Dirty hands and moral extrication

Niccolo Machiavelli asserted in his Discurses that "one will find that it v ery rarely happens that someone good wishes to become prince by bad way, ev en though his end be good...". This article claims that this happens rather often in foreign affairs. We have seen NATO defending human rights by high level bombardment of civilian infrastructure. The end was good, the means less so. The article looks at one case from World War II that illustrates the comple xity of the subject, the strategic air campaign against German and Japanese cities. The war was in many ways a missionary or crusading war, a war to d efend important principles. The problem arose when the way of winning impli ed a threat to the very same principles and values. How is it possible to p romote democratic values by wanton killing of women and children by the hun dreds of thousands? By the same token, how is it possible to defend human r ights by punishing allegedly innocent people, which is an inseparable part of strategic bombing? The second part of the article looks at different types of moral extricatio n. After World War II many people found the strategic air campaign disgrace ful and would not be associated with it. But how could they restore the nor ms they had violated?