Questioning the minds of our military leaders of WWII is simply not a good idea. We needed ALL of our resources to fight and win the war, and rescuing people simply wasn't on the military agenda at the time. Why question great military minds such a Patton, Eisenhower, MacArthur, and call into question their strategies? PC has been woven so deeply into the fabric of American society today even the POTUS feels it's politically expedient to bash America.
I certainly understand the tactical aspects you've pointed out, but overall this comment is profoundly short-sighted. It's always good to reassess and even question the decisions made by previous military leaders, so as to learn what mistakes they made, and how to avoid them in the future.
And in the case of something as unprecedentedly horrific as the what was happening in the death camps, I think that to avoid addressing that situation by hiding behind tactical reasoning is edging into morally questionable territory.
It'd be one thing if it were technically impossible -- but to know about it (as we did), and to be able to make the strike (as we could have, at some point after Normandy), and to fail to do so ... I think it was a mistake not to act.
Why would any President publicly call into question wartime strategies of a war that ended 60 years ago, a world-wide conflagration that we won in just four years, by the way? How do you argue with such enormous success? If he would have questioned Patton, MacArthur and Eisenhower, one wonders how many good generals may have been ignored in this war as well, including General Colin Powell? I honestly feel insulted by what he said, and I stand by my country's WWII record 100%.
Oh well, when Hitler's unsurpassed military juggernaut and Hirohitos fanatic warriors are not killing millions of your and your allies' best men, and when 1/3rd of your Navy is not resting on the bottom of the sea at Pearl Harbor, and 70,000 of your troops have not been captured in the South Pacific, I suppose it's quite easy to make such a proud, ignorant remark.