Interview with WWII reconaissance pilot

[Avimimus]

Originally Posted by Splitter

OK...but name a war where civilians did not die. In war, civilians die too. No matter how careful a military might be in their target selection and execution, civilians sometimes end up on the wrong end of a bomb or bullet.

Note also that when some enemies figure out that the other side is trying to avoid civilian casualties, they start using civilians as shields. So in that case, who is to blame when civilians die?

There is a big difference between what the Japanese did to...well, just about everyone they conquered or captured...and what a few Allied troops did to enemy soldiers on occasion. Both are wrong but to far different degrees.

The good guys are never 100% pure just as the bad guys are seldom 100% evil, but there is still a big difference between the two. When someone says there is no difference, the lines between good and evil become blurred and THAT is when I start to worry.

Just a small point, but Stalin and Hitler do not equate to "bomber Harris" or the Joint Chiefs or Churchill.

I'm not going to hold straffing enemy troops against a Russian recon pilot. I won't hold bombing a radar station filled with non-combat personnel against a German Stuka pilot. I won't hold dead civilians against a bomber pilot who missed the target or didn't have a weapon with enough precision to hit only the factory. And I won't hold civilian casualties against any pilot who was doing his job and trying to end a war.

Splitter

I don't equate them - except that all have some command responsibility.

I think the point I'm getting at is that it is always tragic. It doesn't matter how or why it happens - except insofar as knowing how or why allows us to prevent it from happening again.

I'd go so far as to say all civilians and all military of all nations bear some responsibility for preventing civilian deaths and war crimes. Of course, the country committing the war crime and the individuals involved bear much more responsibility.

But, if we really want to deal with an event like the Holocaust, we have to realise that it is ot just the Einsatzgruppen, nor Hitler, nor the German people, nor the international Eugenics movement, nor the generations of anti-Semite propagandist, nor patriotist "my country right or wrong" attitudes alone which bear responsibility to face what was done (and prevent it from happening again).

If humans can behave this way to other humans, then it means all of humanity - even those not yet born - must take some of the shame and have courage to be eternally vigilant.

I don't blame the pilot, I think it is tragic that he was ever in such a position or that those people were killed. I'd extend this to a lot of other people.