Could we have won WWII without bombing civilian targets?

I am cheating this morning by responding to the long, thoughtful response to yesterday's blog penned by my cousin Chris.

Yesterday I wrote about the US Senate Intelligence Committee’s report on CIA interrogation techniques in the aftermath of WII. This garnered a long, thoughtful post which I respond to here. Thank you Chris. You raise many good points. 

Chris wrote:

You wrote, “The human animal is imperfect. Sometimes, in pursuit of an honourable goal, we make bad decisions.” I agree with you but if that is true for the men and woman in the CIA, isn’t it equally true for the men and woman that wrote this report? The men and woman that wrote this report live and work in one of the most political cities on earth. Is there any chance these people did what you argue the CIA did and wrongfully accused an intuition and its employees? Is there any chance people that wrote this report didn’t like the CIA or the techniques it uses to stop terrorism before they wrote the report?

Yes, the authors of the reports are fallible. On a balance on probability, though, they are more likely correct because of their context. The CIA operatives were motivated to save American lives and to do it now. Very powerful. The authors were motivated to review American procedures and to improve. They had lots of time.

Perhaps more importantly, the current Director of the CIA John Brennan more or less agrees with the report. Brennan conceded unauthorized and in some cases abhorrent methods were used against captives. He does assert that the CIA "did a lot of things right" in a time when there were "no easy answers."

More interesting, to me, is to examine my own bias. We all have them. We come equipped with a life’s experience that predisposes us to see things in a particular way. We all tend to fit new data into the narrative that we have been building. And, we all tend to hang onto beliefs past their due date because they are particularly dear to us. 

I am a skeptic. That’s my bias. I am more skeptical about claims made by global warming deniers, religious groups, pseudo-science medical practitioners, and psychics than I am about claims made by scientists, atheists, doctors, and physicists. The latter tend to better fit my narrative and, having dismissed the former, I tend to ignore their claims out of hand. Your point is a very good reminder to at least consider what it being said and who is saying it before dismissing it. 

As noted, though, Brennan more or less agrees with the content of the report. He has quibbles (particularly around whether or not any useful intelligence was gathered) but he more or less agrees with the content.

When I read what you wrote I thought of the WW2. Do you think WW2 could have been won if Allied militaries were held to the standards we hold the young men and woman willing to pay any price to protect us today? What would the Senate subcommittee on blank have to say about Canadian, British and American bomber commands hitting so many civilian homes in Germany? How long would it have been, before the subcommittee’s reconditions would have made it next to impossible to drop a bomb in Germany? Would that have been a good thing for anyone other than Germany?

War is by nature “doing something wrong in the pursuit of right reason”. The American military pays a higher price than any other nation in the world to insure the right guys are the ones facing the “wrong thing”. You see that in design and manufacturing of the most sophisticated military equipment humanity has ever seen. It isn’t an accident America invent weapons like laser guided bombs.

WWII would have been won without bombing civilian targets. I think that’s clear. Had Bomber Command held to today’s standard – military targets only with minimum civilian casualties – then, yes, there would be no historical objection to decisions that were made between 1939 and 1945. There would have been more civilian casualties than there are with today’s weapons but that is because of the weapons, not because of the policy.

As with the CIA, context matters. The events of the day in WWII explain why civilians were targeted – this does not excuse that choice or make it the right choice. And, looking back is healthy because we can see things that were done wrong and try to be better. It may be the folly of WWII civilian bombing that, today, has the Israeli military work as hard as they do to avoid civilian casualties. 

We tend to have a cultural bias around WWII. I know I do. I have read and read about the western allies but know relatively little about Russian contribution. Probably, though, Germany would have been defeated by Russia alone. Total Tiger tanks produced by Germany: 1368. Total T-34 and T-34-85s produced by Russia: 57,339. Stalin was grateful for our help but he didn’t need it. D-Day and the western allies and the second front were not a requirement.  The western front hastened the end of the war, of course. This does not in any way impugn or diminish the sacrifice of allied soldiers. 

Your use of wrongful convictions isn’t a strong argument, because wrongful convictions in North America are so rare in high profile cases or otherwise. I agree 100% they happen but they are from the norm, I believe the most Liberal of groups peg that 5% of US convicts are wrongfully convicted the means 95% are good. That by the way does not mean the people convicted are innocent of the crime. The American criminal justice system is so good, that unlike other countries, law enforcement from other countries worldwide seeks the help in solving crimes from organizations like the FBI.
War cannot be conducted in a way that doesn’t make normal citizens squeamish, that says more about our society and culture than our militaries.

This is one of the core disagreements that people often have. One side is really invested in making sure that guilty people are caught and imprisoned – even if a few innocent people are picked up along the way. The other side is really invested in making sure that innocent people are never found guilty – even if a few guilty people are acquitted along the way. I am firmly in the latter camp. I have been working on a blog post on precisely this topic. I will have it done next week.

If 5% of people are wrongly convicted that number is atrocious, to me. This does not mean that it’s not the best justice system in the world. But, it means that it’s not as good as it should be. The other interesting question would be to look at who is represented in that 5%? Without having the data in front of me I am willing to bet that racial minorities and the poor will be disproportionally represented in that number which indicates a bias in the system.