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H-ASIA April 15, 2007 Comment re: Korean War-U.S. tactics toward civilian refugees--No Gun Ri ************************************************************************ From: ianwelch@coombs.anu.edu.au With reference to Dr. Pollard's post, I have to confess that I am not entirely sure what is gained by this kind of comment. Quite frankly, this is not because I dispute it or because I approve of killing civilians, nor do I dispute the relevance of it in purely historical terms. It seems part of the continuing moralistic strand that has permeated history for many decades, with historians seeking to impose their personal moral worldview on the rest of society without, it must be added, all that much success. It also ignores what gave rise to the 'high-level' document the wider provenance of which is vital to its legitimacy. Using civilians to penetrate the other side has a very long history in warfare but in the 20C it was normative in China (against and by the Japanese), Korea, Vietnam (from the war with France onwards) and is currently an everyday means of killing both military and civilians in Iraq. Individual Christians may well believe, as I do, that war is the last resort when all else fails, but so-called Christian nations have rarely used the 'last resort' philosophy in practice. What it comes down to is that soldiers have a non-negotiable right to self-defence, and that is a simple truism that is ftequently forgotten. Was it 'moral' to drop the bomb on Japan and kill mostly civilians? Would it have been 'moral' to invade Japan and kill in the process perhaps hundreds of thousands of soldiers on both sides and uncountable numbers of civilians. These are the unanwerable questions of history and I am not sure that there is any worthwhile historical gain to endlessly debate such matters. Ian Welch Canberra ------------------------- Ed. note: It strikes me that Vincent Pollard's note was in the nature of a "calling attention" motion--and that Ian Welch has inferred a higher intensity of moral comment than actually appears in the post. In most of the history of the world up until the past few decades, very little of what actually happened in warfare was ever known to non-combatents. When we later learn of things that occurred, or that are alleged to have occurred, we have to take it on board and draw our conclusions. For my own part, the tragedies that occur within wars simply reinforce my wish that there were more and better means of avoiding wars in the first place. I take Ian Welch's point, but respectfully suggest that he not draw conclusions as to the motivation of the original poster. FFC ****************************************************************** To post to H-ASIA simply send your message to: <H-ASIA@h-net.msu.edu> For holidays or short absences send post to: <listserv@h-net.msu.edu> with message: SET H-ASIA NOMAIL Upon return, send post with message SET H-ASIA MAIL H-ASIA WEB HOMEPAGE URL: http://h-net.msu.edu/~asia/
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