Re: [Marxism] It's the 60th anniversary of the bombing of Dresden

[Carrol Cox <cbcox@xxxxxxxxx>]

"Carlos A. Rivera" wrote:
>
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "rrubinelli" <rrubinelli@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
>
> > That being said, Dresden had no strategic or tactical importance to the
> > Allies plan for the defeat of Germany.  It was an exercise in payback..
>
> I try to put myself in the position of the average person in WWII
>

Well, I was in high school during WW2 -- and the position of the
"average person" then, as now, was one of total ignorance of what was
really going on.

But those who planned the bombing of Dresden were not "the average
person," and what the average person thought then, or now, is utterly
irrelevant to the understanding of what happened at Dresden.

The trouble of saying that war is an atrocity is that like other
sweeping (and empty) moral judgments, it destroys the basis for making
any judgments at all. The mass bombing of German cities (like the fire
bombing of Tokyo and the two nuclear attacks) was an atrocity _IN
CONTRAST TO_ the general horror of war, not merely an exemplification of
that horror.

That the invasion of Iraq is an abomination does _not_ mean that some of
the events of that invasion -- the torture, the destruction of Fallujah
-- can not be singled out for particular condemnation.

Carrol


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