11/13   Destroying empty building boost moral.  Consider what we and others
        has done in the past for devastating other's moral or boost our own
        (i.e. drop nuclear bomb, fire bombing defendless Dresen, and killing
        300,000 in Nanjing), I would say this is, though stupid, pretty
        civilized.
        \_ The firebombing of Dresden was done not to boost morale, but to
           destroy the enemy willingness to fight.  The allies believed,
           and Hitler's rhetoric supported this belief, that WWII was a total
           war, not just a war between opposing armed forces.  The nuclear
           bomb was dropped as a message to Stalin, and perhaps to force
           the japanese surrender (though there are indications the
           japanese were ready to surrender as is).
           \_ That is the point.  I really hate the idea of doing something
              for the purpose of devastating enemy's "willingness to fight."
              We've done it in Dresen, German has done it in Russia, and
              Japanese have done it in Nanjing.  Yet, somehow, only German
               got punished.  Japanese got a slap on the wrist, and Americans,
              some of them (see below) still felt that their action was
              justified, not realizing that they have gotten away with
              crime against humanity only because they won the war.
              \_ No way in hell was it worth the estimated 100,000 American
                 lives to take the mainland vs any number of Japanese to drop
                 the bomb.  Not 1 American life.  The idea that we magically
                 knew they were ready to surrender and nuked them anyway just
                 because is pure bullshit.
              \_ You may really hate the idea of destroying enemy's
                 willingness to fight, but that is the essence of war.
                 Some Sun Tzu and Clausewitz might be helpful.
                 \_ I agree.  When in war, you do what you have to
                    do to end it quickly.
                    \_ That's not what Sun Tzu said though.
                       \_ sounds good enough, but that's what I heard
                          some generals say.
                          \_ Powell Doctrine.
           \_ The Japanese didn't surrender even after the first bomb hit
              Hiroshima.  They surrendered only after the second bomb hit
              Nagasaki.  So they weren't ready to surrender without us bombing.
        \_ Dresden was a key transhipment (something ~ 3rd largest) for
           the German military.  As we all know (or should) war is all
           about logistics. It was a valid military target.  The Japanese
           had ample time and warning to unconditionally surrender.
           Realistically invasion of the home islands would have
           incurred millions of casualties.  There were 300,000+ on
           Okinawa alone.  We also had to stop the Russians from
           entering the war, etc. etc.
        \_ (1) "moral" != "morale"
           (2) destroying buildings in a "regime change" operation
               may undermine morale of the civilian population who
               is supposedly on our side.  I much prefer bombing
               the shit out enemies types of operations as opposed to
               gnarly regime change types of operations.
        \_ Yea, like when commie chinese attacked commie vietnamese,
           they had a really bad time cause the vietnamese were
           like very tough after fighting usa for a long time, so
           the chinese commie gave up, but instead of like admitting
           defeat, they blew up the two vietnamese cities in their hands,
           dynamiting like every single damn hutch they found, to
           boost morale and show they have big penis.
           \_ i forgot. all commies, aside from the size of penis, are all
                the same.
        \_ Yea, like Microsoft bombed Netscape out of existence and will
           soon finish off Realplayer and then screw Google.
           And if they can't win, they'll ship old Java.
           \_ Screw google.  They haven't returned decent results in months.
              And Netscape, too, while you're at it.  They had given up and
              stop improving their browser around version 3.x or 4.x depending
              on who you ask while MS continued to work on theirs.  Go load up
              an old NS and feel the pain.  NS sucked and deserved no less
              than death by that point.
              \_ What about NS 6.x and 7.x?
                 \_ 7.x is broken mozilla 1.0 and 6.x was unspeakably bad.
                    Did anyone actually use 6.x if there was any other
                    choice for their OS?  Anyway, by then NS was long gone.
                    \_ I'm using 7.1 and it seems much better than 4.8 except
                       bigger memory footprint.