There is no moral controversy over the use of bombers as “aerial artillery” against front-line troops. Only controversy about that was a matter of safety, or the lack thereof, involved in level bombing near your own troops. Because, again, of the tendency of the aircrews to want to believe the hype about their ability to hit targets with pinpoint accuracy. So on one occasion the bombers violated explicit orders against making their bombing run perpendicular to the German defensive line. If their bombing accuracy was as good as billed, that wouldn’t have been a problem, and we would never have heard about it. In reality, it was a problem, and it killed 100 American troops. Including, unfortunately, a bomber commander who was on the ground to observe, but who never had a chance to tell the flight leader what he thought of that caper.
I read all the way to the end of the comments, and it took some time.
After nearly a decade as an aircrew member aboard B-52s and B-1s, and more than a decade as a planner and a scientific analyst, I confess that I can still experience surprise - well, a little - that so many are still in such denial about the potential of air power. Odd, how they are so uncommon eager to falsify the record about how it won WWII. Those of you who pine for “civilized warfare” are still stuck in the 18th century.
Dresden - and a great many other events - deserve to be remembered, but to lend special emphasis to the reminiscences of an aging POW who artfully and conveniently exposits the Left’s viewpoint, misses the point. We can expect little else today, steeped as we are in attitudes enabled and sharpened by the likes of Kurt Vonnegut Jr (an author of exceptional talent, perversely motivated by what can only be called infantile misconceptions). Just because one American and one Brit were on the ground in Dresden in February 1945, does not lend them any credence. But Americans are nothing if not deaf to irony: the conceit that civilians can be exempted from attack passed generations ago. The world has never been that safe, nor that orderly.
I’m so glad I spent 29 years in uniform, undergirding the freedoms and inalienable rights of so many citizens: in this case, to think so many foolish thoughts. And to voice them. No sarcasm tags here, because I’m not being sarcastic: if you think long enough, you may actually come up with something of use. After all, even a stopped clock is right, twice a day.
More troubling are you moral absolutists dressing up as conservatives. You may congratulate yourselves that you are riding to the defense of “timeless universal principles”, but in the fullness of time I have come to the conclusion that you are too lazy to find out what’s really going on before you open your mouths. It doesn’t take much effort to apply the same yardstick to every situation, regardless of circumstances: collecting data and observing what is going on around you take time, and effort, and money. Uncovering the historical context takes more time and effort; actual insight, and thought, about what to do next, take yet more.
And if the situation involves combat, doing all this can involve real risk. I can forgive you for lack of courage to face hostile fire, but I find your certitude less than captivating.
Decisions, especially in the midst of war, cannot always wait. It is the height of hubris - not to say moral imbecility - to second-guess the decisions made generations ago, by people caught in unpleasant circumstances. And your disdainful moralizing, your condescensing blamestorming, becomes more odious, if you do it from a position of comfort and security ensured by the very privations and sacrifices of those who made those decisions and took actions you are now pleased to turn up your nose at. Your pronouncements are of no merit.
But all these arguments about what is moral, or what isn’t, are as nothing. Indeed, they are rendered as weightless as a single feather, balanced against one simple truth: first, win the war. Then worry about morality.