Except it would have in no way been pointless to kill Voldemort at the ministry. Denied a body he would have been forced to go through another labor and time intensive ritual to get his body back. It would have shaken moral among the death eaters even if the proof of resurrection would prevent it shattering. It would have set back many plans of Voldemort's. It would have bolstered faith in the resistance. It would have bought time for the defenders and been a rallying cry to prove he can be fought so long as it was spun properly. Even if that wasn't the case putting down Belatrix would have been a positive opening move he neglected to act on.
Couple of things here. I'm not even sure Voldemort
could be killed traditionally. People seem to assume that his man snake body was somehow susceptible to a killing curse or falling and snapping his neck. It was magically crafted and he was anchored to mortality by a ton of phylacteries. Voldemort fights Dumbledore for a while, appears to be losing, attempts to possess Harry, and peaces out. Not sure what more was expected from Dumbledore here.
Also, Dumbledore never had a chance to kill Bellatrix. She was involved in other portions of the fight and he was pre occupied with not letting Tom run wild killing his allies.
Further you forget that Dumbledore due to his many government roles inherits a good deal of the blame and resentment for all the many guilty that got off with the imperious curse defense. We don' know how much power he had at the time to influence these matters but the idea is entrenched in the fandom.
For whatever reason the Death Eaters were on the verge of winning. This is just head canon on my part but I suspect there was an unspoken truce about not pursuing people like Malfoy(people who couldn't be proven to have committed crimes) too hard because it would re ignite hostilities that Dumbledore's
very overwhelmed side would not win. We saw how easily things tumbled when he died.
Dumbledore allowed Draco to endanger every student who's safety he is responsible for in favor of an attempt to flip one teenager that's been indoctrinated since birth and who's parents were held hostage. This was foolhardy in the extreme.
This is somewhat valid criticism. Do remember though that the vanishing cabinet was unknown to both Snape and Dumbledore. Their knowledge of the assassination attempts was severely limited by Draco being both incompetent and unwilling to ask for help. I'd like to think there was some greater plan here but Half Blood Prince was the book where everyone was a freaking moron for plot reasons.
He defended Snape constantly in spite of the mans Undeniable guilt and abusive teaching practices. All because Snape had one attack of guilt which set him against Voldemort. Truthfully we don't know if Snape's defection did any good in the first war, and besides a needlessly complex plan in the second *shrugs* we don't know. We don't get to see enough too know.
As to the orders willingness to kill that's a great case of say don't show. I'm pretty sure every death eater survived the ministry fight. I'm still only half way through book six but… well it doesn't show a lot of follow through.
But to summarize the point, Dumbledores actions, the actions of his order and the government which be serves at the highest level speak so loudly that they drown out a lot of subtler intent from what he does and does not say.
I'm not saying that it's entirely fair but that's how opinions and emotions work.
More than agree with you here. Snape's redemption was a whole lot of "tell don't show". I will point out that he was a horrible person but not the worst teacher we see in the books (damning by faint praise I'm aware).
But I do believe we have to take what the Order says about killing at face value. Else we're stuck with Death Eaters who
also rarely kill anyone. The way Rowling wrote the books it was a pretty low body count war until the final battle.
