The Stanford Daily reports that this past week saw a speech by one of their esteemed history professors on the subject of fighting air wars. Her name is Priya Satia, and her speech concerned the British use of (gasp) airplanes while fighting Iraqi insurgents during the Mandate period between the two world wars. Here is a description of her speech.
http://www.stanforddaily.com/2012/02/10/air-campaign-set-unethical-precedent-in-iraq-prof-says/
Professor Satia apparently never heard of Snoopy and the Red Baron of World War One fame. Airplanes were pretty crude then, but as we know, the Red Baron believed in the basic inhumanity of the Brits, while Snoopy believed in the basic inhumanity of the Germans, which made bombing them and shooting each others' planes much more palatable.
Fast forward to World War Two when planes were more advanced and made a serious contribution to winning that war. Just ask the residents of Berlin, Hamburg, Dresden, Tokyo, Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
War is Hell, professor, but once you are in it, the object is to win-whether by land, air or sea. Like it or not, we are not going back to the Middle Age system of warfare, when armies besieged fortresses and lobbed flaming boulders over the ramparts or some such rot.
Of course, the real thesis behind this silly presentation is that Western Civilization is bad, racist, and all that, while the Arabs are always the victims of others for the sad state of their region. The Mandate after WW 1 may have been a bad idea and unjust as well, but it hardly accounts for what we see happening today in the Middle East.
It's all the fault of Orville and Wilber Wright.
She needs to go see "Red Tails."
ReplyDeleteSo do the rest of you.