• FlowVoid@lemmy.world
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    11 months ago

    Minimizing civilian casualties was not humanitarian, it was a necessary part of America’s ultimate goal: nation-building.

    I don’t think that’s America’s goal here.

    • MagicShel@programming.dev
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      11 months ago

      Maybe this is just an age difference here - I’m fifty - but bringing up Iraq and Afghanistan like you think that’s where I get my moral stance on war from is completely lost on me. I was in and out of the army before either. My perspective is post-Vietnam.

      And look, I don’t think everything the allies did in WW2 was awesome either, but that was a case of total war. A kind of war that actually didn’t really exist before the twentieth century, rather than all of history as you seen to suggest. The goal was absolute capitulation ASAP including by cruel indifference and mass murder - civilians were seen as part of the war machine by providing labor, food, and an economy to support the German war machine. I won’t defend it, but I will observe that Palestinians are already under Israeli authority. They are already defeated. They are already essentially living in a prison camp. This isn’t total war, this is asymmetric warfare between a subjugated people and a greater technological, military, and economic power. Not comparable.