And, just how would the Allied Commanders know with any certainty that the war would end one month from the time they ordered the air raid? Was this action one of the reasons that the war ended as soon as it did? How many Allied soldier lives were saved by this action if the raid did shorten the war?
I am interested in the lives of U.S. service men and women and those of our allies. Not, in what happens to our enemies and those that support them or condone their actions. If the terrorist of today had the capabilities, and they may soon have, to inflict a hundred thousand deaths of American citizens do you think they would have any remorse after doing so? I don't believe they would and neither does another clear thinking person. We owe no apologies to our enemies for destroying them.
No?
I didn't think so.
Who started the war?
Not Britain.
Germany was the aggressor; hence, nations it attacked do not have a moral obligation to respond in a restrained way. If they wanted to put every German that wasn't stuck in a concentration camp to the sword they had the moral authority to do so because the Germans started the war.... but only until the Germans surrendered. Such an action becomes an outrage if it is done AFTER a surrender, not before, or if it is done by the aggressor, not the one who was initially attacked. Dresden took place before the surrender.
If Germany knew to expect a massive, determined resonse it wouldn't have pulled the trigger in the first place. But Germany expected a soft response and so, they were tempted to pull the trigger.
Ugly as it is, that is war. For one side, war is a desperate fight for survival and no chances can be taken on leaving your attacker with the will or means to fight again any time soon. That's why in the Gulf War it was so important to go after the Republican Guard and obliterate it. We were slammed by countless outraged useless ninnies over that because it was ugly, and earned an ugly name: The Highway of Death. But we let the screaming ninnies have the last say and we stopped too soon.
As a result the regime was able to continue its war on its own people, and the regime itself lasted another decade. A whole lot more Iraqis ended up in mass graves or in Hussein's son's little torture chambers, and Iraq funneled cash into every marxist and islamic terror group it could in its lust for revenge, and Iraq bought the UN and apparently a fair number of our politicians.
Saddam won't get to see his victory, but his Syrian counterparts might if the screaming surrender ninnies this time around have their way.
Ironic how decades after WW2 the very people we're fighting are ideological descendents of the Nazi party, blended with some communism and of course Pan Arabism. WW2 Ended in the Pacific theater where we used the atomic bomb but didn't end in the Middle East.
A defender wins war however he can so he can live in peace and the only way to be sure you've done it is to get the aggressor to surrender unconditionally, to completely roll over emotionally as well as in capability. If they're led by a nutcase you're going to have to scare them more than he does to force a surrender. If you don't get them to roll completely you're going to have to fight them again some day when they rearm. And thye most certainly will rearm.
Once you've forced a surrender and have utterly knocked the fight out of them until they accept the fact that they are at your mercy, then it is time to be generous and gracious. Be gracious and you won't have to fight them again. Be vengeful and you're probably going to have to put up with a nest full of vipers in the future.
There was no set timetable for the end of WW2; reasonable people might have guessed it would and a month later, but unreasonable people could make it go on. Things that seem so sure can change unpredictably, one ill-fated decision, one unseen natural or human made disaster, a cut supply line, the sudden death of a critical individual in the 'cast of characters,' a turn of weather, even unexplained miracles can turn a winner into a loser, or make a crushed man a victor. A brilliant mind can devise solutions to escape a trap. A civilian population can pull its support out from under even the most victorious of armies and engineer political defeat- we're seeing people try to do that to us now, and we've seen that before. A population can rally. You always have to assume the unexpected, for no one knows what the next hour may bring.
If the Allies had fought a PC war the ashes in Europe would have been piled a good deal higher and the war would have gone on much longer; we did not have the time or luxury to be PC. Every day the war went on more people were selected for extermination and sent to their deaths. Any hesitation on our part had consequences even with Germans falling apart, hundreds of thousands of human beings would, and did, end up under Soviet boots with nothing but misery and fear in their future.
And for those morons who try to compare Dresden with Al Qaeda's activities... Al Qaeda was not and never has been a government - much less a representative one; its leaders are not accountable to their followers; its fighters are not subject to regulation or enforcement; its organization is without a recognizable & responsible chain of command. It has no authority to wage war on behalf of anyone.
It doesn't matter a hill of beans that the people who died in the WTC or on the airliners were civilians... even had the targets all been military ones and only American military personnel killed, al Qaeda still had no authority to wage war. If 9/11 had been an act of war by Iraq it would be slightly more comparable, though of little difference as Iraq was a dictatorship, not a representative government and so, had little authority to wage war on us and technically none at all since it signed a cease fire. Unlike the Allies in WW2, Iraq was not the victim of attack but was the initiator of aggression in the Gulf War... in short, Kuwait had the moral authority to wage war on Iraq and enlist allies in its defense to defeat Iraq, even to go to Baghdad itself and topple Hussein if it could, while Iraq did not have such rights since it was the aggressor. But for its invasion and pillaging of Kuwait there would have been no war at all. So even if 9/11 was recognized as the act of a stae like Iraq, it still doesn't compare in any way to Dresden.