Elbridge Colby Colonel, United States Army |
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| Elbridge
Colby was incensed by the murder in 1925 of a black soldier from Fort Benning,
Georgia--shot dead when he refused to step off a sidewalk to let a white
man pass. In the Nation magazine, he denounced the murderer's acquittal
by an all-white jury and badly damaged his army career.
In 1925, Captain Elbridge Colby, United States Army, helped formulate the U.S. attitude towards air power as an instrument of total war. He wrote that a "belligerent will not wish to risk his planes and pilots, expend his gasoline, or waste his munitions, on any objectives except those of military importance." This was already problematic, given the U.S. tradition of defining "military targets" rather broadly. Colby went on to say that everyone knows that
bombing is highly inaccurate. "Innocent people are bound to be struck,"
he says, even if the bomber’s intention is to strike a genuinely military
target [my italics]. He surveyed standing legal doctrine and concluded,
rather predictably, that since adherence to the rules would virtually outlaw
bombing, it was the rules, not the bombing, which must yield. No one, he
said, could possibly be expected to forego wielding such a convenient and
useful weapon. Interestingly, he cites British bombing of Afghanistan in
May 1919 as telling precedent.
His father, Elbridge Colby, became a lieutenant shortly after his son’s birth, returning to the U.S. Army after seeing service in World War I. Like so many military families, Lieutenant Colby and his wartime bride, Margaret Mary Eagan Colby, along with their son, moved frequently. Before his sixteenth birthday, young William
had experienced substantial foreign travel and could count residences from
the Canal Zone to Tientsin, China, and United States addresses from Minnesota
to Georgia and to Vermont.
Photo Courtesy of Ron Williams Posted: 20 December 2001 Updated: 22 February 2003 Updated: 29 February 2004 Updated: 8 November 2005 |
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