This thread is awesome.
Sure the atom bombs saved lives, and of course there was a thin line between civilians and bleigerents, but who gave America the right to decide who's who? How many American civilians died in WW2? I'd say its pretty cruel to level every major city in two countries while your own population sleeps soundly. Oh yeah, I forgot "they started it". As I understand it, American and Japanese diplomacy had deteriorated to a such a point that by late Nov. 1941 they were all but in a state of war. Why does Japan get all the blame? The fact is there were two rival powers in competition for control of the Pacific Ocean. One was confined to an archipelego with little natural resources, while the other controled a whole continent with a large hinterland that it obtained mostly through conquest and ethnic cleansing in the previous century. Japan gambled and lost- America bombed it to smithereens in order to "end the war quicker" and "save lives", and also to maintain its status quo of dominating the Pacific. Too bad for Japan-it should've started its expansion a century earlier, when that kind of thing was allowed.
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