Calling the shots: The Syrians behind air attacks on Raqqa

7/1/19
For more than three years, the US-led coalition targeted ISIL positions with more than 4,450 air raids, coupled with four months of urban fighting in what then-Secretary of Defense James Mattis described as a "war of annihilation". This is the bleak aftermath of one of the most vicious urban battles of recent years, most of which were won through air power. From behind the tinted window of his white pick-up truck, commander Aram Hanna of the US-backed Syrian fighters known as the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), looks at the devastated city. "The destruction in Raqqa is not acceptable," he says......

continued @ the link above

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"I ... assume that the view under consideration is something like this: no doubt in the past we were justified in attacking German cities. But to do so was always repugnant and now that the Germans are beaten anyway we can properly abstain from proceeding with these attacks. This is a doctrine to which I could never subscribe. Attacks on cities like any other act of war are intolerable unless they are strategically justified. But they are strategically justified in so far as they tend to shorten the war and preserve the lives of Allied soldiers. To my mind we have absolutely no right to give them up unless it is certain that they will not have this effect. I do not personally regard the whole of the remaining cities of Germany as worth the bones of one British Grenadier.

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"I know that the destruction of so large and splendid a city at this late stage of the war was considered unnecessary even by a good many people who admit that our earlier attacks were as fully justified as any other operation of war. Here I will only say that the attack on Dresden was at the time considered a military necessity by much more important people than myself."

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Evilroddy said:

Both quotes by Sir Arthur "Bomber"/"Butcher" Harris regarding area bombing and dehousing policy during WWII.

Those who wrought destruction in wars and conflicts are often proud of the damage and harm they visit on others and somehow manage to justify it in their own minds as necessity. So it was and so it will be.

Cheers.
Evilroddy.

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