To the Editor: The Book Review's military history columnist, Thomas E. Ricks, was inexcusably negligent in reviewing Malcolm Gladwell's "The Bomber Mafia" (May 2) on the United States' World War II bombing campaigns without referencing the laws of war rooted in the "just war" principles. Since the late 1800s, the United States and European powers endorsed the just-war principle of distinguishing between combatants and civilians in war. And they supported as well the two complementary principles of "proportionality" and "military necessity" in using force. (All three principles are pillars of the Department of Defense's Law of War manual.) Yet these principles were flagrantly violated when the United States bombed every city in Japan and Germany. Ricks uncritically accepts Gladwell's assessment that "LeMay's savage firebombing campaign succeeded" and that "had the war gone on longer … millions of Japanese could have died of starvation." Couldn't the "ultimate problem solver" have found another path to victory without killing so many innocents?