Monuments

striker42 said:
Thousands of children were killed in the bombing of Dresden. This wasn't collateral damage. It was indiscriminate, wholesale destruction. At best there was no care given to the loss of civilian life. At worst the civilians were targeted.

I think we have to be better than that. We have to strive to target valid military targets. Collateral damage is often unavoidable but we should never get to the point we're not even trying to not kill non-combatants.

Why have we spent billions developing guided missiles and smart bombs that can take out a target and leave the building next to it untouched? It would be far cheaper to just level entire city blocks with dumb weapons to destroy a target than to develop, build, and use smart munitions. The reason we do this is we strive to be better than those we're fighting.
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I would be careful about the apportionment of blame for the death of those children.

And Arthur Harris had to make do with the technology at his disposal. No smart bombs, etc.

The point remains when a population enthusiastically backs a horrific cause, the moral calculus changes a bit.
 
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nsacpi said:
I would be careful about the apportionment of blame for the death of those children.

And Arthur Harris had to make do with the technology at his disposal. No smart bombs, etc.

The point remains when a population enthusiastically backs a horrific cause, the moral calculus changes a bit.
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I disagree. Non-Combatants living in their homes, working in the corner bakery, taking their kids to school, etc. should not be targeted and any reasonable step should be taken to avoid their death. I don't care if they're waving flags supporting the devil himself. They're not valid targets.

Harris wasn't working with smart bombs. However, he also didn't really take any steps to confine the destruction to valid targets in Dresden. Even the technology of that period could have accomplished the goals of destroying their targets with a fraction of the loss of civilian life.
 
striker42 said:
I disagree. Non-Combatants living in their homes, working in the corner bakery, taking their kids to school, etc. should not be targeted and any reasonable step should be taken to avoid their death. I don't care if they're waving flags supporting the devil himself. They're not valid targets.

Harris wasn't working with smart bombs. However, he also didn't really take any steps to confine the destruction to valid targets in Dresden. Even the technology of that period could have accomplished the goals of destroying their targets with a fraction of the loss of civilian life.
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What is a noncombatant in a country fully mobilized for war. Where every factory is geared to war production. And let's not forget the blitz and Coventry. You really want to fight by marquis of queensberry rules under those circumstances.
 
I've always found unnecessary monuments to be silly. Personally. I know lots of people like them, but I prefer a good old fashioned plaque or sign.

I don't really understand the need for a Lee Statue in Richmond, he wasn't born there, he didn't die there. It would be like putting a statue of US Grant in Columbus, Ohio, a place he had no real connection to.

Also wasn't Lee against monuments to the Confederacy?

To me this whole thing is silly. I think most people should quite easily be able to tell the difference between Daughters of the Confederacy bought cheap statues and real monuments. Personally I consider people who carry the Traitor flag to be more abhorent then the statues the erected. At least a statue is a tale from a point in life, continuing to show the Traitor flag is a continued act of aggression.
 
get those participation trophy loser traitor statues out of the public area

that mostly were put up during the civil rights time anyway as a reminder to black people
 
goldfly said:
get those participation trophy loser traitor statues out of the public area

that mostly were put up during the civil rights time anyway as a reminder to black people
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The second half of what you wrote is probably the greatest argument against the monuments. Many of the monuments were erected by white supremacists as part of their push against civil rights.
 
sturg33 said:
I wonder if Seattle will take down their Vladimir Lenin statue?

Nah of course they wont
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You do know that the statue is for sale right? Like if you want that Statue gone from Washington and destroy it you can spend 250K to buy it from the owners. Ironic that Jack Posobiec instituted a protest to remove the statue without considering just starting a GoFundMe to buy the statue and remove it. It's private artwork on private property.
 
oh shocker

freedom boy brings an irrelevant and bad example to the debate

instead of just being on the right side of doing something
 
zitothebrave said:
People confuse Lenin and Stalin all the time. Lenin was hardly close to any form of Saint, but he's no Mao or Stalin either.
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Lenin's death toll is probably in the hundreds of thousands. Mao and Stalin are in the millions. Still, Lenin doesn't deserve any celebration. If anyone thinks he's a good guy, go read his Hanging Order of 1918.
 
striker42 said:
Lenin's death toll is probably in the hundreds of thousands. Mao and Stalin are in the millions. Still, Lenin doesn't deserve any celebration. If anyone thinks he's a good guy, go read his Hanging Order of 1918.
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He's not a good guy by any stretch of the imagination. Just compared to many of his contemporaries or those who soon followed (Hitler, Mao, Stalin, Tojo, Leopold II, Pasha, Il Sung) he looks like a saint relatively. But he's not.
 
sturg33 said:
Definitely not as bad as Thomas Jefferson
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I mean it depends on your definition of bad. If you're more into continual human suffering Jefferson is up there. Anyone who owned slaves is up there. As they took someone's life from them as well. So fi I said Thomas Jefferson murdered over 600 people that would make him sound really bad right?
 
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