No, I was talking about the widespread killing of civilians. As regards fighting back against an aggressor, I do think that that is certainly a moral action. By "lose," I didn't mean simply take no hostile action, but rather lack the demoralizing force that the firebombings and nuclear bombings carried, without which we might have lost, or at least have had an immensely more painful victory over Japan.
I was talking in a more general sense.
Sometimes, it isn't a false dichotomy; sometimes, you really only have a few choices. And yes, you're right, "more painful victory" or "we might have lost" is perfectly correct.
Should we have specifically targeted civilian targets? I don't know. I have to figure that there was a reason. It's hard for me to accept that we didn't do a cost-benefit analysis before we did.
Well, it was self defense against military targets in Japan, of which there were some, but even what passed for precision bombing at the time wasn't used. Just blanket incendiaries dropped at a low altitude over known residential districts. It did constitute, I think, the intentional mass killing of Japanese civilians.
Yes, I agree with you. The question was, was it
necessary to attack the civilians? Personally, I do not know. I think that there had to have been a reason, at the least; you're making me question that, though, which is good. I'm willing to be proven wrong.
-Full disclosure-The US did drop leaflets warning the soon-to-be firebombed cities.
To me, this indicates that we were less concerned with targeting innocent civilians, though. Why else give them a warning?
Destroying their property and industrial strength though... that's a different issue. And still questionable, but not as much as taking their lives.
The second part is probably true, but still: If we had the atom bomb at the beginning of WWII and attempted to force Japan's surrender by the same method early on, I think the destructive power of the nuclear bomb might have been effective. (note: Hiroshima and Nagasaki actually killed fewer people than the firebombings, even including those that died later from burns or other side effects.)
You're still working with hindsight, though.
The two atom bombs did all of their damage in two strikes (one for each), while the firebombings took place over a period of time. And I don't think we had any real reason to assume that the casualties may very well have been higher; I think that if we did act, we would have acted upon limited information.
The problem is, we probably would not have been aware of the sheer intimidation potential of the nuclear bomb. Maybe we might have used more in a mass attack, thus raising the toll to more like millions, maybe we would have used a few in all the axis countries very early in the war, effectively saving millions of lives. It was an essentially pointless hypothetical, anyway.
Which is part of my point: What you are stating is relying on hindsight. Before actually using the bombs, you had
every reason to assume that things may happen differently.
.
.