Is violence against civilians sometimes justified?

[Jaron]

It pains me to say this but as of this morning I cancelled my accounts with all Missouri based businesses.

[Valmy]

It pains me to say this but as of this morning I cancelled my accounts with all Missouri based businesses.

Jaron holds grudges.

[grumbler]

If you dehouse people at night, using bombs, you leave yourself open to charges of targeting civilians.

Doing pretty much anything in war or combat leaves you open to charges of targeting civilians.  It's an occupational hazard.

[Zanza]

If we are talking war, then, no, the civilians cannot be the target of violence.  Hiroshima and Dresden were not targeting civilians.

What were they targeting then?
And whatever else it was, they must have been rather incompetent if they did not target civilians because that's what they hit.

[grumbler]

If we are talking war, then, no, the civilians cannot be the target of violence.  Hiroshima and Dresden were not targeting civilians.

What were they targeting then?
And whatever else it was, they must have been rather incompetent if they did not target civilians because that's what they hit.

They weren't targeting swing sets, either, but they hit them.  They weren't targeting fire hydrants but they hit them.  They weren't targeting bowling balls but they hit them.  they probably weren't targeting trampolines, beauty parlors, paper dolls, size 4 children's sneakers, and probably hit all of those.

How the fuck could such incompetents win a war?  The only thing that probably saved them was the fact that the Japanese were targeting wool blankets when they attacked Pearl Harbor.

[The Brain]

It was hoped that the loss of Hiroshima's industrial output would shock the Japanese government into surrendering.

[Josquius]

I'm not so sure.
In a way strategic bombing had a justification. Targeting wasn't particularly good and they wanted to knock out the enemy's industry. Plastering whole cities was the only way to be sure. Particularly with Japan.
But....it went beyond that and into pure terrorism. Killing civilians just for the sake of it in some belief that this would lower morale and hasten the end of the war. This in the modern world is just not appropriate. And besides, it's a waste of resources. It doesn't work. 
Since we have much better targeting these days even hitting a whole city in order to hit industry isn't necessary

I know that "the Allies committed terrorism" is a popular narrative, but do you have any actual historical evidence that this was true?  That there was a plan that involved "Killing civilians just for the sake of it?"

Churchill post Dresden:

'It seems to me that the moment has come when the question of bombing of German cities simply for the sake of increasing the terror, though under other pretexts, should be reviewed ... The destruction of Dresden remains a serious query against the conduct of Allied bombing.'

The 1942 Area bombing directive's aim:

"To focus attacks on the morale of the enemy civil population and in particular the industrial workers. In the case of Berlin harassing attacks to maintain fear of raids and to impose A. R. P. measures".

Bomber Harris in 1943:

"The aim of Bomber Command should be unambiguously and publicly stated. The aim is the destruction of German cities, the killing of German workers and the disruption of civilised community life throughout Germany. It should be emphasised that the destruction of houses, public utilities, transport and lives; the creation of a refugee problem on an unprecedented scale and the breakdown of morale at home and at the battlefronts 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...It should be made clear that the destruction of factory installations is only part and by no means the most important part of the plan. Acreages of housing devastation are infinitely more important."

[DGuller]

Okay, we've got a couple of good answers on what we weren't targeting.  Let's consider that part of the question exhausted.  Now, can we get some answers on what they were targeting?  Let's take Dresden for a specific example.

[Berkut]

We were targeting civilians. We used some rather transparent fig leaves to pretend like we were not, and as Harris states it's not like it was so simple as targeting one thing or another.

We were also trying to destroy their industrial capacity to wage war, and in large part we succeeded. Both Germany and Japan were eventually nearly crippled from shortages in all kind of material.

But it is a fiction, IMO, to pretend that area bombing was not also an attempt to just kill a lot of people, and those people, by and large, were civilians.

Total war sucks. I hope we never get into another one.

[Razgovory]

Is Grumbler going to talk about "De-housing" again?  That was so cute last time.

[DGuller]

Is Grumbler going to talk about "De-housing" again?  That was so cute last time.

It was a civilian dehousing and deanimation campaign. 

[Eddie Teach]

They weren't civilians, they were potential combatants.

[Zanza]

How the fuck could such incompetents win a war?

Their deliberate bombing campaign against Axis civilians was probably not a decisive part of their victorious war effort. They would have won regardless.

By the way, I visited Wismar today where the historic town center was bombed on 15th April 1945. It's clear that Germans brought this over themselves especially as we started the indiscriminate bombing of civilians, but it is still sad to see the destruction and imagine the pain inflicted from the bombing campaigns of WW2.

[alfred russel]

It pains me to say this but as of this morning I cancelled my accounts with all Missouri based businesses.

Jaron holds grudges.

He is a Rams fan. He wanted to boycott the Missouri businesses long ago, but was deterred by his affinity for the Rams.

[grumbler]

Okay, we've got a couple of good answers on what we weren't targeting.  Let's consider that part of the question exhausted.  Now, can we get some answers on what they were targeting?  Let's take Dresden for a specific example.

The rest of your post, the part where you were making your argument, got cut off.  It is hard to respond to an argument you did not post.