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From: tos@psc70.UUCP (Dr.Schlesinger)
Newsgroups: net.politics
Subject: Re: Hiroshima, Beiruit, and Atomic Bombs
Message-ID: <145@psc70.UUCP>
Date: Wed, 7-Aug-85 20:00:13 EDT
Article-I.D.: psc70.145
Posted: Wed Aug  7 20:00:13 1985
Date-Received: Sun, 11-Aug-85 04:16:27 EDT
References: <13700006@orstcs.UUCP>
Organization: Plymouth State College, Plymouth, NH
Lines: 38


     This article, "bombs are not weapons, because they don't take
territory, and are hence purely terrorism" involves a lot of
oversimplification.
     One might just as well argue that the heavy artillery of the
army, which lays down barrages on the army's rear areas, e.g. road
intersections and other communications centers, is purely terrorism,
for it doesn't take territory either. Indeed no one but the rifleman
has the primary mission of taking territory as such.
     On the other hand it's probably true that when Hitler bombed
Rotterdam and Coventry he was trying to terrorize the populations and
punish and frighten them into surrender.
     Whe Allied bombers later bombed German cities, the missions were
primarily designed to disrupt the "homefront" in the sense that it was
passing the ammunition, keeping the war industries going, etc., but as
morale is considered part of that, it is perfectly true that "terror"
again became a dimension of that effort.  Moreover it's also true that
the research of the Sic Bombing Survey showed much of the homefront
disruption effort to have been either ineffective or self-defeating...
the Germans living in piles of rubble, became less inclined to
surrender (the cornered rat effect) and had nothing left in their
lives but to trudge to what was left of that ammo plant and keep
producing a few more shells, or whatever.
     The above, however, should suggest sufficiently that to kind of
neatly separate "bombing" from other forms of military firepower is a
meaningless exercise, just as it has become relatively meaningless to
try to keep an effective distinction between the "homefront" and the
fighting forces.
     Then, the matter of the nuclear weapons or bombs becomes a
different story, however. The trouble with them, even if one
disregards the likelihood that "nuclear war" will wipe out virtually
everything, is that even "limited" use of them (if it were ever held
to that???) makes that nuked homefront a kind of territory which one
would hardly wish to "take" any more. But that's NUCLEAR bombing, not
simply all "bombing."
                                              Tom Schlesinger
                                              Plymouth State College
                                              Plymouth, NH 03264