Dave RobinsonMar 20
In 1919 someone famous said this:

“I cannot understand this squeamishness about the use of gas. I am strongly in favour of using poisoned gas against uncivilised tribes”

He was the government minister for war, and he was talking about the Middle East (Kurds and Afghans).

It was Winston Churchill. Not much has changed. The disregard for human life continues.

#IranWar
Show threadCharlie StrossMar 20

@dave @quixoticgeek

Yeah, what many anglophones today don't seem to realize is that Winston was a monstrous asshole.

For perspective, consider that it took fricken' HITLER to make him look good.

(In his defense: he was born in 1874 and as an officer in the British Army rode in cavalry charges against Pashtuns in what is now Pakistan: classic Victorian imperial soldiering. By the 20th century he was already a living fossil.)

Show threadcatchMar 20
@cstross @dave @quixoticgeek
Don't think you needed to be born in the 20th century to know that concentration camps and fascism are bad. He approved of concentration camps during the boer war. Then put ones in place in Kenya and Malaya in the 1950s. And wrote back to his sister how much he loved Mussolini in the '20s.
Show threadCharlie StrossMar 20
@catch56 @dave @quixoticgeek Yup! Like I said, it took Hitler to make him look good. An absolute monster in any other context.
Show threadRay McCarthyMar 20
@cstross @catch56 @dave @quixoticgeek
He also ordered the bombing of a German city during "the battle of Britain" guessing that Hitler would retaliate and thus take the pressure off the RAF airfields. The decision "won" the Battle of Britain but led to bombing of other UK cities as well as London and V1 & V2 (vengeance) which ironically killed more slaves making them than people in the targets. The V1 was the original Cruise "missile" and V2 the original ballistic missile.
He was a racist.
Show threadRay McCarthyMar 20
@cstross @catch56 @dave @quixoticgeek
Winston Churchill was even banned from the BBC in 1930s and originated Enoch Powell's "rivers of blood" rhetoric.
He vetoed bombing railways feeding the death camps in 1940s.
Show threadCharlie StrossMar 20

@raymaccarthy @catch56 @dave @quixoticgeek The RAF would have had difficulty bombingreat g those railway lines: the death camps were to the east of Germany, at extreme range, and taking out railway lines with bombs is difficult (ask the USAF how well it worked during the Vietnam war).

Churchill did enough horrible things he can be blamed for that there's no reason to dogpile him with edge cases. It just serves to undercut the strength of the case against him. He was an asshole: the end.

Show threadcatch
@cstross @raymaccarthy @dave @quixoticgeek well there are non 'edge case' examples from WWII like destroying every fishing boat in Bengal in case the Japanese army reached there, then refusing to send any rice or wheat when the rice harvest failed shortly afterwards, insisting it should all go to England instead, resulting in a famine in which approx 3 million people died, to which his response was 'if there's a famine why isn't Gandhi dead yet?'
Mar 20 at 12:45pmWeb