Well put - even Churchill realized that Dresden was not a legitimate military target.
From Wikipedia, "Churchill, who approved of the targeting of Dresden and supported the bombing prior to the event, distanced himself from it.[44][45][46] On March 28, in a memo sent by telegram to General Ismay for the British Chiefs of Staff and the Chief of the Air Staff he wrote:
It seems to me that the moment has come when the question of bombing of German cities simply for the sake of increasing the terror, though under other pretexts, should be reviewed. Otherwise we shall come into control of an utterly ruined land… The destruction of Dresden remains a serious query against the conduct of Allied bombing. I am of the opinion that military objectives must henceforward be more strictly studied in our own interests than that of the enemy.
The Foreign Secretary has spoken to me on this subject, and I feel the need for more precise concentration upon military objectives such as oil and communications behind the immediate battle-zone, rather than on mere acts of terror and wanton destruction, however impressive."
If people claim that the terror bombings of German civilians was a legitimate tactic in Dresden, then Al Queda's justification of 9/11 would be that terror bombing civilians in the World Trade Center is also a legitimate tactic. Sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander, so to speak.
This is why sensible people do not attempt to justify terror bombings (like Dresden) aimed at civilians - the next bombing may be in a city near you.
I notice you have nothing to say about German terror bombing.
So........the attacks on 9/11 were justified because we had been systematically wiping out all muslims and bombing their cities to ruble, enslaving them by the millions in death camps and were well on our way to bombing the entire world in order to rule everyone?
Is that the justification for 9/11?
It seems to me that the moment has come when the question of bombing of German cities simply for the sake of increasing the terror
Your comparison of the Dresden bombing to the attacks on the World Trade Center could use some additional "fleshing out."
1. Do we know, for a fact, that Dresden was bombed simply for the sake of increasing the terror?
2. How many civilians had Hitler's government killed, at home and abroad, in the 5 years before the bombing of Dresden?
How many Muslim civilians (radical or otherwise) had the Clinton and Bush governments killed, at home and abroad, in the 5 years prior to 9/11?
Interestingly, your "Churchill quote" refers to footnote [46], the book, Dresden, by Frederick Taylor which defends the bombing of Dresden.
Frederick Taylor's well-researched and unpretentious book is a robust defence of the Dresden raids that counters recent attempts to recast the nation that gave the world Auschwitz as the second world war's principal victims, attempts that stretch back to the time of Goebbels.Other footnotes which are on the Wikipedia web page which you cite (such as #13), contain rebuttals to David Irving's book on the Destruction of Dresden, which is filled with inaccuracies. David Irving is a Holocaust denier and a Dresden liar.Undoubtedly, the most fascinating theme, which Taylor does successfully develop, is how, and why, targets were acquired by RAF and intelligence planners. He convincingly rebuts - one hesitates to write 'demolishes' - the legend that Dresden was purely a cultural centre, since even the (neighbouring) Meissen porcelain manufacturers had been converted to produce military teletypers ...
Taylor skilfully interweaves various personal accounts of the impact of the raids on the permanent or temporary population of Dresden, including its slave-labour force.
But the main thrust of his book is to defend a mission that was merely successful rather than exceptional. It came at the conclusion of a long war that, while generally brutalising and dulling moral sensitivities, also had clear enough justification in the fight between good and evil’
Irving’s account of the bombing of Dresden manipulates and invents material, misinterprets documents, and gives weight to unreliable documents. He also gives undue weight to eyewitness testimony when it suits him, and falsifies statistics in order to put the behaviour of the Allies and particularly Churchill, in a negative lightYa gotta see the big picture once in a while, if you want to survive in a world which has real "bad guys" You don't want to end up on the side of the Holocaust deniers.
Germany started the "terror bombing". Many other German cities went up in firestorms. I guess everyone just likes to choose this one to make their point. Germany had four different V rockets being fired at London during the war.
The Germans executed Russian prisoners of war on the Eastern front where they stood....One of the reasons the Russians fought so ferociously. Nobody talks much about the rape and pillage of Germany by the Russians. The Germans reaped what they had sowed.
They really had this destruction coming to them.