Patting the wrists, rolling the eyes.

[Tyrone Slothrop]

Originally posted by Hank Chinaski
It's so hard to tell sometimes whether you are trying to mislead, or merely ignorant. The fact that recruitment centers are still good targets show who is winning. Hint- if them, there would be so many people to kill lined up to sign up.

Like a stopped clock, sooner or later that line is going to work for you. Keep with it.

[Sidd Finch]

Originally posted by Tyrone Slothrop
This is hardly the first time that proponents have said: technological advances mean that this time, bombing really works! Similar claims were made during WWII. Bombing was going to close the Ho Chi Minh Trail. This time around, we have impressive video of a few precision weapons zooming down bunker air shafts, but the Pentagon and FOX were showing us the weapons that missed. I believe that the studies since the war have shown us that precision bombing wasn't. Shock and awe, anyone?

As you noted, Dyson was talking about the costs of the bombing campaign, particularly in terms of lost planes and pilots. That was hardly the case in Iraq. You are trying to equate two things that are not nearly equal.

I believe that the bombing campaign in Iraq was very effective, and a big part of why the Iraqi army collapsed. The "shock and awe" campaign was not, but attacks on the infrastructure and military targets were. Unfortunately that conventional war was never the real challenge -- the post-war insurgency was. But I don't believe that insurgency was made any worse by the bombing; I think the invasion alone was enough to guarantee an insurgency and that the bombing campaign didn't make much difference. (Or maybe an errant cruise missle blew up the stockpiles of flowers and candy that Rumsfeld was anticipating?)

[Hank Chinaski]

Originally posted by Tyrone Slothrop
Your refutation of Dyson's work would be more credible if you had been showing any sign over the last day that you knew who he was.

Sorry I'd forgotten him. Only one physicist sticks in my mind these days!


Eva Silverstein with her favorite equations

And PS- WWII era physicists are all extremelly anti-war. they created nuclear weapons then realized that might not have been such a good idea.

[Spanky]

Originally posted by Say_hello_for_me
Aren't you supposed to be a fiscal conservative? The best way to reduce abortions is to quit subsidizing and coddling people who engage in risky behavior. Its way harder to get preggers at an 8-10 hour/day minimum wage job with a mean boss than it is in a 16th floor bordello of a public housing project.

You can't be serious with this example. The woman can get pregnant either place. Putting people to work is not going to make them stop having sex. Only contraception is going to prevent pregnancy.

Originally posted by Say_hello_for_me I think your characterization of "social conservatives" is off too, but I also think it depend how you define "social conservatives". My guess is that a majority of the people who define themselves as solidly "pro-Life" would not also characterize themselves as solidly "anti-condom".

It has been my experience, as someone who is actively involved in the Republican party, that the most zealous pro-life advocates are also the most zealous anti- condom advocates. There is also a strong correlation between pro-life politicians and anti-sex education and anti-condom distribution politicians. The Pro-Life pro-condom and pro-sex education politician is a rare thing in the Republican party.

[Tyrone Slothrop]

Originally posted by Sidd Finch
As you noted, Dyson was talking about the costs of the bombing campaign, particularly in terms of lost planes and pilots. That was hardly the case in Iraq. You are trying to equate two things that are not nearly equal.

I'm sorry if my point is obscure. I was posting about strategic bombing because in a conversation that grew out of discussing torture several days ago, we found ourselves talking about the effectiveness -- or relative lack thereof -- of strategic bombing during WWII. Dyson was speaking directly to that point.

Another point that I've made before is that its proponents have always oversold the impact of strategic bombing, both because they expect civilian populations to give up when bombed -- but see London during The Blitz, or Germany during WWII, per Dyson, or the Vietnamese, etc. -- and because the military results are oversold.

I believe that the bombing campaign in Iraq was very effective, and a big part of why the Iraqi army collapsed. The "shock and awe" campaign was not, but attacks on the infrastructure and military targets were. Unfortunately that conventional war was never the real challenge -- the post-war insurgency was. But I don't believe that insurgency was made any worse by the bombing; I think the invasion alone was enough to guarantee an insurgency and that the bombing campaign didn't make much difference. (Or maybe an errant cruise missle blew up the stockpiles of flowers and candy that Rumsfeld was anticipating?)

Let's distinguish between tactical and strategic bombing. The former has been very, very useful, in WWII and in Iraq. The latter, not so much. Unfortunately, the Air Force does not like bombing tanks in support of the Army -- it would much rather win the war on its own -- and so it seeks to defund planes like the A-10 in favor of bigger, faster, long-range equipment.

The bombing probably has made the insurgency worse, for the reason that civilians who get bombed tend to hold it against the bombers.

[Spanky]

Originally posted by Sidd Finch
This explains why European countries that border on being socialist have much lower birthrates than African countries with no viable social welfare and massive unemployment.

Actually all developed countries have a low birth rate. The reason for this is that in third world countries children are seen as a form of social security. The more children you have the more likely someone will be around to take care of you when you are older. In developed countries, children are seen as a drain on resources, making ones retirment more frugal.

[LessinSF]

Originally posted by Spanky
Abortion/birth control stuff

As I have said before many times - Norplant as a condition of welfare or other governmental aid.

[bilmore]

Originally posted by Spanky
Putting people to work is not going to make them stop having sex.

I wanna work where you work.

[Tyrone Slothrop]

Originally posted by Hank Chinaski
WWII era physicists are all extremelly anti-war. they created nuclear weapons then realized that might not have been such a good idea.

Some, like Leo Szilard, realized the threat posed by nuclear weapons long before they were first built. Some, like Robert Oppenheimer, had something of the change of heart you describe. Some, like Edward Teller, didn't.

There were very few -- physicists and otherwise -- who worked in the Allied war effort but who were "anti-war." Dyson's point is that strategic bombing was a waste of money and lives, not that he didn't want to be fighting Hitler.

[ltl/fb]

Originally posted by bilmore
I wanna work where you work.

Your wife is probably still making time for sex, even though you aren't.

[LessinSF]

Originally posted by LessinSF
As I have said before many times - Norplant as a condition of welfare or other governmental aid.

and this is the only charity I donate to - http://www.projectprevention.org/program/

[Say_hello_for_me]

Originally posted by Spanky
You can't be serious with this example. The woman can get pregnant either place. Putting people to work is not going to make them stop having sex. Only contraception is going to prevent pregnancy.

I am very serious with this example. As I noted sometime in the last 2 days, abortions are supposedly down 40% in the last 10 years or something like that. What exactly do you think that correlates with anyway?

I'll answer that. When the government instituted welfare reform, it did all kinds of things that reduced all kinds of risky behavior. As a free-market type, you of all people should be not only accepting this argument, but advocating it with me!

[bilmore]

Originally posted by ltl/fb
Your wife is probably still making time for sex, even though you aren't.

I can count the number of times I've seen my wife in my office naked on the fingers on one foot.

[Spanky]

Originally posted by Sidd Finch
I don't understand why you find this to be such a difficult question. The issue is, who has the right to terminate the life?

I think that the courts were right to let Terry Schiavo's husband terminate her life. But, if someone had broken into the hospital and cut her head off, that person would, and should, be prosecuted for murder. Not for breaking and entering.

The legal, and moral, issue is to whom we give the rights to make such decisions. Scott Peterson had no right to terminate his unborn child's life. (And yes, I recognize the greater difficulty that would be present if, say, she had been on her way to the abortion clinic the morning he murdered her, but these sorts of law school hypos are not that helpful).

And now, I give up on ketching up from yesterday.

So you are saying right before the child is born the mother can end it, but if anyone else does it is murder. But right after the birth, anyone who ends the life is a murderer (including the mother). And husbands shouldn't always be able to terminate thier wife's life. Correct? So when can a close person to you terminate your life? It is tough to draw the line, and where you draw it has huge consequences. That is why the Pro-Life crowd chooses not to draw it at all. No matter where you draw the line, injustice occurs and people get hurt. That is why I would prefer to have my fingernails pulled out rather than become a judge or elected official. Who the hell wants to make these kind of decisions? That is also why I feel guilty whenever I recruit people to run for office, because deep down I know I am ruining their lives.

[Spanky]

Originally posted by Tyrone Slothrop
This is from that book review by Freeman Dyson in the NYRB that I was discussing yesterday. Dyson worked in the RAF's Bomber Command HQ during the war.

• There is overwhelming evidence that the bombing of cities strengthened rather than weakened the determination of the Germans to fight the war to the bitter end. The notion that bombing would cause a breakdown of civilian morale turned out to be a fantasy. After a devastating attack on a factory, the Germans were able to repair the machinery and resume full production in an average time of six weeks. We could not hope to attack the important factories frequently enough to keep them out of action. We learned after the war that, in spite of the bombing, German weapons production increased steadily up to September 1944. In the last few months of the war, bombing of oil refineries [and the Russian advance into Rumania? -- t.s.] caused the German armies to run out of oil, but they never ran out of weapons. Putting together what I saw at Bomber Command with the testimony of Hastings's witnesses, I conclude that the contribution of the bombing of cities to military victory was too small to provide any moral justification for the bombing.
  
  Unfortunately, the offical statements of the British government always claimed that bombing was militarily effective and therefore morally justified. As a result of their ideological commitment to bombing as a war-winning strategy, the leaders of the government were deluding themselves and also deluding the British public. Hastings says that in the last phase of the war "the moral cost of killing German civilians in unprecedented numbers outweighed any possible strategic advantage." I would make a stronger statement. I would say that quite apart from moral considerations, the military cost of killing German civilians outweighed any possible strategic advantage.

Curtis LeMay said after the bombing runs on Tokyo, that if we lost the war he would been tried for war crimes. This guy became the Air Force Chief of Staff and during the Cuban missile crisis her urged Kennedy to invade Cuba.