"Does the fact that we did conduct active campaigns to turn cities like Dresden, Hamburg, Tokyo and Kyoto into moonscapes of fused glass and charred brickwork mean we should have recused ourselves from judging the Wehrmacht leadership for doing the same thing (through alternate means) to the suburbs and ghettos of Krakow, Prague, Warsaw or Gdansk?"
I know that you were referencing the Soviets with "we", but lets replace the above sites with Hiroshima and Nagasaki - after all, the USA more effectively turned Japanese civilian populations into "fused glass" then the Ruskies did, didn't we? Do you truly believe the two are "the same thing?" Does the "alternate means" include "alternate motives", and "ends?" Does the role of aggressor or defender not play a part in discerning the difference?
These are the "hair pulling" statements I refer to - the attempt to draw a comparison between two drastically different operations (both in scope and intent) based on the technical definition of the Nuremberg charges. Proving that each of these happened is an "exact science", that's true. But I find your reasoning which describes them as "doing the same thing" to be a reprehensible misdiagnoses of those historical events.
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Fair enough... "intent" does factor in, I agree.
Can't we avoid the possibility of future "confusion" on this issue, though, by avoiding the mistakes or ommissions of Nuremberg today? Is their really a need for a "Nuremberg-like" trial for the day when OBL is caught? Does the US benefit from having the trial here in the US at all?
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