Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Posting-Version: version B 2.10.1 6/24/83; site psc70.UUCP Path: utzoo!linus!philabs!prls!amdimage!amdcad!decwrl!decvax!dartvax!psc70!tos 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