Still Snake-Bit
Tuesday’s paper carries an item concerning 17 civilians killed in an Afghan air strike, complete with military apologies and on and on.
That strikes me as strange, with my memory of the Warner-Pathe Newsreels shown in movie houses during the Second World War. Waves and waves and waves of B-17 ‘Flying Fortresses’ spilling gut-loads of bombs helter-skelter like so much cascading firewood over German cities, this on a daily basis for months and months. The deliberate fire-bombing of civilian populations in Dresden and Cologne, celebrated by American and British commanders as a ‘breaking of the will’ of Germany. As though those terrified residents had any will other than to see peace finally come.
Thus we demonized the people of entire nations and do it yet, but with restrictions.
War has become at once more deadly and more selective. It is as though ‘smart-bombs’ are the answer to all moral questions and we somehow expect victory to be achieved without private agony. Our own young men…