[UnderseaLcpl]

I wish the US would give as much concern to the Dresden fire-bombing as it does to Hiroshima and Nagasaki. In truth, I wish there was as much concern given to the entire allied bombing campaign. We talk about terror now as though it were some kind of recent and heartless invention by other people, but we and our allies bombed civilian areas for the sole purpose of sowing terror. Even when we didn't bomb civilian areas, we managed to hit them a great deal of the time, which is little better, and we threw thousands of bomber crewmen into the teeth of German interceptors with no support and without regard to strategy.

Militarily speaking, we have learned from those mistakes, though it took us a while and we reformed our approach for the sake of battlefield efficacy, not regret. However, there is very little mention of the allied bombing campaign and the horrors it inflicted upon civilians in the textbooks our children study, other than to portray it as a heroic success. The most valuable lessons are not being learned.