I'll go further. I think Archbishop Welby's expressions of regret are completely wrong and unhelpful.
We now live in an age where any apology or regret is commonly taken as a confession of wrongdoing and an admission of culpability. That might not be the Archbishop's intention but that is how internet users will quote him in years to come. I have already seen internet posts which state that WWII only started when Great Britain and France declared war on what was presumably suggested to be an inoffensive Germany on September 3rd 1939. Technically that is correct, but it is far from the real truth of the time as my books of David Lowe cartoons from 1937, '38 and '39 attest!
Sadly, revisionism is all the rage and all too often, no opinion, philosophy or fact other than this year's latest fashionable one is deemed to be correct. A product of our defective education system, which teaches children what to think rather than how to think, is that cognitive dissonance kicks in early and people seem to be finding it more and more difficult to appreciate or even understand an alternative, not currently conventional point of view.
It means we have lots of fun when cognitive dissonance is appropriate and it turns out that, for example, saturated fats were alright all along but carbohydrates weren't. Or vice versa. Or, as those ill educated, racist, homophobic and Imperial Victorians knew all along, when it comes to diet, "a little of what you fancy does you good!"
Back on topic, I'm afraid I have lost a lot of respect for ghoti who is undoubtedly very intelligent but not necessarily very wise when she said -
I've no respect for young men who knowingly attacked innocent civilians. German or British. And if they "gave their lives" in the act: good.
It's not a personal attack
@ghoti, but as well as the Spike Milligan joke I quoted above, essentially about shooting at every single German on sight; about kill or be killed, you might want to consider Dad's Army. I view that show with a certain poignancy because I was taught how in 1940, when Nazi Germany had overrun the rest of Western Europe and Soviet Russia was happily maintaining a non-aggression pact, those silly old men reported for duty with bread knives tied to broomhandles to defend their country against the Panzer tanks and Stormtroopers of the expected invasion. They were willing to die in their hundreds of thousands and millions and, although they knew they were fighting against a totalitarian regime, and foreign evil they were not fighting to protect multiculturalism nor fighting as part of a "European civil war". They were fighting for their King and their British Empire and for a set of beliefs, many of which would seem laughable today. And they were fighting against the Bosche and the Hun and the Krauts!
I still think we should acknowledge what they were and what they did and accept their beliefs with due respect and the same for the young men who flew nasty missions in Bomber Command.