Non-Lethal Force Quotes
Two protesters were killed. The demonstration so affected the government that they pressured the Belfast local authorities to announce substantial increases in relief. The economy and the employment picture got no better that year.
This quotation illustrates an interesting characteristic of the British colonial military. The British military, under “Chinese Gordon” were assigned to help the government of the Empress Cixi put down a The Taiping Rebellion. However, the British army used just enough force to achieve the military objective, and would take prisoners and kill as few Chinese as possible. This was unsatisfactory to Earl Li who wanted all the rebels killed. His forces were not strong enough or brave enough to beat the rebels, but they were very adept at slaughtering defeated soldiers and their followers and supporters. Li, like most of the Chinese elite at the time, placed very little value on individual Chinese lives. However the fact that Gordon and his men did value individual Chinese lives highly impressed the Empress who was intent on modernizing China against the wishes of most of her court and nobility.
See {620373} for a contrary point of view. Arguably, the kind of ruthlessness that would be required to defeat an insurgency with a strictly military approach would require too brutal and barbarous treatment of civilians who may aid insurgents, that Modern Democracies with their open media are incapable of. In the US invasion of Iraq or the Israeli occupation of the West Bank, the total number of civilians killed by the military was tiny, compared to the 20 million Russians killed by the Germans in their attempted invasion of Russia. The entire Gaza war produced only about 1000 civilian deaths out of 1 million people was one tenth of one percent compared with the American civilian casualties at the hands of the British in 1776 was over 100 times greater.
