March 31,
1942
Six-thousand
Jews from Stanislawow arrive at Belzec to be killed. New rules went into effect
at Auschwitz whereby those "fit for work" would be sent to Birkenau as
forced labor rather than directly to the gas chambers.
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the top
April 1,
1942
The United States
begins to remove any person of Japanese ancestry, including citizens, from
coastal areas of the Pacific. Similar actions were not taken on the Atlantic
coast or of people of German or Italian descent.
As
US ship losses mount, a new policy of limited convoying is implemented as
merchants move only in daylight from port to port.
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the top
April 2,
1942
Axis air raids on the
Maltese port of La Valetta are renewed.
The
US 10th Airforce begins operations in the China-Burma-India (CBI)
theater with bombing raids on the Japanese fleet operating in the Andaman
Islands.
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the top
April
3,
1942
Japanese bombers hit
Mandalay, killing 2000 and destroying much of the city.
The
Japanese open their final offensive on Bataan with a five-hour artillery and air
bombardment, followed by infantry attacks supported armor. The tank support,
limited as it was, still forced the US-Filipino defensive positions. Resistance
was collapsing quickly.
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the top
April 4
1942
Heavy
fighting is reported on Bataan as US-Filipino forces are forced back to make
their final stands.
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the top
April 5,
1942
The Pearl Harbor
carriers were back in action on this day. In a raid by over 200 aircraft, the
Royal Navy cruisers Cornwall and HMS Dorsetshire and destroyer Tenedos
are attacked and sunk off Ceylon. In another set of raids targeting Colombo
and Trincomalee in the Bay of Bengal, 23 merchant ships are sunk. In all 800
British sailors and 112,000 tons of shipping were lost. The Japanese had 36
planes shot down.
In
Oslo Norway, 654 of the 699 Lutheran ministers resigned their civil service
positions in protest of the Nazi occupation of their country.
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to the top
April 6,
1942
Red Army forces make
limited advances against very stiff German resistance in the Smolensk area.
German
bombers hit the port facilities in Alexandria, Egypt
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1941 Archive:
June
| July
| August | September
| October | November | December
1942 Archive:
January
| February | March
Special Editions:
Pearl
Harbor
Editor's
Corner Archive:
Afghanistan
and Vietnam: When the "war against
terrorism" began, many knowledgeable people warned that our operations
in Afghanistan would turn into another Vietnam.
Want to Win - Think Before You Lash Out
- "If we are serious about taking the war to the enemy, it is time to
look ..."
The
First Fight Against Fascism - We must remember the Spanish Civil
War also.
Arguing
Victory - "... Each nation who fought against fascist tyranny in WWII brought with it
part of whole needed to defeat that evil..."
War, Glory,
Honor and Remembrance - "War is a
brutal and savage insult on human society..."
The
First Casualty... in time of war, those in power are even more inclined to hide the truth,
since that truth is often manifest in the most gruesome and terrible
acts.
Those wishing to
contribute items. stories or comments should contact D.A.
Friedrichs
|
Editor's
Corner
The items
found in this section are comments from the editors of Project 60 and
may not necessarily reflect the opinions of bartcop.
Even
the Army Tells the Truth - Once in a While
Information,
good, thoughtful and accurate information, is often hard to come by in
this day and age. But every once in a while, a group will immerge which
provides that need to the people. The publishers of
Parameters is one such group.
Parameters
is the quarterly journal of the U.S. Army War College. Their stated
mission is to provide,
"a
forum for mature professional thought on the art and science of land
warfare, joint and combined matters, national and international
security affairs, military strategy, military leadership and
management, military history, military ethics, and other topics of
significant and current interest to the US Army and the Department of
Defense."
To a large
extent, they do just what they say they will do, providing intelligent
and often critical commentary on their profession. This is not the
typical propaganda we have come to expect from our daily Pentagon news
briefs or political nonsense from a never-ending stream of Republican
chickenhawks. These are the thoughts of professionals, striving to make
their profession function better.
In the Spring
2002 issue, there is an interesting article by Michael A. Carlino
entitled "The Moral Limits of Strategic Attack". Carlino
writes,
" the
prevailing view is that American lives are somehow more important.
That view, however, is misguided. A military commander is morally
obligated to do as much as he can to preserve the lives of all
noncombatants, even if significantly increasing the risk to his own
soldiers. This does not necessitate fighting a war devoid of
noncombatant casualties--that may well be virtually impossible--nor
does it mean that winning is unachievable. Wars can still be fought
and won; however, the moral import of noncombatant immunity demands a
shift in the current conception of force protection."
Seldom
have truer words been spoken.
Carlino
presents a commentary on the concept of "force protection" as a
military goal and concludes,
" the
commander's duty to minimize the harm that comes to his soldiers in
combat is of tremendous pragmatic import, but it is not a stringent
moral obligation. Ultimately, mission must come first, and the safety
of each individual soldier comes second."
He goes on to
discuss "mission" and introduces the idea, that underlying all
missions are the protection of the values of the nation for which the
combatant is fighting. One of the universal principles of the United
States is the right of the individual to life. Therefore, concludes
Carlino, the preservation of the lives of innocents is a mission
requirement at all times for our military and concludes,
" all
moral agents possess the inalienable right to life, regardless of
whether they are citizens of the United States or an enemy state. This
does not mean that a person cannot forfeit the right voluntary
combatants give up at least a part of their right to life--the right
not to be killed by other combatants--in order to gain the right to
kill. In contrast, noncombatants do not participate in any such
exchange, and their right to life remains inalienable and stringent.
Given this difference, the noncombatant is not subject to direct
attack, being targeted or intentionally harmed by combatants.
Hence, a combatant is obligated to respect the rights of all
noncombatants. Combatants are morally obligated to respect the
stringency of noncombatants' right to life and must never intend to
harm them or use them solely as a means to an end. This obligation is
particularly poignant for US soldiers. The values that US soldiers
fight for are not simply constrained or applicable to their own
citizens but are liberal democratic ideals that apply to all people.
The Constitution rests on this very premise. So, any war involving the
United States ultimately centers on the advancement of such ideals;
any fight for the United States against a state that is not
"well-ordered" is a fight for basic rights--including the right to
life--for not only its own citizens but those of the enemy state as
well."
The ultimate
conclusion then is that the concept of "force protection" takes a
back seat to minimizing "noncombatant casualties". If this is not
the case, we deny those fundamental values that we supposedly fight for.
US Air Force
doctrine since operation Desert Storm has centered around the concept of
destroying the enemy's "centers of gravity" - denying the
enemy freedom of action through destruction of leadership,
communications and transportation infrastructure.
In a
"just war", targeting considerations are based on four basic
requirements - legitimacy (is the target valid), effect (are the
results of a successful mission worth the effort), intent (is the
destruction of the target moral), proportionality (do potential
"collateral damage" effects outweigh the level of effort required).
This concept is in direct conflict with stated doctrine and politically
defined missions in our recent commitments in the United States.
After a great
deal of discussion on these factors, Carlino brings forward an
interesting comparison between terrorism and strategic bombing, stating,
" terrorism
is condemned as immoral because of its indiscriminate nature, which
causes foreseeable, innocent noncombatant deaths. In other words,
terrorism harms innocents as a direct means to effect its end. Even if
the terrorists' cause is considered in some instances to be worthy
and good, terrorism, as a means, remains unpalatable, because the
terrorist attempts to achieve expediency by placing his goal ahead of
his moral responsibility to innocents.
The
terrorist's response would be that his seemingly evil methods, though
drastic, are in fact justified, because they are the only ones available
in the given situation. Such a claim is unacceptable. Even a good cause
does not justify the use of any possible method to achieve it. The
fact is that other means are always available. terrorism is not the
only recourse, as the terrorist claims. The reality is that the
terrorist is unwilling to assume risk and instead transfers it to
innocents
Interestingly,
however, the moral condemnation that applies to the terrorist differs
only in degree, not kind, regarding the current practice involving
foreseeable deaths [from
strategic bombing]. breaking the will of an enemy through
strategic attack has no more moral legitimacy than terrorism if it
capitalizes on the innocent."
Carlino
concludes his discussion with several recommendations. He indicates that
if we are to fight a "just war", our political leaders need to
de-emphasize zero-casualty wars. Political leaders need to better
articulate national goals so that everyone is cognizant that this is
important and worth doing even with losses. Also, until bombing can be
as discriminate as the soldier on the ground, military leaders must
shift to the "smarter weapon" to avoid mistakes.
The article
concludes by saying,
"Integrity
demands not the obtaining of an end, but the rightness of the means.
Integrity thus precludes foreseeable deaths as accidental and
unintended, because it demands right action regardless of the
consequences involved. Integrity also entails selflessness in
soldiers, since fulfilling their moral obligations inherently shifts
risk onto themselves. Such must be the nature of the true military
professional. If we cannot prosecute a war justly, then the war should
not be fought. To do otherwise is a compromise of integrity and
directly contradicts the very reasons for fighting."
That pretty
much covers it.
D.
A. Friedrichs
Read
the Carlino article by following this link.
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