“...I think we’re talking past each other.
“Western civilization owes its existence to the idea that there is an objective Truth that surpasses our existence; if we reject that concept...we will find that we can justify pretty much anything...
“And because we would think about these subjects emotionally, we would lack the consistency even in our thoughts to acknowledge that we would be declaring as war criminals any enemy officers and aircrews who had done the same.” [Captain Walker, post 156]
Very astute. You picked up on aspects of the disagreement I wasn’t able to.
But I suspect your “Truth” is a matter of belief. If it wasn’t, you’d not have used a capital T.
The fact that you and a bundle of others believe it (whatever it is), and the fact that it’s been around long enough to have survived getting handed down from one generation to the next, conveys nothing about its validity in the real world. People have believed all sorts of things in the past and quite likely will continue doing so far into the future.
I can’t say if such belief is valid or not and don’t much care. Neither do I concern myself with tracing the belief back to its origins in history, nor deducing how much it has contributed to the success of Western Civ in the modern world.
When it comes to personal motivations and rationalizations, it has always been sufficient on my part to realize that Western Civ is ours, and it’s been under attack. Anything more elevated would be presumptuous.
I will assert that Western Civ was in peril during the period 1931-1945. If that did not satisfy your criteria for justifying armed response, what would?
If your goal is to convince us it’s wrong to attack enemy civilians, Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan are poor examples. Both nations led the way in conning and coercing every last citizen into serving the state. And because both nations were engaged in war against the Allies, that transformed every last citizen of theirs into a legitimate target.
I can’t say if such belief is valid or not and don’t much care.
But even as you deride the moral argument, you insist that the United States was on the "correct" side of it.
You stated earlier that it was not the original intent of the United States to target Japanese cities with incendiary bombs. I have already demonstrated that this is simply false; our statements, our planning, and our military campaign against the country is a matter of public record.
The usual defenders of the bombing campaign against Japan are unapologetic: We would be in the war only to win it, and win it we must; there was simply no place for the usual pleasantries such as concern over babies and their Binkies, schoolchildren, first responders, hospital staff, or even hospitals. (Read some of the research on the subject; whatever their personal conduct may be in their day-to-day lives, the defenders of the campaign are completely amoral in regard to the subject of targeting Japanese cities with incendiaries. The morality of the act is never brought up in the discussion.)
I suspect you're a "moralizer" yourself, even as you may still be in the closet.
The unquestioning defender of the bombing campaign shrugs off the moral arguments with nary a thought; it's the weak "moralizer" who recognizes the line between a moral right and a moral wrong but who engages in all sorts of theatrics to tell himself that despite the evidence, his country would never have committed an act so heinous; there simply had to be a justification for it.
(In other words, if the moral dimension of a matter is based on nothing more than a set of superstitions dragged through the millennia, then why is it important to you whether our actions were "morally right" or "morally wrong"?)