[DoodleDawg]

Direct, deliberate attacks on civilians and on that which is needed for their sheer survival (farms, homesteads and buildings, livestock, crops, and water supplies) with the purpose of terrorizing and/or exirpating the civilian population as such, is a war crime.

So members of the U.S. 8th Air Force, the RAF Bomber Command, and the U.S. XXI Bomber Command in the Pacific were all war criminals?

[Mrs. Don-o]

Objectively --- if they did carpet-bombing in populated areas, or chose weapons of indiscriminate mass destruction --- yes.

I am proud of that fact that at the onset of the US involvement in WWII, the USAF did sited daytime bombing against military targets.

They were as precise as you could be in the early 40's. We know that often looks like laying swathes of useless destruction today, but that was NOT a war crime: they were as precise as they COULD be. More than that, being physically impossible, would not have been morally obligatory.

I am not making an anti-war argument here, or even an anti-bombing argument. I am making the fundamental distinction that the difference between an good soldier/sailor/airman/marine and a Nazi, is that the good guys have moral limits. They do not indiscriminately slaughter, or intentionally target and massacre, noncombatants.