Cause clearly Japan wouldn't keep fighting unless we brought a rain of ruin from the air down on their asses, no sir. They would just surrender the moment we stepped foot on a Pacific island, yes sir. Face it, if we hadn't pushed the button, the war would have been even more hellish than it was already.
Quit bitching about it. What's next, the apologists come out of the wood work for Nanking's anniversary? How about the death marches of Sandakan and Bataan? Or how about the sheer amount of Japanese casualties because of the doctrine of glorious death? Saipan? Okinawa?
I think the point is that while it was probably necessary to end the war, it was still one of the most horrendous things ever done. Did it save more lives by forcing Japan to surrender, probably, but it has a more lasting legacy than just ending the war.
America has both the largest nuclear arsenal in the world, but is also the only nation to have actually used nuclear weapons on a civilian population. It tends to make the way the USA gets their panties in a knot whenever another nation becomes nuclear capable seem a bit hypocritical. This is even more obvious when things like 9/11 are portrayed as the most horrible terrorist attack the world has ever seen, it still pales in comparison to what America did to those cities. It is understandable why the use of nuclear weapons can be seen as terrorist actions, it effectively terrorized Japan into surrender.
Was it the right thing to do with regards to the bigger picture of the war? Probably. However, it most definitely is not something to be proud of. The title of being the only nation to have used nuclear weapons on another is possibly the blackest mark on American history.
