I'll gladly condemn the people who make any warfare necessary. Once it starts I'm in favor of ending it and my inclination is not to second guess those in charge of ending the war quickly. The atomic bomb drops are the perfect example. Those were horrible, horrific actions. The people who ordered them felt that those horrific actions were necessary to bring the emperor immediately into the decision making process of ending the war, and to save the hundreds of thousands of lives expected to be lost if a full scale invasion was required. On their own, they're horrific. But because I know that war ALWAYS leads to horrific acts on both sides, I am not inclined to quickly condemn acts necessary to bring the war to an end. Very often even if in hindsight a particular action was later not deemed necessary, at the time it was ordered it was honestly considered essential and the lesser of evils.
Level a village that is a single source manufacturing point for a critical military supply, or risk the war dragging out another year? Easy to second guess 10, 20, 50+ years later. At the time, certainly a tragedy but the whole war was a tragedy start to finish and maybe this one would speed the end of the war.
Few things deserve contempt as much as armchair quarterbacks second-guessing actual LEADERS, both military and civilian, in a time of war who had to make horrible decisions that they thought were still utterly necessary to prevent an unthinkable evil from winning. Take the time to figure out what happened so maybe next time there is better information available to maybe make a better decision, and we all win. But condemning the decision makers is generally the cowardly and contemptible act of someone who lives in luxury now because of those same decisions made long ago.
