I had you down as being quite sensible but this is where we part company.
“when your country suffered through the London Blitz”
One of those Americans who confuse London with the UK.
“attempting to crush morale and prompt a quicker surrender isn’t a bad tactic.”
Intelligence reports and statistical analysis showed that bombing civilians was never going to cause a German surrender. In fact it was a terrible tactic because it strengthened German resistance.
"Oh, and one can argue that Dresden was a legit target "
It was known at the time (and this was US policy btw) that bombing of fuel stores and rail junctions was far more effective. The RAF statistical department showed that, £ for £, precision bombing of strategic targets by Mosquitos was 5.8 times as effective as carpet bombing by Lancasters.
“Nagasaki happened because the Japanese didn’t surrender fast enough.”
Three days afterwards? Pull the other one. There are plenty of sources that show that the Hiroshima bomb was dropped first because it was guaranteed to explode; once it had exploded the implosion bomb could be dropped because, if it failed, the Japanese did not know that there were no more bombs. There is a lot of evidence that there was no plan to avoid a second bomb. The US military wanted to know the relative effectiveness of the two technologies.
I don’t know how old you are, but my parents and their friends went through the War; my mother was based in London, my father was in the Navy, first wave on D-day and primed to attack Japan. Growing up, we actually had primary sources to talk to. We had a teacher who had flown Lancasters and another who had flown Mosquitos1; one who had been one of the first Allied airmen in Dresden after the attack. Your view is gung-ho, simplistic and, I can say with absolute confidence, not shared by a good number of people who were in a position to know.
As for Assad, he is rather more legitimate than the rulers of Saudi Arabia and most of the other Arab states. He is less legitimate than the President of Iran but rather more legitimate than the Supreme Ayatollah. And unlike any of them, he was trying to run a secular state. The main reasons for the civil war have been drought - always a major cause of war in the ME - and destabilisation caused by Sunni expansionism in the wake of the destruction of Iraq, which was caused by the US and the UK.
But, as I say, your views on the ME (and WW2) are gung-ho and simplistic. You just want to pursue a “US is always right” mantra.
Have you perhaps noticed that we didn’t have a “Muslim problem” until the US decided to fight a proxy war with the Soviet Union in Afghanistan, since when events have gradually spiralled? That was over the Soviet Union trying to turn Afghanistan into a secular state, and the US funding Islamic fundamentalists. But I expect you’ll have a story for that one too.
1Both ended the war as senior officers; I’m not writing about ORs.
