The A-Bombs

I know one of the plans, made as an alternate plan if the a-bomb development failed, called for paving over Okanawa, use it to firebomb most of japan while a major troop build up was commenced. The final invasion was estimated to be several million troops. Rumours at the time said that the japanese were arming everyone they could and telling them to do everything do defend the homeland. Estimates figures the final version would cost several hundred thousand american lives, and probably over a million japanese casualities. I know that this wasn't the main or only reason for dropping the bomb, but many figured it the atomic bombs would save lives, specifically american lives.

MrHambre, there were several detailed operation for teh invasion of Japan. The overal operation was called "Operation Downfall". It was to consist of two major amphibious invasions that would have dwarfed anything prior. The first invasion was to be codenamed "operation Olympic" which was to be an invasion of Kyushu, and the second was "Operation Coronet", which would have targeted Honshu. The two operations called for a combined invasion force of some 15 divisions, 40 aircraft carriers, 24 battleships, and over 300 destoyers and destoyer escourts. There was also a side operation, " Operation Pastel" , which was supposed to try and deceive teh japanese about where we would attack. The two figures for casualiteis were at polar ends of each other. One, which was used to support the invasion plan, only estimated around 125,000 causualities ( about a quarter of those deaths). Those in the military that supported dropping the bomb cited a estimate of over 1,000,000 causalites or more, for invasion, with japenese causlaties everal times that figure.
Do search on any of those operations, you should find plenty of resources. army.mil had a nice synopsis on Operation pastel, if you want to read it. http://www-cgsc.army.mil/...esources/csi/huber2/huber2.asp#v
An intersting note, the japanese had already heavily fortified both locations, and the resulting battles would probably have approached the higher of the two battle estimates.

If you look at the battle tactics of ww2, entire cities in both the european theatre and in the pacific were destroyed. With the introduction of carpet bombing and the accompanying fire storms, the civilian casualties were enormous. The bombing of tokyo by conventional means caused enormous destruction nearly the equal of an atomic weapon. As for your whitewashing of history , you may want to look into some of the documentaries of Japan's development and use of biological weaponry against teh chinese. Specifically, they used infected mosiqutos to spread malaria across large areas of china in order to weaken and kill as much of the populace as possible. As for your personal opinion of what constitutes terrorism, I think you have a very skewed picture, especially in this context. If you think that all war equal bloodshed and terror, which it does, you would have a point. However, your statement seems to indicate a specific and biased viewpoint which seems more intent on making a poor political statement than dealing with the historical facts.

Terrorism is one of thost pop phrases that have been used so often it has lot alot of impact, other than to denigrate an action with a label. Originally, it was used to apply to certain acts of violence which were desgined to draw media attention to a particular cause or group. Since then, its defenitions have broadened to include any form of violence for which people don't agree with. I am not saying that horrible actions dont occur regularly, and that they may inspire terror, but I think the use of the term terrorism is a worn out. Its definitions are so broad that it could be applied to any form of violence. I would define terrorism as a label people use to simplify and ostrize various forms of violence.As for your original statement First, you imply that the use of nuclear weapons was based only on the attack of Pearl Harbor, and glossed over the several years of continual combat between the two nations. A gross oversimplification. Secondly, I would argue that WW2, as a whole, constitued the most bloody, least ethical (if you can find any ehtical war), and most destructive event in human history. I am not arguing the point of the ethical use of the atomic weapon any more than I would argue the ethical use of any means of mass murder. War inherentaly is about the destruction of life and property, and has always claimed far more innocent lives than than the lives of soldiers. In context, your opinion that the atomic bombs represented some special unique horror is absurd. The means of death may have been novel, but the results and scale were no worse than many of the atrocities of ww2 by all sides.
As for "deserving" to be bombed, in war, the goal of both sides is to subjegate the enemy by any an all means. It has nothing to do with one or another nation "deserving" to be attacked. Heck, there are many people in the world who thing the US desrved to be attacked like we were in 9/11. Agreement or disagreement with that sentiment doesn't change the end result of what happened. I guess I simply disagree with your particular view that the use of the bomb was a special atrocity any more than the firebombing of dresden, or the german v2 attacks on britain, etc. I hold that all war is based on atrocity.In regards to the use of the atomic weapons, their use was tragic, but as I stated previously, hardly unique other than the novelty of their method of destruction. While I might agree with your personal view in this regards, our personal opinions hardly change the circumstance of previous wars. There are great many things I find atrocious in history, outside of war, which were deemed acceptable at the time. The best we can do is understand the context of that time, learn from the mistakes made, and try to not repeat the same mistakes in the future.

Perhaps I had some misconceptions about your statement. Rereading your post, I find it mostly stems from your definition of terrorism, and the following statement based on it. However, I see the following statment was just you extending the definition you gave to that particular event. My point is that the term is so vague that it can be applied to nearly any form of violence with which we find objectable and has little real meaning.As far as I know, there is no official army definition of terrorism, at least I never heard one while serving in the army. Meriam-Webster's dictionary mearly defines it as the systematic use of terror especially as a means of coersion. Again, the use of the term is so vague that it has little meaning beyond used as a label of personal judgment. Sorry about all the fuss over semantics.