I agree with you completely, that having lawyers approve individual bombing targets, is folly.
The Hawks will never admit that Dresden was a war crime. But, although they won't say the words, they have changed their actions. We are trying very, very hard to limit civilian casualties. Methods of waging war that cause mass civilian casualties are now "off the table". The only way they would be considered, by the U.S., is in retaliation if those methods are used against us (or our allies) first. So, by our actions, we admit our past crimes. It's like when a company promises to change their past "creative accounting" methods, and restates past year's numbers, without publicly admitting any guilt.
<Two nights of folly>
"Folly" implies it was an accident, an aberration from the overall plan. It wasn't. It was systematically planned; large resources were applied to achieve the result. We knew exactly what we were doing, and we did exactly what we planned to do. The goal was to kill, injure, and make homeless, as many civilians as possible, to break Germany's will to continue fighting. Terror. And it wasn't "two nights", either. It was dozens of cities in Europe and Japan, for years. A systematic campaign. |
