for a big story.
"the inflictor of all this being a regime supported by the west".
I think you might need to understand that this awful conflict was blatantly started by Hamas who "inflicted" rape torture and murder on innocent people.
There is a reasonable argument that the Israeli response has been disproportionate, but the "infliction" was initiated by Hamas terrorists.
As you have been an occasional apologist for Corbyn (and probably indirectly voted for him to be PM) I guess this is hard to recognise?
I know who started the fire. Hamas did. Oct 7th was unspeakable. It's now 13th February and Israel has wreaked a mighty vengeance for it.
Justifiable response to a threat deemed existential? Or barbaric collective punishment of the population of Gaza?
I think the latter.
I think you'll find that war does involve what useful idiots such as yourself would call "collective punishment".
Collective punishment is a war crime under Article 33 of the Geneva Convention. People who make excuses for it are idiots, useful or otherwise.
That's why I put it in quotation marks. Or perhaps Kinabalu thinks what Israel is doing is a war crime.
Well many of us do.
Yes hugely important that arseholes on the internet think something or other.
The arseholes being those who defend the murder of civilians as a necessary evil.
You suit the description perfectly.
It's war, Dickie boy. Look it up in the dictionary.
Indeed hence war crimes. Look them up yourself.
I suspect the proportion of military combatants to civilians was far smaller ratio in the Hamburg firestorm and the levelling of Dresden. But we weren't on trial at Nuremburg.
Is it a free pass for war crimes if you win the war?
Nope. Many commentators these days consider Dresden as a war crime. Indeed there is no escaping that for Harris as his explicit stated aim of breaking the German spirit by targeting civilians is specifically addressed as a war crime today.
The UK, and importantly in this debate, Israel both signed up to the post WW2 international rules on the conduct of war which outlawed many of the things both sides did in WW2 and which Israel and Russia are both doing now.
Personally I think only idiots living without the fear of Nazi tyranny consider Dresden a war crime. Why Dresden and not every single bombing raid that Bomber Command mounted? Because like it or not, Bomber Command wanted to achieve Dresden results EVERY time they set out. Dresden stands out as it was late in the war, and was highly successful, due to the firestorm. But many, many allied soldiers died after Dresden. Many Jews and other captives of the Nazis died after Dresden. Germany could have surrendered and stopped it all.
Because it was clear that it would not work. It was part of this ridiculous idea of British moral superiority. We had not cracked under the Blitz because we were British. But johnny foreigner is not made of the same stuff and so was bound to be broken by our bombing his cities flat.
Harris explicitly pushed this idea - that he could win the war by breaking the German spirit. It was clear in hindsight (and to many at the time) that it was a fallacy and that is one of the reasons that it was outlawed after the war. The whole campaign of targetting German civilian population would today be considered criminal and put in the same category as the use of poison gas.
I’m sorry but I disagree. It did work, just not by damaging morale. See the effort Germany had to put into defending the Reich, rather than fighting the Russians. See the D-Day campaign and after for why winning air superiority was so crucial. The battle of the bulge only got as far as it did because the allies could not fly due to the weather. When the weather cleared the fighter-bombers returned and wreaked havoc.
Morale bombing failed, yes, but the Bombing War as a whole played a significant role in the allied victory. Singling out Dresden as ‘special’ is just nonsense, as Bomber Command, and the 8th Air Force tried to achieve similar results every time. Is Hamburg a war crime? What about Schweinfurt?
That wasn’t Dyson’s view. And he was better placed than most to make the judgment. … A week after the final attack on Berlin, we suffered an even more crushing defeat. We attacked Nuremberg with 795 bombers and lost 94, a loss rate of almost 12 percent. It was then clear to everybody that such losses were unsustainable. Sir Arthur reluctantly abandoned his dream of winning the War by himself. Bomber Command stopped flying so deep into Germany and spent the summer of 1944 giving tactical support to the Allied armies that were, by then, invading France.
The history of the 20th century has repeatedly shown that strategic bombing by itself does not win wars. If Britain had decided in 1936 to put its main effort into building ships instead of bombers, the invasion of France might have been possible in 1943 instead of 1944, and the war in Europe might have ended in 1944 instead of 1945. But in 1943, we had the bombers, and we did not have the ships, and the problem was to do the best we could with what we had...
And yet invading France in 1943 would have been against a Luftwaffe that was still capable of inflicting severe damage, and against a German army that was significantly stronger. Churchill was desperate NOT to invade in 43. About the only advantage would have been the much less complete Atlantic Wall.
I totally agree that strategic bombing did not win the war alone. No one thinks it did, or indeed could. But it played a huge part. German industry was massively hindered. Transport was destroyed. The Das Reich panzer division took an age to get from southern France to Normandy, mainly due to air power of the allies, won by strategic bombing, notably the 8th who actively sought to destroy Luftwaffe fighters, using bombers as bait.
Read the whole of the Dyson article. He was smarter than either of us, and he was there to analyse it. He simply doesn’t believe the “strategic bombing” of cities worked. Which was why it was eventually abandoned.
Whereas the accurate targeted bombing of oil supplies almost certainly did.
But he does not have the perspective of 80 years study though, does he? I’m unconvinced by the counterfactual of building more ships or tanks etc. The allies main thing was Steel not Flesh, hence bombing not troops on the ground. I do agree that bombing economic targets was better, and later in the war became more possible. Area bombing was needed as the Butt report showed how badly BomberCommand were doing. But even the 8th who thought they could do precision bombing in daylight ended up area bombing in reality.
Unfortunately this is a by-election dominated by a quarrel in a far-away country between people of whom we know far, far too much.
There are conflicts all around the world that don't get a fraction of the spotlight or attention that this one has had. I wonder what is so unique about this one conflict, that every moment becomes headline news unlike all the others?
The physical carnage, the huge civilian casualties, the mass displacement of people, the resulting humanitarian disaster, the inflictor of all this being a regime supported by the west - these do make for a big story.
"the inflictor of all this being a regime supported by the west".
I think you might need to understand that this awful conflict was blatantly started by Hamas who "inflicted" rape torture and murder on innocent people.
There is a reasonable argument that the Israeli response has been disproportionate, but the "infliction" was initiated by Hamas terrorists.
As you have been an occasional apologist for Corbyn (and probably indirectly voted for him to be PM) I guess this is hard to recognise?
I know who started the fire. Hamas did. Oct 7th was unspeakable. It's now 13th February and Israel has wreaked a mighty vengeance for it.
Justifiable response to a threat deemed existential? Or barbaric collective punishment of the population of Gaza?
I think the latter.
I think you'll find that war does involve what useful idiots such as yourself would call "collective punishment".
Collective punishment is a war crime under Article 33 of the Geneva Convention. People who make excuses for it are idiots, useful or otherwise.
That's why I put it in quotation marks. Or perhaps Kinabalu thinks what Israel is doing is a war crime.
Well many of us do.
Yes hugely important that arseholes on the internet think something or other.
The arseholes being those who defend the murder of civilians as a necessary evil.
You suit the description perfectly.
It's war, Dickie boy. Look it up in the dictionary.
Indeed hence war crimes. Look them up yourself.
I suspect the proportion of military combatants to civilians was far smaller ratio in the Hamburg firestorm and the levelling of Dresden. But we weren't on trial at Nuremburg.
Is it a free pass for war crimes if you win the war?
Nope. Many commentators these days consider Dresden as a war crime. Indeed there is no escaping that for Harris as his explicit stated aim of breaking the German spirit by targeting civilians is specifically addressed as a war crime today.
The UK, and importantly in this debate, Israel both signed up to the post WW2 international rules on the conduct of war which outlawed many of the things both sides did in WW2 and which Israel and Russia are both doing now.
Personally I think only idiots living without the fear of Nazi tyranny consider Dresden a war crime. Why Dresden and not every single bombing raid that Bomber Command mounted? Because like it or not, Bomber Command wanted to achieve Dresden results EVERY time they set out. Dresden stands out as it was late in the war, and was highly successful, due to the firestorm. But many, many allied soldiers died after Dresden. Many Jews and other captives of the Nazis died after Dresden. Germany could have surrendered and stopped it all.
Because it was clear that it would not work. It was part of this ridiculous idea of British moral superiority. We had not cracked under the Blitz because we were British. But johnny foreigner is not made of the same stuff and so was bound to be broken by our bombing his cities flat.
Harris explicitly pushed this idea - that he could win the war by breaking the German spirit. It was clear in hindsight (and to many at the time) that it was a fallacy and that is one of the reasons that it was outlawed after the war. The whole campaign of targetting German civilian population would today be considered criminal and put in the same category as the use of poison gas.
It was ignorance as much as arrogance. Fascinating commentary from physicist Freeman Dyson here:
https://www.technologyreview.com/2006/11/01/227625/a-failure-of-intelligence/ … Bomber Command had a similar problem in evaluating the effectiveness of bombing. Aircrew frequently reported the destruction of targets when photographs showed they had missed by several miles. The navy ORS was extremely effective and made great contributions to winning the war against the U-boats in the Atlantic. But Blackett had two enormous advantages. First, he was a world-renowned scientist (who would later win a Nobel Prize), with a safe job in the academic world, so he could threaten to resign if his advice was not followed. Second, he had been a navy officer in World War I and was respected by the admirals he advised. Basil Dickins, the chief of our ORS at Bomber Command, had neither of these advantages. He was a civil servant with no independent standing. He could not threaten to resign, and Sir Arthur Harris had no respect for him. His career depended on telling Sir Arthur things that Sir Arthur wanted to hear. So that is what he did. He gave Sir Arthur information rather than advice. He never raised serious questions about Sir Arthur’s tactics and strategy…
This makes pretty clear that the targeting of civilans was deliberate policy : … We succeeded in raising firestorms only twice, once in Hamburg and once more in Dresden in 1945, where between 25,000 and 60,000 people perished (the numbers are still debated). The Germans had good air raid shelters and warning systems and did what they were told. As a result, only a few thousand people were killed in a typical major attack. But when there was a firestorm, people were asphyxiated or roasted inside their shelters, and the number killed was more than 10 times greater. Every time Bomber Command attacked a city, we were trying to raise a firestorm, but we never learnt why we so seldom succeeded…
Targeting of workers making weapons to kill allied soldiers would fit just as well. And the firestorm didn’t just kill people it destroyed buildings.
None of this is nice. But being gassed at Auschwitz was pretty below the belt too, as was being rounded up and burned to death in a church (Oradour) or taken to a ravine, stripped naked and shot, including the children.
I’m comfortable with everything that was done to defeat Germany. I’m sorry others can’t see that. I’ve read accounts of Dresden, and Hamburg, and it sounds horrifying. I hope it never happens again, and I hope I never get to experience it. But it doesn’t make it a war crime.
Under the then existing laws of war, it wasn’t. But it was both morally, and practically, deeply questionable.
Indeed and the point I made right at the start was that it was as a result of the WW2 experience that civilised countries around the world - including the UK and Israel - choose to sign up to a new set of laws outlawing certain behaviour in war.
Maybe Topping and others think those laws should only apply to nasty evil foreigners and not to us morally upstanding British and our brave allies.
"Laws" is a meaningless concept in war.
Answer the question. Let's say that the Dresden (and other) bombings helped to win the war for the UK. Would you rather us not have carried these out because of laws or are you content that we were in an existential fight and needed to do this to win, even if many children died as a result.
The Evening Standard tonight had a double page feature on Labour's problems in its London heartland. The main focus was on the threat to Wes Streeting in Ilford North whose majority in 2019 was 5,200 and now faces an Independent candidate with links to pro-Palestine groups whose own campaign may be helped by the inclusion of some parts of Ilford South into the newly-redrawn constituency.
The Standard also confirmed what I'd heard - that Councillor Mirza and the Newham Independents are going to stand candidates in both East Ham and West Ham & Beckton against Stephen Timms and Lyn Brown respectively. Another likely challenge to Labour is in Bethnal Green & Bow from an Aspire candidate.
It seems unlikely Labour will lose any of these seats and treating "the muslim vote" as a single homogenous entity is unwise. Respect got 20% in 2005 in East Ham and I suspect that's about where any pro-Palestine anti-Labour candidate will end up later this year.
Losing Wes Streeting from the next (likely) Cabinet of the UK would be a disaster for the whole country frankly. Someone needs to sort out the mess of the NHS and he seems like he might be up for the task. Prepared to reform and learn from other countries.
One can only hope if he loses Ilford then a quick peerage and Cabinet will happen.
We are in the unusual situation where all the major parties are pro-Israel, but a large number of voters are either pro-Palestine or neutral. However, Starmer is so scared of being called anti-semitic by the Tories, he is in danger of losing a lot of his natural supporters. Between dissatisfied Tories and dissatisfied Labour supporters, we could have an exceptionally low turnout at the GE.
Strange how sexist, homophobic, antisemites are considered to be our natural supporters. Don't we stand against all that stuff?
There are ca. 270,000 Jews in Britain. So a very tiny minority. Parties could ignore them. But Labour, in particular, is always saying it is in favour of vulnerable marginalised communities. And this community is particularly vulnerable at the moment and marginalised. So Labour should be very strongly on its side and against those who seek to attack Jews here. The issue is not whether the attacks fall into some definition of anti-semitism but simply that attacks on the vulnerable are wrong. This should not be difficult for Labour or the LibDems or any party really.
Criticising Israel and attacking British Jews are two entirely distinct things. The first is totally fine, the second is totally wrong. People who can't do the first without doing the second need to shut up. People who conflate the two to try to shut down the first should also shut up.
But our very own @nico679, one of yours, a homophobic-sympathising, sexist-sympathising, anti-semite-sympathising lefty like yourself said the following:
"The biggest recruiting sergeant for anti-Semitism is Netenyahu and his disgusting cabinet"
He directly said that criticism of Israel leads to anti-semitism. So no, it appears that it is not two entirely distinct thing.
I'm sure it has led to an increase in antisemitism, just like 9/11 led to an increase in Islamophobia, and the start of WW1 led to a spike in anti German sentiment. Or do you think there is no correlation? That seems hard to support based on the data.
I don’t know quite how reliable is this stat, but it is very interesting.
Will Mazi Pilip pay a "scandal penalty" in #NY03 today? I examined more than 20 years of specials and found, on average, the party affiliated with the scandal ran about 9 points worse than in the previous general.
Unfortunately this is a by-election dominated by a quarrel in a far-away country between people of whom we know far, far too much.
There are conflicts all around the world that don't get a fraction of the spotlight or attention that this one has had. I wonder what is so unique about this one conflict, that every moment becomes headline news unlike all the others?
The physical carnage, the huge civilian casualties, the mass displacement of people, the resulting humanitarian disaster, the inflictor of all this being a regime supported by the west - these do make for a big story.
"the inflictor of all this being a regime supported by the west".
I think you might need to understand that this awful conflict was blatantly started by Hamas who "inflicted" rape torture and murder on innocent people.
There is a reasonable argument that the Israeli response has been disproportionate, but the "infliction" was initiated by Hamas terrorists.
As you have been an occasional apologist for Corbyn (and probably indirectly voted for him to be PM) I guess this is hard to recognise?
I know who started the fire. Hamas did. Oct 7th was unspeakable. It's now 13th February and Israel has wreaked a mighty vengeance for it.
Justifiable response to a threat deemed existential? Or barbaric collective punishment of the population of Gaza?
I think the latter.
I think you'll find that war does involve what useful idiots such as yourself would call "collective punishment".
Collective punishment is a war crime under Article 33 of the Geneva Convention. People who make excuses for it are idiots, useful or otherwise.
That's why I put it in quotation marks. Or perhaps Kinabalu thinks what Israel is doing is a war crime.
Well many of us do.
Yes hugely important that arseholes on the internet think something or other.
The arseholes being those who defend the murder of civilians as a necessary evil.
You suit the description perfectly.
It's war, Dickie boy. Look it up in the dictionary.
Indeed hence war crimes. Look them up yourself.
I suspect the proportion of military combatants to civilians was far smaller ratio in the Hamburg firestorm and the levelling of Dresden. But we weren't on trial at Nuremburg.
Is it a free pass for war crimes if you win the war?
Nope. Many commentators these days consider Dresden as a war crime. Indeed there is no escaping that for Harris as his explicit stated aim of breaking the German spirit by targeting civilians is specifically addressed as a war crime today.
The UK, and importantly in this debate, Israel both signed up to the post WW2 international rules on the conduct of war which outlawed many of the things both sides did in WW2 and which Israel and Russia are both doing now.
Personally I think only idiots living without the fear of Nazi tyranny consider Dresden a war crime. Why Dresden and not every single bombing raid that Bomber Command mounted? Because like it or not, Bomber Command wanted to achieve Dresden results EVERY time they set out. Dresden stands out as it was late in the war, and was highly successful, due to the firestorm. But many, many allied soldiers died after Dresden. Many Jews and other captives of the Nazis died after Dresden. Germany could have surrendered and stopped it all.
Because it was clear that it would not work. It was part of this ridiculous idea of British moral superiority. We had not cracked under the Blitz because we were British. But johnny foreigner is not made of the same stuff and so was bound to be broken by our bombing his cities flat.
Harris explicitly pushed this idea - that he could win the war by breaking the German spirit. It was clear in hindsight (and to many at the time) that it was a fallacy and that is one of the reasons that it was outlawed after the war. The whole campaign of targetting German civilian population would today be considered criminal and put in the same category as the use of poison gas.
It was ignorance as much as arrogance. Fascinating commentary from physicist Freeman Dyson here:
https://www.technologyreview.com/2006/11/01/227625/a-failure-of-intelligence/ … Bomber Command had a similar problem in evaluating the effectiveness of bombing. Aircrew frequently reported the destruction of targets when photographs showed they had missed by several miles. The navy ORS was extremely effective and made great contributions to winning the war against the U-boats in the Atlantic. But Blackett had two enormous advantages. First, he was a world-renowned scientist (who would later win a Nobel Prize), with a safe job in the academic world, so he could threaten to resign if his advice was not followed. Second, he had been a navy officer in World War I and was respected by the admirals he advised. Basil Dickins, the chief of our ORS at Bomber Command, had neither of these advantages. He was a civil servant with no independent standing. He could not threaten to resign, and Sir Arthur Harris had no respect for him. His career depended on telling Sir Arthur things that Sir Arthur wanted to hear. So that is what he did. He gave Sir Arthur information rather than advice. He never raised serious questions about Sir Arthur’s tactics and strategy…
This makes pretty clear that the targeting of civilans was deliberate policy : … We succeeded in raising firestorms only twice, once in Hamburg and once more in Dresden in 1945, where between 25,000 and 60,000 people perished (the numbers are still debated). The Germans had good air raid shelters and warning systems and did what they were told. As a result, only a few thousand people were killed in a typical major attack. But when there was a firestorm, people were asphyxiated or roasted inside their shelters, and the number killed was more than 10 times greater. Every time Bomber Command attacked a city, we were trying to raise a firestorm, but we never learnt why we so seldom succeeded…
Targeting of workers making weapons to kill allied soldiers would fit just as well. And the firestorm didn’t just kill people it destroyed buildings.
None of this is nice. But being gassed at Auschwitz was pretty below the belt too, as was being rounded up and burned to death in a church (Oradour) or taken to a ravine, stripped naked and shot, including the children.
I’m comfortable with everything that was done to defeat Germany. I’m sorry others can’t see that. I’ve read accounts of Dresden, and Hamburg, and it sounds horrifying. I hope it never happens again, and I hope I never get to experience it. But it doesn’t make it a war crime.
Dresden, whatever you think of it, pales into insignificance beside Operation Meetinghouse, the firebombing of Tokyo a month later, which is estimated to have killed at least 100,000 people, a death toll not far removed from that later reached at Hiroshima.
I'm curious from a historical perspective - by March 1945, the Americans showed they could destroy any and every Japanese city at whim and inflict massive casualties yet the Japanese didn't at that point yield. Hiroshima, albeit a single device of an unknown magnitude, produced, one could argue, a death toll akin to a fire bombing raid and that didn't immediately force the Japanese surrender.
Was it the second A-Bomb or was it the defeat of the Kwantung Army in Manchuria which persuaded Hirohito and others final defeat was at hand?
After Nagasaki, the war cabinet met
1) the idea that the Americans could only produce one bomb every couple of years, was obviously wrong 2) the American submarines had run out of warships to sink 3) they’d also run out of merchant ships to sink 4) Le May was boring everything down the conventional way. 5) the harvest was failing. Famine in 1946 was inevitable. The military has a plan - confiscate all the remaining food and let the civilians starve 6) The allied island hoping campaign was proceeding unstoppably 7) The Russians were advancing at a rate of knots
The war council was split 3 - 3 - half wanted to fight to the death.
Hirohito broke the stalemate and a lot of tradition by ordering the surrender.
The ultras responded with an attempted coup. Which only failed because of the black out caused by yet another American air raid.
Unfortunately this is a by-election dominated by a quarrel in a far-away country between people of whom we know far, far too much.
There are conflicts all around the world that don't get a fraction of the spotlight or attention that this one has had. I wonder what is so unique about this one conflict, that every moment becomes headline news unlike all the others?
The physical carnage, the huge civilian casualties, the mass displacement of people, the resulting humanitarian disaster, the inflictor of all this being a regime supported by the west - these do make for a big story.
"the inflictor of all this being a regime supported by the west".
I think you might need to understand that this awful conflict was blatantly started by Hamas who "inflicted" rape torture and murder on innocent people.
There is a reasonable argument that the Israeli response has been disproportionate, but the "infliction" was initiated by Hamas terrorists.
As you have been an occasional apologist for Corbyn (and probably indirectly voted for him to be PM) I guess this is hard to recognise?
I know who started the fire. Hamas did. Oct 7th was unspeakable. It's now 13th February and Israel has wreaked a mighty vengeance for it.
Justifiable response to a threat deemed existential? Or barbaric collective punishment of the population of Gaza?
I think the latter.
I think you'll find that war does involve what useful idiots such as yourself would call "collective punishment".
Collective punishment is a war crime under Article 33 of the Geneva Convention. People who make excuses for it are idiots, useful or otherwise.
That's why I put it in quotation marks. Or perhaps Kinabalu thinks what Israel is doing is a war crime.
Well many of us do.
Yes hugely important that arseholes on the internet think something or other.
The arseholes being those who defend the murder of civilians as a necessary evil.
You suit the description perfectly.
It's war, Dickie boy. Look it up in the dictionary.
Indeed hence war crimes. Look them up yourself.
I suspect the proportion of military combatants to civilians was far smaller ratio in the Hamburg firestorm and the levelling of Dresden. But we weren't on trial at Nuremburg.
Is it a free pass for war crimes if you win the war?
Nope. Many commentators these days consider Dresden as a war crime. Indeed there is no escaping that for Harris as his explicit stated aim of breaking the German spirit by targeting civilians is specifically addressed as a war crime today.
The UK, and importantly in this debate, Israel both signed up to the post WW2 international rules on the conduct of war which outlawed many of the things both sides did in WW2 and which Israel and Russia are both doing now.
Personally I think only idiots living without the fear of Nazi tyranny consider Dresden a war crime. Why Dresden and not every single bombing raid that Bomber Command mounted? Because like it or not, Bomber Command wanted to achieve Dresden results EVERY time they set out. Dresden stands out as it was late in the war, and was highly successful, due to the firestorm. But many, many allied soldiers died after Dresden. Many Jews and other captives of the Nazis died after Dresden. Germany could have surrendered and stopped it all.
I know very little about WW2. But was Bomber Command strategy basically predicated on the idea that bombing Germany out of the war would save the innumerable slaughter witnessed in WW1?
Yep. Harris wanted to defeat Germany without the need for any British soldiers to land on the continent, other than to accept the surrender. There have been many arguments over the years about whether Bomber Command was worth the money and resources (materials and men) that it took. Max Hastings thought not in his book on the bomber war. Others disagree. Certainly the bombing campaign tied up tens if not hundreds of thousands of Germans defending the Reich who could have been fighting in the East. And combined with the 8th airforce’s campaign, the Allies achieved air dominance over the Luftwaffe, making D-Day much easier and restricting German movements to night time, to avoid being attacked from the air. By the end of 44 and into 45 the German transport system was wrecked, so moving anything was hard, including troops, tanks etc.
Sadly the idea that you could depress the morale of a nation under a fascist authoritarian regime was false. Even if a German housewife wanted to end the war after her house was destroyed, there was no mechanism for her to achieve it. And the Blitz had shown the resilience of the Brits under the bomb.
But ultimately strategic bombing contributed to winning the war and to describe one target destroyed as a war crime is infantile rubbish.
There were lots of things done on both sides in both wars which would now be considered war crimes. The whole point of civilisation is that we develop and learn from our mistakes.
My view is that war is never desirable, but once one is engaged, there’s no point in half measures.
Ultimately one has to do what is needful, to win. There is nothing worse than defeat.
If the price is 2.3 million Gazans including women and children?
Israel have the right to defend themselves against Hamas. Benjamin Netanyahu does not have the right to save his liberty and political career by the mass killing of Gazan women and children. That is not anti-Semitic but it does demonstrate my utter contempt for a sociopath who happens to be Prime Minister of Israel.
Bloody hell is the death toll up to 2.3m already.
What's your market 2.2m-2.4m? Can I please sell at 2.2m at a pound a life.
You really are quite a disgusting individual. Why am I even engaging with such a heartless idiot?
Feel free to ignore my posts. I mean I don't force you to reply to them wondering why you are replying to them.
Unfortunately this is a by-election dominated by a quarrel in a far-away country between people of whom we know far, far too much.
There are conflicts all around the world that don't get a fraction of the spotlight or attention that this one has had. I wonder what is so unique about this one conflict, that every moment becomes headline news unlike all the others?
The physical carnage, the huge civilian casualties, the mass displacement of people, the resulting humanitarian disaster, the inflictor of all this being a regime supported by the west - these do make for a big story.
"the inflictor of all this being a regime supported by the west".
I think you might need to understand that this awful conflict was blatantly started by Hamas who "inflicted" rape torture and murder on innocent people.
There is a reasonable argument that the Israeli response has been disproportionate, but the "infliction" was initiated by Hamas terrorists.
As you have been an occasional apologist for Corbyn (and probably indirectly voted for him to be PM) I guess this is hard to recognise?
I know who started the fire. Hamas did. Oct 7th was unspeakable. It's now 13th February and Israel has wreaked a mighty vengeance for it.
Justifiable response to a threat deemed existential? Or barbaric collective punishment of the population of Gaza?
I think the latter.
I think you'll find that war does involve what useful idiots such as yourself would call "collective punishment".
Collective punishment is a war crime under Article 33 of the Geneva Convention. People who make excuses for it are idiots, useful or otherwise.
That's why I put it in quotation marks. Or perhaps Kinabalu thinks what Israel is doing is a war crime.
Well many of us do.
Yes hugely important that arseholes on the internet think something or other.
The arseholes being those who defend the murder of civilians as a necessary evil.
You suit the description perfectly.
It's war, Dickie boy. Look it up in the dictionary.
Indeed hence war crimes. Look them up yourself.
I suspect the proportion of military combatants to civilians was far smaller ratio in the Hamburg firestorm and the levelling of Dresden. But we weren't on trial at Nuremburg.
Is it a free pass for war crimes if you win the war?
Nope. Many commentators these days consider Dresden as a war crime. Indeed there is no escaping that for Harris as his explicit stated aim of breaking the German spirit by targeting civilians is specifically addressed as a war crime today.
The UK, and importantly in this debate, Israel both signed up to the post WW2 international rules on the conduct of war which outlawed many of the things both sides did in WW2 and which Israel and Russia are both doing now.
Personally I think only idiots living without the fear of Nazi tyranny consider Dresden a war crime. Why Dresden and not every single bombing raid that Bomber Command mounted? Because like it or not, Bomber Command wanted to achieve Dresden results EVERY time they set out. Dresden stands out as it was late in the war, and was highly successful, due to the firestorm. But many, many allied soldiers died after Dresden. Many Jews and other captives of the Nazis died after Dresden. Germany could have surrendered and stopped it all.
Because it was clear that it would not work. It was part of this ridiculous idea of British moral superiority. We had not cracked under the Blitz because we were British. But johnny foreigner is not made of the same stuff and so was bound to be broken by our bombing his cities flat.
Harris explicitly pushed this idea - that he could win the war by breaking the German spirit. It was clear in hindsight (and to many at the time) that it was a fallacy and that is one of the reasons that it was outlawed after the war. The whole campaign of targetting German civilian population would today be considered criminal and put in the same category as the use of poison gas.
I’m sorry but I disagree. It did work, just not by damaging morale. See the effort Germany had to put into defending the Reich, rather than fighting the Russians. See the D-Day campaign and after for why winning air superiority was so crucial. The battle of the bulge only got as far as it did because the allies could not fly due to the weather. When the weather cleared the fighter-bombers returned and wreaked havoc.
Morale bombing failed, yes, but the Bombing War as a whole played a significant role in the allied victory. Singling out Dresden as ‘special’ is just nonsense, as Bomber Command, and the 8th Air Force tried to achieve similar results every time. Is Hamburg a war crime? What about Schweinfurt?
That wasn’t Dyson’s view. And he was better placed than most to make the judgment. … A week after the final attack on Berlin, we suffered an even more crushing defeat. We attacked Nuremberg with 795 bombers and lost 94, a loss rate of almost 12 percent. It was then clear to everybody that such losses were unsustainable. Sir Arthur reluctantly abandoned his dream of winning the War by himself. Bomber Command stopped flying so deep into Germany and spent the summer of 1944 giving tactical support to the Allied armies that were, by then, invading France.
The history of the 20th century has repeatedly shown that strategic bombing by itself does not win wars. If Britain had decided in 1936 to put its main effort into building ships instead of bombers, the invasion of France might have been possible in 1943 instead of 1944, and the war in Europe might have ended in 1944 instead of 1945. But in 1943, we had the bombers, and we did not have the ships, and the problem was to do the best we could with what we had...
And yet invading France in 1943 would have been against a Luftwaffe that was still capable of inflicting severe damage, and against a German army that was significantly stronger. Churchill was desperate NOT to invade in 43. About the only advantage would have been the much less complete Atlantic Wall.
I totally agree that strategic bombing did not win the war alone. No one thinks it did, or indeed could. But it played a huge part. German industry was massively hindered. Transport was destroyed. The Das Reich panzer division took an age to get from southern France to Normandy, mainly due to air power of the allies, won by strategic bombing, notably the 8th who actively sought to destroy Luftwaffe fighters, using bombers as bait.
Read the whole of the Dyson article. He was smarter than either of us, and he was there to analyse it. He simply doesn’t believe the “strategic bombing” of cities worked. Which was why it was eventually abandoned.
Whereas the accurate targeted bombing of oil supplies almost certainly did.
Whether he was wrong or right I wouldn't necessarily rely on contemporary accounts to provide the last word about the value of something in the grand scheme of things, and given the broad sweep of history.
Indeed not.
But I haven’t seen any postwar analysis to show he was wrong, and a fair amount to suggest he wasn’t.
Unfortunately this is a by-election dominated by a quarrel in a far-away country between people of whom we know far, far too much.
There are conflicts all around the world that don't get a fraction of the spotlight or attention that this one has had. I wonder what is so unique about this one conflict, that every moment becomes headline news unlike all the others?
The physical carnage, the huge civilian casualties, the mass displacement of people, the resulting humanitarian disaster, the inflictor of all this being a regime supported by the west - these do make for a big story.
"the inflictor of all this being a regime supported by the west".
I think you might need to understand that this awful conflict was blatantly started by Hamas who "inflicted" rape torture and murder on innocent people.
There is a reasonable argument that the Israeli response has been disproportionate, but the "infliction" was initiated by Hamas terrorists.
As you have been an occasional apologist for Corbyn (and probably indirectly voted for him to be PM) I guess this is hard to recognise?
I know who started the fire. Hamas did. Oct 7th was unspeakable. It's now 13th February and Israel has wreaked a mighty vengeance for it.
Justifiable response to a threat deemed existential? Or barbaric collective punishment of the population of Gaza?
I think the latter.
I think you'll find that war does involve what useful idiots such as yourself would call "collective punishment".
Collective punishment is a war crime under Article 33 of the Geneva Convention. People who make excuses for it are idiots, useful or otherwise.
That's why I put it in quotation marks. Or perhaps Kinabalu thinks what Israel is doing is a war crime.
Well many of us do.
Yes hugely important that arseholes on the internet think something or other.
The arseholes being those who defend the murder of civilians as a necessary evil.
You suit the description perfectly.
It's war, Dickie boy. Look it up in the dictionary.
Indeed hence war crimes. Look them up yourself.
I suspect the proportion of military combatants to civilians was far smaller ratio in the Hamburg firestorm and the levelling of Dresden. But we weren't on trial at Nuremburg.
Is it a free pass for war crimes if you win the war?
Nope. Many commentators these days consider Dresden as a war crime. Indeed there is no escaping that for Harris as his explicit stated aim of breaking the German spirit by targeting civilians is specifically addressed as a war crime today.
The UK, and importantly in this debate, Israel both signed up to the post WW2 international rules on the conduct of war which outlawed many of the things both sides did in WW2 and which Israel and Russia are both doing now.
Personally I think only idiots living without the fear of Nazi tyranny consider Dresden a war crime. Why Dresden and not every single bombing raid that Bomber Command mounted? Because like it or not, Bomber Command wanted to achieve Dresden results EVERY time they set out. Dresden stands out as it was late in the war, and was highly successful, due to the firestorm. But many, many allied soldiers died after Dresden. Many Jews and other captives of the Nazis died after Dresden. Germany could have surrendered and stopped it all.
I know very little about WW2. But was Bomber Command strategy basically predicated on the idea that bombing Germany out of the war would save the innumerable slaughter witnessed in WW1?
Yep. Harris wanted to defeat Germany without the need for any British soldiers to land on the continent, other than to accept the surrender. There have been many arguments over the years about whether Bomber Command was worth the money and resources (materials and men) that it took. Max Hastings thought not in his book on the bomber war. Others disagree. Certainly the bombing campaign tied up tens if not hundreds of thousands of Germans defending the Reich who could have been fighting in the East. And combined with the 8th airforce’s campaign, the Allies achieved air dominance over the Luftwaffe, making D-Day much easier and restricting German movements to night time, to avoid being attacked from the air. By the end of 44 and into 45 the German transport system was wrecked, so moving anything was hard, including troops, tanks etc.
Sadly the idea that you could depress the morale of a nation under a fascist authoritarian regime was false. Even if a German housewife wanted to end the war after her house was destroyed, there was no mechanism for her to achieve it. And the Blitz had shown the resilience of the Brits under the bomb.
But ultimately strategic bombing contributed to winning the war and to describe one target destroyed as a war crime is infantile rubbish.
There were lots of things done on both sides in both wars which would now be considered war crimes. The whole point of civilisation is that we develop and learn from our mistakes.
My view is that war is never desirable, but once one is engaged, there’s no point in half measures.
Ultimately one has to do what is needful, to win. There is nothing worse than defeat.
Hallelujah.
This is what I referred to earlier. The UK hasn't been in a war for a very long time. We have had operations in Afghan, Iraq, Bosnia, for example, where at the end of the day we could always say fuck it and go home. Indeed that is exactly what we did mostly.
The likes of Richard "Dickie Boy" Tyndall is mistaking such actions with actual war.
If you are losing or think you might lose a war what on earth do you care about "the rules". A ridiculous concept in any case.
I will be sure to remind you in future that you advocated for murdering children.
You would rather have lost the second world war than bomb Dresden.
Do you really think we would not have won the war without firebombing Dresden in February 1945?
Did we dare to find out? 80 years of hindsight allows you to make that statement. Round the war cabinet perhaps they weren't so sure.
Unfortunately this is a by-election dominated by a quarrel in a far-away country between people of whom we know far, far too much.
There are conflicts all around the world that don't get a fraction of the spotlight or attention that this one has had. I wonder what is so unique about this one conflict, that every moment becomes headline news unlike all the others?
The physical carnage, the huge civilian casualties, the mass displacement of people, the resulting humanitarian disaster, the inflictor of all this being a regime supported by the west - these do make for a big story.
"the inflictor of all this being a regime supported by the west".
I think you might need to understand that this awful conflict was blatantly started by Hamas who "inflicted" rape torture and murder on innocent people.
There is a reasonable argument that the Israeli response has been disproportionate, but the "infliction" was initiated by Hamas terrorists.
As you have been an occasional apologist for Corbyn (and probably indirectly voted for him to be PM) I guess this is hard to recognise?
I know who started the fire. Hamas did. Oct 7th was unspeakable. It's now 13th February and Israel has wreaked a mighty vengeance for it.
Justifiable response to a threat deemed existential? Or barbaric collective punishment of the population of Gaza?
I think the latter.
I think you'll find that war does involve what useful idiots such as yourself would call "collective punishment".
Collective punishment is a war crime under Article 33 of the Geneva Convention. People who make excuses for it are idiots, useful or otherwise.
That's why I put it in quotation marks. Or perhaps Kinabalu thinks what Israel is doing is a war crime.
Well many of us do.
Yes hugely important that arseholes on the internet think something or other.
The arseholes being those who defend the murder of civilians as a necessary evil.
You suit the description perfectly.
It's war, Dickie boy. Look it up in the dictionary.
Indeed hence war crimes. Look them up yourself.
I suspect the proportion of military combatants to civilians was far smaller ratio in the Hamburg firestorm and the levelling of Dresden. But we weren't on trial at Nuremburg.
Is it a free pass for war crimes if you win the war?
Nope. Many commentators these days consider Dresden as a war crime. Indeed there is no escaping that for Harris as his explicit stated aim of breaking the German spirit by targeting civilians is specifically addressed as a war crime today.
The UK, and importantly in this debate, Israel both signed up to the post WW2 international rules on the conduct of war which outlawed many of the things both sides did in WW2 and which Israel and Russia are both doing now.
Personally I think only idiots living without the fear of Nazi tyranny consider Dresden a war crime. Why Dresden and not every single bombing raid that Bomber Command mounted? Because like it or not, Bomber Command wanted to achieve Dresden results EVERY time they set out. Dresden stands out as it was late in the war, and was highly successful, due to the firestorm. But many, many allied soldiers died after Dresden. Many Jews and other captives of the Nazis died after Dresden. Germany could have surrendered and stopped it all.
I know very little about WW2. But was Bomber Command strategy basically predicated on the idea that bombing Germany out of the war would save the innumerable slaughter witnessed in WW1?
Yep. Harris wanted to defeat Germany without the need for any British soldiers to land on the continent, other than to accept the surrender. There have been many arguments over the years about whether Bomber Command was worth the money and resources (materials and men) that it took. Max Hastings thought not in his book on the bomber war. Others disagree. Certainly the bombing campaign tied up tens if not hundreds of thousands of Germans defending the Reich who could have been fighting in the East. And combined with the 8th airforce’s campaign, the Allies achieved air dominance over the Luftwaffe, making D-Day much easier and restricting German movements to night time, to avoid being attacked from the air. By the end of 44 and into 45 the German transport system was wrecked, so moving anything was hard, including troops, tanks etc.
Sadly the idea that you could depress the morale of a nation under a fascist authoritarian regime was false. Even if a German housewife wanted to end the war after her house was destroyed, there was no mechanism for her to achieve it. And the Blitz had shown the resilience of the Brits under the bomb.
But ultimately strategic bombing contributed to winning the war and to describe one target destroyed as a war crime is infantile rubbish.
There were lots of things done on both sides in both wars which would now be considered war crimes. The whole point of civilisation is that we develop and learn from our mistakes.
My view is that war is never desirable, but once one is engaged, there’s no point in half measures.
Ultimately one has to do what is needful, to win. There is nothing worse than defeat.
If the price is 2.3 million Gazans including women and children?
Israel have the right to defend themselves against Hamas. Benjamin Netanyahu does not have the right to save his liberty and political career by the mass killing of Gazan women and children. That is not anti-Semitic but it does demonstrate my utter contempt for a sociopath who happens to be Prime Minister of Israel.
Bloody hell is the death toll up to 2.3m already.
What's your market 2.2m-2.4m? Can I please sell at 2.2m at a pound a life.
You really are quite a disgusting individual. Why am I even engaging with such a heartless idiot?
Unfortunately this is a by-election dominated by a quarrel in a far-away country between people of whom we know far, far too much.
There are conflicts all around the world that don't get a fraction of the spotlight or attention that this one has had. I wonder what is so unique about this one conflict, that every moment becomes headline news unlike all the others?
The physical carnage, the huge civilian casualties, the mass displacement of people, the resulting humanitarian disaster, the inflictor of all this being a regime supported by the west - these do make for a big story.
"the inflictor of all this being a regime supported by the west".
I think you might need to understand that this awful conflict was blatantly started by Hamas who "inflicted" rape torture and murder on innocent people.
There is a reasonable argument that the Israeli response has been disproportionate, but the "infliction" was initiated by Hamas terrorists.
As you have been an occasional apologist for Corbyn (and probably indirectly voted for him to be PM) I guess this is hard to recognise?
I know who started the fire. Hamas did. Oct 7th was unspeakable. It's now 13th February and Israel has wreaked a mighty vengeance for it.
Justifiable response to a threat deemed existential? Or barbaric collective punishment of the population of Gaza?
I think the latter.
I think you'll find that war does involve what useful idiots such as yourself would call "collective punishment".
Collective punishment is a war crime under Article 33 of the Geneva Convention. People who make excuses for it are idiots, useful or otherwise.
That's why I put it in quotation marks. Or perhaps Kinabalu thinks what Israel is doing is a war crime.
Well many of us do.
Yes hugely important that arseholes on the internet think something or other.
The arseholes being those who defend the murder of civilians as a necessary evil.
You suit the description perfectly.
It's war, Dickie boy. Look it up in the dictionary.
Indeed hence war crimes. Look them up yourself.
I suspect the proportion of military combatants to civilians was far smaller ratio in the Hamburg firestorm and the levelling of Dresden. But we weren't on trial at Nuremburg.
Is it a free pass for war crimes if you win the war?
Nope. Many commentators these days consider Dresden as a war crime. Indeed there is no escaping that for Harris as his explicit stated aim of breaking the German spirit by targeting civilians is specifically addressed as a war crime today.
The UK, and importantly in this debate, Israel both signed up to the post WW2 international rules on the conduct of war which outlawed many of the things both sides did in WW2 and which Israel and Russia are both doing now.
Personally I think only idiots living without the fear of Nazi tyranny consider Dresden a war crime. Why Dresden and not every single bombing raid that Bomber Command mounted? Because like it or not, Bomber Command wanted to achieve Dresden results EVERY time they set out. Dresden stands out as it was late in the war, and was highly successful, due to the firestorm. But many, many allied soldiers died after Dresden. Many Jews and other captives of the Nazis died after Dresden. Germany could have surrendered and stopped it all.
I know very little about WW2. But was Bomber Command strategy basically predicated on the idea that bombing Germany out of the war would save the innumerable slaughter witnessed in WW1?
Yep. Harris wanted to defeat Germany without the need for any British soldiers to land on the continent, other than to accept the surrender. There have been many arguments over the years about whether Bomber Command was worth the money and resources (materials and men) that it took. Max Hastings thought not in his book on the bomber war. Others disagree. Certainly the bombing campaign tied up tens if not hundreds of thousands of Germans defending the Reich who could have been fighting in the East. And combined with the 8th airforce’s campaign, the Allies achieved air dominance over the Luftwaffe, making D-Day much easier and restricting German movements to night time, to avoid being attacked from the air. By the end of 44 and into 45 the German transport system was wrecked, so moving anything was hard, including troops, tanks etc.
Sadly the idea that you could depress the morale of a nation under a fascist authoritarian regime was false. Even if a German housewife wanted to end the war after her house was destroyed, there was no mechanism for her to achieve it. And the Blitz had shown the resilience of the Brits under the bomb.
But ultimately strategic bombing contributed to winning the war and to describe one target destroyed as a war crime is infantile rubbish.
There were lots of things done on both sides in both wars which would now be considered war crimes. The whole point of civilisation is that we develop and learn from our mistakes.
My view is that war is never desirable, but once one is engaged, there’s no point in half measures.
Ultimately one has to do what is needful, to win. There is nothing worse than defeat.
If both sides adopt that approach it only adds to the barbarity. There can't be victory without defeat and the greater the defeat doesn't mean the greater the victory. So, all told, half measures is the way to go imo.
Unfortunately this is a by-election dominated by a quarrel in a far-away country between people of whom we know far, far too much.
There are conflicts all around the world that don't get a fraction of the spotlight or attention that this one has had. I wonder what is so unique about this one conflict, that every moment becomes headline news unlike all the others?
The physical carnage, the huge civilian casualties, the mass displacement of people, the resulting humanitarian disaster, the inflictor of all this being a regime supported by the west - these do make for a big story.
"the inflictor of all this being a regime supported by the west".
I think you might need to understand that this awful conflict was blatantly started by Hamas who "inflicted" rape torture and murder on innocent people.
There is a reasonable argument that the Israeli response has been disproportionate, but the "infliction" was initiated by Hamas terrorists.
As you have been an occasional apologist for Corbyn (and probably indirectly voted for him to be PM) I guess this is hard to recognise?
I know who started the fire. Hamas did. Oct 7th was unspeakable. It's now 13th February and Israel has wreaked a mighty vengeance for it.
Justifiable response to a threat deemed existential? Or barbaric collective punishment of the population of Gaza?
I think the latter.
I think you'll find that war does involve what useful idiots such as yourself would call "collective punishment".
Collective punishment is a war crime under Article 33 of the Geneva Convention. People who make excuses for it are idiots, useful or otherwise.
That's why I put it in quotation marks. Or perhaps Kinabalu thinks what Israel is doing is a war crime.
Well many of us do.
Yes hugely important that arseholes on the internet think something or other.
The arseholes being those who defend the murder of civilians as a necessary evil.
You suit the description perfectly.
It's war, Dickie boy. Look it up in the dictionary.
Indeed hence war crimes. Look them up yourself.
I suspect the proportion of military combatants to civilians was far smaller ratio in the Hamburg firestorm and the levelling of Dresden. But we weren't on trial at Nuremburg.
Is it a free pass for war crimes if you win the war?
Nope. Many commentators these days consider Dresden as a war crime. Indeed there is no escaping that for Harris as his explicit stated aim of breaking the German spirit by targeting civilians is specifically addressed as a war crime today.
The UK, and importantly in this debate, Israel both signed up to the post WW2 international rules on the conduct of war which outlawed many of the things both sides did in WW2 and which Israel and Russia are both doing now.
Personally I think only idiots living without the fear of Nazi tyranny consider Dresden a war crime. Why Dresden and not every single bombing raid that Bomber Command mounted? Because like it or not, Bomber Command wanted to achieve Dresden results EVERY time they set out. Dresden stands out as it was late in the war, and was highly successful, due to the firestorm. But many, many allied soldiers died after Dresden. Many Jews and other captives of the Nazis died after Dresden. Germany could have surrendered and stopped it all.
Because it was clear that it would not work. It was part of this ridiculous idea of British moral superiority. We had not cracked under the Blitz because we were British. But johnny foreigner is not made of the same stuff and so was bound to be broken by our bombing his cities flat.
Harris explicitly pushed this idea - that he could win the war by breaking the German spirit. It was clear in hindsight (and to many at the time) that it was a fallacy and that is one of the reasons that it was outlawed after the war. The whole campaign of targetting German civilian population would today be considered criminal and put in the same category as the use of poison gas.
It was ignorance as much as arrogance. Fascinating commentary from physicist Freeman Dyson here:
https://www.technologyreview.com/2006/11/01/227625/a-failure-of-intelligence/ … Bomber Command had a similar problem in evaluating the effectiveness of bombing. Aircrew frequently reported the destruction of targets when photographs showed they had missed by several miles. The navy ORS was extremely effective and made great contributions to winning the war against the U-boats in the Atlantic. But Blackett had two enormous advantages. First, he was a world-renowned scientist (who would later win a Nobel Prize), with a safe job in the academic world, so he could threaten to resign if his advice was not followed. Second, he had been a navy officer in World War I and was respected by the admirals he advised. Basil Dickins, the chief of our ORS at Bomber Command, had neither of these advantages. He was a civil servant with no independent standing. He could not threaten to resign, and Sir Arthur Harris had no respect for him. His career depended on telling Sir Arthur things that Sir Arthur wanted to hear. So that is what he did. He gave Sir Arthur information rather than advice. He never raised serious questions about Sir Arthur’s tactics and strategy…
This makes pretty clear that the targeting of civilans was deliberate policy : … We succeeded in raising firestorms only twice, once in Hamburg and once more in Dresden in 1945, where between 25,000 and 60,000 people perished (the numbers are still debated). The Germans had good air raid shelters and warning systems and did what they were told. As a result, only a few thousand people were killed in a typical major attack. But when there was a firestorm, people were asphyxiated or roasted inside their shelters, and the number killed was more than 10 times greater. Every time Bomber Command attacked a city, we were trying to raise a firestorm, but we never learnt why we so seldom succeeded…
Targeting of workers making weapons to kill allied soldiers would fit just as well. And the firestorm didn’t just kill people it destroyed buildings.
None of this is nice. But being gassed at Auschwitz was pretty below the belt too, as was being rounded up and burned to death in a church (Oradour) or taken to a ravine, stripped naked and shot, including the children.
I’m comfortable with everything that was done to defeat Germany. I’m sorry others can’t see that. I’ve read accounts of Dresden, and Hamburg, and it sounds horrifying. I hope it never happens again, and I hope I never get to experience it. But it doesn’t make it a war crime.
Under the then existing laws of war, it wasn’t. But it was both morally, and practically, deeply questionable.
Indeed and the point I made right at the start was that it was as a result of the WW2 experience that civilised countries around the world - including the UK and Israel - choose to sign up to a new set of laws outlawing certain behaviour in war.
Maybe Topping and others think those laws should only apply to nasty evil foreigners and not to us morally upstanding British and our brave allies.
"Laws" is a meaningless concept in war.
Answer the question. Let's say that the Dresden (and other) bombings helped to win the war for the UK. Would you rather us not have carried these out because of laws or are you content that we were in an existential fight and needed to do this to win, even if many children died as a result.
I agree, war is crime made legal, so all war is criminal actionin intent and purpose.
Unfortunately this is a by-election dominated by a quarrel in a far-away country between people of whom we know far, far too much.
There are conflicts all around the world that don't get a fraction of the spotlight or attention that this one has had. I wonder what is so unique about this one conflict, that every moment becomes headline news unlike all the others?
The physical carnage, the huge civilian casualties, the mass displacement of people, the resulting humanitarian disaster, the inflictor of all this being a regime supported by the west - these do make for a big story.
"the inflictor of all this being a regime supported by the west".
I think you might need to understand that this awful conflict was blatantly started by Hamas who "inflicted" rape torture and murder on innocent people.
There is a reasonable argument that the Israeli response has been disproportionate, but the "infliction" was initiated by Hamas terrorists.
As you have been an occasional apologist for Corbyn (and probably indirectly voted for him to be PM) I guess this is hard to recognise?
I know who started the fire. Hamas did. Oct 7th was unspeakable. It's now 13th February and Israel has wreaked a mighty vengeance for it.
Justifiable response to a threat deemed existential? Or barbaric collective punishment of the population of Gaza?
I think the latter.
I think you'll find that war does involve what useful idiots such as yourself would call "collective punishment".
Collective punishment is a war crime under Article 33 of the Geneva Convention. People who make excuses for it are idiots, useful or otherwise.
That's why I put it in quotation marks. Or perhaps Kinabalu thinks what Israel is doing is a war crime.
Well many of us do.
Yes hugely important that arseholes on the internet think something or other.
The arseholes being those who defend the murder of civilians as a necessary evil.
You suit the description perfectly.
It's war, Dickie boy. Look it up in the dictionary.
Indeed hence war crimes. Look them up yourself.
I suspect the proportion of military combatants to civilians was far smaller ratio in the Hamburg firestorm and the levelling of Dresden. But we weren't on trial at Nuremburg.
Is it a free pass for war crimes if you win the war?
Nope. Many commentators these days consider Dresden as a war crime. Indeed there is no escaping that for Harris as his explicit stated aim of breaking the German spirit by targeting civilians is specifically addressed as a war crime today.
The UK, and importantly in this debate, Israel both signed up to the post WW2 international rules on the conduct of war which outlawed many of the things both sides did in WW2 and which Israel and Russia are both doing now.
Personally I think only idiots living without the fear of Nazi tyranny consider Dresden a war crime. Why Dresden and not every single bombing raid that Bomber Command mounted? Because like it or not, Bomber Command wanted to achieve Dresden results EVERY time they set out. Dresden stands out as it was late in the war, and was highly successful, due to the firestorm. But many, many allied soldiers died after Dresden. Many Jews and other captives of the Nazis died after Dresden. Germany could have surrendered and stopped it all.
I know very little about WW2. But was Bomber Command strategy basically predicated on the idea that bombing Germany out of the war would save the innumerable slaughter witnessed in WW1?
Yep. Harris wanted to defeat Germany without the need for any British soldiers to land on the continent, other than to accept the surrender. There have been many arguments over the years about whether Bomber Command was worth the money and resources (materials and men) that it took. Max Hastings thought not in his book on the bomber war. Others disagree. Certainly the bombing campaign tied up tens if not hundreds of thousands of Germans defending the Reich who could have been fighting in the East. And combined with the 8th airforce’s campaign, the Allies achieved air dominance over the Luftwaffe, making D-Day much easier and restricting German movements to night time, to avoid being attacked from the air. By the end of 44 and into 45 the German transport system was wrecked, so moving anything was hard, including troops, tanks etc.
Sadly the idea that you could depress the morale of a nation under a fascist authoritarian regime was false. Even if a German housewife wanted to end the war after her house was destroyed, there was no mechanism for her to achieve it. And the Blitz had shown the resilience of the Brits under the bomb.
But ultimately strategic bombing contributed to winning the war and to describe one target destroyed as a war crime is infantile rubbish.
There were lots of things done on both sides in both wars which would now be considered war crimes. The whole point of civilisation is that we develop and learn from our mistakes.
My view is that war is never desirable, but once one is engaged, there’s no point in half measures.
Ultimately one has to do what is needful, to win. There is nothing worse than defeat.
If the price is 2.3 million Gazans including women and children?
Israel have the right to defend themselves against Hamas. Benjamin Netanyahu does not have the right to save his liberty and political career by the mass killing of Gazan women and children. That is not anti-Semitic but it does demonstrate my utter contempt for a sociopath who happens to be Prime Minister of Israel.
Bloody hell is the death toll up to 2.3m already.
What's your market 2.2m-2.4m? Can I please sell at 2.2m at a pound a life.
You really are quite a disgusting individual. Why am I even engaging with such a heartless idiot?
btw I love the "heartless" bit. Very Gone with the Wind.
The Evening Standard tonight had a double page feature on Labour's problems in its London heartland. The main focus was on the threat to Wes Streeting in Ilford North whose majority in 2019 was 5,200 and now faces an Independent candidate with links to pro-Palestine groups whose own campaign may be helped by the inclusion of some parts of Ilford South into the newly-redrawn constituency.
The Standard also confirmed what I'd heard - that Councillor Mirza and the Newham Independents are going to stand candidates in both East Ham and West Ham & Beckton against Stephen Timms and Lyn Brown respectively. Another likely challenge to Labour is in Bethnal Green & Bow from an Aspire candidate.
It seems unlikely Labour will lose any of these seats and treating "the muslim vote" as a single homogenous entity is unwise. Respect got 20% in 2005 in East Ham and I suspect that's about where any pro-Palestine anti-Labour candidate will end up later this year.
Number of Muslims in London 2001 607k 2011 1m 2021 1.7m
So I’d think that the percentage of votes in big Muslim areas could be higher than 20
According to the 2021 census the number of Muslims in London was 1,318,755.
Where do your figures come from?
Quite obviously London Muslims are a diverse community and not of one mind politically.
I thought I’d got it from here, but must be going mad
The Evening Standard tonight had a double page feature on Labour's problems in its London heartland. The main focus was on the threat to Wes Streeting in Ilford North whose majority in 2019 was 5,200 and now faces an Independent candidate with links to pro-Palestine groups whose own campaign may be helped by the inclusion of some parts of Ilford South into the newly-redrawn constituency.
The Standard also confirmed what I'd heard - that Councillor Mirza and the Newham Independents are going to stand candidates in both East Ham and West Ham & Beckton against Stephen Timms and Lyn Brown respectively. Another likely challenge to Labour is in Bethnal Green & Bow from an Aspire candidate.
It seems unlikely Labour will lose any of these seats and treating "the muslim vote" as a single homogenous entity is unwise. Respect got 20% in 2005 in East Ham and I suspect that's about where any pro-Palestine anti-Labour candidate will end up later this year.
Losing Wes Streeting from the next (likely) Cabinet of the UK would be a disaster for the whole country frankly. Someone needs to sort out the mess of the NHS and he seems like he might be up for the task. Prepared to reform and learn from other countries.
One can only hope if he loses Ilford then a quick peerage and Cabinet will happen.
Sticking reject politicians who cannot win their own constituency into the Lords is the sort of thing that brings the Lords into disrepute.
I am very suspicious of Streeting. All I have seem from him is superficial gimmicks and a ruthless personal ambition. I don't think he cares much about the job.
I'm afraid you're not going to see much improvement in healthcare provision whether Streeting is in charge of it or not. Labour want to ignore the obvious - that the population is exploding in size because of mass immigration, and getting progressively older and sicker to boot - and pretend that somehow everything can be made magically better through "reforms." Now, doubtless there are reforms that can help, but at the end of the day reforms aren't going to provide all the new hospitals and other healthcare facilities needed to deal with our huge and increasingly decrepit populace, nor pay for them to be staffed and operated. That needs shedloads of extra cash, and Labour has quit the redistribution business. It's there to protect the wealthy and keep them in the manner to which they have become accustomed. They're faux pink Tories and will therefore fail.
Unfortunately this is a by-election dominated by a quarrel in a far-away country between people of whom we know far, far too much.
There are conflicts all around the world that don't get a fraction of the spotlight or attention that this one has had. I wonder what is so unique about this one conflict, that every moment becomes headline news unlike all the others?
The physical carnage, the huge civilian casualties, the mass displacement of people, the resulting humanitarian disaster, the inflictor of all this being a regime supported by the west - these do make for a big story.
"the inflictor of all this being a regime supported by the west".
I think you might need to understand that this awful conflict was blatantly started by Hamas who "inflicted" rape torture and murder on innocent people.
There is a reasonable argument that the Israeli response has been disproportionate, but the "infliction" was initiated by Hamas terrorists.
As you have been an occasional apologist for Corbyn (and probably indirectly voted for him to be PM) I guess this is hard to recognise?
I know who started the fire. Hamas did. Oct 7th was unspeakable. It's now 13th February and Israel has wreaked a mighty vengeance for it.
Justifiable response to a threat deemed existential? Or barbaric collective punishment of the population of Gaza?
I think the latter.
I think you'll find that war does involve what useful idiots such as yourself would call "collective punishment".
Collective punishment is a war crime under Article 33 of the Geneva Convention. People who make excuses for it are idiots, useful or otherwise.
That's why I put it in quotation marks. Or perhaps Kinabalu thinks what Israel is doing is a war crime.
Well many of us do.
Yes hugely important that arseholes on the internet think something or other.
The arseholes being those who defend the murder of civilians as a necessary evil.
You suit the description perfectly.
It's war, Dickie boy. Look it up in the dictionary.
Indeed hence war crimes. Look them up yourself.
I suspect the proportion of military combatants to civilians was far smaller ratio in the Hamburg firestorm and the levelling of Dresden. But we weren't on trial at Nuremburg.
Is it a free pass for war crimes if you win the war?
Nope. Many commentators these days consider Dresden as a war crime. Indeed there is no escaping that for Harris as his explicit stated aim of breaking the German spirit by targeting civilians is specifically addressed as a war crime today.
The UK, and importantly in this debate, Israel both signed up to the post WW2 international rules on the conduct of war which outlawed many of the things both sides did in WW2 and which Israel and Russia are both doing now.
Personally I think only idiots living without the fear of Nazi tyranny consider Dresden a war crime. Why Dresden and not every single bombing raid that Bomber Command mounted? Because like it or not, Bomber Command wanted to achieve Dresden results EVERY time they set out. Dresden stands out as it was late in the war, and was highly successful, due to the firestorm. But many, many allied soldiers died after Dresden. Many Jews and other captives of the Nazis died after Dresden. Germany could have surrendered and stopped it all.
I know very little about WW2. But was Bomber Command strategy basically predicated on the idea that bombing Germany out of the war would save the innumerable slaughter witnessed in WW1?
Yep. Harris wanted to defeat Germany without the need for any British soldiers to land on the continent, other than to accept the surrender. There have been many arguments over the years about whether Bomber Command was worth the money and resources (materials and men) that it took. Max Hastings thought not in his book on the bomber war. Others disagree. Certainly the bombing campaign tied up tens if not hundreds of thousands of Germans defending the Reich who could have been fighting in the East. And combined with the 8th airforce’s campaign, the Allies achieved air dominance over the Luftwaffe, making D-Day much easier and restricting German movements to night time, to avoid being attacked from the air. By the end of 44 and into 45 the German transport system was wrecked, so moving anything was hard, including troops, tanks etc.
Sadly the idea that you could depress the morale of a nation under a fascist authoritarian regime was false. Even if a German housewife wanted to end the war after her house was destroyed, there was no mechanism for her to achieve it. And the Blitz had shown the resilience of the Brits under the bomb.
But ultimately strategic bombing contributed to winning the war and to describe one target destroyed as a war crime is infantile rubbish.
There were lots of things done on both sides in both wars which would now be considered war crimes. The whole point of civilisation is that we develop and learn from our mistakes.
My view is that war is never desirable, but once one is engaged, there’s no point in half measures.
Ultimately one has to do what is needful, to win. There is nothing worse than defeat.
Hallelujah.
This is what I referred to earlier. The UK hasn't been in a war for a very long time. We have had operations in Afghan, Iraq, Bosnia, for example, where at the end of the day we could always say fuck it and go home. Indeed that is exactly what we did mostly.
The likes of Richard "Dickie Boy" Tyndall is mistaking such actions with actual war.
If you are losing or think you might lose a war what on earth do you care about "the rules". A ridiculous concept in any case.
I will be sure to remind you in future that you advocated for murdering children.
You would rather have lost the second world war than bomb Dresden.
Bombing Dresden made not one iota of difference to the outcome of WW2.
And 80 years later that is still up for debate. Would you have dared chance it at the time?
Unfortunately this is a by-election dominated by a quarrel in a far-away country between people of whom we know far, far too much.
There are conflicts all around the world that don't get a fraction of the spotlight or attention that this one has had. I wonder what is so unique about this one conflict, that every moment becomes headline news unlike all the others?
The physical carnage, the huge civilian casualties, the mass displacement of people, the resulting humanitarian disaster, the inflictor of all this being a regime supported by the west - these do make for a big story.
"the inflictor of all this being a regime supported by the west".
I think you might need to understand that this awful conflict was blatantly started by Hamas who "inflicted" rape torture and murder on innocent people.
There is a reasonable argument that the Israeli response has been disproportionate, but the "infliction" was initiated by Hamas terrorists.
As you have been an occasional apologist for Corbyn (and probably indirectly voted for him to be PM) I guess this is hard to recognise?
I know who started the fire. Hamas did. Oct 7th was unspeakable. It's now 13th February and Israel has wreaked a mighty vengeance for it.
Justifiable response to a threat deemed existential? Or barbaric collective punishment of the population of Gaza?
I think the latter.
I think you'll find that war does involve what useful idiots such as yourself would call "collective punishment".
Collective punishment is a war crime under Article 33 of the Geneva Convention. People who make excuses for it are idiots, useful or otherwise.
That's why I put it in quotation marks. Or perhaps Kinabalu thinks what Israel is doing is a war crime.
Well many of us do.
Yes hugely important that arseholes on the internet think something or other.
The arseholes being those who defend the murder of civilians as a necessary evil.
You suit the description perfectly.
It's war, Dickie boy. Look it up in the dictionary.
Indeed hence war crimes. Look them up yourself.
I suspect the proportion of military combatants to civilians was far smaller ratio in the Hamburg firestorm and the levelling of Dresden. But we weren't on trial at Nuremburg.
Is it a free pass for war crimes if you win the war?
Nope. Many commentators these days consider Dresden as a war crime. Indeed there is no escaping that for Harris as his explicit stated aim of breaking the German spirit by targeting civilians is specifically addressed as a war crime today.
The UK, and importantly in this debate, Israel both signed up to the post WW2 international rules on the conduct of war which outlawed many of the things both sides did in WW2 and which Israel and Russia are both doing now.
Personally I think only idiots living without the fear of Nazi tyranny consider Dresden a war crime. Why Dresden and not every single bombing raid that Bomber Command mounted? Because like it or not, Bomber Command wanted to achieve Dresden results EVERY time they set out. Dresden stands out as it was late in the war, and was highly successful, due to the firestorm. But many, many allied soldiers died after Dresden. Many Jews and other captives of the Nazis died after Dresden. Germany could have surrendered and stopped it all.
I know very little about WW2. But was Bomber Command strategy basically predicated on the idea that bombing Germany out of the war would save the innumerable slaughter witnessed in WW1?
Yep. Harris wanted to defeat Germany without the need for any British soldiers to land on the continent, other than to accept the surrender. There have been many arguments over the years about whether Bomber Command was worth the money and resources (materials and men) that it took. Max Hastings thought not in his book on the bomber war. Others disagree. Certainly the bombing campaign tied up tens if not hundreds of thousands of Germans defending the Reich who could have been fighting in the East. And combined with the 8th airforce’s campaign, the Allies achieved air dominance over the Luftwaffe, making D-Day much easier and restricting German movements to night time, to avoid being attacked from the air. By the end of 44 and into 45 the German transport system was wrecked, so moving anything was hard, including troops, tanks etc.
Sadly the idea that you could depress the morale of a nation under a fascist authoritarian regime was false. Even if a German housewife wanted to end the war after her house was destroyed, there was no mechanism for her to achieve it. And the Blitz had shown the resilience of the Brits under the bomb.
But ultimately strategic bombing contributed to winning the war and to describe one target destroyed as a war crime is infantile rubbish.
There were lots of things done on both sides in both wars which would now be considered war crimes. The whole point of civilisation is that we develop and learn from our mistakes.
My view is that war is never desirable, but once one is engaged, there’s no point in half measures.
Ultimately one has to do what is needful, to win. There is nothing worse than defeat.
Hallelujah.
This is what I referred to earlier. The UK hasn't been in a war for a very long time. We have had operations in Afghan, Iraq, Bosnia, for example, where at the end of the day we could always say fuck it and go home. Indeed that is exactly what we did mostly.
The likes of Richard "Dickie Boy" Tyndall is mistaking such actions with actual war.
If you are losing or think you might lose a war what on earth do you care about "the rules". A ridiculous concept in any case.
I will be sure to remind you in future that you advocated for murdering children.
You would rather have lost the second world war than bomb Dresden.
Do you really think we would not have won the war without firebombing Dresden in February 1945?
Did we dare to find out? 80 years of hindsight allows you to make that statement. Round the war cabinet perhaps they weren't so sure.
Even at the time, while the war was still in progress, the firebombing of Dresden was controversial.
Unfortunately this is a by-election dominated by a quarrel in a far-away country between people of whom we know far, far too much.
There are conflicts all around the world that don't get a fraction of the spotlight or attention that this one has had. I wonder what is so unique about this one conflict, that every moment becomes headline news unlike all the others?
The physical carnage, the huge civilian casualties, the mass displacement of people, the resulting humanitarian disaster, the inflictor of all this being a regime supported by the west - these do make for a big story.
"the inflictor of all this being a regime supported by the west".
I think you might need to understand that this awful conflict was blatantly started by Hamas who "inflicted" rape torture and murder on innocent people.
There is a reasonable argument that the Israeli response has been disproportionate, but the "infliction" was initiated by Hamas terrorists.
As you have been an occasional apologist for Corbyn (and probably indirectly voted for him to be PM) I guess this is hard to recognise?
I know who started the fire. Hamas did. Oct 7th was unspeakable. It's now 13th February and Israel has wreaked a mighty vengeance for it.
Justifiable response to a threat deemed existential? Or barbaric collective punishment of the population of Gaza?
I think the latter.
I think you'll find that war does involve what useful idiots such as yourself would call "collective punishment".
Collective punishment is a war crime under Article 33 of the Geneva Convention. People who make excuses for it are idiots, useful or otherwise.
That's why I put it in quotation marks. Or perhaps Kinabalu thinks what Israel is doing is a war crime.
Well many of us do.
Yes hugely important that arseholes on the internet think something or other.
The arseholes being those who defend the murder of civilians as a necessary evil.
You suit the description perfectly.
It's war, Dickie boy. Look it up in the dictionary.
Indeed hence war crimes. Look them up yourself.
I suspect the proportion of military combatants to civilians was far smaller ratio in the Hamburg firestorm and the levelling of Dresden. But we weren't on trial at Nuremburg.
Is it a free pass for war crimes if you win the war?
Nope. Many commentators these days consider Dresden as a war crime. Indeed there is no escaping that for Harris as his explicit stated aim of breaking the German spirit by targeting civilians is specifically addressed as a war crime today.
The UK, and importantly in this debate, Israel both signed up to the post WW2 international rules on the conduct of war which outlawed many of the things both sides did in WW2 and which Israel and Russia are both doing now.
Personally I think only idiots living without the fear of Nazi tyranny consider Dresden a war crime. Why Dresden and not every single bombing raid that Bomber Command mounted? Because like it or not, Bomber Command wanted to achieve Dresden results EVERY time they set out. Dresden stands out as it was late in the war, and was highly successful, due to the firestorm. But many, many allied soldiers died after Dresden. Many Jews and other captives of the Nazis died after Dresden. Germany could have surrendered and stopped it all.
Because it was clear that it would not work. It was part of this ridiculous idea of British moral superiority. We had not cracked under the Blitz because we were British. But johnny foreigner is not made of the same stuff and so was bound to be broken by our bombing his cities flat.
Harris explicitly pushed this idea - that he could win the war by breaking the German spirit. It was clear in hindsight (and to many at the time) that it was a fallacy and that is one of the reasons that it was outlawed after the war. The whole campaign of targetting German civilian population would today be considered criminal and put in the same category as the use of poison gas.
It was ignorance as much as arrogance. Fascinating commentary from physicist Freeman Dyson here:
https://www.technologyreview.com/2006/11/01/227625/a-failure-of-intelligence/ … Bomber Command had a similar problem in evaluating the effectiveness of bombing. Aircrew frequently reported the destruction of targets when photographs showed they had missed by several miles. The navy ORS was extremely effective and made great contributions to winning the war against the U-boats in the Atlantic. But Blackett had two enormous advantages. First, he was a world-renowned scientist (who would later win a Nobel Prize), with a safe job in the academic world, so he could threaten to resign if his advice was not followed. Second, he had been a navy officer in World War I and was respected by the admirals he advised. Basil Dickins, the chief of our ORS at Bomber Command, had neither of these advantages. He was a civil servant with no independent standing. He could not threaten to resign, and Sir Arthur Harris had no respect for him. His career depended on telling Sir Arthur things that Sir Arthur wanted to hear. So that is what he did. He gave Sir Arthur information rather than advice. He never raised serious questions about Sir Arthur’s tactics and strategy…
This makes pretty clear that the targeting of civilans was deliberate policy : … We succeeded in raising firestorms only twice, once in Hamburg and once more in Dresden in 1945, where between 25,000 and 60,000 people perished (the numbers are still debated). The Germans had good air raid shelters and warning systems and did what they were told. As a result, only a few thousand people were killed in a typical major attack. But when there was a firestorm, people were asphyxiated or roasted inside their shelters, and the number killed was more than 10 times greater. Every time Bomber Command attacked a city, we were trying to raise a firestorm, but we never learnt why we so seldom succeeded…
Targeting of workers making weapons to kill allied soldiers would fit just as well. And the firestorm didn’t just kill people it destroyed buildings.
None of this is nice. But being gassed at Auschwitz was pretty below the belt too, as was being rounded up and burned to death in a church (Oradour) or taken to a ravine, stripped naked and shot, including the children.
I’m comfortable with everything that was done to defeat Germany. I’m sorry others can’t see that. I’ve read accounts of Dresden, and Hamburg, and it sounds horrifying. I hope it never happens again, and I hope I never get to experience it. But it doesn’t make it a war crime.
Under the then existing laws of war, it wasn’t. But it was both morally, and practically, deeply questionable.
Indeed and the point I made right at the start was that it was as a result of the WW2 experience that civilised countries around the world - including the UK and Israel - choose to sign up to a new set of laws outlawing certain behaviour in war.
Maybe Topping and others think those laws should only apply to nasty evil foreigners and not to us morally upstanding British and our brave allies.
"Laws" is a meaningless concept in war.
Answer the question. Let's say that the Dresden (and other) bombings helped to win the war for the UK. Would you rather us not have carried these out because of laws or are you content that we were in an existential fight and needed to do this to win, even if many children died as a result.
I agree, war is crime made legal, so all war is criminal actionin intent and purpose.
So why do we do it, advocate it and defend it?
Ah well that is an eternal truth that has eluded our greatest thinkers down the ages.
Unfortunately this is a by-election dominated by a quarrel in a far-away country between people of whom we know far, far too much.
There are conflicts all around the world that don't get a fraction of the spotlight or attention that this one has had. I wonder what is so unique about this one conflict, that every moment becomes headline news unlike all the others?
The physical carnage, the huge civilian casualties, the mass displacement of people, the resulting humanitarian disaster, the inflictor of all this being a regime supported by the west - these do make for a big story.
"the inflictor of all this being a regime supported by the west".
I think you might need to understand that this awful conflict was blatantly started by Hamas who "inflicted" rape torture and murder on innocent people.
There is a reasonable argument that the Israeli response has been disproportionate, but the "infliction" was initiated by Hamas terrorists.
As you have been an occasional apologist for Corbyn (and probably indirectly voted for him to be PM) I guess this is hard to recognise?
I know who started the fire. Hamas did. Oct 7th was unspeakable. It's now 13th February and Israel has wreaked a mighty vengeance for it.
Justifiable response to a threat deemed existential? Or barbaric collective punishment of the population of Gaza?
I think the latter.
I think you'll find that war does involve what useful idiots such as yourself would call "collective punishment".
Collective punishment is a war crime under Article 33 of the Geneva Convention. People who make excuses for it are idiots, useful or otherwise.
That's why I put it in quotation marks. Or perhaps Kinabalu thinks what Israel is doing is a war crime.
Well many of us do.
Yes hugely important that arseholes on the internet think something or other.
The arseholes being those who defend the murder of civilians as a necessary evil.
You suit the description perfectly.
It's war, Dickie boy. Look it up in the dictionary.
Indeed hence war crimes. Look them up yourself.
I suspect the proportion of military combatants to civilians was far smaller ratio in the Hamburg firestorm and the levelling of Dresden. But we weren't on trial at Nuremburg.
Is it a free pass for war crimes if you win the war?
Nope. Many commentators these days consider Dresden as a war crime. Indeed there is no escaping that for Harris as his explicit stated aim of breaking the German spirit by targeting civilians is specifically addressed as a war crime today.
The UK, and importantly in this debate, Israel both signed up to the post WW2 international rules on the conduct of war which outlawed many of the things both sides did in WW2 and which Israel and Russia are both doing now.
Personally I think only idiots living without the fear of Nazi tyranny consider Dresden a war crime. Why Dresden and not every single bombing raid that Bomber Command mounted? Because like it or not, Bomber Command wanted to achieve Dresden results EVERY time they set out. Dresden stands out as it was late in the war, and was highly successful, due to the firestorm. But many, many allied soldiers died after Dresden. Many Jews and other captives of the Nazis died after Dresden. Germany could have surrendered and stopped it all.
Because it was clear that it would not work. It was part of this ridiculous idea of British moral superiority. We had not cracked under the Blitz because we were British. But johnny foreigner is not made of the same stuff and so was bound to be broken by our bombing his cities flat.
Harris explicitly pushed this idea - that he could win the war by breaking the German spirit. It was clear in hindsight (and to many at the time) that it was a fallacy and that is one of the reasons that it was outlawed after the war. The whole campaign of targetting German civilian population would today be considered criminal and put in the same category as the use of poison gas.
I’m sorry but I disagree. It did work, just not by damaging morale. See the effort Germany had to put into defending the Reich, rather than fighting the Russians. See the D-Day campaign and after for why winning air superiority was so crucial. The battle of the bulge only got as far as it did because the allies could not fly due to the weather. When the weather cleared the fighter-bombers returned and wreaked havoc.
Morale bombing failed, yes, but the Bombing War as a whole played a significant role in the allied victory. Singling out Dresden as ‘special’ is just nonsense, as Bomber Command, and the 8th Air Force tried to achieve similar results every time. Is Hamburg a war crime? What about Schweinfurt?
That wasn’t Dyson’s view. And he was better placed than most to make the judgment. … A week after the final attack on Berlin, we suffered an even more crushing defeat. We attacked Nuremberg with 795 bombers and lost 94, a loss rate of almost 12 percent. It was then clear to everybody that such losses were unsustainable. Sir Arthur reluctantly abandoned his dream of winning the War by himself. Bomber Command stopped flying so deep into Germany and spent the summer of 1944 giving tactical support to the Allied armies that were, by then, invading France.
The history of the 20th century has repeatedly shown that strategic bombing by itself does not win wars. If Britain had decided in 1936 to put its main effort into building ships instead of bombers, the invasion of France might have been possible in 1943 instead of 1944, and the war in Europe might have ended in 1944 instead of 1945. But in 1943, we had the bombers, and we did not have the ships, and the problem was to do the best we could with what we had...
And yet invading France in 1943 would have been against a Luftwaffe that was still capable of inflicting severe damage, and against a German army that was significantly stronger. Churchill was desperate NOT to invade in 43. About the only advantage would have been the much less complete Atlantic Wall.
I totally agree that strategic bombing did not win the war alone. No one thinks it did, or indeed could. But it played a huge part. German industry was massively hindered. Transport was destroyed. The Das Reich panzer division took an age to get from southern France to Normandy, mainly due to air power of the allies, won by strategic bombing, notably the 8th who actively sought to destroy Luftwaffe fighters, using bombers as bait.
Actually no. The Das Reich movement is a perfect example of the idiocy of bombing as a tool. The French were opposed to it and condemned it both before and after the event and in the end it was as much the actions of a few people - both resistance and the Jedburgh teams - that stopped the trains. Blowing up the tracks and junctions killed alot of French civilians bt was largely pointless because the German plan to move Das Reich by train had aready been abandoned when all the rolling stock was sabotaged.
The Germans couldn’t move by day because of relentless attacks fighter-bombers (Jabos). That’s air supremacy. Of course other factors affected the Das Reich, but bombing was always just one part of the picture. And yes, I’m sure the French didn’t want to be bombed, but that was a price to pay for them getting their country back, and they have held that grudge ever since.
We are at cross purposes. The allies chose to use strategic bombing, not fighter bombers, to try and prevent the movement of Das Reich by targetting the railway nodes. This was pointless and killed lots of French civilians. They also separately used their control of the air to harry the Division as it moved North. But in fact Das Reich moved almost entirely by day until it got very close to Normandy. This was because they feared attack from the Maquis as much as they feared the allied air attacks. At least until the last approach.
Unfortunately this is a by-election dominated by a quarrel in a far-away country between people of whom we know far, far too much.
There are conflicts all around the world that don't get a fraction of the spotlight or attention that this one has had. I wonder what is so unique about this one conflict, that every moment becomes headline news unlike all the others?
The physical carnage, the huge civilian casualties, the mass displacement of people, the resulting humanitarian disaster, the inflictor of all this being a regime supported by the west - these do make for a big story.
"the inflictor of all this being a regime supported by the west".
I think you might need to understand that this awful conflict was blatantly started by Hamas who "inflicted" rape torture and murder on innocent people.
There is a reasonable argument that the Israeli response has been disproportionate, but the "infliction" was initiated by Hamas terrorists.
As you have been an occasional apologist for Corbyn (and probably indirectly voted for him to be PM) I guess this is hard to recognise?
I know who started the fire. Hamas did. Oct 7th was unspeakable. It's now 13th February and Israel has wreaked a mighty vengeance for it.
Justifiable response to a threat deemed existential? Or barbaric collective punishment of the population of Gaza?
I think the latter.
I think you'll find that war does involve what useful idiots such as yourself would call "collective punishment".
Collective punishment is a war crime under Article 33 of the Geneva Convention. People who make excuses for it are idiots, useful or otherwise.
That's why I put it in quotation marks. Or perhaps Kinabalu thinks what Israel is doing is a war crime.
Well many of us do.
Yes hugely important that arseholes on the internet think something or other.
The arseholes being those who defend the murder of civilians as a necessary evil.
You suit the description perfectly.
It's war, Dickie boy. Look it up in the dictionary.
Indeed hence war crimes. Look them up yourself.
I suspect the proportion of military combatants to civilians was far smaller ratio in the Hamburg firestorm and the levelling of Dresden. But we weren't on trial at Nuremburg.
Is it a free pass for war crimes if you win the war?
Nope. Many commentators these days consider Dresden as a war crime. Indeed there is no escaping that for Harris as his explicit stated aim of breaking the German spirit by targeting civilians is specifically addressed as a war crime today.
The UK, and importantly in this debate, Israel both signed up to the post WW2 international rules on the conduct of war which outlawed many of the things both sides did in WW2 and which Israel and Russia are both doing now.
Personally I think only idiots living without the fear of Nazi tyranny consider Dresden a war crime. Why Dresden and not every single bombing raid that Bomber Command mounted? Because like it or not, Bomber Command wanted to achieve Dresden results EVERY time they set out. Dresden stands out as it was late in the war, and was highly successful, due to the firestorm. But many, many allied soldiers died after Dresden. Many Jews and other captives of the Nazis died after Dresden. Germany could have surrendered and stopped it all.
I know very little about WW2. But was Bomber Command strategy basically predicated on the idea that bombing Germany out of the war would save the innumerable slaughter witnessed in WW1?
Yep. Harris wanted to defeat Germany without the need for any British soldiers to land on the continent, other than to accept the surrender. There have been many arguments over the years about whether Bomber Command was worth the money and resources (materials and men) that it took. Max Hastings thought not in his book on the bomber war. Others disagree. Certainly the bombing campaign tied up tens if not hundreds of thousands of Germans defending the Reich who could have been fighting in the East. And combined with the 8th airforce’s campaign, the Allies achieved air dominance over the Luftwaffe, making D-Day much easier and restricting German movements to night time, to avoid being attacked from the air. By the end of 44 and into 45 the German transport system was wrecked, so moving anything was hard, including troops, tanks etc.
Sadly the idea that you could depress the morale of a nation under a fascist authoritarian regime was false. Even if a German housewife wanted to end the war after her house was destroyed, there was no mechanism for her to achieve it. And the Blitz had shown the resilience of the Brits under the bomb.
But ultimately strategic bombing contributed to winning the war and to describe one target destroyed as a war crime is infantile rubbish.
There were lots of things done on both sides in both wars which would now be considered war crimes. The whole point of civilisation is that we develop and learn from our mistakes.
My view is that war is never desirable, but once one is engaged, there’s no point in half measures.
Ultimately one has to do what is needful, to win. There is nothing worse than defeat.
If both sides adopt that approach it only adds to the barbarity. There can't be victory without defeat and the greater the defeat doesn't mean the greater the victory. So, all told, half measures is the way to go imo.
Hello the 14th century knights are calling and they want their rules of war back.
Unfortunately this is a by-election dominated by a quarrel in a far-away country between people of whom we know far, far too much.
There are conflicts all around the world that don't get a fraction of the spotlight or attention that this one has had. I wonder what is so unique about this one conflict, that every moment becomes headline news unlike all the others?
The physical carnage, the huge civilian casualties, the mass displacement of people, the resulting humanitarian disaster, the inflictor of all this being a regime supported by the west - these do make for a big story.
"the inflictor of all this being a regime supported by the west".
I think you might need to understand that this awful conflict was blatantly started by Hamas who "inflicted" rape torture and murder on innocent people.
There is a reasonable argument that the Israeli response has been disproportionate, but the "infliction" was initiated by Hamas terrorists.
As you have been an occasional apologist for Corbyn (and probably indirectly voted for him to be PM) I guess this is hard to recognise?
I know who started the fire. Hamas did. Oct 7th was unspeakable. It's now 13th February and Israel has wreaked a mighty vengeance for it.
Justifiable response to a threat deemed existential? Or barbaric collective punishment of the population of Gaza?
I think the latter.
I think you'll find that war does involve what useful idiots such as yourself would call "collective punishment".
Collective punishment is a war crime under Article 33 of the Geneva Convention. People who make excuses for it are idiots, useful or otherwise.
That's why I put it in quotation marks. Or perhaps Kinabalu thinks what Israel is doing is a war crime.
Well many of us do.
Yes hugely important that arseholes on the internet think something or other.
The arseholes being those who defend the murder of civilians as a necessary evil.
You suit the description perfectly.
It's war, Dickie boy. Look it up in the dictionary.
Indeed hence war crimes. Look them up yourself.
I suspect the proportion of military combatants to civilians was far smaller ratio in the Hamburg firestorm and the levelling of Dresden. But we weren't on trial at Nuremburg.
Is it a free pass for war crimes if you win the war?
Nope. Many commentators these days consider Dresden as a war crime. Indeed there is no escaping that for Harris as his explicit stated aim of breaking the German spirit by targeting civilians is specifically addressed as a war crime today.
The UK, and importantly in this debate, Israel both signed up to the post WW2 international rules on the conduct of war which outlawed many of the things both sides did in WW2 and which Israel and Russia are both doing now.
Personally I think only idiots living without the fear of Nazi tyranny consider Dresden a war crime. Why Dresden and not every single bombing raid that Bomber Command mounted? Because like it or not, Bomber Command wanted to achieve Dresden results EVERY time they set out. Dresden stands out as it was late in the war, and was highly successful, due to the firestorm. But many, many allied soldiers died after Dresden. Many Jews and other captives of the Nazis died after Dresden. Germany could have surrendered and stopped it all.
I know very little about WW2. But was Bomber Command strategy basically predicated on the idea that bombing Germany out of the war would save the innumerable slaughter witnessed in WW1?
Yep. Harris wanted to defeat Germany without the need for any British soldiers to land on the continent, other than to accept the surrender. There have been many arguments over the years about whether Bomber Command was worth the money and resources (materials and men) that it took. Max Hastings thought not in his book on the bomber war. Others disagree. Certainly the bombing campaign tied up tens if not hundreds of thousands of Germans defending the Reich who could have been fighting in the East. And combined with the 8th airforce’s campaign, the Allies achieved air dominance over the Luftwaffe, making D-Day much easier and restricting German movements to night time, to avoid being attacked from the air. By the end of 44 and into 45 the German transport system was wrecked, so moving anything was hard, including troops, tanks etc.
Sadly the idea that you could depress the morale of a nation under a fascist authoritarian regime was false. Even if a German housewife wanted to end the war after her house was destroyed, there was no mechanism for her to achieve it. And the Blitz had shown the resilience of the Brits under the bomb.
But ultimately strategic bombing contributed to winning the war and to describe one target destroyed as a war crime is infantile rubbish.
There were lots of things done on both sides in both wars which would now be considered war crimes. The whole point of civilisation is that we develop and learn from our mistakes.
My view is that war is never desirable, but once one is engaged, there’s no point in half measures.
Ultimately one has to do what is needful, to win. There is nothing worse than defeat.
Hallelujah.
This is what I referred to earlier. The UK hasn't been in a war for a very long time. We have had operations in Afghan, Iraq, Bosnia, for example, where at the end of the day we could always say fuck it and go home. Indeed that is exactly what we did mostly.
The likes of Richard "Dickie Boy" Tyndall is mistaking such actions with actual war.
If you are losing or think you might lose a war what on earth do you care about "the rules". A ridiculous concept in any case.
I will be sure to remind you in future that you advocated for murdering children.
You would rather have lost the second world war than bomb Dresden.
Do you really think we would not have won the war without firebombing Dresden in February 1945?
Did we dare to find out? 80 years of hindsight allows you to make that statement. Round the war cabinet perhaps they weren't so sure.
Even at the time, while the war was still in progress, the firebombing of Dresden was controversial.
I think it became so fairly quickly after, but I don’t think Churchill was being fair. He knew what Bomber command was doing, and allowed it to go on. His subsequent behaviour (no campaign medal for bomber command etc) is sometimes attributed to guilt over Dresden.
Unfortunately this is a by-election dominated by a quarrel in a far-away country between people of whom we know far, far too much.
There are conflicts all around the world that don't get a fraction of the spotlight or attention that this one has had. I wonder what is so unique about this one conflict, that every moment becomes headline news unlike all the others?
The physical carnage, the huge civilian casualties, the mass displacement of people, the resulting humanitarian disaster, the inflictor of all this being a regime supported by the west - these do make for a big story.
"the inflictor of all this being a regime supported by the west".
I think you might need to understand that this awful conflict was blatantly started by Hamas who "inflicted" rape torture and murder on innocent people.
There is a reasonable argument that the Israeli response has been disproportionate, but the "infliction" was initiated by Hamas terrorists.
As you have been an occasional apologist for Corbyn (and probably indirectly voted for him to be PM) I guess this is hard to recognise?
I know who started the fire. Hamas did. Oct 7th was unspeakable. It's now 13th February and Israel has wreaked a mighty vengeance for it.
Justifiable response to a threat deemed existential? Or barbaric collective punishment of the population of Gaza?
I think the latter.
I think you'll find that war does involve what useful idiots such as yourself would call "collective punishment".
Collective punishment is a war crime under Article 33 of the Geneva Convention. People who make excuses for it are idiots, useful or otherwise.
That's why I put it in quotation marks. Or perhaps Kinabalu thinks what Israel is doing is a war crime.
Well many of us do.
Yes hugely important that arseholes on the internet think something or other.
The arseholes being those who defend the murder of civilians as a necessary evil.
You suit the description perfectly.
It's war, Dickie boy. Look it up in the dictionary.
Indeed hence war crimes. Look them up yourself.
I suspect the proportion of military combatants to civilians was far smaller ratio in the Hamburg firestorm and the levelling of Dresden. But we weren't on trial at Nuremburg.
Is it a free pass for war crimes if you win the war?
Nope. Many commentators these days consider Dresden as a war crime. Indeed there is no escaping that for Harris as his explicit stated aim of breaking the German spirit by targeting civilians is specifically addressed as a war crime today.
The UK, and importantly in this debate, Israel both signed up to the post WW2 international rules on the conduct of war which outlawed many of the things both sides did in WW2 and which Israel and Russia are both doing now.
Personally I think only idiots living without the fear of Nazi tyranny consider Dresden a war crime. Why Dresden and not every single bombing raid that Bomber Command mounted? Because like it or not, Bomber Command wanted to achieve Dresden results EVERY time they set out. Dresden stands out as it was late in the war, and was highly successful, due to the firestorm. But many, many allied soldiers died after Dresden. Many Jews and other captives of the Nazis died after Dresden. Germany could have surrendered and stopped it all.
I know very little about WW2. But was Bomber Command strategy basically predicated on the idea that bombing Germany out of the war would save the innumerable slaughter witnessed in WW1?
Yep. Harris wanted to defeat Germany without the need for any British soldiers to land on the continent, other than to accept the surrender. There have been many arguments over the years about whether Bomber Command was worth the money and resources (materials and men) that it took. Max Hastings thought not in his book on the bomber war. Others disagree. Certainly the bombing campaign tied up tens if not hundreds of thousands of Germans defending the Reich who could have been fighting in the East. And combined with the 8th airforce’s campaign, the Allies achieved air dominance over the Luftwaffe, making D-Day much easier and restricting German movements to night time, to avoid being attacked from the air. By the end of 44 and into 45 the German transport system was wrecked, so moving anything was hard, including troops, tanks etc.
Sadly the idea that you could depress the morale of a nation under a fascist authoritarian regime was false. Even if a German housewife wanted to end the war after her house was destroyed, there was no mechanism for her to achieve it. And the Blitz had shown the resilience of the Brits under the bomb.
But ultimately strategic bombing contributed to winning the war and to describe one target destroyed as a war crime is infantile rubbish.
There were lots of things done on both sides in both wars which would now be considered war crimes. The whole point of civilisation is that we develop and learn from our mistakes.
My view is that war is never desirable, but once one is engaged, there’s no point in half measures.
Ultimately one has to do what is needful, to win. There is nothing worse than defeat.
Hallelujah.
This is what I referred to earlier. The UK hasn't been in a war for a very long time. We have had operations in Afghan, Iraq, Bosnia, for example, where at the end of the day we could always say fuck it and go home. Indeed that is exactly what we did mostly.
The likes of Richard "Dickie Boy" Tyndall is mistaking such actions with actual war.
If you are losing or think you might lose a war what on earth do you care about "the rules". A ridiculous concept in any case.
I will be sure to remind you in future that you advocated for murdering children.
You would rather have lost the second world war than bomb Dresden.
Do you really think we would not have won the war without firebombing Dresden in February 1945?
Did we dare to find out? 80 years of hindsight allows you to make that statement. Round the war cabinet perhaps they weren't so sure.
Even at the time, while the war was still in progress, the firebombing of Dresden was controversial.
I have no doubt. But as a tool to try and beat the Nazis it was used. Everything was used including, later in Japan after Germany had surrendered, nuclear weapons. A fair few children died then I imagine.
And to come back to the subject at hand today I don't think anyone could say that Israel's operation in Gaza isn't controversial.
Unfortunately this is a by-election dominated by a quarrel in a far-away country between people of whom we know far, far too much.
There are conflicts all around the world that don't get a fraction of the spotlight or attention that this one has had. I wonder what is so unique about this one conflict, that every moment becomes headline news unlike all the others?
The physical carnage, the huge civilian casualties, the mass displacement of people, the resulting humanitarian disaster, the inflictor of all this being a regime supported by the west - these do make for a big story.
"the inflictor of all this being a regime supported by the west".
I think you might need to understand that this awful conflict was blatantly started by Hamas who "inflicted" rape torture and murder on innocent people.
There is a reasonable argument that the Israeli response has been disproportionate, but the "infliction" was initiated by Hamas terrorists.
As you have been an occasional apologist for Corbyn (and probably indirectly voted for him to be PM) I guess this is hard to recognise?
I know who started the fire. Hamas did. Oct 7th was unspeakable. It's now 13th February and Israel has wreaked a mighty vengeance for it.
Justifiable response to a threat deemed existential? Or barbaric collective punishment of the population of Gaza?
I think the latter.
I think you'll find that war does involve what useful idiots such as yourself would call "collective punishment".
Collective punishment is a war crime under Article 33 of the Geneva Convention. People who make excuses for it are idiots, useful or otherwise.
That's why I put it in quotation marks. Or perhaps Kinabalu thinks what Israel is doing is a war crime.
Well many of us do.
Yes hugely important that arseholes on the internet think something or other.
The arseholes being those who defend the murder of civilians as a necessary evil.
You suit the description perfectly.
It's war, Dickie boy. Look it up in the dictionary.
Indeed hence war crimes. Look them up yourself.
I suspect the proportion of military combatants to civilians was far smaller ratio in the Hamburg firestorm and the levelling of Dresden. But we weren't on trial at Nuremburg.
Is it a free pass for war crimes if you win the war?
Nope. Many commentators these days consider Dresden as a war crime. Indeed there is no escaping that for Harris as his explicit stated aim of breaking the German spirit by targeting civilians is specifically addressed as a war crime today.
The UK, and importantly in this debate, Israel both signed up to the post WW2 international rules on the conduct of war which outlawed many of the things both sides did in WW2 and which Israel and Russia are both doing now.
Personally I think only idiots living without the fear of Nazi tyranny consider Dresden a war crime. Why Dresden and not every single bombing raid that Bomber Command mounted? Because like it or not, Bomber Command wanted to achieve Dresden results EVERY time they set out. Dresden stands out as it was late in the war, and was highly successful, due to the firestorm. But many, many allied soldiers died after Dresden. Many Jews and other captives of the Nazis died after Dresden. Germany could have surrendered and stopped it all.
I know very little about WW2. But was Bomber Command strategy basically predicated on the idea that bombing Germany out of the war would save the innumerable slaughter witnessed in WW1?
Yep. Harris wanted to defeat Germany without the need for any British soldiers to land on the continent, other than to accept the surrender. There have been many arguments over the years about whether Bomber Command was worth the money and resources (materials and men) that it took. Max Hastings thought not in his book on the bomber war. Others disagree. Certainly the bombing campaign tied up tens if not hundreds of thousands of Germans defending the Reich who could have been fighting in the East. And combined with the 8th airforce’s campaign, the Allies achieved air dominance over the Luftwaffe, making D-Day much easier and restricting German movements to night time, to avoid being attacked from the air. By the end of 44 and into 45 the German transport system was wrecked, so moving anything was hard, including troops, tanks etc.
Sadly the idea that you could depress the morale of a nation under a fascist authoritarian regime was false. Even if a German housewife wanted to end the war after her house was destroyed, there was no mechanism for her to achieve it. And the Blitz had shown the resilience of the Brits under the bomb.
But ultimately strategic bombing contributed to winning the war and to describe one target destroyed as a war crime is infantile rubbish.
There were lots of things done on both sides in both wars which would now be considered war crimes. The whole point of civilisation is that we develop and learn from our mistakes.
My view is that war is never desirable, but once one is engaged, there’s no point in half measures.
Ultimately one has to do what is needful, to win. There is nothing worse than defeat.
Hallelujah.
This is what I referred to earlier. The UK hasn't been in a war for a very long time. We have had operations in Afghan, Iraq, Bosnia, for example, where at the end of the day we could always say fuck it and go home. Indeed that is exactly what we did mostly.
The likes of Richard "Dickie Boy" Tyndall is mistaking such actions with actual war.
If you are losing or think you might lose a war what on earth do you care about "the rules". A ridiculous concept in any case.
I will be sure to remind you in future that you advocated for murdering children.
You would rather have lost the second world war than bomb Dresden.
Bombing Dresden made not one iota of difference to the outcome of WW2.
And 80 years later that is still up for debate. Would you have dared chance it at the time?
It was well known at the time. There were reports made on the accuracy of US bombing in 1943 and 1944 which highlighted how poor the accuracy was. And it was pointed out at the time of Dresden and well before that it had no real strategic value.
Harris is on record as being frustrated that he could not find enough viable targets to bomb.What ultimately won WW2 for the allies was the Russian advance. The main achievement of the second front was to prevent the Russians controlling the whole of Europe after WW2.
Unfortunately this is a by-election dominated by a quarrel in a far-away country between people of whom we know far, far too much.
There are conflicts all around the world that don't get a fraction of the spotlight or attention that this one has had. I wonder what is so unique about this one conflict, that every moment becomes headline news unlike all the others?
The physical carnage, the huge civilian casualties, the mass displacement of people, the resulting humanitarian disaster, the inflictor of all this being a regime supported by the west - these do make for a big story.
"the inflictor of all this being a regime supported by the west".
I think you might need to understand that this awful conflict was blatantly started by Hamas who "inflicted" rape torture and murder on innocent people.
There is a reasonable argument that the Israeli response has been disproportionate, but the "infliction" was initiated by Hamas terrorists.
As you have been an occasional apologist for Corbyn (and probably indirectly voted for him to be PM) I guess this is hard to recognise?
I know who started the fire. Hamas did. Oct 7th was unspeakable. It's now 13th February and Israel has wreaked a mighty vengeance for it.
Justifiable response to a threat deemed existential? Or barbaric collective punishment of the population of Gaza?
I think the latter.
I think you'll find that war does involve what useful idiots such as yourself would call "collective punishment".
Collective punishment is a war crime under Article 33 of the Geneva Convention. People who make excuses for it are idiots, useful or otherwise.
That's why I put it in quotation marks. Or perhaps Kinabalu thinks what Israel is doing is a war crime.
Well many of us do.
Yes hugely important that arseholes on the internet think something or other.
The arseholes being those who defend the murder of civilians as a necessary evil.
You suit the description perfectly.
It's war, Dickie boy. Look it up in the dictionary.
Indeed hence war crimes. Look them up yourself.
I suspect the proportion of military combatants to civilians was far smaller ratio in the Hamburg firestorm and the levelling of Dresden. But we weren't on trial at Nuremburg.
Is it a free pass for war crimes if you win the war?
Nope. Many commentators these days consider Dresden as a war crime. Indeed there is no escaping that for Harris as his explicit stated aim of breaking the German spirit by targeting civilians is specifically addressed as a war crime today.
The UK, and importantly in this debate, Israel both signed up to the post WW2 international rules on the conduct of war which outlawed many of the things both sides did in WW2 and which Israel and Russia are both doing now.
Personally I think only idiots living without the fear of Nazi tyranny consider Dresden a war crime. Why Dresden and not every single bombing raid that Bomber Command mounted? Because like it or not, Bomber Command wanted to achieve Dresden results EVERY time they set out. Dresden stands out as it was late in the war, and was highly successful, due to the firestorm. But many, many allied soldiers died after Dresden. Many Jews and other captives of the Nazis died after Dresden. Germany could have surrendered and stopped it all.
Because it was clear that it would not work. It was part of this ridiculous idea of British moral superiority. We had not cracked under the Blitz because we were British. But johnny foreigner is not made of the same stuff and so was bound to be broken by our bombing his cities flat.
Harris explicitly pushed this idea - that he could win the war by breaking the German spirit. It was clear in hindsight (and to many at the time) that it was a fallacy and that is one of the reasons that it was outlawed after the war. The whole campaign of targetting German civilian population would today be considered criminal and put in the same category as the use of poison gas.
I’m sorry but I disagree. It did work, just not by damaging morale. See the effort Germany had to put into defending the Reich, rather than fighting the Russians. See the D-Day campaign and after for why winning air superiority was so crucial. The battle of the bulge only got as far as it did because the allies could not fly due to the weather. When the weather cleared the fighter-bombers returned and wreaked havoc.
Morale bombing failed, yes, but the Bombing War as a whole played a significant role in the allied victory. Singling out Dresden as ‘special’ is just nonsense, as Bomber Command, and the 8th Air Force tried to achieve similar results every time. Is Hamburg a war crime? What about Schweinfurt?
That wasn’t Dyson’s view. And he was better placed than most to make the judgment. … A week after the final attack on Berlin, we suffered an even more crushing defeat. We attacked Nuremberg with 795 bombers and lost 94, a loss rate of almost 12 percent. It was then clear to everybody that such losses were unsustainable. Sir Arthur reluctantly abandoned his dream of winning the War by himself. Bomber Command stopped flying so deep into Germany and spent the summer of 1944 giving tactical support to the Allied armies that were, by then, invading France.
The history of the 20th century has repeatedly shown that strategic bombing by itself does not win wars. If Britain had decided in 1936 to put its main effort into building ships instead of bombers, the invasion of France might have been possible in 1943 instead of 1944, and the war in Europe might have ended in 1944 instead of 1945. But in 1943, we had the bombers, and we did not have the ships, and the problem was to do the best we could with what we had...
And yet invading France in 1943 would have been against a Luftwaffe that was still capable of inflicting severe damage, and against a German army that was significantly stronger. Churchill was desperate NOT to invade in 43. About the only advantage would have been the much less complete Atlantic Wall.
I totally agree that strategic bombing did not win the war alone. No one thinks it did, or indeed could. But it played a huge part. German industry was massively hindered. Transport was destroyed. The Das Reich panzer division took an age to get from southern France to Normandy, mainly due to air power of the allies, won by strategic bombing, notably the 8th who actively sought to destroy Luftwaffe fighters, using bombers as bait.
Actually no. The Das Reich movement is a perfect example of the idiocy of bombing as a tool. The French were opposed to it and condemned it both before and after the event and in the end it was as much the actions of a few people - both resistance and the Jedburgh teams - that stopped the trains. Blowing up the tracks and junctions killed alot of French civilians bt was largely pointless because the German plan to move Das Reich by train had aready been abandoned when all the rolling stock was sabotaged.
The Germans couldn’t move by day because of relentless attacks fighter-bombers (Jabos). That’s air supremacy. Of course other factors affected the Das Reich, but bombing was always just one part of the picture. And yes, I’m sure the French didn’t want to be bombed, but that was a price to pay for them getting their country back, and they have held that grudge ever since.
We are at cross purposes. The allies chose to use strategic bombing, not fighter bombers, to try and prevent the movement of Das Reich by targetting the railway nodes. This was pointless and killed lots of French civilians. They also separately used their control of the air to harry the Division as it moved North. But in fact Das Reich moved almost entirely by day until it got very close to Normandy. This was because they feared attack from the Maquis as much as they feared the allied air attacks. At least until the last approach.
The general bombing of the rail network (France and Germany) was certainly not pointless, even if you are correct in the case of Das Reich. Germany lost the ability to move anything by rail by late 44, with catastrophic results.
The Evening Standard tonight had a double page feature on Labour's problems in its London heartland. The main focus was on the threat to Wes Streeting in Ilford North whose majority in 2019 was 5,200 and now faces an Independent candidate with links to pro-Palestine groups whose own campaign may be helped by the inclusion of some parts of Ilford South into the newly-redrawn constituency.
The Standard also confirmed what I'd heard - that Councillor Mirza and the Newham Independents are going to stand candidates in both East Ham and West Ham & Beckton against Stephen Timms and Lyn Brown respectively. Another likely challenge to Labour is in Bethnal Green & Bow from an Aspire candidate.
It seems unlikely Labour will lose any of these seats and treating "the muslim vote" as a single homogenous entity is unwise. Respect got 20% in 2005 in East Ham and I suspect that's about where any pro-Palestine anti-Labour candidate will end up later this year.
Losing Wes Streeting from the next (likely) Cabinet of the UK would be a disaster for the whole country frankly. Someone needs to sort out the mess of the NHS and he seems like he might be up for the task. Prepared to reform and learn from other countries.
One can only hope if he loses Ilford then a quick peerage and Cabinet will happen.
Sticking reject politicians who cannot win their own constituency into the Lords is the sort of thing that brings the Lords into disrepute.
I am very suspicious of Streeting. All I have seem from him is superficial gimmicks and a ruthless personal ambition. I don't think he cares much about the job.
I'm afraid you're not going to see much improvement in healthcare provision whether Streeting is in charge of it or not. Labour want to ignore the obvious - that the population is exploding in size because of mass immigration, and getting progressively older and sicker to boot - and pretend that somehow everything can be made magically better through "reforms." Now, doubtless there are reforms that can help, but at the end of the day reforms aren't going to provide all the new hospitals and other healthcare facilities needed to deal with our huge and increasingly decrepit populace, nor pay for them to be staffed and operated. That needs shedloads of extra cash, and Labour has quit the redistribution business. It's there to protect the wealthy and keep them in the manner to which they have become accustomed. They're faux pink Tories and will therefore fail.
"Reform" is a meaningless word on its own, used to opacify rather than clarify Streetings intentions.
Unfortunately this is a by-election dominated by a quarrel in a far-away country between people of whom we know far, far too much.
There are conflicts all around the world that don't get a fraction of the spotlight or attention that this one has had. I wonder what is so unique about this one conflict, that every moment becomes headline news unlike all the others?
The physical carnage, the huge civilian casualties, the mass displacement of people, the resulting humanitarian disaster, the inflictor of all this being a regime supported by the west - these do make for a big story.
"the inflictor of all this being a regime supported by the west".
I think you might need to understand that this awful conflict was blatantly started by Hamas who "inflicted" rape torture and murder on innocent people.
There is a reasonable argument that the Israeli response has been disproportionate, but the "infliction" was initiated by Hamas terrorists.
As you have been an occasional apologist for Corbyn (and probably indirectly voted for him to be PM) I guess this is hard to recognise?
I know who started the fire. Hamas did. Oct 7th was unspeakable. It's now 13th February and Israel has wreaked a mighty vengeance for it.
Justifiable response to a threat deemed existential? Or barbaric collective punishment of the population of Gaza?
I think the latter.
I think you'll find that war does involve what useful idiots such as yourself would call "collective punishment".
Collective punishment is a war crime under Article 33 of the Geneva Convention. People who make excuses for it are idiots, useful or otherwise.
That's why I put it in quotation marks. Or perhaps Kinabalu thinks what Israel is doing is a war crime.
Well many of us do.
Yes hugely important that arseholes on the internet think something or other.
The arseholes being those who defend the murder of civilians as a necessary evil.
You suit the description perfectly.
It's war, Dickie boy. Look it up in the dictionary.
Indeed hence war crimes. Look them up yourself.
I suspect the proportion of military combatants to civilians was far smaller ratio in the Hamburg firestorm and the levelling of Dresden. But we weren't on trial at Nuremburg.
Is it a free pass for war crimes if you win the war?
Nope. Many commentators these days consider Dresden as a war crime. Indeed there is no escaping that for Harris as his explicit stated aim of breaking the German spirit by targeting civilians is specifically addressed as a war crime today.
The UK, and importantly in this debate, Israel both signed up to the post WW2 international rules on the conduct of war which outlawed many of the things both sides did in WW2 and which Israel and Russia are both doing now.
Personally I think only idiots living without the fear of Nazi tyranny consider Dresden a war crime. Why Dresden and not every single bombing raid that Bomber Command mounted? Because like it or not, Bomber Command wanted to achieve Dresden results EVERY time they set out. Dresden stands out as it was late in the war, and was highly successful, due to the firestorm. But many, many allied soldiers died after Dresden. Many Jews and other captives of the Nazis died after Dresden. Germany could have surrendered and stopped it all.
I know very little about WW2. But was Bomber Command strategy basically predicated on the idea that bombing Germany out of the war would save the innumerable slaughter witnessed in WW1?
Yep. Harris wanted to defeat Germany without the need for any British soldiers to land on the continent, other than to accept the surrender. There have been many arguments over the years about whether Bomber Command was worth the money and resources (materials and men) that it took. Max Hastings thought not in his book on the bomber war. Others disagree. Certainly the bombing campaign tied up tens if not hundreds of thousands of Germans defending the Reich who could have been fighting in the East. And combined with the 8th airforce’s campaign, the Allies achieved air dominance over the Luftwaffe, making D-Day much easier and restricting German movements to night time, to avoid being attacked from the air. By the end of 44 and into 45 the German transport system was wrecked, so moving anything was hard, including troops, tanks etc.
Sadly the idea that you could depress the morale of a nation under a fascist authoritarian regime was false. Even if a German housewife wanted to end the war after her house was destroyed, there was no mechanism for her to achieve it. And the Blitz had shown the resilience of the Brits under the bomb.
But ultimately strategic bombing contributed to winning the war and to describe one target destroyed as a war crime is infantile rubbish.
There were lots of things done on both sides in both wars which would now be considered war crimes. The whole point of civilisation is that we develop and learn from our mistakes.
My view is that war is never desirable, but once one is engaged, there’s no point in half measures.
Ultimately one has to do what is needful, to win. There is nothing worse than defeat.
Hallelujah.
This is what I referred to earlier. The UK hasn't been in a war for a very long time. We have had operations in Afghan, Iraq, Bosnia, for example, where at the end of the day we could always say fuck it and go home. Indeed that is exactly what we did mostly.
The likes of Richard "Dickie Boy" Tyndall is mistaking such actions with actual war.
If you are losing or think you might lose a war what on earth do you care about "the rules". A ridiculous concept in any case.
I will be sure to remind you in future that you advocated for murdering children.
You would rather have lost the second world war than bomb Dresden.
Bombing Dresden made not one iota of difference to the outcome of WW2.
And 80 years later that is still up for debate. Would you have dared chance it at the time?
It was well known at the time. There were reports made on the accuracy of US bombing in 1943 and 1944 which highlighted how poor the accuracy was. And it was pointed out at the time of Dresden and well before that it had no real strategic value.
Harris is on record as being frustrated that he could not find enough viable targets to bomb.What ultimately won WW2 for the allies was the Russian advance. The main achievement of the second front was to prevent the Russians controlling the whole of Europe after WW2.
And yet we still did it. As other posters have said on here perhaps it worked perhaps it didn't; it seems to have been controversial at the time but we were in an existential war so we did it. And we, the allies, dropped not one but two nuclear bombs on Japan. Because we needed to win.
It is war. Gaza is a war. Horrible things happen because you can't (bless him, as Kinabalu suggests) do things in half measures.
And Israel does appear to be trying not to kill civilians although with FIBUA it is tricky.
And well done Richard for staying to argue whereas all the others have turned tail and effed off.
Unfortunately this is a by-election dominated by a quarrel in a far-away country between people of whom we know far, far too much.
There are conflicts all around the world that don't get a fraction of the spotlight or attention that this one has had. I wonder what is so unique about this one conflict, that every moment becomes headline news unlike all the others?
The physical carnage, the huge civilian casualties, the mass displacement of people, the resulting humanitarian disaster, the inflictor of all this being a regime supported by the west - these do make for a big story.
"the inflictor of all this being a regime supported by the west".
I think you might need to understand that this awful conflict was blatantly started by Hamas who "inflicted" rape torture and murder on innocent people.
There is a reasonable argument that the Israeli response has been disproportionate, but the "infliction" was initiated by Hamas terrorists.
As you have been an occasional apologist for Corbyn (and probably indirectly voted for him to be PM) I guess this is hard to recognise?
I know who started the fire. Hamas did. Oct 7th was unspeakable. It's now 13th February and Israel has wreaked a mighty vengeance for it.
Justifiable response to a threat deemed existential? Or barbaric collective punishment of the population of Gaza?
I think the latter.
I think you'll find that war does involve what useful idiots such as yourself would call "collective punishment".
Collective punishment is a war crime under Article 33 of the Geneva Convention. People who make excuses for it are idiots, useful or otherwise.
That's why I put it in quotation marks. Or perhaps Kinabalu thinks what Israel is doing is a war crime.
Well many of us do.
Yes hugely important that arseholes on the internet think something or other.
The arseholes being those who defend the murder of civilians as a necessary evil.
You suit the description perfectly.
It's war, Dickie boy. Look it up in the dictionary.
Indeed hence war crimes. Look them up yourself.
I suspect the proportion of military combatants to civilians was far smaller ratio in the Hamburg firestorm and the levelling of Dresden. But we weren't on trial at Nuremburg.
Is it a free pass for war crimes if you win the war?
Nope. Many commentators these days consider Dresden as a war crime. Indeed there is no escaping that for Harris as his explicit stated aim of breaking the German spirit by targeting civilians is specifically addressed as a war crime today.
The UK, and importantly in this debate, Israel both signed up to the post WW2 international rules on the conduct of war which outlawed many of the things both sides did in WW2 and which Israel and Russia are both doing now.
Personally I think only idiots living without the fear of Nazi tyranny consider Dresden a war crime. Why Dresden and not every single bombing raid that Bomber Command mounted? Because like it or not, Bomber Command wanted to achieve Dresden results EVERY time they set out. Dresden stands out as it was late in the war, and was highly successful, due to the firestorm. But many, many allied soldiers died after Dresden. Many Jews and other captives of the Nazis died after Dresden. Germany could have surrendered and stopped it all.
I know very little about WW2. But was Bomber Command strategy basically predicated on the idea that bombing Germany out of the war would save the innumerable slaughter witnessed in WW1?
Yep. Harris wanted to defeat Germany without the need for any British soldiers to land on the continent, other than to accept the surrender. There have been many arguments over the years about whether Bomber Command was worth the money and resources (materials and men) that it took. Max Hastings thought not in his book on the bomber war. Others disagree. Certainly the bombing campaign tied up tens if not hundreds of thousands of Germans defending the Reich who could have been fighting in the East. And combined with the 8th airforce’s campaign, the Allies achieved air dominance over the Luftwaffe, making D-Day much easier and restricting German movements to night time, to avoid being attacked from the air. By the end of 44 and into 45 the German transport system was wrecked, so moving anything was hard, including troops, tanks etc.
Sadly the idea that you could depress the morale of a nation under a fascist authoritarian regime was false. Even if a German housewife wanted to end the war after her house was destroyed, there was no mechanism for her to achieve it. And the Blitz had shown the resilience of the Brits under the bomb.
But ultimately strategic bombing contributed to winning the war and to describe one target destroyed as a war crime is infantile rubbish.
There were lots of things done on both sides in both wars which would now be considered war crimes. The whole point of civilisation is that we develop and learn from our mistakes.
My view is that war is never desirable, but once one is engaged, there’s no point in half measures.
Ultimately one has to do what is needful, to win. There is nothing worse than defeat.
Hallelujah.
This is what I referred to earlier. The UK hasn't been in a war for a very long time. We have had operations in Afghan, Iraq, Bosnia, for example, where at the end of the day we could always say fuck it and go home. Indeed that is exactly what we did mostly.
The likes of Richard "Dickie Boy" Tyndall is mistaking such actions with actual war.
If you are losing or think you might lose a war what on earth do you care about "the rules". A ridiculous concept in any case.
I will be sure to remind you in future that you advocated for murdering children.
You would rather have lost the second world war than bomb Dresden.
Bombing Dresden made not one iota of difference to the outcome of WW2.
And 80 years later that is still up for debate. Would you have dared chance it at the time?
It was well known at the time. There were reports made on the accuracy of US bombing in 1943 and 1944 which highlighted how poor the accuracy was. And it was pointed out at the time of Dresden and well before that it had no real strategic value.
Harris is on record as being frustrated that he could not find enough viable targets to bomb.What ultimately won WW2 for the allies was the Russian advance. The main achievement of the second front was to prevent the Russians controlling the whole of Europe after WW2.
And yet we still did it. As other posters have said on here perhaps it worked perhaps it didn't; it seems to have been controversial at the time but we were in an existential war so we did it. And we, the allies, dropped not one but two nuclear bombs on Japan. Because we needed to win.
It is war. Gaza is a war. Horrible things happen because you can't (bless him, as Kinabalu suggests) do things in half measures.
And Israel does appear to be trying not to kill civilians although with FIBUA it is tricky.
And well done Richard for staying to argue whereas all the others have turned tail and effed off.
Except war can be fought by half measures, indeed clear rules of engagement are part and parcel of modern military doctrine aren't they?
Unfortunately this is a by-election dominated by a quarrel in a far-away country between people of whom we know far, far too much.
There are conflicts all around the world that don't get a fraction of the spotlight or attention that this one has had. I wonder what is so unique about this one conflict, that every moment becomes headline news unlike all the others?
The physical carnage, the huge civilian casualties, the mass displacement of people, the resulting humanitarian disaster, the inflictor of all this being a regime supported by the west - these do make for a big story.
"the inflictor of all this being a regime supported by the west".
I think you might need to understand that this awful conflict was blatantly started by Hamas who "inflicted" rape torture and murder on innocent people.
There is a reasonable argument that the Israeli response has been disproportionate, but the "infliction" was initiated by Hamas terrorists.
As you have been an occasional apologist for Corbyn (and probably indirectly voted for him to be PM) I guess this is hard to recognise?
I know who started the fire. Hamas did. Oct 7th was unspeakable. It's now 13th February and Israel has wreaked a mighty vengeance for it.
Justifiable response to a threat deemed existential? Or barbaric collective punishment of the population of Gaza?
I think the latter.
I think you'll find that war does involve what useful idiots such as yourself would call "collective punishment".
Collective punishment is a war crime under Article 33 of the Geneva Convention. People who make excuses for it are idiots, useful or otherwise.
That's why I put it in quotation marks. Or perhaps Kinabalu thinks what Israel is doing is a war crime.
Well many of us do.
Yes hugely important that arseholes on the internet think something or other.
The arseholes being those who defend the murder of civilians as a necessary evil.
You suit the description perfectly.
It's war, Dickie boy. Look it up in the dictionary.
Indeed hence war crimes. Look them up yourself.
I suspect the proportion of military combatants to civilians was far smaller ratio in the Hamburg firestorm and the levelling of Dresden. But we weren't on trial at Nuremburg.
Is it a free pass for war crimes if you win the war?
Nope. Many commentators these days consider Dresden as a war crime. Indeed there is no escaping that for Harris as his explicit stated aim of breaking the German spirit by targeting civilians is specifically addressed as a war crime today.
The UK, and importantly in this debate, Israel both signed up to the post WW2 international rules on the conduct of war which outlawed many of the things both sides did in WW2 and which Israel and Russia are both doing now.
Personally I think only idiots living without the fear of Nazi tyranny consider Dresden a war crime. Why Dresden and not every single bombing raid that Bomber Command mounted? Because like it or not, Bomber Command wanted to achieve Dresden results EVERY time they set out. Dresden stands out as it was late in the war, and was highly successful, due to the firestorm. But many, many allied soldiers died after Dresden. Many Jews and other captives of the Nazis died after Dresden. Germany could have surrendered and stopped it all.
I know very little about WW2. But was Bomber Command strategy basically predicated on the idea that bombing Germany out of the war would save the innumerable slaughter witnessed in WW1?
Yep. Harris wanted to defeat Germany without the need for any British soldiers to land on the continent, other than to accept the surrender. There have been many arguments over the years about whether Bomber Command was worth the money and resources (materials and men) that it took. Max Hastings thought not in his book on the bomber war. Others disagree. Certainly the bombing campaign tied up tens if not hundreds of thousands of Germans defending the Reich who could have been fighting in the East. And combined with the 8th airforce’s campaign, the Allies achieved air dominance over the Luftwaffe, making D-Day much easier and restricting German movements to night time, to avoid being attacked from the air. By the end of 44 and into 45 the German transport system was wrecked, so moving anything was hard, including troops, tanks etc.
Sadly the idea that you could depress the morale of a nation under a fascist authoritarian regime was false. Even if a German housewife wanted to end the war after her house was destroyed, there was no mechanism for her to achieve it. And the Blitz had shown the resilience of the Brits under the bomb.
But ultimately strategic bombing contributed to winning the war and to describe one target destroyed as a war crime is infantile rubbish.
There were lots of things done on both sides in both wars which would now be considered war crimes. The whole point of civilisation is that we develop and learn from our mistakes.
My view is that war is never desirable, but once one is engaged, there’s no point in half measures.
Ultimately one has to do what is needful, to win. There is nothing worse than defeat.
If the price is 2.3 million Gazans including women and children?
Israel have the right to defend themselves against Hamas. Benjamin Netanyahu does not have the right to save his liberty and political career by the mass killing of Gazan women and children. That is not anti-Semitic but it does demonstrate my utter contempt for a sociopath who happens to be Prime Minister of Israel.
Well there's 30000 Hamas members and the IDS have killed 30000 people so they should be about there if they've been targeting carefully.
Unfortunately this is a by-election dominated by a quarrel in a far-away country between people of whom we know far, far too much.
There are conflicts all around the world that don't get a fraction of the spotlight or attention that this one has had. I wonder what is so unique about this one conflict, that every moment becomes headline news unlike all the others?
The physical carnage, the huge civilian casualties, the mass displacement of people, the resulting humanitarian disaster, the inflictor of all this being a regime supported by the west - these do make for a big story.
"the inflictor of all this being a regime supported by the west".
I think you might need to understand that this awful conflict was blatantly started by Hamas who "inflicted" rape torture and murder on innocent people.
There is a reasonable argument that the Israeli response has been disproportionate, but the "infliction" was initiated by Hamas terrorists.
As you have been an occasional apologist for Corbyn (and probably indirectly voted for him to be PM) I guess this is hard to recognise?
I know who started the fire. Hamas did. Oct 7th was unspeakable. It's now 13th February and Israel has wreaked a mighty vengeance for it.
Justifiable response to a threat deemed existential? Or barbaric collective punishment of the population of Gaza?
I think the latter.
I think you'll find that war does involve what useful idiots such as yourself would call "collective punishment".
Collective punishment is a war crime under Article 33 of the Geneva Convention. People who make excuses for it are idiots, useful or otherwise.
That's why I put it in quotation marks. Or perhaps Kinabalu thinks what Israel is doing is a war crime.
Well many of us do.
Yes hugely important that arseholes on the internet think something or other.
The arseholes being those who defend the murder of civilians as a necessary evil.
You suit the description perfectly.
It's war, Dickie boy. Look it up in the dictionary.
Indeed hence war crimes. Look them up yourself.
I suspect the proportion of military combatants to civilians was far smaller ratio in the Hamburg firestorm and the levelling of Dresden. But we weren't on trial at Nuremburg.
Is it a free pass for war crimes if you win the war?
Nope. Many commentators these days consider Dresden as a war crime. Indeed there is no escaping that for Harris as his explicit stated aim of breaking the German spirit by targeting civilians is specifically addressed as a war crime today.
The UK, and importantly in this debate, Israel both signed up to the post WW2 international rules on the conduct of war which outlawed many of the things both sides did in WW2 and which Israel and Russia are both doing now.
Personally I think only idiots living without the fear of Nazi tyranny consider Dresden a war crime. Why Dresden and not every single bombing raid that Bomber Command mounted? Because like it or not, Bomber Command wanted to achieve Dresden results EVERY time they set out. Dresden stands out as it was late in the war, and was highly successful, due to the firestorm. But many, many allied soldiers died after Dresden. Many Jews and other captives of the Nazis died after Dresden. Germany could have surrendered and stopped it all.
I know very little about WW2. But was Bomber Command strategy basically predicated on the idea that bombing Germany out of the war would save the innumerable slaughter witnessed in WW1?
Yep. Harris wanted to defeat Germany without the need for any British soldiers to land on the continent, other than to accept the surrender. There have been many arguments over the years about whether Bomber Command was worth the money and resources (materials and men) that it took. Max Hastings thought not in his book on the bomber war. Others disagree. Certainly the bombing campaign tied up tens if not hundreds of thousands of Germans defending the Reich who could have been fighting in the East. And combined with the 8th airforce’s campaign, the Allies achieved air dominance over the Luftwaffe, making D-Day much easier and restricting German movements to night time, to avoid being attacked from the air. By the end of 44 and into 45 the German transport system was wrecked, so moving anything was hard, including troops, tanks etc.
Sadly the idea that you could depress the morale of a nation under a fascist authoritarian regime was false. Even if a German housewife wanted to end the war after her house was destroyed, there was no mechanism for her to achieve it. And the Blitz had shown the resilience of the Brits under the bomb.
But ultimately strategic bombing contributed to winning the war and to describe one target destroyed as a war crime is infantile rubbish.
There were lots of things done on both sides in both wars which would now be considered war crimes. The whole point of civilisation is that we develop and learn from our mistakes.
My view is that war is never desirable, but once one is engaged, there’s no point in half measures.
Ultimately one has to do what is needful, to win. There is nothing worse than defeat.
If both sides adopt that approach it only adds to the barbarity. There can't be victory without defeat and the greater the defeat doesn't mean the greater the victory. So, all told, half measures is the way to go imo.
Hello the 14th century knights are calling and they want their rules of war back.
I recall a letter from one monk to another about the tourney he'd just been to. Apparently in the melee, there was no knightly behaviour as in the Goode Olde days - attacks from behind, 2 ganging up on 1.
Unfortunately this is a by-election dominated by a quarrel in a far-away country between people of whom we know far, far too much.
There are conflicts all around the world that don't get a fraction of the spotlight or attention that this one has had. I wonder what is so unique about this one conflict, that every moment becomes headline news unlike all the others?
The physical carnage, the huge civilian casualties, the mass displacement of people, the resulting humanitarian disaster, the inflictor of all this being a regime supported by the west - these do make for a big story.
"the inflictor of all this being a regime supported by the west".
I think you might need to understand that this awful conflict was blatantly started by Hamas who "inflicted" rape torture and murder on innocent people.
There is a reasonable argument that the Israeli response has been disproportionate, but the "infliction" was initiated by Hamas terrorists.
As you have been an occasional apologist for Corbyn (and probably indirectly voted for him to be PM) I guess this is hard to recognise?
I know who started the fire. Hamas did. Oct 7th was unspeakable. It's now 13th February and Israel has wreaked a mighty vengeance for it.
Justifiable response to a threat deemed existential? Or barbaric collective punishment of the population of Gaza?
I think the latter.
I think you'll find that war does involve what useful idiots such as yourself would call "collective punishment".
Collective punishment is a war crime under Article 33 of the Geneva Convention. People who make excuses for it are idiots, useful or otherwise.
That's why I put it in quotation marks. Or perhaps Kinabalu thinks what Israel is doing is a war crime.
Well many of us do.
Yes hugely important that arseholes on the internet think something or other.
The arseholes being those who defend the murder of civilians as a necessary evil.
You suit the description perfectly.
It's war, Dickie boy. Look it up in the dictionary.
Indeed hence war crimes. Look them up yourself.
I suspect the proportion of military combatants to civilians was far smaller ratio in the Hamburg firestorm and the levelling of Dresden. But we weren't on trial at Nuremburg.
Is it a free pass for war crimes if you win the war?
Nope. Many commentators these days consider Dresden as a war crime. Indeed there is no escaping that for Harris as his explicit stated aim of breaking the German spirit by targeting civilians is specifically addressed as a war crime today.
The UK, and importantly in this debate, Israel both signed up to the post WW2 international rules on the conduct of war which outlawed many of the things both sides did in WW2 and which Israel and Russia are both doing now.
Personally I think only idiots living without the fear of Nazi tyranny consider Dresden a war crime. Why Dresden and not every single bombing raid that Bomber Command mounted? Because like it or not, Bomber Command wanted to achieve Dresden results EVERY time they set out. Dresden stands out as it was late in the war, and was highly successful, due to the firestorm. But many, many allied soldiers died after Dresden. Many Jews and other captives of the Nazis died after Dresden. Germany could have surrendered and stopped it all.
I know very little about WW2. But was Bomber Command strategy basically predicated on the idea that bombing Germany out of the war would save the innumerable slaughter witnessed in WW1?
Yep. Harris wanted to defeat Germany without the need for any British soldiers to land on the continent, other than to accept the surrender. There have been many arguments over the years about whether Bomber Command was worth the money and resources (materials and men) that it took. Max Hastings thought not in his book on the bomber war. Others disagree. Certainly the bombing campaign tied up tens if not hundreds of thousands of Germans defending the Reich who could have been fighting in the East. And combined with the 8th airforce’s campaign, the Allies achieved air dominance over the Luftwaffe, making D-Day much easier and restricting German movements to night time, to avoid being attacked from the air. By the end of 44 and into 45 the German transport system was wrecked, so moving anything was hard, including troops, tanks etc.
Sadly the idea that you could depress the morale of a nation under a fascist authoritarian regime was false. Even if a German housewife wanted to end the war after her house was destroyed, there was no mechanism for her to achieve it. And the Blitz had shown the resilience of the Brits under the bomb.
But ultimately strategic bombing contributed to winning the war and to describe one target destroyed as a war crime is infantile rubbish.
There were lots of things done on both sides in both wars which would now be considered war crimes. The whole point of civilisation is that we develop and learn from our mistakes.
My view is that war is never desirable, but once one is engaged, there’s no point in half measures.
Ultimately one has to do what is needful, to win. There is nothing worse than defeat.
Hallelujah.
This is what I referred to earlier. The UK hasn't been in a war for a very long time. We have had operations in Afghan, Iraq, Bosnia, for example, where at the end of the day we could always say fuck it and go home. Indeed that is exactly what we did mostly.
The likes of Richard "Dickie Boy" Tyndall is mistaking such actions with actual war.
If you are losing or think you might lose a war what on earth do you care about "the rules". A ridiculous concept in any case.
I will be sure to remind you in future that you advocated for murdering children.
You would rather have lost the second world war than bomb Dresden.
Bombing Dresden made not one iota of difference to the outcome of WW2.
And 80 years later that is still up for debate. Would you have dared chance it at the time?
It was well known at the time. There were reports made on the accuracy of US bombing in 1943 and 1944 which highlighted how poor the accuracy was. And it was pointed out at the time of Dresden and well before that it had no real strategic value.
Harris is on record as being frustrated that he could not find enough viable targets to bomb.What ultimately won WW2 for the allies was the Russian advance. The main achievement of the second front was to prevent the Russians controlling the whole of Europe after WW2.
And yet we still did it. As other posters have said on here perhaps it worked perhaps it didn't; it seems to have been controversial at the time but we were in an existential war so we did it. And we, the allies, dropped not one but two nuclear bombs on Japan. Because we needed to win.
It is war. Gaza is a war. Horrible things happen because you can't (bless him, as Kinabalu suggests) do things in half measures.
And Israel does appear to be trying not to kill civilians although with FIBUA it is tricky.
And well done Richard for staying to argue whereas all the others have turned tail and effed off.
Except war can be fought by half measures, indeed clear rules of engagement are part and parcel of modern military doctrine aren't they?
There are clear rules of engagement and the Geneva convention. We await to see whether Israel is condemned by any of these. UNWRA aside, obvs.
One long term worry I have is that Britain is not capable of going to war. People will get duped in to subservience to another power. I was also thinking that 'woke' creates the conditions for this perfectly - a reduction in self confidence and a confusing form of self hatred that leads people to support and glorify Hamas, with its associated acts of murder and rape; with the legal system then letting them off with a 'non punishment'. These people are unlikely to be capable of fighting for anything.
Unfortunately this is a by-election dominated by a quarrel in a far-away country between people of whom we know far, far too much.
There are conflicts all around the world that don't get a fraction of the spotlight or attention that this one has had. I wonder what is so unique about this one conflict, that every moment becomes headline news unlike all the others?
The physical carnage, the huge civilian casualties, the mass displacement of people, the resulting humanitarian disaster, the inflictor of all this being a regime supported by the west - these do make for a big story.
"the inflictor of all this being a regime supported by the west".
I think you might need to understand that this awful conflict was blatantly started by Hamas who "inflicted" rape torture and murder on innocent people.
There is a reasonable argument that the Israeli response has been disproportionate, but the "infliction" was initiated by Hamas terrorists.
As you have been an occasional apologist for Corbyn (and probably indirectly voted for him to be PM) I guess this is hard to recognise?
I know who started the fire. Hamas did. Oct 7th was unspeakable. It's now 13th February and Israel has wreaked a mighty vengeance for it.
Justifiable response to a threat deemed existential? Or barbaric collective punishment of the population of Gaza?
I think the latter.
I think you'll find that war does involve what useful idiots such as yourself would call "collective punishment".
Collective punishment is a war crime under Article 33 of the Geneva Convention. People who make excuses for it are idiots, useful or otherwise.
That's why I put it in quotation marks. Or perhaps Kinabalu thinks what Israel is doing is a war crime.
Well many of us do.
Yes hugely important that arseholes on the internet think something or other.
The arseholes being those who defend the murder of civilians as a necessary evil.
You suit the description perfectly.
It's war, Dickie boy. Look it up in the dictionary.
Indeed hence war crimes. Look them up yourself.
I suspect the proportion of military combatants to civilians was far smaller ratio in the Hamburg firestorm and the levelling of Dresden. But we weren't on trial at Nuremburg.
Is it a free pass for war crimes if you win the war?
Nope. Many commentators these days consider Dresden as a war crime. Indeed there is no escaping that for Harris as his explicit stated aim of breaking the German spirit by targeting civilians is specifically addressed as a war crime today.
The UK, and importantly in this debate, Israel both signed up to the post WW2 international rules on the conduct of war which outlawed many of the things both sides did in WW2 and which Israel and Russia are both doing now.
Personally I think only idiots living without the fear of Nazi tyranny consider Dresden a war crime. Why Dresden and not every single bombing raid that Bomber Command mounted? Because like it or not, Bomber Command wanted to achieve Dresden results EVERY time they set out. Dresden stands out as it was late in the war, and was highly successful, due to the firestorm. But many, many allied soldiers died after Dresden. Many Jews and other captives of the Nazis died after Dresden. Germany could have surrendered and stopped it all.
Because it was clear that it would not work. It was part of this ridiculous idea of British moral superiority. We had not cracked under the Blitz because we were British. But johnny foreigner is not made of the same stuff and so was bound to be broken by our bombing his cities flat.
Harris explicitly pushed this idea - that he could win the war by breaking the German spirit. It was clear in hindsight (and to many at the time) that it was a fallacy and that is one of the reasons that it was outlawed after the war. The whole campaign of targetting German civilian population would today be considered criminal and put in the same category as the use of poison gas.
It was ignorance as much as arrogance. Fascinating commentary from physicist Freeman Dyson here:
https://www.technologyreview.com/2006/11/01/227625/a-failure-of-intelligence/ … Bomber Command had a similar problem in evaluating the effectiveness of bombing. Aircrew frequently reported the destruction of targets when photographs showed they had missed by several miles. The navy ORS was extremely effective and made great contributions to winning the war against the U-boats in the Atlantic. But Blackett had two enormous advantages. First, he was a world-renowned scientist (who would later win a Nobel Prize), with a safe job in the academic world, so he could threaten to resign if his advice was not followed. Second, he had been a navy officer in World War I and was respected by the admirals he advised. Basil Dickins, the chief of our ORS at Bomber Command, had neither of these advantages. He was a civil servant with no independent standing. He could not threaten to resign, and Sir Arthur Harris had no respect for him. His career depended on telling Sir Arthur things that Sir Arthur wanted to hear. So that is what he did. He gave Sir Arthur information rather than advice. He never raised serious questions about Sir Arthur’s tactics and strategy…
This makes pretty clear that the targeting of civilans was deliberate policy : … We succeeded in raising firestorms only twice, once in Hamburg and once more in Dresden in 1945, where between 25,000 and 60,000 people perished (the numbers are still debated). The Germans had good air raid shelters and warning systems and did what they were told. As a result, only a few thousand people were killed in a typical major attack. But when there was a firestorm, people were asphyxiated or roasted inside their shelters, and the number killed was more than 10 times greater. Every time Bomber Command attacked a city, we were trying to raise a firestorm, but we never learnt why we so seldom succeeded…
Targeting of workers making weapons to kill allied soldiers would fit just as well. And the firestorm didn’t just kill people it destroyed buildings.
None of this is nice. But being gassed at Auschwitz was pretty below the belt too, as was being rounded up and burned to death in a church (Oradour) or taken to a ravine, stripped naked and shot, including the children.
I’m comfortable with everything that was done to defeat Germany. I’m sorry others can’t see that. I’ve read accounts of Dresden, and Hamburg, and it sounds horrifying. I hope it never happens again, and I hope I never get to experience it. But it doesn’t make it a war crime.
Dresden, whatever you think of it, pales into insignificance beside Operation Meetinghouse, the firebombing of Tokyo a month later, which is estimated to have killed at least 100,000 people, a death toll not far removed from that later reached at Hiroshima.
I'm curious from a historical perspective - by March 1945, the Americans showed they could destroy any and every Japanese city at whim and inflict massive casualties yet the Japanese didn't at that point yield. Hiroshima, albeit a single device of an unknown magnitude, produced, one could argue, a death toll akin to a fire bombing raid and that didn't immediately force the Japanese surrender.
Was it the second A-Bomb or was it the defeat of the Kwantung Army in Manchuria which persuaded Hirohito and others final defeat was at hand?
The first one proved enough, but tragically, they were slow about communicating the decision.
One long term worry I have is that Britain is not capable of going to war. People will get duped in to subservience to another power. I was also thinking that 'woke' creates the conditions for this perfectly - a reduction in self confidence and a confusing form of self hatred that leads people to support and glorify Hamas, with its associated acts of murder and rape; with the legal system then giving them a 12month 'conditional discharge'. These people are unlikely to be capable of fighting for anything.
Yet what has the Conservative Party done for 14 years? Just look at its attitude to Army recruitment, for one thing. Contracts it out. Disrupts willing recruits.
Unfortunately this is a by-election dominated by a quarrel in a far-away country between people of whom we know far, far too much.
There are conflicts all around the world that don't get a fraction of the spotlight or attention that this one has had. I wonder what is so unique about this one conflict, that every moment becomes headline news unlike all the others?
The physical carnage, the huge civilian casualties, the mass displacement of people, the resulting humanitarian disaster, the inflictor of all this being a regime supported by the west - these do make for a big story.
"the inflictor of all this being a regime supported by the west".
I think you might need to understand that this awful conflict was blatantly started by Hamas who "inflicted" rape torture and murder on innocent people.
There is a reasonable argument that the Israeli response has been disproportionate, but the "infliction" was initiated by Hamas terrorists.
As you have been an occasional apologist for Corbyn (and probably indirectly voted for him to be PM) I guess this is hard to recognise?
I know who started the fire. Hamas did. Oct 7th was unspeakable. It's now 13th February and Israel has wreaked a mighty vengeance for it.
Justifiable response to a threat deemed existential? Or barbaric collective punishment of the population of Gaza?
I think the latter.
I think you'll find that war does involve what useful idiots such as yourself would call "collective punishment".
Collective punishment is a war crime under Article 33 of the Geneva Convention. People who make excuses for it are idiots, useful or otherwise.
That's why I put it in quotation marks. Or perhaps Kinabalu thinks what Israel is doing is a war crime.
Well many of us do.
Yes hugely important that arseholes on the internet think something or other.
The arseholes being those who defend the murder of civilians as a necessary evil.
You suit the description perfectly.
It's war, Dickie boy. Look it up in the dictionary.
Indeed hence war crimes. Look them up yourself.
I suspect the proportion of military combatants to civilians was far smaller ratio in the Hamburg firestorm and the levelling of Dresden. But we weren't on trial at Nuremburg.
Is it a free pass for war crimes if you win the war?
Nope. Many commentators these days consider Dresden as a war crime. Indeed there is no escaping that for Harris as his explicit stated aim of breaking the German spirit by targeting civilians is specifically addressed as a war crime today.
The UK, and importantly in this debate, Israel both signed up to the post WW2 international rules on the conduct of war which outlawed many of the things both sides did in WW2 and which Israel and Russia are both doing now.
Personally I think only idiots living without the fear of Nazi tyranny consider Dresden a war crime. Why Dresden and not every single bombing raid that Bomber Command mounted? Because like it or not, Bomber Command wanted to achieve Dresden results EVERY time they set out. Dresden stands out as it was late in the war, and was highly successful, due to the firestorm. But many, many allied soldiers died after Dresden. Many Jews and other captives of the Nazis died after Dresden. Germany could have surrendered and stopped it all.
I know very little about WW2. But was Bomber Command strategy basically predicated on the idea that bombing Germany out of the war would save the innumerable slaughter witnessed in WW1?
Yep. Harris wanted to defeat Germany without the need for any British soldiers to land on the continent, other than to accept the surrender. There have been many arguments over the years about whether Bomber Command was worth the money and resources (materials and men) that it took. Max Hastings thought not in his book on the bomber war. Others disagree. Certainly the bombing campaign tied up tens if not hundreds of thousands of Germans defending the Reich who could have been fighting in the East. And combined with the 8th airforce’s campaign, the Allies achieved air dominance over the Luftwaffe, making D-Day much easier and restricting German movements to night time, to avoid being attacked from the air. By the end of 44 and into 45 the German transport system was wrecked, so moving anything was hard, including troops, tanks etc.
Sadly the idea that you could depress the morale of a nation under a fascist authoritarian regime was false. Even if a German housewife wanted to end the war after her house was destroyed, there was no mechanism for her to achieve it. And the Blitz had shown the resilience of the Brits under the bomb.
But ultimately strategic bombing contributed to winning the war and to describe one target destroyed as a war crime is infantile rubbish.
There were lots of things done on both sides in both wars which would now be considered war crimes. The whole point of civilisation is that we develop and learn from our mistakes.
My view is that war is never desirable, but once one is engaged, there’s no point in half measures.
Ultimately one has to do what is needful, to win. There is nothing worse than defeat.
Hallelujah.
This is what I referred to earlier. The UK hasn't been in a war for a very long time. We have had operations in Afghan, Iraq, Bosnia, for example, where at the end of the day we could always say fuck it and go home. Indeed that is exactly what we did mostly.
The likes of Richard "Dickie Boy" Tyndall is mistaking such actions with actual war.
If you are losing or think you might lose a war what on earth do you care about "the rules". A ridiculous concept in any case.
I will be sure to remind you in future that you advocated for murdering children.
You would rather have lost the second world war than bomb Dresden.
Bombing Dresden made not one iota of difference to the outcome of WW2.
And 80 years later that is still up for debate. Would you have dared chance it at the time?
It was well known at the time. There were reports made on the accuracy of US bombing in 1943 and 1944 which highlighted how poor the accuracy was. And it was pointed out at the time of Dresden and well before that it had no real strategic value.
Harris is on record as being frustrated that he could not find enough viable targets to bomb.What ultimately won WW2 for the allies was the Russian advance. The main achievement of the second front was to prevent the Russians controlling the whole of Europe after WW2.
And yet we still did it. As other posters have said on here perhaps it worked perhaps it didn't; it seems to have been controversial at the time but we were in an existential war so we did it. And we, the allies, dropped not one but two nuclear bombs on Japan. Because we needed to win.
It is war. Gaza is a war. Horrible things happen because you can't (bless him, as Kinabalu suggests) do things in half measures.
And Israel does appear to be trying not to kill civilians although with FIBUA it is tricky.
And well done Richard for staying to argue whereas all the others have turned tail and effed off.
Except war can be fought by half measures, indeed clear rules of engagement are part and parcel of modern military doctrine aren't they?
Exactly.
"This is War!" doesn't justify everything that is done in the name of it.
Wars, aging and emigration - except thus is true of tge countries to the south as well, and Iraq, for example, has more than doubled in population across the same period. What seems to be the culprit is Christianity.
Russia puts Estonian prime minister Kaja Kallas on wanted list Lithuanian minister also among those accused of ‘destroying Soviet monuments’, as Tallinn fears Russian military buildup
The Russian foreign ministry spokesperson Maria Zakharova said the Estonian state secretary, Taimar Peterkop, the Lithuanian culture minister, Simonas Kairys, and Kallas were accused of “destroying monuments to Soviet soldiers”, a reference to the removal of Soviet-era second world war memorials
“This is only the start,” Zakharova wrote on her Telegram channel. “Crimes against the memory of the world’s liberators from nazism and fascism must be prosecuted.” Russian authorities have not revealed the exact charges against the three...
The Evening Standard tonight had a double page feature on Labour's problems in its London heartland. The main focus was on the threat to Wes Streeting in Ilford North whose majority in 2019 was 5,200 and now faces an Independent candidate with links to pro-Palestine groups whose own campaign may be helped by the inclusion of some parts of Ilford South into the newly-redrawn constituency.
The Standard also confirmed what I'd heard - that Councillor Mirza and the Newham Independents are going to stand candidates in both East Ham and West Ham & Beckton against Stephen Timms and Lyn Brown respectively. Another likely challenge to Labour is in Bethnal Green & Bow from an Aspire candidate.
It seems unlikely Labour will lose any of these seats and treating "the muslim vote" as a single homogenous entity is unwise. Respect got 20% in 2005 in East Ham and I suspect that's about where any pro-Palestine anti-Labour candidate will end up later this year.
Losing Wes Streeting from the next (likely) Cabinet of the UK would be a disaster for the whole country frankly. Someone needs to sort out the mess of the NHS and he seems like he might be up for the task. Prepared to reform and learn from other countries.
One can only hope if he loses Ilford then a quick peerage and Cabinet will happen.
Sticking reject politicians who cannot win their own constituency into the Lords is the sort of thing that brings the Lords into disrepute.
I am very suspicious of Streeting. All I have seem from him is superficial gimmicks and a ruthless personal ambition. I don't think he cares much about the job.
I don’t think he’ll lose, anyhow. He’s a lot more prominent now than in previous elections, and demography has been eating away at the Tory vote in East London for years - look at the last locals. The Jewish population is much reduced, the Asian population is growing, and the educated professionals moving into the west of the borough are trending away from the Tories. Streeting is safe, protest candidate or not. And the modest boundary changes aren’t unfavourable.
Unfortunately this is a by-election dominated by a quarrel in a far-away country between people of whom we know far, far too much.
There are conflicts all around the world that don't get a fraction of the spotlight or attention that this one has had. I wonder what is so unique about this one conflict, that every moment becomes headline news unlike all the others?
The physical carnage, the huge civilian casualties, the mass displacement of people, the resulting humanitarian disaster, the inflictor of all this being a regime supported by the west - these do make for a big story.
"the inflictor of all this being a regime supported by the west".
I think you might need to understand that this awful conflict was blatantly started by Hamas who "inflicted" rape torture and murder on innocent people.
There is a reasonable argument that the Israeli response has been disproportionate, but the "infliction" was initiated by Hamas terrorists.
As you have been an occasional apologist for Corbyn (and probably indirectly voted for him to be PM) I guess this is hard to recognise?
I know who started the fire. Hamas did. Oct 7th was unspeakable. It's now 13th February and Israel has wreaked a mighty vengeance for it.
Justifiable response to a threat deemed existential? Or barbaric collective punishment of the population of Gaza?
I think the latter.
I think you'll find that war does involve what useful idiots such as yourself would call "collective punishment".
Collective punishment is a war crime under Article 33 of the Geneva Convention. People who make excuses for it are idiots, useful or otherwise.
That's why I put it in quotation marks. Or perhaps Kinabalu thinks what Israel is doing is a war crime.
Well many of us do.
Yes hugely important that arseholes on the internet think something or other.
The arseholes being those who defend the murder of civilians as a necessary evil.
You suit the description perfectly.
It's war, Dickie boy. Look it up in the dictionary.
Indeed hence war crimes. Look them up yourself.
I suspect the proportion of military combatants to civilians was far smaller ratio in the Hamburg firestorm and the levelling of Dresden. But we weren't on trial at Nuremburg.
Is it a free pass for war crimes if you win the war?
Nope. Many commentators these days consider Dresden as a war crime. Indeed there is no escaping that for Harris as his explicit stated aim of breaking the German spirit by targeting civilians is specifically addressed as a war crime today.
The UK, and importantly in this debate, Israel both signed up to the post WW2 international rules on the conduct of war which outlawed many of the things both sides did in WW2 and which Israel and Russia are both doing now.
Personally I think only idiots living without the fear of Nazi tyranny consider Dresden a war crime. Why Dresden and not every single bombing raid that Bomber Command mounted? Because like it or not, Bomber Command wanted to achieve Dresden results EVERY time they set out. Dresden stands out as it was late in the war, and was highly successful, due to the firestorm. But many, many allied soldiers died after Dresden. Many Jews and other captives of the Nazis died after Dresden. Germany could have surrendered and stopped it all.
I know very little about WW2. But was Bomber Command strategy basically predicated on the idea that bombing Germany out of the war would save the innumerable slaughter witnessed in WW1?
Yep. Harris wanted to defeat Germany without the need for any British soldiers to land on the continent, other than to accept the surrender. There have been many arguments over the years about whether Bomber Command was worth the money and resources (materials and men) that it took. Max Hastings thought not in his book on the bomber war. Others disagree. Certainly the bombing campaign tied up tens if not hundreds of thousands of Germans defending the Reich who could have been fighting in the East. And combined with the 8th airforce’s campaign, the Allies achieved air dominance over the Luftwaffe, making D-Day much easier and restricting German movements to night time, to avoid being attacked from the air. By the end of 44 and into 45 the German transport system was wrecked, so moving anything was hard, including troops, tanks etc.
Sadly the idea that you could depress the morale of a nation under a fascist authoritarian regime was false. Even if a German housewife wanted to end the war after her house was destroyed, there was no mechanism for her to achieve it. And the Blitz had shown the resilience of the Brits under the bomb.
But ultimately strategic bombing contributed to winning the war and to describe one target destroyed as a war crime is infantile rubbish.
There were lots of things done on both sides in both wars which would now be considered war crimes. The whole point of civilisation is that we develop and learn from our mistakes.
My view is that war is never desirable, but once one is engaged, there’s no point in half measures.
Ultimately one has to do what is needful, to win. There is nothing worse than defeat.
Hallelujah.
This is what I referred to earlier. The UK hasn't been in a war for a very long time. We have had operations in Afghan, Iraq, Bosnia, for example, where at the end of the day we could always say fuck it and go home. Indeed that is exactly what we did mostly.
The likes of Richard "Dickie Boy" Tyndall is mistaking such actions with actual war.
If you are losing or think you might lose a war what on earth do you care about "the rules". A ridiculous concept in any case.
I will be sure to remind you in future that you advocated for murdering children.
You would rather have lost the second world war than bomb Dresden.
Bombing Dresden made not one iota of difference to the outcome of WW2.
And 80 years later that is still up for debate. Would you have dared chance it at the time?
It was well known at the time. There were reports made on the accuracy of US bombing in 1943 and 1944 which highlighted how poor the accuracy was. And it was pointed out at the time of Dresden and well before that it had no real strategic value.
Harris is on record as being frustrated that he could not find enough viable targets to bomb.What ultimately won WW2 for the allies was the Russian advance. The main achievement of the second front was to prevent the Russians controlling the whole of Europe after WW2.
Harris was a dogmatist who killed tens of thousands of his own airmen for marginal results.
One long term worry I have is that Britain is not capable of going to war. People will get duped in to subservience to another power. I was also thinking that 'woke' creates the conditions for this perfectly - a reduction in self confidence and a confusing form of self hatred that leads people to support and glorify Hamas, with its associated acts of murder and rape; with the legal system then letting them off with a 'non punishment'. These people are unlikely to be capable of fighting for anything.
The biggest obstacle is that vast numbers of people won't be physically fit to fight thanks to poor diets and malnutrition, reflecting widespread childhood poverty, and a lack of exercise. Also, does this country really treat its young like it wants them to love it? Let the pensioners fight the next war, they're the only ones who get anything out of being here.
Wars, aging and emigration - except thus is true of tge countries to the south as well, and Iraq, for example, has more than doubled in population across the same period. What seems to be the culprit is Christianity.
That, and the EU. Though as we’ve seen with Poland, that emigration to wealthier EU members can go into reverse.
It will be instructive to revisit those figures at the end of the decade.
Unfortunately this is a by-election dominated by a quarrel in a far-away country between people of whom we know far, far too much.
There are conflicts all around the world that don't get a fraction of the spotlight or attention that this one has had. I wonder what is so unique about this one conflict, that every moment becomes headline news unlike all the others?
The physical carnage, the huge civilian casualties, the mass displacement of people, the resulting humanitarian disaster, the inflictor of all this being a regime supported by the west - these do make for a big story.
"the inflictor of all this being a regime supported by the west".
I think you might need to understand that this awful conflict was blatantly started by Hamas who "inflicted" rape torture and murder on innocent people.
There is a reasonable argument that the Israeli response has been disproportionate, but the "infliction" was initiated by Hamas terrorists.
As you have been an occasional apologist for Corbyn (and probably indirectly voted for him to be PM) I guess this is hard to recognise?
I know who started the fire. Hamas did. Oct 7th was unspeakable. It's now 13th February and Israel has wreaked a mighty vengeance for it.
Justifiable response to a threat deemed existential? Or barbaric collective punishment of the population of Gaza?
I think the latter.
I think you'll find that war does involve what useful idiots such as yourself would call "collective punishment".
Collective punishment is a war crime under Article 33 of the Geneva Convention. People who make excuses for it are idiots, useful or otherwise.
That's why I put it in quotation marks. Or perhaps Kinabalu thinks what Israel is doing is a war crime.
Well many of us do.
Yes hugely important that arseholes on the internet think something or other.
The arseholes being those who defend the murder of civilians as a necessary evil.
You suit the description perfectly.
It's war, Dickie boy. Look it up in the dictionary.
Indeed hence war crimes. Look them up yourself.
I suspect the proportion of military combatants to civilians was far smaller ratio in the Hamburg firestorm and the levelling of Dresden. But we weren't on trial at Nuremburg.
Is it a free pass for war crimes if you win the war?
Nope. Many commentators these days consider Dresden as a war crime. Indeed there is no escaping that for Harris as his explicit stated aim of breaking the German spirit by targeting civilians is specifically addressed as a war crime today.
The UK, and importantly in this debate, Israel both signed up to the post WW2 international rules on the conduct of war which outlawed many of the things both sides did in WW2 and which Israel and Russia are both doing now.
Personally I think only idiots living without the fear of Nazi tyranny consider Dresden a war crime. Why Dresden and not every single bombing raid that Bomber Command mounted? Because like it or not, Bomber Command wanted to achieve Dresden results EVERY time they set out. Dresden stands out as it was late in the war, and was highly successful, due to the firestorm. But many, many allied soldiers died after Dresden. Many Jews and other captives of the Nazis died after Dresden. Germany could have surrendered and stopped it all.
I know very little about WW2. But was Bomber Command strategy basically predicated on the idea that bombing Germany out of the war would save the innumerable slaughter witnessed in WW1?
Yep. Harris wanted to defeat Germany without the need for any British soldiers to land on the continent, other than to accept the surrender. There have been many arguments over the years about whether Bomber Command was worth the money and resources (materials and men) that it took. Max Hastings thought not in his book on the bomber war. Others disagree. Certainly the bombing campaign tied up tens if not hundreds of thousands of Germans defending the Reich who could have been fighting in the East. And combined with the 8th airforce’s campaign, the Allies achieved air dominance over the Luftwaffe, making D-Day much easier and restricting German movements to night time, to avoid being attacked from the air. By the end of 44 and into 45 the German transport system was wrecked, so moving anything was hard, including troops, tanks etc.
Sadly the idea that you could depress the morale of a nation under a fascist authoritarian regime was false. Even if a German housewife wanted to end the war after her house was destroyed, there was no mechanism for her to achieve it. And the Blitz had shown the resilience of the Brits under the bomb.
But ultimately strategic bombing contributed to winning the war and to describe one target destroyed as a war crime is infantile rubbish.
There were lots of things done on both sides in both wars which would now be considered war crimes. The whole point of civilisation is that we develop and learn from our mistakes.
My view is that war is never desirable, but once one is engaged, there’s no point in half measures.
Ultimately one has to do what is needful, to win. There is nothing worse than defeat.
If both sides adopt that approach it only adds to the barbarity. There can't be victory without defeat and the greater the defeat doesn't mean the greater the victory. So, all told, half measures is the way to go imo.
Hello the 14th century knights are calling and they want their rules of war back.
It's now we're talking about. Eg Russia bomb indiscriminately in Ukraine. Many civilians slaughtered. People complain. You come along with "This is War!" do you?
Unfortunately this is a by-election dominated by a quarrel in a far-away country between people of whom we know far, far too much.
There are conflicts all around the world that don't get a fraction of the spotlight or attention that this one has had. I wonder what is so unique about this one conflict, that every moment becomes headline news unlike all the others?
The physical carnage, the huge civilian casualties, the mass displacement of people, the resulting humanitarian disaster, the inflictor of all this being a regime supported by the west - these do make for a big story.
"the inflictor of all this being a regime supported by the west".
I think you might need to understand that this awful conflict was blatantly started by Hamas who "inflicted" rape torture and murder on innocent people.
There is a reasonable argument that the Israeli response has been disproportionate, but the "infliction" was initiated by Hamas terrorists.
As you have been an occasional apologist for Corbyn (and probably indirectly voted for him to be PM) I guess this is hard to recognise?
I know who started the fire. Hamas did. Oct 7th was unspeakable. It's now 13th February and Israel has wreaked a mighty vengeance for it.
Justifiable response to a threat deemed existential? Or barbaric collective punishment of the population of Gaza?
I think the latter.
I think you'll find that war does involve what useful idiots such as yourself would call "collective punishment".
Collective punishment is a war crime under Article 33 of the Geneva Convention. People who make excuses for it are idiots, useful or otherwise.
That's why I put it in quotation marks. Or perhaps Kinabalu thinks what Israel is doing is a war crime.
Well many of us do.
Yes hugely important that arseholes on the internet think something or other.
The arseholes being those who defend the murder of civilians as a necessary evil.
You suit the description perfectly.
It's war, Dickie boy. Look it up in the dictionary.
Indeed hence war crimes. Look them up yourself.
I suspect the proportion of military combatants to civilians was far smaller ratio in the Hamburg firestorm and the levelling of Dresden. But we weren't on trial at Nuremburg.
Is it a free pass for war crimes if you win the war?
Nope. Many commentators these days consider Dresden as a war crime. Indeed there is no escaping that for Harris as his explicit stated aim of breaking the German spirit by targeting civilians is specifically addressed as a war crime today.
The UK, and importantly in this debate, Israel both signed up to the post WW2 international rules on the conduct of war which outlawed many of the things both sides did in WW2 and which Israel and Russia are both doing now.
Personally I think only idiots living without the fear of Nazi tyranny consider Dresden a war crime. Why Dresden and not every single bombing raid that Bomber Command mounted? Because like it or not, Bomber Command wanted to achieve Dresden results EVERY time they set out. Dresden stands out as it was late in the war, and was highly successful, due to the firestorm. But many, many allied soldiers died after Dresden. Many Jews and other captives of the Nazis died after Dresden. Germany could have surrendered and stopped it all.
I know very little about WW2. But was Bomber Command strategy basically predicated on the idea that bombing Germany out of the war would save the innumerable slaughter witnessed in WW1?
Yep. Harris wanted to defeat Germany without the need for any British soldiers to land on the continent, other than to accept the surrender. There have been many arguments over the years about whether Bomber Command was worth the money and resources (materials and men) that it took. Max Hastings thought not in his book on the bomber war. Others disagree. Certainly the bombing campaign tied up tens if not hundreds of thousands of Germans defending the Reich who could have been fighting in the East. And combined with the 8th airforce’s campaign, the Allies achieved air dominance over the Luftwaffe, making D-Day much easier and restricting German movements to night time, to avoid being attacked from the air. By the end of 44 and into 45 the German transport system was wrecked, so moving anything was hard, including troops, tanks etc.
Sadly the idea that you could depress the morale of a nation under a fascist authoritarian regime was false. Even if a German housewife wanted to end the war after her house was destroyed, there was no mechanism for her to achieve it. And the Blitz had shown the resilience of the Brits under the bomb.
But ultimately strategic bombing contributed to winning the war and to describe one target destroyed as a war crime is infantile rubbish.
There were lots of things done on both sides in both wars which would now be considered war crimes. The whole point of civilisation is that we develop and learn from our mistakes.
My view is that war is never desirable, but once one is engaged, there’s no point in half measures.
Ultimately one has to do what is needful, to win. There is nothing worse than defeat.
If the price is 2.3 million Gazans including women and children?
Israel have the right to defend themselves against Hamas. Benjamin Netanyahu does not have the right to save his liberty and political career by the mass killing of Gazan women and children. That is not anti-Semitic but it does demonstrate my utter contempt for a sociopath who happens to be Prime Minister of Israel.
Well there's 30000 Hamas members and the IDS have killed 30000 people so they should be about there if they've been targeting carefully.
And didn't John Major see off a few thousand also.
Comments
Morale bombing failed, yes, but the Bombing War as a whole played a significant role in the allied victory. Singling out Dresden as ‘special’ is just nonsense, as Bomber Command, and the 8th Air Force tried to achieve similar results every time. Is Hamburg a war crime? What about Schweinfurt?
Apart from the accident of location which allowed the initial coining of the terms, the truth is those divisions belong to the 20th century and don't really apply now.
I prefer terms like reforming - there have been three truly reforming Governments since 1900 - Asquith's from 1906, Attlee's from 1945 and Thatcher's in 1979. Each in its own way fundamentally transformed Britain - I'm not arguing whether for good or ill.
The truth is radical thinking isn't usually popular and only becomes so when there is a general recognition something has to change - that was certainly the case in 1945 after the war and in 1979 when we all knew the post war Butskellite concensus had failed. The question now is whether we have reached a similar point in 2024.
It's interesting to note how often a few individuals come on here and opine how bad things aren't. We had someone this morning almost praising the Government for presiding over full employment.
I'd offer this thought - if 20 people are chasing 10 jobs you have an unemployment problem. If 10 people are chasing 10 jobs you have full employment. If 5 people are chasing 10 jobs you also have full employment but you have 5 vacancies which means either finding an alternative labour source or accepting these jobs and the productivity they bring, the growth they create and the tax receipts they produce will all not exist.
If creating more jobs represents economic growth and we can't fill those jobs it's hardly surprising we don't see any growth. Perhaps in time technological progress (including AI) will reduce those back to 5 jobs and we'll be back in full employment but what we currently have isn't full employment but under employment.
Hamas proxies standing in London and Lancashire. BJP proxies standing in Leicester. It's all very depressing and needs to be stopped.
That leaves Labour or Workers Party.
Rochdale is 74% white. Fairly working class. I lived there for a time and my three children were born there.
I suspect many will vote Ali. They won't care what he said about Israel. I also suspect many local Labour activists will give him a hand. With no other Labour candidate on the ballot I suspect Ali will win it decisively and I have bet accordingly.
3 women have been convicted of offences under the Terrorism Act in relation to one of the pro-Palestine marches. https://news.sky.com/story/three-guilty-of-terror-offence-for-displaying-images-of-paragliders-at-pro-palestine-protest-13070710
One of the women is a refugee from Gaza who is apparently seeking asylum here because she was being persecuted by Hamas in Gaza and is now worried that her criminal conviction might adversely affect her claim.
Trying to get back in their good books, I suppose.
Ultimately one has to do what is needful, to win. There is nothing worse than defeat.
Fascinating commentary from physicist Freeman Dyson here:
https://www.technologyreview.com/2006/11/01/227625/a-failure-of-intelligence/
… Bomber Command had a similar problem in evaluating the effectiveness of bombing. Aircrew frequently reported the destruction of targets when photographs showed they had missed by several miles. The navy ORS was extremely effective and made great contributions to winning the war against the U-boats in the Atlantic. But Blackett had two enormous advantages. First, he was a world-renowned scientist (who would later win a Nobel Prize), with a safe job in the academic world, so he could threaten to resign if his advice was not followed. Second, he had been a navy officer in World War I and was respected by the admirals he advised. Basil Dickins, the chief of our ORS at Bomber Command, had neither of these advantages. He was a civil servant with no independent standing. He could not threaten to resign, and Sir Arthur Harris had no respect for him. His career depended on telling Sir Arthur things that Sir Arthur wanted to hear. So that is what he did. He gave Sir Arthur information rather than advice. He never raised serious questions about Sir Arthur’s tactics and strategy…
https://x.com/thedailyshow/status/1757253512625586177
:
… We succeeded in raising firestorms only twice, once in Hamburg and once more in Dresden in 1945, where between 25,000 and 60,000 people perished (the numbers are still debated). The Germans had good air raid shelters and warning systems and did what they were told. As a result, only a few thousand people were killed in a typical major attack. But when there was a firestorm, people were asphyxiated or roasted inside their shelters, and the number killed was more than 10 times greater. Every time Bomber Command attacked a city, we were trying to raise a firestorm, but we never learnt why we so seldom succeeded…
Tbf Sweeney (at one point my MP) was against Corbyn, for Corbyn and then against him again, so he's lightning fast on the humour front.
Giving him the Fish decrypts of the German reports on the results of the various raids would have transformed strategy - a positive feedback loop on what worked.
… A week after the final attack on Berlin, we suffered an even more crushing defeat. We attacked Nuremberg with 795 bombers and lost 94, a loss rate of almost 12 percent. It was then clear to everybody that such losses were unsustainable. Sir Arthur reluctantly abandoned his dream of winning the War by himself. Bomber Command stopped flying so deep into Germany and spent the summer of 1944 giving tactical support to the Allied armies that were, by then, invading France.
The history of the 20th century has repeatedly shown that strategic bombing by itself does not win wars. If Britain had decided in 1936 to put its main effort into building ships instead of bombers, the invasion of France might have been possible in 1943 instead of 1944, and the war in Europe might have ended in 1944 instead of 1945. But in 1943, we had the bombers, and we did not have the ships, and the problem was to do the best we could with what we had...
The fact remains "the muslim vote" isn't a single thing and it's disingenuous to suggest otherwise. Nor, on the other hand, can we assume non-muslims wouldn't be attracted to a pro-Palestine independent as people of all faiths and none came out in opposition to the Iraq War in 2005.
None of this is nice. But being gassed at Auschwitz was pretty below the belt too, as was being rounded up and burned to death in a church (Oradour) or taken to a ravine, stripped naked and shot, including the children.
I’m comfortable with everything that was done to defeat Germany. I’m sorry others can’t see that. I’ve read accounts of Dresden, and Hamburg, and it sounds horrifying. I hope it never happens again, and I hope I never get to experience it. But it doesn’t make it a war crime.
But it was both morally, and practically, deeply questionable.
I totally agree that strategic bombing did not win the war alone. No one thinks it did, or indeed could. But it played a huge part. German industry was massively hindered. Transport was destroyed. The Das Reich panzer division took an age to get from southern France to Normandy, mainly due to air power of the allies, won by strategic bombing, notably the 8th who actively sought to destroy Luftwaffe fighters, using bombers as bait.
This is what I referred to earlier. The UK hasn't been in a war for a very long time. We have had operations in Afghan, Iraq, Bosnia, for example, where at the end of the day we could always say fuck it and go home. Indeed that is exactly what we did mostly.
The likes of Richard "Dickie Boy" Tyndall is mistaking such actions with actual war.
If you are losing or think you might lose a war what on earth do you care about "the rules". A ridiculous concept in any case.
We draw the line somewhere and where International Law has currently drawn it seems a pretty good place to me.
(By the way I am not accusing Israel of any of these just pointing out that your 'half measures' might be very much open to interpretation).
https://themuslimvote.co.uk/
Where do your figures come from?
Quite obviously London Muslims are a diverse community and not of one mind politically.
Lab: 14345, 55.4%
Con: 5422, 20.9%
LD: 4533, 17.5%
Green: 1236, 4.8%
Others: 361, 1.4%
What possibly to glean from this given how the by-election stands.
Con vote retention level tends to be quite close between LEs and typical by-elections, so possibly they can still sneak into the low 20s, but RefUK and Galloway will nibble a little.
LD 17.5% is their likely vote baseline in the by-election now, and they can get themselves a good bit higher on transferred Labour votes. I reckon 25-30% is possible
Rochdale is 19th most Muslim constituency at 23%. Galloway's best vote shares have closely matched Muslim populations where he has stood, it's obviously not that neat, but good rule of thumb. But Labour will squeeze a bit so I reckon around 20%
RefUK will be squeezed badly, maybe 6%.
Retained Labour will make up most of the difference which suggests around 22%.
LD to win on around 27%.
Israel have the right to defend themselves against Hamas. Benjamin Netanyahu does not have the right to save his liberty and political career by the mass killing of Gazan women and children. That is not anti-Semitic but it does demonstrate my utter contempt for a sociopath who happens to be Prime Minister of Israel.
What exactly is the debate that is being shut down.
Let's hear people speak up for homophobic, sexist, anti-Semites. Have I got that right.
I'm curious from a historical perspective - by March 1945, the Americans showed they could destroy any and every Japanese city at whim and inflict massive casualties yet the Japanese didn't at that point yield. Hiroshima, albeit a single device of an unknown magnitude, produced, one could argue, a death toll akin to a fire bombing raid and that didn't immediately force the Japanese surrender.
Was it the second A-Bomb or was it the defeat of the Kwantung Army in Manchuria which persuaded Hirohito and others final defeat was at hand?
What's your market 2.2m-2.4m? Can I please sell at 2.2m at a pound a life.
I am very suspicious of Streeting. All I have seem from him is superficial gimmicks and a ruthless personal ambition. I don't think he cares much about the job.
But it seems to me that a lot of people seem to want to justify or ignore attacks on Jews here by referencing Israel, which seems to me to be wrong.
He simply doesn’t believe the “strategic bombing” of cities worked. Which was why it was eventually abandoned.
Whereas the accurate targeted bombing of oil supplies almost certainly did.
"The biggest recruiting sergeant for anti-Semitism is Netenyahu and his disgusting cabinet"
He directly said that criticism of Israel leads to anti-semitism. So no, it appears that it is not two entirely distinct thing.
Maybe Topping and others think those laws should only apply to nasty evil foreigners and not to us morally upstanding British and our brave allies.
Are they immoral or just thick political partisans? I hope and suspect the latter.
As a point of order. Hamas are a vile death cult and need to be extinguished. Netanyahu is a disgusting racist who hates Arabs and is comfortable to see them die horribly and in eye watering numbers. But if it adds some votes to the UK Conservative Party, all to the good, eh?
I wouldn't chose to rub shoulders with some of these w***ers in real life, so the question is why am I engaging with them on line?
"Hamas are a vile death cult and need to be extinguished"
How would you go about this tricksy task? Arch comment them to death? Internet chat room them into submission?
Answer the question. Let's say that the Dresden (and other) bombings helped to win the war for the UK. Would you rather us not have carried these out because of laws or are you content that we were in an existential fight and needed to do this to win, even if many children died as a result.
Will Mazi Pilip pay a "scandal penalty" in #NY03 today? I examined more than 20 years of specials and found, on average, the party affiliated with the scandal ran about 9 points worse than in the previous general.
Santos won by 8 in 2022.
https://twitter.com/Politico_Steve/status/1757467708117938289
1) the idea that the Americans could only produce one bomb every couple of years, was obviously wrong
2) the American submarines had run out of warships to sink
3) they’d also run out of merchant ships to sink
4) Le May was boring everything down the conventional way.
5) the harvest was failing. Famine in 1946 was inevitable. The military has a plan - confiscate all the remaining food and let the civilians starve
6) The allied island hoping campaign was proceeding unstoppably
7) The Russians were advancing at a rate of knots
The war council was split 3 - 3 - half wanted to fight to the death.
Hirohito broke the stalemate and a lot of tradition by ordering the surrender.
The ultras responded with an attempted coup. Which only failed because of the black out caused by yet another American air raid.
We can count you out of this debate henceforth.
Deal?
But I haven’t seen any postwar analysis to show he was wrong, and a fair amount to suggest he wasn’t.
So why do we do it, advocate it and defend it?
https://www.mcb.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2015/02/MCBCensusReport_2015.pdf
I’m not so sure I’d say they were that diverse politically really. Where do you get that from?
And to come back to the subject at hand today I don't think anyone could say that Israel's operation in Gaza isn't controversial.
Harris is on record as being frustrated that he could not find enough viable targets to bomb.What ultimately won WW2 for the allies was the Russian advance. The main achievement of the second front was to prevent the Russians controlling the whole of Europe after WW2.
We definitely do not talk enough about the insane depopulation of Eastern Europe since 1990. Wars, aging, and emigration.
In 1990, Ukraine & Turkey were even. Turkey is now double Ukraine's pop.
For many countries this depopulation literally surpasses the death tolls of WWII.
https://twitter.com/mmjukic/status/1689639368255049728
Health is the poisoned chalice of portfolios.
It is war. Gaza is a war. Horrible things happen because you can't (bless him, as Kinabalu suggests) do things in half measures.
And Israel does appear to be trying not to kill civilians although with FIBUA it is tricky.
And well done Richard for staying to argue whereas all the others have turned tail and effed off.
This was in about 1250, IIRC.
Are the Tories woke?
"This is War!" doesn't justify everything that is done in the name of it.
What seems to be the culprit is Christianity.
Russia puts Estonian prime minister Kaja Kallas on wanted list
Lithuanian minister also among those accused of ‘destroying Soviet monuments’, as Tallinn fears Russian military buildup
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/feb/13/russia-puts-estonian-prime-minister-kaja-kallas-on-wanted-list
Moscow has put the Estonian prime minister, Kaja Kallas, and other Baltic states officials on a wanted list, as Tallinn warns of an imminent Russian military buildup along its border.
The Russian foreign ministry spokesperson Maria Zakharova said the Estonian state secretary, Taimar Peterkop, the Lithuanian culture minister, Simonas Kairys, and Kallas were accused of “destroying monuments to Soviet soldiers”, a reference to the removal of Soviet-era second world war memorials
“This is only the start,” Zakharova wrote on her Telegram channel. “Crimes against the memory of the world’s liberators from nazism and fascism must be prosecuted.” Russian authorities have not revealed the exact charges against the three...
So much for no designs beyond Ukraine.
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2024/02/13/labour-suspends-candidate-graham-jones-rochdale-israel/
Though as we’ve seen with Poland, that emigration to wealthier EU members can go into reverse.
It will be instructive to revisit those figures at the end of the decade.