let'em eat amotal

[Murthy Yenamandra]

In a previous message Burgess, John writes:
> [In a reply to Dennis Jones]
> What still confuses me, though, is your statement:
> 
> Given a choice of having rockets fall and destroy the symbolic heart of 
> the nation or re-directing them to working class residential areas to the 
> south and east of the city ....

I don't see what's so confusing about the original statement - you may
not agree with it, ofcourse, but it's fairly straightforward. Assuming
that 1) "they" had the option of redirecting the rocket hits, 2) the
city has privileged and not-so-privileged residential/working areas (as
most cities that I know of do - this distinction is not the same as
military significance), and 3) they had no moral qualms about making
"secret decisions affecting the lives of its subjects and others", it
follows. If you disagree with any of the above assumptions, well, that's
a different story.

> If you're considering the City of London as the "heart," then your 
> argument doesn't really hold up as that particular region had the shit 
> bombed out of it long before the V-weapons make their debuts.
> 
> If the second "London" is what you have in mind, your argument is even 
> weaker. The docklands are very much a part of that "London."  They, too, 
> were bombed earlier in the war, and far more effectively than any damage 
> the V2 did.

All parts of London having had the shit bombed out of them is not
particularly relevant to this thread - I think that being hit by a
rocket was qualitatively different from being bombed by aircraft. Even
if some posh areas were bombed earlier, it would still make sense to
avoid their getting hit by rockets. The point of the rocket hits was not
purely physical damage anyway.

Regards,
Murthy

-- 
Murthy Yenamandra, Dept of CompSci, U of Minnesota. Email: yenamand at cs.umn.edu
   "I returned, and saw under the sun, that the race is not to the
    swift, nor the battle to the strong, neither yet bread to the
    wise, nor yet riches to men of understanding, nor yet favour  
    to men of skill; but time and chance happeneth to them all ..."