[lit-ideas] Re: Barnett's Blueprint for Action

  • From: "Andreas Ramos" <andreas@xxxxxxxxxxx>
  • To: <lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
  • Date: Sun, 10 Sep 2006 17:30:26 -0700

From: "Robert Paul" <rpaul@xxxxxxxx>


Lawrence: If we look at the events of WWI we see that the absurd loss of life on
both sides was due not so much to anything intrinsic in the nature of war itself
as from leaders who refused to come up with tactics to match the modern
weaponry of the day.

Andreas: No. The loss of life wasn't due to poor tactical use of machines. The
US, for example, understood the possiblities of military machines very well:
the US used firebombing to systematically destroy huge numbers of civilians.

Lawrence is talking about WWI, in which thousands were slaughtered on the
Western Front because the generals tried to advance infantry armed with rifles
and bayonets  against massed machine gun and artillery fire. I suspect that
Andreas misread this part of Lawrence's post, mistaking 'WWI' for WWII, for
there was no systematic firebombing of anything in WWI.

That's correct: there was no aerial firebombing in The Great War. I was writing about industrialized military tactics in WWII.


One of the issues that allowed the armies to get into The Great War was the idea that technology was so powerful that nobody would wage war. Poison gas and the machine gun would force others to keep the peace.

Looking back, I don't understand why the armies got themselves into such a bad situation. Both sides created trench warfare and got into a stalemate.

Nevertheless, my main point is that people died because there was war. There is no such thing as safe war.

yrs,
andreas
www.andreas.com

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