After WWII, the US air force investigated itself and determined that the deliberate targeting of civilian housing areas was not a war crime because they contributed to the war effort by being located in Germany and having some war relevant industry or infrastructure in the same city. Independent of this justification, the actual reasoning for the strikes was to deplete enemy morale by killing civilians or at least depriving them of housing.
This has become the founding myth of the US air force, and despite the total lack of success in WWII they have continued to pursue this strategy of depleting morale by bombing civilians in every strategic bombing campaign since. AFAIK no US airman has ever been convicted of war crimes related to bombing.
Trumps tweets don’t even explicitly say that the purpose of bombing the infrastructure is to hurt civilians (only the “crazy bastards” in charge of the strait, presumably the government of Iran). That puts them ahead of most past US bombing campaigns.
After WWII, the US air force investigated itself and determined that the deliberate targeting of civilian housing areas was not a war crime because they contributed to the war effort by being located in Germany and having some war relevant industry or infrastructure in the same city. Independent of this justification, the actual reasoning for the strikes was to deplete enemy morale by killing civilians or at least depriving them of housing.
This has become the founding myth of the US air force, and despite the total lack of success in WWII they have continued to pursue this strategy of depleting morale by bombing civilians in every strategic bombing campaign since. AFAIK no US airman has ever been convicted of war crimes related to bombing.
Trumps tweets don’t even explicitly say that the purpose of bombing the infrastructure is to hurt civilians (only the “crazy bastards” in charge of the strait, presumably the government of Iran). That puts them ahead of most past US bombing campaigns.