The case against conspiracy

[Carl Remick]

>From: "Max Sawicky"
>
>Around here I have to stipulate that I see the U.S. role in WWII as a great 
>contribution to humanity.
>
>That aside, to me massacre connotes an attack by one force on another where 
>the strengths of the two are grossly disproportionate, and the stronger 
>side elects to exploit its advantage by attempting to murder their 
>opposition wholesale. There is also the connotation that the extent of 
>force used has a gratuitous dimension. This doesn't sound like Pearl 
>Harbor, where the Japanese effort, whatever you think of their motivation, 
>was directed against a large, heavily armed opposition, and where their 
>intent was not the destruction of life per se but of naval ships. There 
>were huge numbers of casualties in various Civil War battles, but most 
>people wouldn't call them massacres.
>
>mbs

The horrors of mechanized warfare confuse things.  E.g., how would you 
categorize the Battle of the Somme, where wave on wave of UK soldiers walked 
into German machine gun fire, resulting in 35,494 British seriously wounded 
and 19,240 dead in a single day -- a massacre or ritual suicide?

Carl

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