[user104658]

Originally Posted by Livia

Once again... let's see your list of Allied war crimes against the Japanese record. Your view that the dropping of the bomb was an act of terrorismis a fresh and slightly skewed one . Do you think that the bombing of Pearl Harbour was an act of terrorism? Just because someone hits a bully with a stick bigger than the one that the bully has, doesn't make them a bully too.

Most of the British soldiers that died at the hands of the Japanese - tortured to death (think about that for a minute...) starved to death, beaten to death... their stories have passed and now we can truly view the Japanese as the victims. And that's what's happening. Had the Japanese had nuclear weapons they would have used them. We all know that whether we deny it or not. The people who made the decision to drop the bomb used their best judgement at the time after six years of world war. Now people who've never been involved in a conflict are judging them to be cowards.

Do I think the Americans would make the same decision now? Not at all. To quote L. P. Hartley in The Go-Between: The past is a foreign country, they do things differently there.

I don't have a "list" but the notion that not one Allied sodier was guilty of war crimes in WW2 is frankly absurd. I haven't once passed comment on the scale; I am well aware that the brutality of and crimes committed by both the Japanese and German forces in WW2 far outweigh anything from "our side", including dropping the bombs, but I don't really find the scale to be relevant when giving a flat description of what happened. I guess in much the same was that mass-murder doesn't mean shoplifting "isn't a crime", even though you can hardly compare the two?

As for the description of terrorism - I know that it's not even within the bounds of what constitutes terrorism in law... however, it was; "a use of force against a civilian population with the sole purpose of creating fear in order to achieve an idea (stopping the war)". It certainly, at least, has a lot in common with terrorism. Whether or not it was a JUSTIFIED use of terror is another discussion entirely.