Suchergebnisse

Balloons have been employed for more than a century for purposes of observation, signalling, transmission of dispatches and as a means of escape from besieged places. During the siege of Venice in 1849, two hundred small balloons charged with explosives were directed against the city, though without success. As is well known, they played an important part in the siege of Paris in 1870, and were employed by the Japanese in the battle of Liao-Yang in 1904. Aeroplanes, as contradistinguished from balloons, were employed in the recent Turco-Italian and Balkan Wars, though mainly for purposes of observation and signalling, transportation of dispatches and the location of mines. In the present war they are being used for the first time on an extensive scale for the purpose of dropping bombs on towns and cities of the enemy, and with so much effectiveness that Tennyson's vision seems almost on the point of realization when heHeard the heavens fill with shouting and there rained a ghastly dewFrom the nations' airy navies grappling in the central blue.

No place is safe-no place is at peace. There is no place where a woman and her daughter can hide and be at peace. The war comes through the air, bombs drop in the night. Quiet people go out in the morning, and see air-fleets passing overhead-dripping death-dripping death!1

I shall often go wrong through defect of judgment. When right, I shall often be thought wrong by those whose positions will not command a view of the whole ground. I ask your indulgence for my own errors, which will never be intentional, and your support against the errors of others, who may condemn what they would not if seen in all its parts.—Thomas JeffersonOn August 2,1990, Iraqi forces invaded and occupied Kuwait, beginning a seven-monthlong series of events that would come to be known as the Persian Gulf war. Perhaps the most thoroughly examined of these events was the thirty-eight-day air campaign, which began on January 17,1991, and marked the beginning of the offensive by the coalition of states arrayed against Iraq, which ended after the latter's withdrawal from Kuwait. Much has been written about the air campaign and its objectives, its implications for the future use of military force, and the extent to which it conformed to international law. Although this article will focus on the last of these topics, a contextual understanding of the air campaign is essential to a serious consideration of the military necessity and proportionality issues that lie at the heart of the legal analysis.