The fantasy of using civilians as a means to say this is a war crime is out the window. In order to stop one country from killing your population, most often the revers effect is the same. neither of which are justified. in order to stop the third Reich the majority of Germany was destroyed along with the mass civilian death. Attacking promptly and aggressively carries civilian death in most cases (U.S. attacking japan). This is a cycle that happens in humanity every so often, one can say we tend to take life for granted over-time. Then some big event or catastrophe happens and a group of nations put some international body in place to reduce big wars and conflicts, this usually hinders large scale conflicts for about 50-80 years until that generation forgets and or history is no longer connected to them some way and the same thing repeats again. Remember that The U.S. and some of the European nations carried the actions, in which there-after developed international body's to protect them from a similar attack like nuclear or mass genocide. The one's affected are the ones that repeat the cycle, if they were the victim last time in the cycle then they will be the perpetrator this tine around.