At what point does a war become a massacre?

[dayglow 2]

Uhm, they would open the door the vehicle they are in and run away. An aircraft isn't going to pick off individual people from the air. They were attacking the vehicles on the highway. Look at photos of the highway. The carnage is on/around the roadway. The hills beside the road don't have any crators/burn marks.

COLINMAN

[FallenPaladin 0]

They were bombed on a blocked roadway where 2000! vehicles were stuck. They were even bombed with 500lbs. bombs and napalm. They had no chance to run anywhere. The road there is many kilometers only wrecks and dead bodies.

[FallenPaladin 0]

In addition to that something I heard in a BBC video (pro USA): The sky was pitchblack because of all the burning vehicles.Imagine 2000 vehicles close behind each other and lots ot them aside, the beginning and the end of the convoy already bombed, so no way to get back or anywhere else. There must have been terrible panic, because the US planes bombed one after another. I don`t believe you can run 10km or more to get to safety from falling bombs, through thick smoke and fire and through shrapnel and napalm bombs. No way

[Tex -USMC- 0]

What knowledge did US commanders have that these troops were essentially out of the fight? As far as they were concerned, this might as well have been a substantial Iraqi force that escaped relatively intact. Remember that the US intelligence structure had the same limitations put on them by the scorched earth policy the Iraqi Army applied in Kuwait. It is entirely likely that at the time they had no idea what exactly the retreating force consisted of, only that it was large, and it was a perfect target.

Aside from that, I don't see the problem with what happened on the Highway of Death. They were Iraqi soldiers who had invaded a sovereign country, and were retreating, presumably to regroup. Their command structure hadn't surrendered, and they represented a significant force if they were allowed to regroup. So, they were disposed of. It isn't the military's job to let an enemy get back on its feet after he has been knocked down; it is the military's job to kick him in the nuts several times and then start working on him with a lead pipe. It's cruel, it's violent, but it's reality.

[Longinius 1]

"Uhm, they would open the door the vehicle they are in and run away."

I dont think you'd run very far with cluster bombs, napalm and machinegun rounds hitting the ground all around you. You'd duck down, and then you'd probably die anyway considering how long the assault continued.

"An aircraft isn't going to pick off individual people from the air."

Depends on the aircraft used. But fighters can still make strafing runs and a straight road with stationary targets must be a godsend for that.

"They were attacking the vehicles on the highway. Look at photos of the highway. The carnage is on/around the roadway. The hills beside the road don't have any crators/burn marks."

And how can you even be sure that many people ever reached the hills?

[Longinius 1]

"It's cruel, it's violent, but it's reality."

And a massacre.

[Tex -USMC- 0]

</span><table border="0" align="center" width="95%" cellpadding="3" cellspacing="1"><tr><td>Quote (Longinius @ Feb. 17 2003,20:51)</td></tr><tr><td id="QUOTE">"It's cruel, it's violent, but it's reality."

And a massacre.<span id='postcolor'>

Oh, I'm sorry, were you expecting a tea party?

[Longinius 1]

"Oh, I'm sorry, were you expecting a tea party?"

No, I am simply saying it was a masscacre. Nothing more, nothing less. You can of course disagree if you really want to, but as far as I can see, it WAS a massacre. And I thought we were discussing at what point warfare turns to massacres...right?

[RaptorAce 0]

An F-16 pilot who made attacks on the Highway of Death said that they were fired upon while making attack runs. Now i dont know about you, but if i see tracers flying all around, then im gonna drop bombs in the area that they were coming from... and if that means a few cars in the highway then im gonna drop a bomb on them regardless of what's around them... Horseshit if its a massacre, if the pussies wanna do shit like that and put innocents near a target then that's too bad. Same thing when you hear that a bomb hits a hospital or some other stupid crap like that... is it a massacre? No. it wasnt aimed at innocent civilians, it was aimed at people who were aiming at the pilots. Just a case of a stray bullet, bomb, shrapnel, whatever.

[Die Alive 0]

At what point does a war become a massacre?

When Longinius says it's a massacre.  

You can of course disagree if you really want to, but as far as I can see, it WAS a massacre.

-=Die Alive=-

[Longinius 1]

"No.  it wasnt aimed at innocent civilians, it was aimed at people who were aiming at the pilots.  Just a case of a stray bullet, bomb, shrapnel, whatever."

Check up on facts. The soldiers on the highway were not attacked because their fired on airplanes. They were attacked because their were a target of opportunity. They might very well have fired on the attacking aircrafts though, and that wouldnt be very strange.

"At what point does a war become a massacre?

When Longinius says it's a massacre."

Yep, now if you had just gotten wise to these things in earlier threads, we could have wrapped them up aswell before they hit 300+ pages.

[Assault (CAN) 1]

</span><table border="0" align="center" width="95%" cellpadding="3" cellspacing="1"><tr><td>Quote </td></tr><tr><td id="QUOTE">Tell me, is it that dying from chemical/biological agents is 100 times worse than slowly burning to death that is the reason for it being illegal?<span id='postcolor'>

No. Chemicals contaminate and spread with the wind, possibly affecting non-combatants. Fire is a result of a standard munition hiting a vehicle and igniting flammable materials. The means of death have nothing to do with it. People see burnt corpses and assume that they burnt to death, this isn't always true. If a bomb struck near a tank or APC, the pressure wave would have killed the crew along with any exploding munitions inside. Leaving the dead body to burn.

Anyways............

It all depends on how you define the word 'massacre' If you mean 'massacre' as a killing of innocent people, then the attack on the highway was not a massacre IMO. If you see the word 'massacre' and think of large amounts of people dying, regardless of circumstance or disposition then yes, the attack was a massacre IMO, and a resounding victory for the coalition forces.

If I was a commander in a position to deal the enemy a death-blow, like they were at the 'Highway of Death' I would have done the exact same thing.

Tyler

[Tex -USMC- 0]

</span><table border="0" align="center" width="95%" cellpadding="3" cellspacing="1"><tr><td>Quote (Assault (CAN) @ Feb. 17 2003,21:53)</td></tr><tr><td id="QUOTE">It all depends on how you define the word 'massacre' If you mean 'massacre' as a killing of innocent people, then the attack on the highway was not a massacre IMO. If you see the word 'massacre' and think of large amounts of people dying, regardless of circumstance or disposition then yes, the attack was a massacre IMO, and a resounding victory for the coalition forces.<span id='postcolor'>

What he said.

[MrMilli 0]

god must I be stupid, I thought the point of a war was to kill the enemy.

A BMP is not a car (check your config.cpp's lads I'd think people around here would know that!

A BMP full of Soldiers is not a car full of innocent civilians.

I won't say they deserved to die, as few people ever do, but do I have a moral objection to what happened on the road to Basra?

Not in the slightest.

A Burning soldier crawling out of a APC is a nasty sight

but if it has to be so i'd MUCH rather that nasty sight is that of an Iraqi soldier, than a British soldier.

... and if you think this is a massacre, how about the massacre of innocent civilians in southern Iraq?

what would of happened if the "innocent iraqi conscripts" that had done that had been 'massacred'?

[red oct 2]

good point but almost all the vehicles looked like trucks and jacked civilian cars.

[N.o.R.S.u 0]

War is never fair, sad but simple.

In my opinion Highway of Death was massacre. However I'm not putting it to same level with, for example, massacres committed by Nazis. Still bombing out soldiers who are retreating (=leaving the war/combat) in huge convoy with no change to escape or defend themselves (can you shoot F-16 down with an AK? Quite impossible I think) is rather pointless and has no strategical value when war is almost over. If there's something that can be compared to HoD, it would be the bombing of Dresden.

[MrMilli 0]

how can destroying a large chunk of the enemy (and they were still the enemy) army not have strategic value?

[Wick_105 0]

I cant remember who said this but someone said that there are rules of war that armies must follow...yes there are but the american gov has bent these rules to the braking point in the past and I'm sure they will do it again.

and it is the media that decides when combat losses=massacre

[FallenPaladin 0]

It`s part of the rules of engagement, that you give your enemy the chance to surrender. By not doing that you commit murder, it`s that easy.

I have no problems with soldiers killing enemies which are a direct threat, I would do the same, but I can`t justify massive slaughtering of defenseless units.

For the people thinking wiping out an enemy is justified when he could be a threat another time:

Japan felt threatened by the USA in WW2, so they started a preventive strike on the US fleet in Pearl Harbor. The first shot/torpedo by the japanese planes was the war declaration. The US naval forces fought back, they accepted the challenge so to say. According to what many of the people here wrote it would`ve been totally ok if the japanese planes wiped out all american soldiers in Pearl Harbor. If they had killed any uniformed person on Pearl Harbor and left noone alive it would`ve been ok too, because the US naval forces could`ve been a threat to Japan in future again.

I hope that you now realize that the argumentation "kill anyone, despite his current status, no matter if wounded or retreating, who could be able to fight another day" doesn`t work.

[MrMilli 0]

I'd call armoured vehicles, tanks and Artillery, aside from the small arms they had in abudnace far from defenceless.

Remember also that they had little air defence because people had laid down their lives to knock it out.

[Balschoiw 0]

Sometimes it´s not obviouse that someone has stopped to fight. I mean it did happen to me that guys wanted to surrender but didnt know how and everything went somehow wrong afterwards. They didnt trust us. We didnt trust them. And a simple thing fueled the situation with a bad outcome.

Soemtimes you don´t have much time to decide wether something is 100 percent ok or not, but in the case of the "Highway to hell" massacre it was no matter of fast decisions. It was a planned strike on retreating, surrendering military units and civilians. A comparable planned massacre has not happened until WW 2.

It was not necessarry and it was done without honor or military attitude. It was a massacre.

[Tex -USMC- 0]

4--></span><table border="0" align="center" width="95%" cellpadding="3" cellspacing="1"><tr><td>Quote (FallenPaladin @ Feb. 18 2003,014)</td></tr><tr><td id="QUOTE">It`s part of the rules of engagement, that you give your enemy the chance to surrender. By not doing that you commit murder, it`s that easy.<span id='postcolor'>

Ever tried to get someone to surrender while flying at Mach 1.5 1000 feet in the air? Not very feasible.

And for the record, some Iraqis actually did surrender to AH64 Apaches   Not at the highway of death, but during other battles during Desert Storm

[dayglow 2]

</span><table border="0" align="center" width="95%" cellpadding="3" cellspacing="1"><tr><td>Quote (FallenPaladin @ Feb. 17 2003,17:04)</td></tr><tr><td id="QUOTE">It`s part of the rules of engagement, that you give your enemy the chance to surrender. By not doing that you commit murder, it`s that easy.

I have no problems with soldiers killing enemies which are a direct threat, I would do the same, but I can`t justify massive slaughtering of defenseless units.

For the people thinking wiping out an enemy is justified when he could be a threat another time:

Japan felt threatened by the USA in WW2, so they started a preventive strike on the US fleet in Pearl Harbor. The first shot/torpedo by the japanese planes was the war declaration. The US naval forces fought back, they accepted the challenge so to say. According to what many of the people here wrote it would`ve been totally ok if the japanese planes wiped out all american soldiers in Pearl Harbor. If they had killed any uniformed person on Pearl Harbor and left noone alive it would`ve been ok too, because the US naval forces could`ve been a threat to Japan in future again.

I hope that you now realize that the argumentation "kill anyone, despite his current status, no matter if wounded or retreating, who could be able to fight another day" doesn`t work.<span id='postcolor'>

How is that different from what happenned? Pearl Habour was a stragic strike. The hit it hard and fast and withdrew before a counter attack could be mounted. They tried to inflict as much damage as possible. I really don't see your point. They did try to destroy the forces present at the time.

As for the highway of death comments. The whole strike wasn't in and out in 5 minutes, but as I remember it took over 12 hours for the carnage to happen. During that time the people could get out of there. I'm not saying a number died, but to say 40,000 were killed doesn't make sense.

COLINMAN

[RaptorAce 0]

yeah that was pretty funny... about 100 guys at a time surrendering to two.

/edit

(funny to wat tex said)

[Tovarish 0]

I don't think there has ever been a war worthy of the title that has not had a massacre. That's the nature of armed conflict.