And before I hear the - The German citizens deserved what they got answer - We just fought a war against Iraq. Can we fire bomb some cities there and kill a quarter of million people and just say they deserved it? If not - why? Saddam was just as evil as Hitler.
So, are there degrees of evil? A little evil is acceptable but a lot of evil is a bad thing? Now, to compare the Nazi "Final Solution" to a thug like Saddam is just laughable. Saddam killed people out of some kind of blood lust or lust for power and control. What Hitler and the Third Reich did is something of a different magnitude and not comparable.
Also, IMHO, one of the things we did wrong in Iraq is not pacify, with extreme prejudice, those towns and cities that support the insurgents and terrorists. It has caused the fighting...again, IMHO...to last much longer and cost many more of our own than it otherwise might have.
I think of Fullujah as an example. No way did we need to go in there and lose 120+ of our boys fighting an urban war made to order for Jihadists and their perverted notion of martydom. We should have ringed the place with steel and offered 72 hours for everyone who wanted to get out to do so. Women and young kids one way, fighting aged men another...who would then be used to rebuild their city and to rebuild it in such a fashion that is not only much more modern and with better sanitation, but with wide avenues and clear fields of fire.
Then we should have waged an around the clock bombing campaign that reduced the entire place to rubble. Any innocents dieing in the exchange are on the heads of the terrorist and insurgents. A clear message would also have been sent. A 'demonstration" that I bet would not have had to be repeated too many more times before the Iraqis in those areas where insurgents were abetted...stoppoed abetting them.
...but that's why I will never be in charge of such operations.
That's not to say they couldn't have concentrated on the railways and other targets without firebombing...
You can go shave your head now
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Student of revised history?
Besides ball bearing plants and tank machinery, there were other legitimate war targets in Dresden = where some 35,000 (not the quadruples number being touted) were killed = less than were killed in the Blitzkrieg of Germany on civilians in Gt. Britain in 1940
>< from the link:
http://oracknows.blogspot.com/2005/02/60-years-ago-tonight-dresden-firestorm.html
"There were a large number of precision engineering companies headquartered in Dresden, many of which made instruments for the Wehrmacht and Luftwaffe. Zeiss-Ikon manufactured precision optics in Dresden, much of which went in the later years of the war to sights for antiaircraft batteries. There was the previously mentioned hydrogenation plant. Many of these plants used Jewish slave labor in the later years of the war, when worker shortages were accute. Next, Dresden was an important rail transportation hub for all of Saxony and eastern Germany.
Finally, there were a number of military barracks in and around the city. By any criteria used at the time, Dresden was a legitimate military target.
"
on Tuesday, February 13, 1945, with Hitler's death and war's end less than three months away, Dresden's luck finally ran out. On the night of Shrove Tuesday, in two raids, a total of nearly 800 RAF bombers dropped 2,690 tons of incendiaries and high explosives on the capital of Saxony. 244 Lancaster bombers hit the city center between 10:13 PM and 10:28 PM, pummeling it with 881 tons of bombs, 43% of which were incendiaries. By 11:00 PM, the early stages of the firestorm were becoming evident. But worse was in store. 550 more bombers were on their way, guided to their target by the light of the fires raging in Dresden, which were visible 50-100 miles"
Awww, and did you think it was mostly the big bad Americans? And if some of those RAF pilots didn't feel too bad - maybe they were remembering all the innocents, and family, who died from the bombs rained upon Gt. Britain = in cities which truly didn't have any military significance 0 and In which far more innocents were killed.
In addition, the people of Dresden had had many warnings for months to get their children out and advised to do the same themselves. They chose to ignore it. "
In answer to your inane remark on "Can we firebomb some cities" in Iraq ... "If not - why? Saddam was just as evil as Hitler"
Ah, we have never been at war with the Iraqi people - We liberated them from a brutal tyrant who brutally murdered tens of thousands of his own people, etc. And We removed the tyrant = He is gone. "He's dead, Jim." That's "why" we wont "fire bomb" and "kill a quarter of million people" in Iraq.
I do not post this as an answer direct to you as I wouldn't presume, by your post, that you have the capacity or honesty to recognize the truth...but just because, for the other readers, your upside down thinking needed to be addressed.
If we had indeed done so early on (Fallujah after the hanging of dead burnt bodies of US contractors from that bridge comes to mind) Iraq would have been fully pacified by now.
The Germans were just lucky that we beat their asses before we had the atom bomb ready.