home *** CD-ROM | disk | FTP | other *** search
- Newsgroups: can.politics
- Path: sparky!uunet!utcsri!torn!nott!cunews!csi.uottawa.ca!news
- From: cbbrowne@csi.uottawa.ca (Christopher Browne)
- Subject: Re: Senate Interrogation
- Message-ID: <1992Nov16.032507.531@csi.uottawa.ca>
- Sender: news@csi.uottawa.ca
- Nntp-Posting-Host: prgv
- Organization: Dept. of Computer Science, University of Ottawa
- References: <schuck.721767010@sfu.ca> <92319.191414SPRAGGEJ@QUCDN.QueensU.CA> <schuck.721855327@sfu.ca>
- Distribution: can
- Date: Mon, 16 Nov 92 03:25:07 GMT
- Lines: 68
-
- In article <schuck.721855327@sfu.ca> Bruce_Schuck@sfu.ca writes:
- >John G. Spragge <SPRAGGEJ@QUCDN.QueensU.CA> writes:
- >
- >You can prove what German production would have been without bombing
- >then? I can't. Nobody can. It's all a guess.
-
- Quite true. But some guesses may be better than others.
-
- >>>Very true. But I disagree that bombing of Germany was a tragic
- >>>blunder.
- >
- >>Because you don't want it to have been a tragic blunder? Because you
- >>want to believe it attacked targets Air Marshall Harris himself admitted
- >>he could not hit, stopping production lines we know did not stop
- >>producing military goods? On what do you base this assertion? Your dislike
- >>of historians who claim it was a tragic blunder? I'll append my sources
- >>below.
- >
- >Tragic blunder? The allies had to fight back somehow. Bombing was one
- >of the few ways open to them.
-
- It looks like the bombing in question didn't have an enormous amount
- of effect on German production. Thus, SOMETHING was done wrong.
- Either the bombing was done incorrectly, or it was done right, and
- just didn't have the desired effect. It's not apparent that the
- bombing was a particular SUCCESS. As a surrogate for the abominable
- word "non-success," "blunder" isn't drastically unreasonable.
-
- The fact that this blunder/non-success resulted in the destruction of
- a large number of British planes, and the deaths of a large number of
- Allied pilots makes it tragic. There's not been any disagreement on
- the fact that a lot of bombers got shot down. :-)
-
- If a lot of men died, with relatively little effect, is that not a
- tragedy?
-
- >>> And if you remember, the bombing of Iraq's military and
- >>>military industrial complex did a great job of bring Iraq to its knees.
- >
- >>It did no such thing. The UN Allies defeated Iraq the old fashioned
- >>way: they launched a ground offensive with better cavalry, better tanks,
- >>and better generals than the Iraqis. Iraq did not pull out (or try to)
- >>before the US armoured divisions chased them out.
-
- Discussions of disagreements omitted...
-
- >You fail to suggest a resonable alternative for the allies during
- >WWII. You would have just had them sitting there, letting the
- >Luftwaffe bomb the crap out of London and other British cities without
- >striking back. Thats ludicrous. The people would not have allowed
- >their leaders to sit and do nothing.
-
- Here's a more appropriate comparison to make with Iraq;
-
- The Coalition bombing WAS effective because the Iraqis didn't defend
- themselves effectively from the bombing.
-
- Luftwaffe attacks on London DID elicit some major defense responses,
- and if the British Air Force had been less effective in their defense,
- there would have been nothing left of London and other such cities,
- just like there wasn't much left of the Iraqis in the Gulf War after
- the Coalition bombings.
-
- --
- Christopher Browne | PGP 2.0 key available
- cbbrowne@csi.uottawa.ca |===================================
- University of Ottawa | The Personal Computer: Colt 45
- Master of System Science Program | of the Information Frontier
-