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When did War change?

• Message 1. 

  Posted by GrandFalconRailroad (U14802912) on Tuesday, 2nd August 2011

  During WW2 when we wanted rid of somone we just bombed the hell out of the place, sent in the troops and if a few people died then tough luck - I mean Iraq in the 1920's, India in the 20's/30's and Manila in 1944/5.
  
  Yet now we're all surgical strikes, a few platitudes and doing as little as possible - LIbya 2011, Afghanistan since forever, Bosnia 1994-5.
  
  So my question is when did war change in nature from all out killing spree where you did whatever you needed to do to a PR exercise?

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• Message 2

  , in reply to message 1.

  Posted by Mutatis_Mutandis (U8620894) on Tuesday, 2nd August 2011

  During WW2 when we wanted rid of somone we just bombed the hell out of the place, sent in the troops and if a few people died then tough luck - 
  
  It is undeniable that a lot of indiscriminate and pointless killing happened in WW2, but in general your assessment is incorrect. War was never perceived as an "all out killing spree", not even in WW2. Military commanders have always been aware that indiscriminate destruction can be enormously counter-productive. They often shifted the definition of what constituted legal targets into a zone that was controversial at the time and has remained so ever since, but they did continue to make some distinction.
  
  In Manila, for example, MacArthur resisted the use of bombing to break Japanese resistance in the city, although he could not refuse the use of artillery. (And much of the suffering of the civilian population was due to Japanese soldiers who engaged in random murder.)
  
  And to give another example, there was a lot of debate on the bombing of railway yards, bridges and factories in France, which were used by the German military. Thus factories and railway yards were targeted with great care to avoid killing civilians. Bridges were widely targeted before D-Day to disrupt German reinforcement plans, but the bridges in Paris were exempt to avoid causing too much damage to the city. Which would of course have been exploited by Goebbels, other factors aside... (Rome, too, was only bombed after much hesitation.)
  
  As for the use of the RAF to "police" the British Empire in the 1920s and 1930s, it too was a graduated approach. It often was based on simplistic and misguided assumptions ("these natives only understand force") but it wasn't entirely indiscriminate. For example, rebellious villages would often be leafleted to announce a bombing raid, to give the people some time to evacuate houses. Aircraft were also equipped with loudspeakers to broadcast warnings. Pilots were sometimes instructed to target only the chief's hut. The goals were, after all, political rather than military.
  
  The notion of doing "whatever you needed" is usually more suited to the rabid rhetoric of politicians and armchair strategists back home than to commanders in the field, who tend to be aware that there is no point in creating a wasteland with a hostile population. That is not an environment in which armies can operate well, and it is counterproductive. The best example of this is the destruction wrought be German forces in the occupied zones of Russia, creating endless trouble even in areas where they had initially received a warm welcome.
  

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  Posted by VF (U5759986) on Saturday, 6th August 2011

  Dare I suggest that the increase in easily accessible media have changed the game? No easily fabricated newspaper reports,or carefully edited cine film but easy to produce,widely available tv.
  
  

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• Message 4

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  Posted by Mutatis_Mutandis (U8620894) on Saturday, 6th August 2011

  Dare I suggest that the increase in easily accessible media have changed the game? No easily fabricated newspaper reports,or carefully edited cine film but easy to produce,widely available tv. 
  
  But has it, really? Remember, for example, the criticism by Churchill -- then a young aristocratic journalist-soldier -- of Kitchener's actions in the Sudan, which let to public questions and political debate. Or the controversy that followed Dyer's action in Amritsar. Or the lasting stain on the reputations of Henry V and Richard I because they ordered the killing of prisoners.
  
  War has always been a highly public activity. Covering up a serious incident is usually difficult, simply because of the large number of people involved. More to the point, military commanders who indulge in indiscriminate killing often have no desired to keep this secret: On the contrary, they want publicity because they want to instill fear.
  
  
  

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• Message 5

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  Posted by VF (U5759986) on Sunday, 7th August 2011

  But can you imagine the reaction to those events if they had been televised?

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• Message 6

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  Posted by CASSEROLEON (U11049737) on Sunday, 28th August 2011

  Actually it is quite possible that the technology that makes modern media possible- in addition to the work of the Media itself- has made necessary a much less surgical and almost genocidal approach.
  
  It was the use of the mass media during the First World War- and again in the Second World War- that made it politically impossible to do- as an unpublished letter to the Times argued c1917- as used to be done in the "Age of Reason"- that is negotiate a peace that was a pragmatic and realistic one accepted by both sides.
  
  The industrial scale of war demanded that hatred, blust-lust and revenge should be stirred up amongst populations that had received no education that could help most of them to understand the wars rationally. Democracy seemed to demand war until unconditional surrender and a dictated peace. This started early on in 1914 with the Belgian Outrages which prepared British womanhood for the "White Feather" campaign aimed at getting young men to volunteer to go and avenge the poor Belgian women and children.
  
  This is a far cry from ancient struggles in which- as in the David & Goliath story- both sides accepted that the issue should be settled by individual combat involving two champions.
  
  And on a wider scale- as the Jallianwalla Bagh Massacre at Amritsar has come up, Indian opinion long held Governor O'Dwyer more culpable than General Dyer- hence the heroic status accorded to Udham Singh who assassinated O-Dwyer, and was hanged by British justice for it.
  
  Conspiracy theories abound about the trap that was made in the "bagh" in order to carry out an action intended to be an exemplary warning of any repeat of the rioting. The Amritsar riots that led to Dyer being sent to the City and the imposition of a nightime curfew, had killed a number of British men (mostly bankers), destroyed much property in Amritsar and left the missionary Miss Sherwood the victim of what Indian delicacy refers to as "assault"- which was probably gang rape.
  
  In 1919 even in the aftermath of the First World War [and the Punjab had been the main recruiting ground in British India for soldiers] such an action as was taken by Dyer and his unit could achieve real historic standing and significance. Gandhi saw it as the turning point that removed what moral justification Britain had ever had to govern India.
  
  These days we are much more hardened against extreme violence by the Mass Media- both News and entertainment- and reference to "moral justification" is usually thrown out as some vain challenge within a cultural context that does not have much in the way of a moral code as it was once understood.
  
  Cass

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• Message 7

  , in reply to message 1.

  Posted by islanddawn (U7379884) on Sunday, 28th August 2011

  Possibly there is no one single reason, rather the change is due to a combination of changes since WWII?
  
  -The development of an International Military Tribunal or the War Crimes Tribunal.
  - The establishment of the UN Security Council.
  - 24hr live media coverage from battle zones, thus a better informed public to whom the politicians need answer.
  - And a general change in attitude from the west. From one of aggression in colonial times to one of moral superiority more recently. If one is going to hold themselves up as the guiding light of a democratic world then one has to make sure that their own actions are clean. Or, at least, seen to be clean.
  

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• Message 8

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  Posted by CASSEROLEON (U11049737) on Sunday, 28th August 2011

  "From one of aggression in colonial times to one of moral superiority more recently."
  
  Actually Niall Ferguson in "Leviathan. The Rise and Fall of the American Empire" makes the point that- in comparison with the huge US investment in overwhelming force in attempting to do the job done by Great Britain before 1914- the comparison with the very meagre military base of the British Empire is very striking..Indian commentators regularly cite the British use of "divide and rule" which weakened opposition to British policy, which- as was the case in Ancient Rome that became the model for the "Lost Generation" brought up with the dream of a British version of the 'pax romanum'.
  
  The ultimate revenge attack and combined exemplary use of overwhelming force was the use of the A Bomb on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and the potential of nuclear holocaust has been a very powerful inducement ever since against escalation. And the massive increase in the cost of war- has also led to more targetted action- precisely targetted missiles since they cost a great deal of money- and more use of technology rather than men, because modern consumerist society sees very few causes actually worth dying for, when life is supposed to be all about mundane existence.
  
  Cass

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