Ethics to combat troops?

to beat guerillas you must isolate them first,remove his civil population (which often is merely a shakedown victem)...ur guerilla has no wherer to hide but the woods ,and bark and bugs for supper,the boers and apaches were concentrated in poor housing and sanitation .people died ..but that was not the intent of their warders.....collateral death ,then....the ss run camps and gulags were something diferent entirely...the ss camps were folded up in 45 ...the gulags continued at full vigor...the GULAGS FAR OUTSRTIPPED THE SS CAMPS,PER CAPITA....THE FREE FIRE ZONES were an attempt to arrest the expansion of the gulag state.did civillians get shot....of course...did it work,no was it worth trying?...of course,ANYTHING ...is worth tryin if it will stop the red aushwitz...dang,what is the part of this equation that ppl dont follow...throw me a bone...please...were the good guys ,their the bad guys ..we can use the murder of tens of millions of innocents for a yardstick.is that not a valid yardstick?

 

There was a war in progress. The minimization of civilian casualties has been the policy of the US military for quite some time; that is not to say the total elimination of civilian casualties. If that were the criteria then nothing at all could be done since there will always be some risk of collateral damage. How many iinocent civilians died due to the free fire zones? I don't have an answer to that question and neither does anyone else posting here. The number was probably quite small since the civilians were made aware of where the free fire zones were located. Guerillas attemping to operate in these zones often disquised themselves as farmers. It was part of the Viet Cong modus operandi.

 

Majorwoody, I would respond to you earlier post but Panzerman has hit the nail on the head for me.

Majorwoody wrote:

C'mon now, you know rank has nothing to do with anyone's intelligence level on this forum, or how right or wrong they are. Frankly I'm surprised that you, a person who's posts I find very interesting, would say anything like that above.

Yes, perspective it is, but justification it is not. I mean, one wrong, in my book, does not rectify a lesser wrong. We all know that Stalin killed more people in peacetime than Hitler did in wartime. This does not change the fact that the strategic hamlet program coupled with the free-fire zone tactc caused too many innocent deaths, and did nothing more than create additional NVA/VC sympthesizers. More sympthesizers meant more men to deal death to US/SV/SK troops. Do not mistake me for attacking the soldiers who forced Vietnamese citizens into fortified hamlets or those who ordered artillery fire every time they saw a shadow move in the jungle. It was not their fault, not their doing. This was the plan implemented by officials who we would expect to know something about the situation. Anyways, I don't want to take this any further because the Vietnam War is a very touchy subject with many different entrenched views on it, and there's already a thread for all that.

To defeat guerillas one must first prevent their ranks from swelling. Isolating them does not work; it spreads fear, discontent, and sympathy for the enemy.

 

Sorry but none of that is fact. It is your opinion. Others may even share that opinion but I have seen nothing to justify raising that opinion to the level of fact.

 

Seems like good way of making enemies.

Taken from:
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/vietnam/series/pt_04.html

 

the usaac sold srategic bombing to the american tax payer.first the norden site which worked pretty good in texas....not so good over north europe....then desroyng industrrial might(speer said that production increased every month on all things every month from mid 43 to the end...despite the rubble..as to desroying the ppls will to fight ...hogwash ..killing civillians creates soldiers... that much we can agree on..the russian tactical airforce is a better use of the airpower ..i think...

 

Strategic bombing caused over half of the German air force to be tied down over Germany. This helped the Allied victory like little else, even if the planes had dropped no bombs at all.

 

And about Phoenix program:
http://www.thememoryhole.org/phoenix/

 

but wouldnt a tactical air force suk the luftwaffe into battle just as well roel,without all the lost treasure and lives in b17s that arent hitting anything anyway(grandmaS AN NEICES are counter productive i feel...

 

That's true. But production would be far greater still if not for strategic bombing of the factories. What was more problematic is the way it was done. B-17's and B-24's were not escorted all the way up to late1943/ early 1944. This was a strange decision at the top level of 8.th AF and not becouse of lack of long range fighters ("unemployed"P-38 were based in UK at the time). Firm conviction that defensive armmament of B-17 and B-24 was adequate was misplaced, but high brass hung to this idea like drunkard to the fence. This coused unneccesary losses in US flight personnel and strategic material (bombers).

The most moraly problematical aspect of strategic bombing campaigns during the WW2 was deliberate bombing of civilians (cities - housing) mostly by the RAF bomber command in Germany and US in Japan (firebombings with B-29's). These bombings coused a looot of demage and killed a lot of civilians but did little to demoralise the enemy population which was their main goal. This had mostly opposite effect as it usually stiffened resolve of civilians and ralied them behind their leaders.

 

I often hear this one, but I can't help wondering what the production increases might have been like if it wasn't for the hinderance of the bombing.

 

yes tiso a great store of faith was put into the defensive box of fire..still i had no idea that fighter cover was withheld...is this true simon?....it wouldnt suprise me, the bomber clique of the aac was in direct compatition with fighter gang ....years of squabbleing over meager funds....the very real downside of killing civillians is that it will harden the hearts of combat servicemen and create droves of new ones...(imagine if the vc or nva were terror bombing american citys in 67...i wonder how the peace love ,end the war movement would have fared..

 

On VC terrorbombing US cities: That is kind of irrelevant, because it would mean the nature of the war was entirely different... not fighting a guerrila in a foreign country, but defending ones home soil. The "hippie" movement was a reaction to the former...

 

Indeed, and what's more, there would probably never have been any resistance against the Cold War as such if it had ever been apparent that the Western world was actually under siege.

 

suppose the nva or n.koreans infiltrated us cities ...easy in 67 as it is today...and bombed ala, ira. in belfast..or vc in saigon....this would be a political mistake( THATS HINDSITE THO...)....there would be no peace sign ...no kent state,no vets throwing medals at the white house...i

 

Well,hearts and minds would be a good thing in the long run,but something the US forces would be unable to achieve for some time though not impossible at this moment.

On the other hand,killing everybody irregardless generates more casualties and would take a very willing and determined army to do so.IT is much more prudent to stick with hearts and minds.Besides,if u kill everybody,what's left to occupy?The natives will probably try something a few years later.

Oh and Major Woody,it may be called the malayan emergency but at that time,Malaya and Singapore combined,the Chinese OUTNUMBERED the malays or muslims.But it was won because the British commander,Templar and another whose name evades me,were good chaps and knew their stuff.

 

As far as I'm aware no, this is not true.

A few things to be aware of. First the early P-38s did not have fantastic range on internal fuel, they got something like about 2/3rds of their range from drop-tanks, which initially over Europe proved less than ideal, they leaked terribly and in any case what's the first thing any fighter pilot would do on contact with the enemy? Lose the drop tanks (Reduced vulnerability, especially if they're leaking, increases speed and manouevrability). So even if the small number of P-38s in N.Europe were released for escort duties they wouldn't have been able to escort the B-17s much further than the existing escorts.

Let's not forget that the early P-38s also had the famous cockpit heater problems that numbed pilots and decreased their effectiveness at the altitudes they needed to operate at.

The AAF/AAC had a rude awakening early on with the Schweinfurt/Regensburg raids, they quickly learnt to operate wherever possible against targets where reasonably effective escorts could be provided, and deep penetration raids were avoided as far as practical.

I believe the first raid was regarded as something of a case of bad luck, but when the return raid was attempted a couple of months later it met the same results, and such raids on the whole were avoided until Mustangs became available.

By the time these problems with the P-38s were sorted out that type was already proving a winner in the Pacific and the P-51s were starting to come off the assembly lines.