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Originally posted by Tyrone Slothrop
Um, what?
Or maybe it's because the winners get to try people for war crimes. What we did to Dresden is pretty similar to what the Germans did to Rotterdam earlier in the war, which caused massive outrage. Strategic bombing is really just another name for terrorism, right? We were destroying Axis cities in the hopes that they'd lose the will to fight.
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I see two critical questions here - are there noncombatants in a "total war" (I assume that there are always moral issues in attacking noncombatants) and was the attack proportionate to the justifiable moral basis for that war.
WWII was a total war, and if attacks like these are justified anywhere it is in that war. It was terror, and terror to a much greater degree than the bombing of London, for example. At the end of the day, given the importance of winning that war against a genocideal enemy, I'm not sure I'm ready to second guess the morality of Dresden. On the other hand, historically, I believe it had the reverse effect of its goal, and that it did more to incite Germans to rally against the Allies than it did to break their will to fight.
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