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So now we're left with a situation that's hard to justify when viewed with modern ROE.
I do not think it is at all hard to justify, and IMO modern ROE will be found to only matter in these petty ante little skirmishes in third world nations.
All of the combatants in WW2 tried out Douhet's theory that a nation could be brought to surrender not only by economic attack but by the onset of massive civilian casualties. Germany (as usual... they pulled the same shit in World War 1) initiated terror bombing in the raids on Coventry, and kept at it into March 1945 by the continued deployment of V1s and V2s despite the fact that said weapons had zero military application... typically missing their nominal "military targets" by 20 km.
At the time of the Dresden Raid, Nazi Germany was still fighting. The Dresden Raid was comprised of two parts. British firebombing at night, and American "precision" bombing using conventional HE by day. The British component was supposed to inflict such terror and demoralization as to cause the Germans (who were still fighting) to rethink their position on the futility of continuing the fight to no legitimate military purpose. So you could say that the Germans were engaged in a sustained "immoral" (in the modern sense of killing with no military purpose) warfare both on the ground (in combat), in occupied areas (civilian exterminations) and by air (fire bombing and V weapons) from 1939 through early May 1945.
The British raid was therefore justified as a kind of hail mary pass to stop the Germans from continuing their immoral war. Now, it did not work but it MIGHT have. It worked when the US dropped two nuclear bombs on Japan, forcing Japanese leaders to not only confront but admit the hopelessness of continuing their fight, immorally (in the looking back sense) long after any legitimate military purpose had ceased to exist.
The second reason was retribution. Germans in warfare made killing civilians a "without which nothing" casual and indeed celebrated facet of military practice starting in 1914. Many (but probably not Sneero or Wiffle) have heard of the "rape of Belgium" ... atrocities that the Germans celebrated as a way of intimidating other powers. Germany was not held accountable for their practices in WW1 having never been actually occupied and having their civilians lined up against walls and shot, nor in WW2 never having had their prisoners herded into camps and gassed as they did to others. The Germans NEEDED to learn a lesson that shit that goes around comes around. Indeed, RETALIATION is a MORAL GOOD when it is properly directed against the initial perpetrators of horror.
Does the world stand by such morality now, today? Only when the USA is engaged. China murders civilians wholesale. Gunning down Vietnamese protestors knee deep in water on a Vietnamese coral reef is nothing to China. Have we heard a peep from modern "moral warfare" advocates, or from our local Finnish nazi fanbois (Wiffle and Sneero)? Of course not. When francophone Hutu attempted to kill all the anglophone Tutsi, with French support, did the "moral warfare" types step up and be heard? Not so much.
If a major war were to occur again, I doubt that any European or Asian major power will hesitate to slaughter enemy civilians wholesale. The whole "rules of engagement" thing will become an academic conversation, rather than a military one.