If we look to the history of war....playing nice. never wins.
To succeed you have to deny the enemy the ability to fight and destroy his will to fight.
As time moves on we seem to want to see things through a different Prism than existed at the time and that is unkind to those having to make some very hard decisions.
When you consider the horrendous losses to Bomber crews of the RAF and US Army Air Corps during WWII....it was a very dangerous business for the aircrews.
I tip my hat to them all!
I had a close family friend who went to Canada and wound up flying Lancaster Bombers from Teeside doing Thirty Missions.
Sadly, he passed on a couple of years ago and was quite the positive influence on me over the years I knew him.