Torture versus drone strikes and atomic bombs

We are being asked to believe that for Democrats to launch drone attacks and special forces raids against terrorists on the sovereign territory of foreign nations, sometimes killing innocent bystanders in the process, is morally defensible, but for Republicans to torture a handful of the most extreme terrorists in order to obtain useful information in time of war is not.

In 1945, a Democratic President, Harry Truman, authorized the dropping of atomic bombs on the two Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. These bombs killed in excess of 200,000 people, many of them non-combatants. Mr Truman considered this action regrettable, but necessary to crush Japanese resistance and put an end to the war.

In 1945, American planes also firebombed Tokyo, killing in excess of 100,000 people, many of them non-combatants. American and British bombers also firebombed Dresden, killing at least 25,000 people. Here is an eyewitness account from a Dresden survivor:

We saw terrible things: cremated adults shrunk to the size of small children, pieces of arms and legs, dead people, whole families burnt to death, burning people ran to and fro, burnt coaches filled with civilian refugees, dead rescuers and soldiers, many were calling and looking for their children and families, and fire everywhere, everywhere fire, and all the time the hot wind of the firestorm threw people back into the burning houses they were trying to escape from. I cannot forget these terrible details. I can never forget them. — Lothar Metzger.

Again, these firebombings were undertaken to crush Japanese and Nazi resistance.

It is time for Americans to put off their sense of moral outrage and acknowledge that sometimes such actions as all those listed above are undertaken in time of total war, by realistic American Democrats and Republicans alike, to achieve victory and preserve the nation.