Gaza Like Normandy, War Is Still Hell

This D-Day France examined the trauma of Allied bombings taking 50K French civilian lives, albeit after dropping dinky leaflet warnings from the sky. And US & UK leaders want Israeli forces to do what more in Gaza?

Taking an even broader view of the civilian death toll in WW II from Allied bombing, one book titled “Fire & Fury,” estimated “Allied air forces dropped nearly two million tons of bombs on Germany destroying some 60 cities, killing more than half a million German citizens…” Then, of course, there’s the US bombing of Japanese cities, nuclear & conventional, in which an estimated 337K more perished. The literature often called this wanton bombing “strategic” or “targeted”, while sometimes it was more honestly called “making war on civilians.” Shocking? Not so much perhaps when the fascist atrocities were weighed. Or, when it is recalled that the Lincoln-Grant-Sherman plan to end the Civil War decades earlier, especially in Sherman’s “March to the Sea,” was candidly about wiping out the “backers’ uppers” of the Confederate Army’s ability to wage war. Didn’t Gen. Didn’t Sherman plainly say time & again, “War is all Hell” while Gen. Grant reminded, “the sooner it is fought & ended, the better”? Even Lincoln had a killing "ratio" for ending the war.

So it is with particular curiosity that we consider the WSJ’s separate op ed titled, “Don’t Blame Israel First,” in which columnist Dan Henninger urged that in today’s Gaza war between Israel & Hamas, “World opinion should impose more pressure on Hamas military leader Yahya Sinwar” for invading Israel & butchering at least 1,200 civilians for no good reason. Some might say THAT is too obvious a statement. But, maybe even more obvious … is that the moralizing US & UK leaders of today have become obsessed with civilian lives & all but ordering Israel to stop its military campaign to wipe out Hamas once & for all. Not that Israel shouldn’t be obsessed with limiting civilian casualties where possible. But, really, what do you think FDR & Churchill would have said to such critics of their WWII aerial campaigns?

Davd Soul