Sorry it took so long to respond, been busy.
If I didn't know any better,you're argument runs something like this:
1. Germany and Japan were the epitome of evil (you'll get no argument this from me)
2. It was our responsibility to win, so that evil would not prosper
3. We won,even if the means by which we did so were not always exactly kosher
4. In the light of victory, therefore, the methods used do not really matter.
If you buy this line of reasoning, then you're probably one of the few who believes Janet Reno did a good thing when she burned down a church in Waco to "save the children". The ends do not always justify the means, dsc.
"Since you’re arbitrarily deciding what is murder and what is not, I don’t see why I shouldn’t arbitrarily decide anything I like."
In that case, then I can believe that a lot of what was done in the Second World War by the Allies was outside the bounds of what would be considered acceptable by a civilized society. That statement in NO WAY justifies what was done by the Axis, btw, it is just a statement of fact.
"Unfortunately, it is a rule of warfare that you don’t leave a dangerous enemy behind you as you advance. That said, the streams of casualties on those islands were finite, not endless."
Quite clearly, you haven't studied any of the campaigns of the Pacific War with anything approaching a critical eye. MacArthur ROUTINELY left "a dangerous enemy behind him as he advanced", or are not familair with the indirect approach taken by MacArthur to surround and bypass fortified bases which would be too costly to take by frontal assault? He called this "hitting them where they ain't". Nimitz often did likewise. Isolated Japanese garrisons on many islands (especially Rabaul and Taiwan) were routinely surrounded by American invasions of smaller islands and bases within air range, and then cut off from supply by a combination of air and sea power.
And with regards to leaving enemies behind (or unfought), nearly 70% of the Japanese army went unengaged by any Allied force of signifigance all over Asia, particularly in China, Indonesia, Indochina, Malaya, Burma, Manchuria, Korea and a hundred Pacific atolls. That's a fact. Look it up. Two milion Japanese troops alone in China basically spent the war standing around watching Chinese who would never fire a shot at them.
"And I’m saying you’re far too eager to assert that America is in a glass house."
Not at all. Never said any such thing. I only remarked that it's funny how human nature (and maybe patriotism?) allows for one atrocity to be considered as necessary for victory (when one's own side commits it) and another a prosecutable offense(when perpetrated by the other side) by a court of victors with no legal authority, except by right of conquest.
"One problem is calling what we did in WWII “barbaric.” Once you accept that falsehood, it becomes impossible to reason your way to the truth."
Sorry. I'm not ready to swallow the fiction that we were always the good guys in every conflict we've ever been in, and that should automatically give us a pass. Regardless of whether or not the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor or the Germans declared war on us first, it did not require the mass slaughter of unarmed civilians behind the lines to achieve victory, and certainly not by a method which has never been as effective as it's most rabid proponents have always assured us it was. The truth of the matter is that bombing civilians was the ONLY weapon available to the Western Allies that could take the fight to Germany before the invasion of France, and in the case of the Japanese, was little more than terrorism (we called it 'revenge for Pearl Harbor'). You can't excuse either one, even if you actually believe "strategic" bombing actually contributed to victory in any tangible sense (i.e. even being relentlessly and repeatedly bombed from the air between 1940 and 1945, Germany only surrendered when Germany itself was invaded. Either an air war requires a decade to achieve it's aims, or "strategic" bombing was an expensive, unnecessary lie. Take your pick).
It should be a maxim of warfare that while one is required to always study the methods of the past, one should also be prepared to study the moral implications of those methods.
"If I didn't know any better,you're argument runs something like this:
1. Germany and Japan were the epitome of evil (you'll get no argument this from me)
2. It was our responsibility to win, so that evil would not prosper
3. We won,even if the means by which we did so were not always exactly kosher
4. In the light of victory, therefore, the methods used do not really matter."
Nope, not even close.
"it did not require the mass slaughter of unarmed civilians behind the lines to achieve victory"
Wrongola. The alternative was hundreds of thousands of unnecessary casualties on our side, and possibly even allowing victory to escape our grasp.
Before you start arguing that those men should have been sent to their deaths, shoulder a musket and fall in with them.