Kate Adie Quotes

This has been true in just about every conflict. In WWII however, there were a highly disproportionate ration of atrocities with those of the axis forces dwarfing those of the U. S. and its allies. Further, after the war, those allied atrocities that did take place were published. In addition, one basic difference is in the policies of the fighting forces and their governments as opposed to individual actions by soldiers. In WWII, the allied atrocities were of the latter type, but the axis atrocities involved both.

Wikileaks had just released 400,000 classified American documents relating to the Iraq War. Many accused him and Wikileaks of endangering the lives of not only soldiers, but Iraq civilians who might be identified as cooperating with the coalition forces by the released documents. The heart of the problem is that governments tend to use classification to hide embarrassing facts or policies that might be controversial as well as to protect legitimate national security secrets and sources and methods of information. The majority of the 400,000 leaked documents, when examined, were clearly not protecting any legitimate people or secrets but just staved off criticism or embarrassment; in many cases, there was no value to the contents and the maw of the censorship and classification process was applied indiscriminately to many documents. A much better argument than Assange made, can be gleaned from the vast number of WWII documents that America, England, France, Russia and others still keep secret, when the people who might have been protected have already died and the methods are long since obsolete.

This had been a general, bipartisan principle from WWII through the Gulf War, but in the War on Terrorism, President George W. Bush and his administration deviated from the traditional American view and accused those who were criticizing their counter terrorism of aiding and abetting the enemy and attacked the loyalty and patriotism of their critics.

This is the earliest known explicit writing about physiological warefare and its effect on morale of the enemy.

The Americans had attacked the Belgian city of Brest and had been repulsed by a well fortified and led German contingent. Analysis of the wartime situation showed that Brest, a port city was no longer necessary for the Allied supplies as numerous other ports were taken and were available. Many of the officers wondered why Bradley wanted them to attack and defeat the Germans in Brest when all they had to do was surround them and eventually starve them out. Bradley’s response explained a subtle aspect of military and foreign policy. It is that the United States Army, once committed, will never be defeated or stopped. Had the Americans not already attempted to take Brest, they would not have bothered at this stage of the war, but since they had, it was imperative that they succeed. Otherwise, it was felt that Allies and enemies would not take future American threats as seriously and that the morale of American soldiers would even be affected if they thought they could be beaten. A similar problem occurred in the Vietnam War and later in the Iraq war. Once the short term military necessity of fighting was gone, the long-term factors came into play and often will. Others argue that the United States military is so strong and well equipped, that it no longer necessary to take casualties just to prove a psychological point.

The issue of how to raise an army plagued the Founding Fathers. The State Militias had very short enlistment periods so that as soon as the soldiers had been trained and were effective, their enlistments would be up. Washington and others wanted a draft or at least long enlistment periods in an American Army. The debate which then began has never ended. How much regular Army as opposed to the Army Reserves—the equivalent of the State Militias, whether or not there should be a draft, whether or not an enlistment period may be extended if there is a military need—none of these are new issues but have been with us since the country was founded. See {591368} for more of Washington’s view of this issue.

The quotation was given by Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld just prior to the war with Iraq, 2003.

Assigned to the Treasury Department to create war bond posters

The smaller German towns had not been targets for allied bombing and German censorship kept most Germans from realizing that the factories in the larger cities were being attacked. But the “rules of war” which the Germans had abandoned early in the war by bombing civilian targets in England and other European cities, required that only military targets be attacked. If a nation placed its factories or military bases in the midst of civilian populations, then the rules of war no longer protected the civilians. So the allies were within their rights by bombing the smaller towns where they targeted factories. However, this quotation is used by some critics to show that FDR’s motive was not the destruction of factories per se, but the breaking of German civilian morale. They argue that the allies were following the letter of the law, but not the spirit.

Clark had commanded the American and NATO forces in the Serbian War where all the military and political objectives were accomplished with heavy losses to the Serbian’s and none to the allied side—what many think was the most successful war in American History. Like Eisenhower in WWII one great challenge for Clark was the political and strategic one of keeping the coalition of all the allied governments working together. His perspective had been like Eisenhower’s and other officer’s perspectives in history, which was much wider and geopolitical than the views of most military officers.