I would categorize your responses, illustrations as decent, gentlemanly, not fighting dirty but nevertheless nitpicky, historically/factually ambiguous, a question of interpretation and perspective all well within politically justifiable points of view.
I'm not going to deconstruct your comments point-by-point. You've responded thoughtfully and honestly and that's all I can ever ask of anyone, in agreeing to disagree.
There's only one point I'd like to make in that if I followed the same fallacious logic you've used to mischaracterize Harris in the statement below, I could then make the same assumption about Winston Churchill, being abadnoned. rejected, whatever, let's not quibble, who, as one of the greatest men of history, almost single-handedly winning the war by sheer strength of will, an indefatigable stalwart against the forces oof evil, having oddly enough lost the post-war election despite his garagantun heroism during the war, might make the same erroneous statement/conclusion you made vis a vis Harris.
Oddly enough, the British themselves seemed to somewhat share my opinion
Thank you.
God Bless America.
The whole issue between us is one of "does the end justify the means," usually stated as if it can be a yes or no answer for all circumstances.
IMO, it depends on the specific end and means.
Some ends, being evil, cannot justify any means. Other ends, sufficiently laudable, will justify almost any means.
War itself is by definition the justification of means that in any other context would be utterly unacceptable.
So the question is whether the specific end of preventing the Nazis from conquering the world justified Bomber Command's intentional attacks on German civilians.
The end in this case was the most justifiable in human history. If the only way to stop the Nazis had been to kill every single German, it would have been entirely justified to do so.
IMO these attacks would have been fully justified had two conditions both applied:
1. Such attacks were truly effective at accomplishing the end.
2. The same resources, applied in other ways, would not have been even more effective.
However, IMO only, neither of these conditions applied. It is generally agreed that the area bombardment tactics were at best less than militarily effective given the enormous resources used.
I believe Bomber Command and British government started this tactic out of wholly understandable frustration due to having no other way to strike back at their enemy, and at least partly to provide an internal morale boost for the British people. This may have been justified during the darkest days of the war.
Continuing it when other more effective means of attack became available was much less justified, and was at least largely a matter of expressing hatred and revenge, as well as an unwillingness to abandon an enormous investment in weapons with no other effective use. So Bomber Command continued making the rubble bounce in German cities and killing civilians through the end of the war, long after doing so had much military impact.
These emotions are intensely understandable, given the circumstances, but decisions about the morality of actions should be made without taking emotions into account.
BTW, Churchill, while a very great man, arguably the savior of Western civilization, shares guilt with Bomber Harris for these unjustified tactics.