At 04:46 PM 5/20/97 +0000, Attila T. Hun wrote:
Dresden was probably the first highly visible of America's willingness to literally destroy civilian populations with the express intent of demoralizing a nation.
General Sherman's march through the Confederacy wasn't first either. Depending on when you count "America" starting, it was probably some attack on some Indian group. If you count internal attacks as well, maybe the crushing of the Whiskey Rebellion or Shay's Rebellion?
government is its own end: power corrupts, and absolute power sounds like so much fun....
+Why go so far back? How many civilians were murdered by the U.S. +gubmint in Korea, in Viet Nam, in Panama, in Iraq?
Casualties from Bush's invasion of Panama were about 6000, mostly military. All sorts of people were murdering civilians in VietNam and Korea - governments, wannabe governments, other civilians... US figures for deaths in VietNam are typically given as 50,000, though sometimes you can remind them of the 2-3 million VietNamese killed (in contrast to during the war itself, when there were exaggerated body counts to make it sound like the draftees were doing a great job of killing Commies.) # Thanks; Bill # Bill Stewart, +1-415-442-2215 stewarts@ix.netcom.com # You can get PGP outside the US at ftp.ox.ac.uk/pub/crypto/pgp # (If this is a mailing list or news, please Cc: me on replies. Thanks.)