Even so, there is a general food shortage? Why is anyone obligated to keep tossing down the Arad Domon rathole? Food is not some sort of right, and feeding people, however admirable, is not an obligation. In fact, that is WHY it is admirable - because no one is obligated to do it, but they do anyway.

Hello. Did someone mention me? The only defense is that Truman was pretty clueless at that point and might not have completely understood what he was getting into.

It WAS the correct thing to do. There might have been better ways, but it is absurd to expect fallible human people to sit around looking for the 'perfect' method or tactic. Rand is morally in the clear by a long shot. The situation is not comparable to WW2 in the slightest.

As per the evidence they had for years. The only evidence of bombings intimidating anyone were the French & Low Countries, who panicked because of the pre-war hysteria over the havoc bombers would cause (in the inter-War years, the bombers were viewed in much the same way nuclear missiles were during the Cold War), and those were the politicians who were, admirably, from a humanitarian standpoint, concerned about their people being wiped out from the air. The idea that Churchill & Roosevelt & the men of Bomber Command and the Army Air Corps believed Hitler had the same humanitarian outlook is absurd.

Neither am I, but it is fairly obvious that they were full of it. Churchill floated plans to bomb the German countryside with anthrax, and as First Lord of the Admiralty in World War One, was responsible for the starvation blockage the British imposed on Germany (a far more grotesque violation of the letter & spirit of the naval laws of warfare at the time than unrestricted submarine warfare). Of course this is also a guy who, when the British official in charge of India complained that their policies were causing a famine there, replied by demanding to know why Gandhi was not dead yet.

No, it does not. The deaths in Tokyo & Hiroshima & Nagasaki WERE the point. The extra deaths besides Graendal were incidental, as Rand was targeting her. Even if there was a target of equivalent stature to Graendal in Japan, no one was aiming for it. They were not trying to take out the Emperor or the Prime Minister or the military commanders. They were just bombing to wreck stuff. And I don't care how many people would argue a position. Right & wrong are not matters of democracy. If everyone in the world believes an action justified and it is not, then everyone is wrong.