Hotfoot wrote:Adrian Laguna wrote:No, it's strategic bombardment. It's also legal, de facto if not necessarily de jure.
So you're saying that there weren't nukes pointed at major civilian population centers?
No, I'm saying that major civilian population centres can be valid military targets. If a city exists that somehow holds no military value then it's wrong to bomb it, but no such thing exist. The nuclear plans of both the US and USSR did not specifically target civilians, it's just that vital industry and infrastructure that a nation requires to wage war resides within major population centres. It also happens to be a fact that the most sure fire way to ensure target destruction is to nuke it, repeatedly.
Of course, it's also FALSE according to the Geneva Conventions, but why let a little thing like that get in the way of your argument.
What that says is you can't target civilians. I'm not advocating doing so.
So there is no argument here. Unless you want to argue that strategic bombardment constitutes genocide, that would require a different thread.
It is when you include EVERY CIVILIAN POPULATION CENTER.
Depends entirely on why you are targeting them. There are valid military reasons to attack towns and cities, and then there are invalid reasons to attack towns and cities.
Attacking civilian populations has always been a tactic of terror.
Of course, but I'm not advocating attacking the population, I'm advocating attacking targets of military value. If the population evacuated to the countryside, then the city would still be blasted.
It says you're willing to kill anyone and everyone that stands in your way. You can handwave it away and try to justify it, but the simple fact remains that you're saying that wiping out civilians is justifiable in any given war for any reason.
It's justifiable when waging total war. I never said it was acceptable for any war and any reason. Also, if the city agrees to stop helping the enemy war effort, by surrendering, then it is spared.
Never mind that in the case of conquest you're killing the majority of your trained workforce, you're killing millions, if not billions of sentient beings.
The point not conquest. The point is to deny industry and resources to the enemy without having to spend your own resources blockading or occupying the planet. That's what strategic bombardment is all about,
destroying the enemy's ability to wage war. It is not about killing the civilian population, they're just collateral damage. If it was possible to wipe-out a city without killing anyone in it, then it would be done.
Now it's clear that you are really stretching the definition of a military target by including civilian population centers, but hey, that's okay. That gives us all a clearer picture of what you consider to be right and wrong. Clearly, you think it's just fine to kill civilians until they're all gone or they give up. It's an interesting philosophy, but it's not necessarily "right" or even "legal".
Population centres are military targets. They have industry, they have supply depots, they have transportation infrastructure. All of this aides the enemy war effort, therefore under total war it's a target.
Since you seem to like the letter of the law so much
You may have noticed I said it was legally
de facto if not necessarily
de jure. It means that it is legal in practice even if the letter of the law disagrees. I don't know of anyone ever being prosecuted for planning or executing indiscriminate bombardment, do you?
but the fact of the matter remains that what you consider to be an absolute certainty is in fact not. Granted, it's up to the players to see if they will bother getting upset about someone bombarding a city into rubble from orbit, but that's the gambit you make when you do general bombardment. In some cases, you can get away with it pretty easy. Other times, well, not so much.
I don't consider anything an absolute certainty. In practical terms it might be accepted as a fact of life or everyone could decided to get their panties in a bunch about it all at once. I was just saying that destroying most structures on a planet out of military necessity is not genocide even if between one half and two thirds of the population bites it. War on an interplanetary scale will carry horrendous casualties even if you're playing with the kid gloves on.
