Re: Bomber Harris, Dresden, Iraq & Palestine Archived Message
Posted by Keith-264![](https://images.boardhost.com/invisible.gif) on November 25, 2023, 10:53 pm, in reply to "Bomber Harris, Dresden, Iraq & Palestine"
The RAFs fetish for strategic bombing was born closer to home. After the Great War the RAF tried to supplant the army an navy as inefficient and obsolete means of state power because they affected the periphery when the RAF flew over it to the sources of military power and destroyed them. The Raff claimed that this was a way out of the industrial warfare of the US Civil War and the First World War of extravagant firepower and the extraordinary human staying power of industrial states with populations in the tens and hundred millions. The RAF studied the effects of bombing in England, France and Germany and extrapolated the results to show that the psychological effect of bombing multiplied the destructive effect tenfold. The trouble was, that they relied on anecdotal evidence and overdid the extrapolations from a narrow base of information. The Raffs role in colonial repression between the wars was used to emphasise the cheapness in (British) lives of mass killing from a distance against people who had no means of retaliation. Using Dresden as a pretext for the extermination of Palestinians is a tu quoque argument which is an excuse, not a reason. See The Rise of the Bomber: RAF-Army Planning 1919 to Munich 1938 by Greg Baughen (2015) Fonthill Media 978-1781554937 The RAF and Tribal Control: Airpower and Irregular Warfare between the World Wars by Richard D. Newton (2019) University Press of Kansas 978-0700628711 and Air Power and Colonial Control (Studies in Imperialism) by David Omissi (1990) Manchester University Press 978-0719029608 for the gory details.
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Message Thread:
- Bomber Harris, Dresden, Iraq & Palestine - Ian M November 25, 2023, 3:38 pm
- John Newsinger on the British repression of the 1st Palestinian intifada - Ian M November 25, 2023, 3:43 pm
- Re: Bomber Harris, Dresden, Iraq & Palestine - Ian M November 25, 2023, 6:20 pm
- Re: Bomber Harris, Dresden, Iraq & Palestine - Keith-264 November 25, 2023, 10:53 pm
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