Blackwater guards sentenced for Nisour Square shooting

[Thanas]

AFAIK, the basic argument goes something like this: IF we had to conventionally defeat Germany, then A. It would have taken far longer and more Allied Troops, German military and German civilians would have died, B. More of Germany would have falled to the Soviets, and C. part of breaking the German Morale to fight was burning down their cities and showing them they had no hope.
(How that jibes with the blitz only inflaming the british, I don't know)
IMHO, this goes right back to: 'The only way to win is not to play' I'm not surprised by Allied policy, but I am dismayed a at the continued whitewashing. The German people didn't 'deserve' white phosphorous attacks for supporting the Nazi gov andy more than the Japanese 'deserved' being atomically bombed twice. If we are ostensibly 'the west' and are supposed to act like Christendom then finding a negotiated end to war should be the #1 priority not finding a war to gain 'total victory' over an opponent. That's killing just for the sake of pride, or power etc.

I'll also note you used "terror bombing" instead of strategic bombing, very apt. I suppose the difference is if you can make the case for the target being necessary for the enemies continued war efforts or not.

That is all true. However, it should be noted that the publicly stated objective of the terror bombing against the Nazi cities (not only German cities were being bombed, France for example was very hard hit in preparation for the invasion - so hard that the French Government ordered it hushed up after the war) was not the destruction of strategic material:

the aim of the Combined Bomber Offensive...should be unambiguously stated [as] the destruction of German cities, the killing of German workers, and the disruption of civilised life throughout Germany.

... the destruction of houses, public utilities, transport and lives, the creation of a refugee problem on an unprecedented scale, and the breakdown of morale both at home and at the battle fronts by fear of extended and intensified bombing, are accepted and intended aims of our bombing policy. They are not by-products of attempts to hit factories.

These are the exact words of Arthur Harris, and statements like this are the reason why Arthur Harris is widely acknowledged to be a war criminal. Same for LeMay, who organized the firebombing of the Japanese cities. Further gems from Harris include "In spite of all that happened at Hamburg, bombing proved a relatively humane method". Even after the German Armies were all but beaten in 1945 Harris advocated:

I ... assume that the view under consideration is something like this: no doubt in the past we were justified in attacking German cities. But to do so was always repugnant and now that the Germans are beaten anyway we can properly abstain from proceeding with these attacks. This is a doctrine to which I could never subscribe. Attacks on cities like any other act of war are intolerable unless they are strategically justified. But they are strategically justified in so far as they tend to shorten the war and preserve the lives of Allied soldiers. To my mind we have absolutely no right to give them up unless it is certain that they will not have this effect. I do not personally regard the whole of the remaining cities of Germany as worth the bones of one British Grenadier.

I don't think anybody can defend this as anything but the ravings of a genocidal maniac. I mean, not even the official history of the RAF tries to defend this, it instead states that by 1945, the ravages of Germany had taken on a scale comparable to the age of Attila and Ghenghis Khan. Despite this the bomber crews are largely unapologetic even to this day, which presents another parallel between them and the mass-murdering assholes on the Nazi sides.

[LaCroix]

I think we're in general agreement then: Dresden bad, Ploesti bad.. but necessary.

Depends if you apply the "necessary" to Dresden, as well.

Ploesti was an attack at eleven REFINERIES outside of the city. http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_ ... oiesti.png
With 177 Bombers, attacking ONCE, dropping 300tons on the REFINERIES. A real, valid target, and only slight civil casualties (~300 people working there).
Not 'that' bad, and cannot be argued about. No one would ever claim this to be a war crime.

Dresden, was a four attack waves on minor industry right in the middle of a city of 700000 inhabitants, over the span of days (13th till 15th), using about a thousand bombers to drop over 3000 tons of ordenance, ~50% of them FIREBOMBS, into a densely populated city, killing 20 -25 thousand civillians, and burning the city to the ground.
Bad, and unnecessary. And generally accepted as a warcrime by nations who did not commit it.

[cmdrjones]

Let us be perfectly clear about something here: ex-Navy SEAL sniper Chris Kyle fought in a war of imperialist aggression that resulted in hundreds of thousands of needless deaths. He alone killed over one hundred Iraqis while fighting on the side that initiated an illegal, unprovoked and unnecessary invasion. If we are to charitably assume that every single Iraqi he killed was actively engaged in armed hostilities against the US occupation, that still makes him an individual who killed people whose only crime was to defend the integrity and sovereignty of their own country.

That last sentence sounds too naive. Very few Iraqis, with the exception of hardcore Republican Guard loyalists, cared to defend "the integrity and sovereignty" of Saddam's Baathist regime - especially the >60% Shia population, nor anyone north of Mosul. The majority of Iraqis would have loved to see the regime fall, but quickly turned against the US occupiers when it turned out that the whole post-blitzkrieg shock-and-awe occupation strategy was completely inept, the entire Iraqi army was laid off, and the US couldn't get (or didn't care about) basic sanitation and infrastructure services working for months or years after the invasion. The fact that war crime after war crime started to occur while fighting the insurgency didn't help either.

The Iraqis basically just can't get a fucking break.

agreed, though we could ask ourselves: Who are these 'Iraqis' of whom you speak?

[Channel72]

Most of them.

[cmdrjones]

Most of them.

I was being a tad facetious. I feel secure making the prediction that the legal nation of "Iraq" is dead and a large portion of the peopl within its borders will, as they have historically thought of themselves as Shia, Sunni or Kurd, and not as Iraqi.... humpty dumpty and all that.