How about firebombing civilian populations causing tens of thousands of casualties among women and children in order to hasten the end to a war. How about using atomic bombs on civilian populations causing hundreds of thousands of civilian casualties including thousands of children all in order to bring a war to a more rapid close.
I'm not against any of these decisions, but we should remember that when our backs were against the wall we used all means available to achieve victory. The ethics of swift victory overroad the ethics of killing large numbers of civilians.
Those were command level decisions carefully crafted and weighed to save lives by shorting a war.
The ethics now being taught at field level were field level "antics" can upset an overall strategy in an area.
That stated, the firebombing was a bad idea and in retrospect, the Allied command would probably agree. In fact, I believe I saw a documentary on the History channel to that effect.