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PaperclipPerfector  8mo ago (text post)   28304 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of August 28, 2023

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So there is one thing about both sides' media coverage of Russian-Ukranian war that bugged me for the last two years - accusations of deliberate targeting of civilian buildings, specifically non-military hospitals, schools, malls and houses. Am I wrong in thinking that regardless of evidence in specific cases probability of this happening is so low that we should expect to see almost zero cases of it?

I specifically talking about deliberate strikes because there are many alternative explanations revolving around mistakes, negligence, and faulty weapons. Of course all blame for this still lays on the initiator of the war but I think claims of deliberate hits are generally explained by these reasons.

Specific targeting of civilians is not new to wars, it was done quite often for loot and plunder in the old times and with mass proliferation of planes and missiles it, and Douhet's doctrine were at its height in WW2. Strategic bombing(e.g. targeting general use infrastructure and in some case industry somewhat related to the war) never went out of fashion and was used in almost all wars where the participants had a large enough air fleet since. But terror bombing(e.g. striking civilian targets for the purpose of lowering the enemy morale) is generally not used because time and time again it was proved ineffective and even damaging to its goal. I can't recall any country that engaged in the open terror bombing campaigns from, again, WW2, and if you decide to go this route you should be open about it. Main effect is on morale, it should be supported by propaganda and fiery speeches of inevitable death in case of continued defiance. I was quite obviously wrong about this(Thanks @ymeskhout for the correction). There is a modern tendency of doing things almost in the open and then fervently denying that you did them, that Russia follows often(recently with Prigozhin's untimely demise). What I wanted to communicate is that terror bombing needs to be open, or almost open because this doctrine by necessity requires large parts or even majority of your air force to have a desired effect. . I'm interested in the process that happens before such strike as imagined by people who disagree with me. Does Russian/Ukrainian command has a secret policy of terror bombings but to keep it secret limits it to some fraction of its forces? What do they or some random rogue commander hope to gain from it? How do they justify wasting precious ammunition on targets that aren't relevant to the war effort?

I don't think that on any side of the barricades there exist some human-hating berserks that can answer "blood for the blood god, skulls for the skull throne!" to all of these questions and even if they did exist we would expect them to not have any power from the evidence we see.

The bombing of power substations last year was classical terror bombing: the military had its own supply of fuel and generators, but the civilians were supposed to get cold and angry and the government that failed to protect them.

The rest of the attacks on civilian infrastructure were similar to what Israel practices, with one distinction:

  • Israel goes: if we see Hamas launching rockets from your rooftop, we will destroy your house. Your choices are running away when you hear the warning impact or not letting Hamas near your house, we don't care how you do the latter
  • Russia goes: if we hear about ZSU or other Ukrainian combatants near a building, we will destroy the building. Your choices are running away when you see Ukrainian combatants or not letting them get close to your house/school/theater, we don't care how you do the latter

It's the same recipe that was used in Chechnya: if there are reports about separatists hiding in your village, you either round them up yourselves or you share a thermobaric explosion with them and are posthumously convicted of aiding and abetting the terrorists.

Also, the USA in Vietnam, with the establishment of free fire zones in villages suspected of helping the Viet Cong.

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