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"?)
“...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...
“...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...
...why is it important to you whether our actions were “morally right” or “morally wrong”?” [Captain Walker, post 158]
I still shrink from claiming any sort of status as a moralizer. My ego isn’t so huge that I can talk myself into the delusion that I can set standards of behavior for humanity at large, outside a narrow range of professional expertise and legal authority conveyed by my commission (which hasn’t been active for a couple decades).
By way of contrast, your tone and word choice hint that you somehow came to believe you have been handed an unlimited right to set moral standards for all people on the globe, in all times and every circumstance, as if you owned a secret hotline or decoder ring that distinguishes Right from Wrong for you and must never be questioned. The fact that you’ve no factual knowledge nor experience in the subjects you presume to pass judgment on seems of no moment to you.
The mildest response I can make is that you are in error about my opinions on the Allied victories of 1945. I will offer the summary judgment that the world is better off today that events turned out as they did. Americans were darned lucky. Which in turn tells us nothing about what was “right” or “wrong” concerning decisions made at the time or the actions taken to implement them.
It seems urgent to you that the rest of the forum be impressed by your rectitude. I can’t say that it means anything. I resolved to take the career path I did while the anti-war protests concerning Vietnam were at their height; the words “We are complying with a higher morality” could be heard from a lot of lips then. In the 49 years that have come and gone since I signed on the dotted line, a multitude of other people have uttered that same sentence, defending or attacking every cause that can be imagined, on all sides of every issue.
I wasn’t impressed with the sentence back then. After unending repetitions, year after year after year, it impresses me less than ever.