Walzer's overriding criteria for distinguishing just from unjust war is that intentionally killing civilians is wrong, even for the purpose of deterring aggressors. He is not deterred by unintentional collateral damage because if you rule that out, you rule out war, and then you're a pacifist and not a just war theorist. But how, I wonder, does he justify sanctions of mass destruction? Because those are effectively targeted only at civilians, and precisely with the aim of harming aggressors through their suffering.
Michael
-------
What can you say? Walzer sounds dazed and confused.
Luke Weider(?) asked a week or so ago, did the Germans deserve Dresden? While that thread was running, I went looking around to answer a slightly different question, which I think bares on that thread and this one. The question is, when did the US and UK decide to inflict mass civilian casualties in WWII? I researched this a little on the web and discovered something interesting---probably many know this, but it was news to me. I never sent the post, but here is a synopsis.
The usual assumption is that the Germans started this bombing civilians business with the London blitz (or Guernica, if you count the Spanish Civil War). But if you do a little research you realize that most of the blitz casualties could be attributed to the category of collateral damage since the primary bombing targets were supposed to be industry, shipping, warehousing and manufacturing districts in London, Manchester, Hull, Liverpool and Coventry (`40-41). The official total civilian casualties during this early blitz period were around 13,900.
But in early 1942, with the US in the war, the UK winning the air defence war over Britain, and Germany having begun and bogged down in Barbarosa, the US and UK could ramp up the offensive bombing of Germany. The first large scale bombing raids were predominately the same as those Germany had conducted, targeting obvious military and industrial centers and ignoring the pleasantries about civilian casualties---well mistakes were made, it's collateral damage, etc. There was a certain causal and retaliatory aspect with respect to civilians and working class residential areas in and near industrial centers in the early Cologne and Hamburg raids. Meanwhile one of Churchill's science and technical advisors F.A. Lindemann in 1942 wrote a report for Churchill, outlining a more specific plan:
``...Lindemann estimated that every 40 tons of bombs dropped on built-up areas would make 4,000 to 8,000 people homeless. This report to PM stated: In 1938 over 22 million Germans lived in 58 towns of over 100,000 inhabitants, which, with modern equipment, should be easy to find and hit...'' (can't remember now where I found this, just look around under Lindemann, Churchill, science, bombing, etc)
In January 1943, Roosevelt and Churchill met in Casablanca to work out a joint allied military command system, that included joint air operations. I think this is when and where the formal decision about inflicting mass civilian casualties was made. In March through June `43 an early phase of this strategy was developed employing 1000+ heavy bombers on mass scaled raids on cities like Essen, Dortmund, and Cologne as examples. The estimated civilian casuality figures went from several hundred up to several thousand, and began to grow upward from there. The Hamburg raids of July 24-Aug 3 were coordinated to inflict really giant civilian casualties by using 1000+ heavy bombers loaded with half incendiaries, striking over several sequential nights and the great fire storms were the result. From a few thousand the figure shot up to nearly 41,000+ killed outright, but the official estimates have to be very low.
After Hamburg there were the start of big raids on Berlin later in Aug `43. All through the rest of '43 and `44 the same so-called strategic bombing was conducted more less following exactly the plan that Lindemann had outlined: systematic destruction of Germany cities, people, factories, buildings, military, everything. Famous examples were: Magdeburg, Nuremberg, supporting D-Day, Kiel, Meerbeck, Dusseldorf. These were celebrated by firsts such as the first 4,000lb bombs, the first 22,000lb bombs, the latter beginning to reach the limits of conventional explosives. The Germans of course had re-started the blitz idea with the V-1 and V-2's, obviously devices incapable of distinguishing any target objective at all.
In Feb 1945, Churchill, Roosevelt and Stalin met in Yalta and this was the who, when and where Dresden was picked. The strategic rational for Dresden was it was directly in the path of the advancing Russian front, it was a military transit center for supporting the German eastern front, it was also a major medical center for German casualties, with extensive refugee and POW camps and had an extensive rail hub. In any event, the Feb 13-14 raids were UK-US conducted with 1000+ heavy bombers using half incendiaries. Due to light and then non-existent anti-aircraft defenses, the fighter escorts were freed up to strafe the traffic and roads. Coming back on Feb 15 and Mar 2, US lead bombing runs, the fighter escorts strafed the mass evacuations. Initial German and Swedish estimates stopped around 35,000+, but later official US-UK estimates gave 135,000+, mostly civilians.
For scale comparisons the official estimates for Hiroshima was around 71,379 and Nagasaki 39,000 killed outright. In other words Dresden was the biggest single allied bombing atrocity of WWII. It is interesting to consider that the Germans ramped up their concentration camp slaughters in almost matched pace with allied bombing and their combat defeats on both fronts---as if camp killings were some kind of frustrated killing ritual by proxy.
It should be obvious that nuclear weapons were developed specifically to replicate the strategy carried out on Cologne, Hamburg, Tokyo, and Dresden on as large a scale as effectively and efficiently as possible. The key to seeing the linkage or lineage is to ask what is the biggest incendiary device you can make?
Chuck Grimes