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I read all the way to the end of the comments, and it took some time.

After nearly a decade as an aircrew member aboard B-52s and B-1s, and more than a decade as a planner and a scientific analyst, I confess that I can still experience surprise - well, a little - that so many are still in such denial about the potential of air power. Odd, how they are so uncommon eager to falsify the record about how it won WWII. Those of you who pine for “civilized warfare” are still stuck in the 18th century.

Dresden - and a great many other events - deserve to be remembered, but to lend special emphasis to the reminiscences of an aging POW who artfully and conveniently exposits the Left’s viewpoint, misses the point. We can expect little else today, steeped as we are in attitudes enabled and sharpened by the likes of Kurt Vonnegut Jr (an author of exceptional talent, perversely motivated by what can only be called infantile misconceptions). Just because one American and one Brit were on the ground in Dresden in February 1945, does not lend them any credence. But Americans are nothing if not deaf to irony: the conceit that civilians can be exempted from attack passed generations ago. The world has never been that safe, nor that orderly.

I’m so glad I spent 29 years in uniform, undergirding the freedoms and inalienable rights of so many citizens: in this case, to think so many foolish thoughts. And to voice them. No sarcasm tags here, because I’m not being sarcastic: if you think long enough, you may actually come up with something of use. After all, even a stopped clock is right, twice a day.

More troubling are you moral absolutists dressing up as conservatives. You may congratulate yourselves that you are riding to the defense of “timeless universal principles”, but in the fullness of time I have come to the conclusion that you are too lazy to find out what’s really going on before you open your mouths. It doesn’t take much effort to apply the same yardstick to every situation, regardless of circumstances: collecting data and observing what is going on around you take time, and effort, and money. Uncovering the historical context takes more time and effort; actual insight, and thought, about what to do next, take yet more.

And if the situation involves combat, doing all this can involve real risk. I can forgive you for lack of courage to face hostile fire, but I find your certitude less than captivating.

Decisions, especially in the midst of war, cannot always wait. It is the height of hubris - not to say moral imbecility - to second-guess the decisions made generations ago, by people caught in unpleasant circumstances. And your disdainful moralizing, your condescensing blamestorming, becomes more odious, if you do it from a position of comfort and security ensured by the very privations and sacrifices of those who made those decisions and took actions you are now pleased to turn up your nose at. Your pronouncements are of no merit.

But all these arguments about what is moral, or what isn’t, are as nothing. Indeed, they are rendered as weightless as a single feather, balanced against one simple truth: first, win the war. Then worry about morality.

WOW!!! Great post.

Well said.

I am a moral absolutist but I don’t see how the allies did anything wrong in Dresden. Those factories are legitimate targets, and its not like we had smart bombs. Wasn’t a bomb landing within a mile considered a “hit”?

After nearly a decade as an aircrew member aboard B-52s and B-1s, and more than a decade as a planner and a scientific analyst, I confess that I can still experience surprise - well, a little - that so many are still in such denial about the potential of air power.

I must say I’m a little surprised myself - that a planner and scientific analyst would confuse potential with realized capability. You flew much more modern aircraft than those which bombed Germany in the early 1940s, and yet I will venture to say that you wouldn’t want to be in a foxhole when a B-52 was level bombing from high altitude and was aiming within 100 yards of you and flying directly toward you. And that’s with radar helping the B-52 know its own velocity much better than the B-17 crew knew their position, velocity, and the wind conditions. Even with the B-2, they realized excellent bombing accuracy by dropping guided missiles known as “smart bombs.”
Which ought to tell you something about the limits of the accuracy potential of WWII bombers.

A masterpiece of a post.

Well said.

Same as it ever was.