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The deliberate bombing of civilians can never be justified

After the birth of the airplane, military theorists believed that the strategic bombing of urban centres could be used to effectively lower civilian morale, end conflicts quickly and avoid the stalemate and slaughter that had caused such devastation in the trenches of World War I.

But after the Second World War, and the comparative horrors of the Blitz, Dresden, Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the ethics of such indiscriminate killing was reassessed. A leading British philosopher has even argued that there is very little difference between the Allied bombing of German and Japanese cities and the destruction of the Twin Towers on 11 September 2001. Are these comparable crimes?