ever miss the days when a country could carpet-bomb another country and face little to no opprobrium from its citizenry? dresden. hiroshima. nagasaki. so much death and destruction, so little unrest at home for the western allies. ah, those were the days.
only nobody misses those days. the lack of opprobrium in the west wasn’t an endorsement; it was a sign of the times. back then, information couldn’t ping around with the click of a button. very few people could even produce information. death and destruction on a global scale could happen behind mostly closed doors.
there was blowback, particularly after the unleashing of nuclear-powered destruction. there’s a reason we haven’t seen another use of the nuclear bomb beyond its debut in august 1945: the world decided it was a genie that should never again be loosed from its bottle. in the moment, though, the governments of the west had a free hand as they tried to rid the world of evil.
unfortunately, the world has never been, and will never be, free from evil. or carpet-bombing. and it’s certainly not free of criticism. israel, for one, is receiving plenty of opprobrium for its brutal campaign in gaza following the murder of 1,200+ citizens by the genocidal hamas.