A Mediterranean Battlefield - Syria

[Jan Klimkowski]

Keith - great find.

Let's remind ourselves of the philosophical inheritance of the US Military's renewed lust for "Total War".

The phrase can be traced back to the 1936 publication of General Ludendorff's World War I memoir Der Totale Krieg ("The Total War"). The concept is extended by some authors back as far as Clausewitz's classic work On War as "absoluter Krieg" (however, the relevant passages have been interpreted in diverging ways by different authors[2]), and to the French "guerre à outrance" during the Franco-Prussian War.[3][4][5]

USAF General Curtis LeMay updated the concept for the nuclear age. In 1949, he was first to propose that a total war in the nuclear age would consist of delivering the entire nuclear arsenal in a single overwhelming blow, going as far as "killing a nation".

Source.

Killing a nation.

Taking war to a civilian population wherever necessary.

Using the lessons of "Hiroshima" to wipe out whole cities at once

"What about ordering a village of resistants to be massacred? ... Is that a power that the president could legally -"
"Yeah," Yoo replied, according to a partial transcript included in the report. "Although, let me say this: So, certainly, that would fall within the commander-in-chief's power over tactical decisions."
"To order a village of civilians to be [exterminated]?" the OPR investigator asked again.
"Sure," said Yoo.

Remember this thread.

Ben Tre.

"It became necessary to destroy the town to save it," a U.S. major said Wednesday. He was talking about the grim decision that allied commanders made when Viet Cong attackers overran most of this Mekong Delta city 45 miles southwest of Saigon. They decided that regardless of civilian casualties they must bomb and shell the once placid river city of 35,000 to rout the Viet Cong forces.