Osama Bin Laden reported dead

[JimboUK]

The Nazis biggest mistake was opening a second front to the east, they were doomed from that point onwards. It's worth mentioning that many saw Dresden as an appalling act back then, quite rightly today many see it as a war crime. That act of barbarism didn't help the war effort one iota.

 

Here is something to think about:

 

Article: It Takes a Monster To Control a Monster

 

The interesting part is at the end where he summarizes our efforts and compares what is going on now with what we had to do to win against Germans and Japanese in WWII. It is a bitter ugly truth and one that has to be understood.

 

obl pulled us into a war not easily disengaged. Their miserable conflict has been going on for a long time and now we are dragged into it. The major problem is that we are fighting a guerrilla warfare, not a country so-to-speak.

 

Do we do what it takes to "win" or do we withdraw and say stay away from us? And do you think the latter would work?

 

This stood out for me...

 

America has the firepower, but the ruthlessness necessary for victory has been replaced by political correctness. Admirable in a peaceful society, but dangerous in war.

 

I don't know about this U.S but here not only is political correctness stopping us from tackling the extremists it also means we don't protect the moderates from the extremists, the result of that is the moderates stay silent and the only ones heard are the extremists. Hardly surprising then that many people think the majority of Muslims are barbarians. If we want to stop this we have to stop pandering to the extremists and start giving the moderates a voice they can use without fear of reprisal from the lunatic element.

 

This is the website of a small group of UK extremists.... http://www.muslimsagainstcrusades.com/

 

They only number 50 or so and are seen by the wider Muslim community as a bunch of nutters, this doesn't stop the politically correct BBC interviewing and them as the voice of UK Muslims.

[dazzerfong]

@ RZ1029:

 

First of all, sorry for that Byzantine mistake (my Crusades history is very rusty). Also, I should have mentioned it was 'one' of the things that originated from the Crusades, a modern and more 'grey' version, but nevertheless, related. But funny, how that once Iraq was invaded for the second time during Bush's administration, USA's oil output increased 120%. Maybe I'm too speculative.............

 

About point 4, I meant that IF (hypothetically) USA was attacked on the same scale as did America on Japan, not arguing about the resource problem.

[RZ1029]

Hmm, in that case, I'd have to agree with you. If Japan was able to muster the same forces and resources the US had, we'd be in for a hell of a fight, and I'm not sure our British friends wouldn't be speaking German now.

 

EDIT: Also, no biggie on the Byzantine thing, I had to look it up myself to double-check, those dates just didn't seem right. Still, your point stood.

Edited May 5, 2011 by RZ1029

[csgators]

Al qaeda has confirmed Osama's death

 

http://dc-cdn.virtacore.com/2011/05/klee-e1304628252539.jpg

Edited May 6, 2011 by csgators

[ginnyfizz]

It's worth mentioning that many saw Dresden as an appalling act back then, quite rightly today many see it as a war crime. That act of barbarism didn't help the war effort one iota.

 

You may say what you like, jim_uk, but the families of Bomber Command pilots don't quite see it that way and find the war criminal accusations insulting to their memory. My uncle got a gong posthumously after being killed in action on a rather famous raid trashing the dams in the Ruhr. His commanding officer copped a Victoria Cross. Their country clearly thought they were heroes, dead or alive.

 

Likewise with Dresden, I am sorry to tell you, but I live with people who were alive during WWII, my Mum and Dad, and they really did not see it as an appalling act, and nor did many of their contemporaries. You see, they remember hearing the Nazi bombers razing Sheffield despite the fact that it is 25 miles away. They remember the day when they detoured from Sheffield to bomb the coke ovens in our village. You will no doubt all have heard of the destruction in Coventry, London and Sheffield, but have you ever seen a picture of Plymouth after the bombers came? You would swear it was Hiroshima, that's how flattened that city was - the sky was lit up from it burning and could be seen from Salisbury Plain. Other cities were wantonly destroyed for their beauty rather than any strategic importance, for instance, Exeter. Hitler boasted that the most beautiful city in England had been destroyed.

 

So when it was declared that they who sowed the wind would reap the whirlwind and Dresden was set alight, however distasteful it might seem to us WHO WERE NOT AT THE RECEIVING END OF THE BLITZ, those who were found it a sign that we were taking the fight right back to Hitler. And in that sense, it was a morale booster.

 

It is very easy to try and take the moral high ground with the benefit of hindsight, and this all ties up with how we see the situation with Bin Laden. He has been gunned down as he richly deserves. The message is really the same as we were sending in the 1940's. We have a saying here oop north

 

"Tha'll play wi' t' bull till it tups thee" (you would have to hear me say that with my Derbyshire accent), which means "You will goad the bull until it turns around and gores you".

 

I rather think that is how Osama will be seeing it as the devils prod him with their toasting forks down in the deepest pit in Hell.

[Lisnpuppy]

I have to largely agree with Ginny on this one. As a person that studies history I do not think we should ever STOP questioning things like Dresden. We learn from history and things we did before. However, one must use all caution when calling things out as right or wrong when they have been removed from that same history.

 

Did both sides commit acts that looking back are found repugnant? Yes indeed...but when put in the context of when and why...all this black and white starts to become grey. My grandfather was on a ship waiting to invade Japan when the bombs were dropped. I have little doubt that he would not have come home had our troops invaded the Japanese beachfront. So there is the grey for that. I do not easily point to the bombings being right or wrong because of this.

 

As I said...questioning is good..it gives us an opportunity to prevent things like Dresden in the future...but study and questioning isn't the same as judging from a safe distance what happened and how the decisions were made. You can not take humanity, with all its emotion and fault...and glory...out of its history.

 

Hopefully we will learn as a society from this experience and perhaps find a less violent way to manage future event.

[LHammonds]

http://lib.store.yahoo.net/lib/demotivators/bustedtshirt.jpg

[JimboUK]

It's worth mentioning that many saw Dresden as an appalling act back then, quite rightly today many see it as a war crime. That act of barbarism didn't help the war effort one iota.

 

You may say what you like, jim_uk, but the families of Bomber Command pilots don't quite see it that way and find the war criminal accusations insulting to their memory. My uncle got a gong posthumously after being killed in action on a rather famous raid trashing the dams in the Ruhr. His commanding officer copped a Victoria Cross. Their country clearly thought they were heroes, dead or alive.

 

Likewise with Dresden, I am sorry to tell you, but I live with people who were alive during WWII, my Mum and Dad, and they really did not see it as an appalling act, and nor did many of their contemporaries. You see, they remember hearing the Nazi bombers razing Sheffield despite the fact that it is 25 miles away. They remember the day when they detoured from Sheffield to bomb the coke ovens in our village. You will no doubt all have heard of the destruction in Coventry, London and Sheffield, but have you ever seen a picture of Plymouth after the bombers came? You would swear it was Hiroshima, that's how flattened that city was - the sky was lit up from it burning and could be seen from Salisbury Plain. Other cities were wantonly destroyed for their beauty rather than any strategic importance, for instance, Exeter. Hitler boasted that the most beautiful city in England had been destroyed.

 

So when it was declared that they who sowed the wind would reap the whirlwind and Dresden was set alight, however distasteful it might seem to us WHO WERE NOT AT THE RECEIVING END OF THE BLITZ, those who were found it a sign that we were taking the fight right back to Hitler. And in that sense, it was a morale booster.

 

It is very easy to try and take the moral high ground with the benefit of hindsight, and this all ties up with how we see the situation with Bin Laden. He has been gunned down as he richly deserves. The message is really the same as we were sending in the 1940's. We have a saying here oop north

 

"Tha'll play wi' t' bull till it tups thee" (you would have to hear me say that with my Derbyshire accent), which means "You will goad the bull until it turns around and gores you".

 

I rather think that is how Osama will be seeing it as the devils prod him with their toasting forks down in the deepest pit in Hell.

 

Where did I blame the Airmen? they done what they were told to do as they should so I'd appreciate it if you would not accuse me of insulting anyones memory again. You are not alone in having relatives that remember that time and I can assure you not everyone was happy about it. They ignored potential strategic targets, (factories ect) and dropped incendiaries into heavily populated civilian areas, this didn't only inflict needless suffering it also put our airmen at risk without good reason. There can be no way to justify the horror that was inflicted on the civilian population, it was a morally repugnant act of revenge. Yes the blitz was terrible but two wrongs don't make a right.

[ginnyfizz]

No-one is saying that two wrongs make a right, just saying why bang on about Dresden as a war crime all the time? And I have certainly heard some people (I didn't say you) call for Bomber Harris and the men who served under him to be named as war criminals and stripped of their decorations and honours. The Nazis too bombed civilian targets of no strategic importance and we all know their record with innocent civilians. I repeat, at the time, people were so battered by years of war, and certainly my family and many like them were starting to get wind of what was happening to relatives in Europe, they had scant sympathy, if any, left for those they saw as the enemy. You may not like it, but outside the "usual suspects" in more intellectual circles, that was the case. Those most affected thought "So what?". Yes, it looks appalling with the benefit of 60 years hindsight. Sixty years from now no doubt people will be looking appalled at all the whooping at the death of Osama Been Bagged. But I'm still glad he's gone and look forward to hearing that Ayman al Zahwari got blown away too.

[Aurielius]

Oh Ginnyfizz, (sadly shakes head) I rarely disagree with you in forum but Dresden was a horrific blunder that achieved little strategically other than reducing a non essential military target to ruins. Air Marshall Harris was absolutely convinced to the validity of his form of infrastructure reduction despite almost all evidence to the contrary. Churchill had to rein him since no one else could, Harris only acquiesced under pain of being relieved of his command. The technology that would have made Harris's air war viable did not yet exist, most Lancaster bomb runs rarely got within 3km of their actual targets. Harris choose cities because that was the only target large enough that even navigation errors at night would be still make it possible to hit. I think that I speak from a position of personal experience since my mother was in London during the Blitz and my father was a B-17 pilot in the 8th Army Air Corps (1943-44). My father thought that Dresden was an horrific waste of resources for the allies and a poor way of differentiating us from the way the Luftwaffe conducted the war. Hindsight is always 20/20 but there was enough feed back at the time to reappraise that sort of grand tactical thinking as ineffective, it did no more to reduce the moral of the German civilians than the Blitz did to reduce the will to win of the British..