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re: Let's review the situation
Justin Kelly — (archived)

"Shock and awe" was billed as a circus of generally nonlethal psychological weapons, like power-station and communications zappers, and precision lethal strikes against government buildings that leave adjacent buildings standing. Napalm is inconsistent with either tactic

those aren't "psycological weapons". The most humane weapon is one that makes your enemy, through usually fear or uncertaintly, decide that he is not going to fight, so you don;t have to kill them in the first place.

Take Napalm for example: I wonder how many RG soldiers saw the napalm blast and said "Oh hell-no. Fuck that I am going home."

We told them to surrender, and a few stupid ones didn't. At any time they could have walked away and deserted thier positions and lived long happy lives. But they decided against it, they decided they would stand and fight. Of those who stayed and fought, they got to hear about what happened to others in thier situation, so some more left. Yeagh, it sucks for those who got hit with it, but there were even more who said "screw that I am not dying like that for Saddam" and thus we didn't have to kill them at all.

I can see if right now, what if we did invent and deploy some majical weapon that when you shoot it at someone they die just as if they fell asleep with a happy little grin on thier face. I'm sure the world would applaud it. But you would end up having to kill more people, because it just wouldn't be as frightening, it would have a diminished psycological effect on those around it. The the world woudl turn around and say "hey wait a minute, you should have realized that would happen before you implemented it, you guys are just evil etc. . ."

Its why I personnally think that the idea of "rules in war" is genuinely stupid, inconsistent, illogical and in the end doesn't help anything. But thats just me.

-Justin Kelly

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