View the H-War Discussion Logs by month
View the Prior Message in H-War's March 2010 logs by: [date] [author] [thread] View the Next Message in H-War's March 2010 logs by: [date] [author] [thread] Visit the H-War home page.
1. David Spencer <spencer@panix.com> 2. techconsultserv@juno.com -----Message from: David Spencer <spencer@panix.com>----- Napalm is not a forbidden weapon. Protocol on Prohibitions or Restrictions on the Use of Incendiary Weapons (Protocol III). Geneva, 10 October 1980, prohibits the use of incendiaries against civilians as such. However, it does not prohibit the use of incendiaries against military objectives. In any event, the United States is not a party to the Protocol. Best regards, David David Spencer <spencer@panix.com> -----Message from: techconsultserv@juno.com----- Palle Rasmussen wrote- The answer to Mr Del Vecchio's question to my mind is this name, "*Phan Th? Kim Phúc*". Actually, I had already had that comment made to me in a private response, and I agree that the picture of the naked, burned little girl running, screaming, down a road was one of the two most dramatic, and also misleading, images of that war. I'm sure it does contribute to a horror of napalm as a weapon. Then again, the images of burned bodies in even older documentaries of WW2, and the latest one now being televised (WW2 In Color), have always been horrific. (The particular irony of Kim Phuc is that as an adult, living a privileged life as a tool of the communist state, she and her husband nonetheless took asylum to live in Canada, to the embarassment of the Vietnamese government.) Had the shortfall bomb from the South Vietnamese warplane been a 500 lb conventional bomb, most likely Kim Phuc and the others would not have come running down that road, since they would very likely have been dead or totally incapacitated by the explosion, but no one thinks of that. The truth is that killing people is a major part of the business of war, and it has been and will always be a horrible business. Trying to parse levels of horror seems to me to be a fruitless project. Other than true WMD, it is hard to see the difference between napalm and modern Gatling guns, rocket salvos, 25 or 30mm explosive rounds, shotguns, RPGs, etc, etc. Anything other than that sniper rifle with a very careful marksman and spotter behind it has a significant probability of doing terrible harm to enemies and civilians alike. As one whose major concern is for our military to destroy the enemy with minimal losses of our own, I find the increasing narrowing of resources available to accomplish that destruction to be of concern. Attempting to achieve some theoretical level of "clean" combat ultimately translates to putting our people in more danger. R J Del Vecchio ____________________________________________________________ Love Spell Click here to light up your life with a love spell! http://thirdpartyoffers.juno.com/TGL2141/c?cp=mDzksmY9OfzGz3_sSQh-DgAAJ1Btrf8aMdi3lUsVs0vlhu56AAYAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAADNAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAARwAAAAA= techconsultserv@juno.com ----- For subscription help, go to: http://www.h-net.org/lists/help/ To change your subscription settings, go to http://h-net.msu.edu/cgi-bin/wa?SUBED1=h-war -----
|