It is perfectly acceptable to will the death of innocents?

No, it is not. It is wrong and cannot be justified.

The correct response is 'If you didn't spend two years trying to carpet bombing London out of existence, if you didn't march into Poland and Czechoslovakia without provocation, if you didn't try to put all of Europe under your hobnail boot, this wouldn't have happened. Don't let your alligator mouth write any checks your hummingbird ass can't cash.'

Such frankness would probably help inter-European amity, not unlike a cold shower when you have a hangover.

Paul: Isn't the whole question whether they were "innocents"?

We say that, in democracies, people get the government they deserve. That implies that they get the enemies they deserve, and that when those enemies strike back, the people at last get what they deserve.

I dispute the characterization of "terror" bombings. Hiroshima had a large military base, and Dresden had various war industries. True, many civilians were killed or wounded or made homeless, but that was the way WWII was fought, and as Bart points out, we didn't set those rules.

As wondrous and instrument as the Norden bombsight was in its day, true precision bombing (and artillery-shooting) was simply not technically possible in 1945. It really wasn't possible until just the last few years.

That said, the German and Japanese people--unlike the Afghan or Iraqi populations--were fully supportive of their tyrants up to the point of defeat.

David:

Certainly a sizeable percentage of the German population was at least implicated in the crimes of the Nazi regime (and a great many were up to their ears in blood) -- not all of them. What about, say, German children?

What age, Paul?

What age is a child?

"What about the children!?" — argumentum ad Helen Lovejoy.

Response: German parents of the 1930s and 1940s made that decision for us.

A similiar argument/excuse is made on the value of human life vs. shooting burglars— the burglar made that decision on the value of his life by breaking and entering, and who are we do disagree with him?

Sandy:

Let's say, 5 years old or younger, for simplicity's sake.

Raoul:

So the child is guilty because of his parents?

Paul: what about children not yet born? As I've said here before, I presume I owe my own existence to Hiroshima. Am I duty bound to prefer that my father had died in the invasion of Japan?

Joe:

I think your are duty-bound to say that the deliberate murder of innocents cannot be justified, no matter how much good might come from it.

David,
Isn't that position of Ward Churchill, Arafat and al-Qaeda?

Paul:

That's the position of a pacifist and is immoral because it accedes to evil.

Papaya:

Hiroshoima was chosen because it had no military value and we could therefore leave it alone until the bomb was ready, thereby gaining accurate measures of the devastation caused. Because we weren't bombing it became something of a haven for women and children who we then melted.

OJ:

No, it is the position of the Christian, which descends from the teaching of the One for whom immorality was perfectly alien.

Dresden wasn't the worst thing in the war.

Most of the resentment about Dresden is for the loss of the architecture rather than the lives.

That said, if you've ever been to an intact gothic/renaissance/baroque European city, such as Prague or Vienna, you'll know that that loss is not trifling. It is a serious loss for the world, and it shouldn't have happened, simply on the grounds it was more about revenge than tactics.

We don't need to apologise. I think 'regret' is about right.

Paul: The use of the terms "murder" and "innocents" in the context of a declared war between sovereign states is tendentious. You are implicitly arguing that the actions of soldiers in wartime can be judged by the standards imposed on citizens in peacetime. That just doesn't work. There are standards, but they are different.

The Devil, though, is in the application of the standards. I have no problem at all with Hiroshima and Nagasake. While I don't think that any number of enemy non-combatant deaths are better than the death of one US soldier, I know that we can't waste US lives to save enemy lives. Forty years on, it is too easy to say to Joe that he is duty-bound to say that the deliberate murder of innocents cannot be justified. The death of noncombatants in combat is unavoidable. It would be childish of us to enter a war, whether offensive or defensive, without asking ourselves before hand if our goal is worth the death of, as you call them, innocents.

Having said that, I used to be torn about Dresdan. Though there were some legitimate military targets in the city, and it is too easy to read back into history our modern accuracy with bombs, my impression has been that the fire-bombing was done in order to terrorize German civilians. Neo-Nazi's using that bombing to demand for a British apology for German deaths during WWII does have the entirely emotional result of hardening my support for the bombing.

As OJ says, the Nazis can always be counted upon to provide moral clarity.

Paul:

When He killed everyone but Noah and his kin there were probably a few innocent children in the mix, no?

Pat: But they're wrong.

OJ:

He is God, and before Him there are no innocents.

David:

I do not judge the soldiers. I do not even judge the generals. I judge the action. It must be condemned.

I respectfully ask that you follow my distinctions very closely here. I agree with you that "the death of noncombatants in combat is unavoidable," and I affirm with you that this fact does not efface the justice of many wars. But to deliberately will the death of innocents (or noncombatants, if you prefer) is evil. If we believe in moral absolutes we cannot gainsay that statement.

Paul:

Yes, so we can rather easily reconcile killing during a just war with His teachings.

I had an uncle who had been an RAF bomber crewman. Uncle John was pretty clear that the RAF had few illusions about what was going of. He had a story about an intel officer briefing one of the Hamburg raids being hooted down when he told the crews that they were hitting the residential districts because the German workers were taking home work to do in their basements.

The alternative to counter-value bombing in WWII was granting those beasts terms. The bomber won WWII, and strategic superiority won WWIII. Do gentlemen wish that we had not held the Communists at bay for all those years with the threat of megadeath?

And what now? Do we wish the North Koreans and Iranians to dare to imagine that the penalty for striking us is something other than annihilation? Say rather that German crimes included the crime of provoking us to do what we would never have done had they not made it necessary.

OJ:

We cannot reconcile the deliberate taking of innocent life with His teachings. We certainly can reconcile the prosecution of a just war with His teachings.

Paul: That's an awfully fine line.

There were no innocent Germans in 1945. None. Zero. They all deserved to die.

Paul:

My history is rusty since college, which wars didn't take innocent lives?

Lou:

Say rather that German crimes included the crime of provoking us to committing our own horrible crimes. That good came of these crimes is not in dispute. But some would argue the relativist position: that they were not crimes because of the context.

Bob:

Not so much deserved to as their loss was an acceptable cost to end the regime.

David:

Yes it is. But it is no less important for it.

OJ:

Every war takes innocent life. What is the relevance of this to my point?

Paul:

The relativist position is right. They aren't crimes because of the context. Ends can always justify means.

Bob:

Does that include German Jews? How about infants? The mentally handicapped?

What about in 1946?

OJ:

What is not permitted, then? Or have you joined with Ivan Karamazov declared that everything is permitted.

Evil ends.

So everything is permitted in the pursuit of good ends?

Someone makes decisions for children. Traditionally, it's been the parents who are responsible for their actions, behavior and well-being. Parents are held responsible when children are not treated properly. In some cases, the state has tried to usurp that authority, and been successful. It could be claimed that Germany of the 1930s was one of those cases. But in either case, it was the actions of the German parents and the German state which caused the death of those children, with the death caused by the war the German parents and the German state caused. To blame the bombers is to absolve the ones most responsibile for their deaths. The lesson is that if you truly love and care for your (innocent) children, you shouldn't go around starting wars and committing mass murder in their name.

(Some on the Left claim that children should always be treated as adults. If that's the case, they aren't innocent., just negligent.)

David,
I would say they are on the wrong side though not, by your statement "wrong". I don't in any way condone what they are doing but the theory is the same, except they are trying to win through terror while we win through devastation, attrition and the destruction of their will to continue fighting. I do not regret what we did in Dresden, Hiroshima or Nagasaki. War is hell, so don't start one with the U.S. Period. The old Cowboy and Indian movies frequently mention that one can judge his power and worth by the identity of his enemies. Our enemies are the enemies of liberty, freedom, democracy, prosperity and even Christianity and thus, we are able to see our worth.

Oops. What I am trying to say is that if we are to have enemies, these are the enemies we deserve since they oppose everything we stand for. Innocents will die but that is their fault, not ours. By allowing the terrorists to hide among them, they are accepting the risk for themselves and their children.

OJ: Hiroshima was a major military headquarters (see right map) and the site of many factories producing military goods.

Pat: I can't tell if you're disagreeing with me or not.

Paul: Without accepting OJ's argument that all means are available to achieve a just end, I don't quite see the point in condemning a 40 year old act without condemning the actors. I think too well of you to accuse you of seeking the easy self-righteousness that comes with second guessing the hard decisions that have to be made when civilization lies in the balance.

Concerning Dresden: if we had fire-bombed Dresden in 1943, one might have rested easier justifying it. Bombing it in the spring of 1945 with the Russians on the Odor and ourselves in Germany, and with the knowledge that there was little of strategic / tactical value, does make it seem as though the whole point of the exercise was mindless killing -- terror. OJ states that terrorizing your enemy in a total war is a legitimate thing to do, but I really have to wonder whether, at the point with the end of the war in clear sight, whether fire-bombing Dresden was necessary.

I have a dear German friend, old man today, who lived through Dresden as a child -- he later resisted the Soviets and the Stazi, and spent a few years in Communist corrective labor camps, so I think he's earned his political chops -- who becomes near apopletic on the subject of Dresden. His point is a simple one: it was unnecessary as Germany was thoroughly, completely beaten. I find it hard to argue with him.

David:

I hesitate to condemn the actors because I tremble to, as you put it "second guess the hard decisions that have to be made when civilization lies in the balance."

But I think it is very important that we retain the principles of morality that this very civilization was constructed upon -- retain them even if it means judging against the prudential decisions, made in the midst of crisis, of our revered forebears.

Though there were some legitimate military targets in the city, and it is too easy to read back into history our modern accuracy with bombs, my impression has been that the fire-bombing was done in order to terrorize German civilians.

The problem was that the RAF bombers had very little defensive armament, unlike the B-17s and B-24s.

The American bombers could attack during daylight without sustaining crippling losses (although 1943 was close to it.)

The only game the Brits could play was at night. And given the technology of the time, any target smaller than a city was impossible to hit. So Dresden was the result of technological limitations.

OJ seems wedded to the airpower theories of Giulio Douhet.

Which WWII comprehensively disproved.

As for Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the alternative to using atomic bombs was an invasion so brutal that it would likely have cost as many of their lives, plus a whole lot of ours.

It is very sad we had to use them.

David,
I'm not and never was. I was simply interested in your statement and how it seems to mirror what the now infamous blog-pinata Ward Churchill says. I find the man's opinions loathsome, but he used the same logic to explain 9/11 as you use to explain why we do what we do. It seems valid from both directions. The difference is that he is obviously an enemy of the United States. It caught me unaware I suppose.

Papaya:

They were trivial and would qualify every city in any nation, no matter how minor.

Paul:

What is the moral argument for prolonging war and killing more people slower rather than shortly and directly?

Steve:

Then they should have surrendered first.

Paul:

No, but the ends can justify the means or, as it is famously put, if the ends don't justify the means what does?

I look forward to the commemoration later this year of the 60th anniversary of the Japanese destruction of Manila along with 100,000 Filipinos.

Anybody who has nothing to say about that has nothing to say about Dresden or Hiroshimma.

That's gonna eliminate a lot of people, like Lou's friend and Orrin.

But we don't have to get to that point yet. It might help to get straight on the facts.

Hiroshima was the headquarters of theSecond Army and the main port for the conquest and robbery of China. Orrin is creating facts to support theories again.

It'd be better to go the other way round.

Dresden was (as even Orrin dimly perceives) the major rail center for the retreat of German armies who had not -- contra posts here -- stopped fighting and therefore were not 'beaten.'

For Dresden, at least, its iconic status relates not to what may have been going on there in 1945 but to its alleged status as a center of European culture.

Orrin is inconsistent. He despises Vansittart, but Vansittartism requires -- not merely absolves -- the destruction of Dresden.

I, for one, don't miss it.

Harry:

To the contrary, I'm sympathetic to Vansitarttism but think it was a waste, as all hatreds always are. Without Vansitarttism the Germans would have gladly surrendered and helped us stop the Soviets.

You don't need to firebomb a whole city to take out a railyard and Hiroshima had little military worth, which is why Ike, MacArthur, and Admiral Leahy all opposed bombing it. We did Dresden and Hiroshima because we could, not because of need. But there's nothing wrong with that.

Pat: Both Al Qaeda and the United States wish to remake the world in their own image. We will use methods compatible with our principles (once we figure out what they are) and they will use methods compatible with their principles.

Brit:

"German Jews"? Who were "German Jews" in 1945? They were stripped of citizenship in 1933 and mostly dead by 1945.

"mentally handicapped" The few that the Germans had not euthanized by 1945?

Infants? Yes, I did mean them. The guilt of the German people can only be cleansed in blood. Not that it was though.

The longer wars go on, the breater brutality there will be. Wars brutalize. In the course of defending yourself and winning the war, all sorts of terrible acts are committed. Some of those are calculated acts of necessity, others became mistakes when they did not turn out as planned, and more were simply mistakes.

However, mistakes do not automatically become atrocities. They may be extremely tragic and become a reminder of the horrors of war, but there must be forethought of malice for it to be an atrocity.

The bombing of Dresden could very well be one of those last. However, this grandstanding is wrong because it seeks to place the Germans in the role of innocent victims during WWII which they were not.

At some point, a refusal to actively resist evil makes you an accomplice of that evil.

Bob:

You didn't answer my questions: what about the "few (mentally-handicapped) that the Germans had not euthanized"?

And what about the Germans in 1946? Once the war was over, did all Germans still deserve to die, or did they become 'innocent' after surrender?

If not, do any survivors of the War still deserve to die now, including those who were infants in 1945, or is the guilt now cleansed?

How much blood (to the nearest gallon, or German infant - your choice) is sufficient to 'cleanse' the guilt?

Brit

Once they surrendered, then as decent people we could not just kill them. I do think that they would not have observed such a standard had the roles been reversed.

I hate to quote a Nazi but Hans Frank, former Governor General of Poland, before he was hanged said: �a thousand years will pass and the guilt of Germany will still not be erased".

See me in 950 years, then I will reevaluate my views.

Only the blood of Jesus can cleanse guilt.