Did you miss "in war against non-combatants"? Hiroshima and Nagasaki were exactly that. Even Tokyo was considered.
PS, Pearl Harbour was against military targets, and peacetime is arguable considering the embargoes, etc. Still not "high ground" by any means, but hardly unprecedented. The US already had a fleet there precisely in case it was needed against the Japanese empire.
From the US Civil War to the atomic age, there was no such thing as a non-combatant. Industrialization meant that a modern society could indefinitely sustain mobilization and fight until economic collapse.
World War 1 was where his really came to roost. The machine gun and artillery turned the western front into an industrial scale killing machine that only ended when the German economy ground to a halt. Technology improvements in WW2 enabled destruction at a scale never witnessed in history and incomparable on a relative scale to nothing except Caesar’s Gallic campaign.
The way to win was about metrics — building more arms and killing as many people as possible. Japan was no different than cavalrymen in WW1, who believed that elan and decisive victory in the field would carry the day. Sociopaths like Curtis Lemay figured that out.
My point is, that this "everything's fair in love and war" attitude is without moral basis. It's not magically OK to be evil just because you are at war, and using wartime tactics when you are not officially at war is not worse than doing them during a war.
It’s not terrorism if a government does it openly. It was a breach of international law but to call an attack by one nation’s military on another’s terrorism is well outside any non propagandistic usage.
So you are saying that governments can not be terrorists (as long as they are open about it)?
Funny definition is that.
So, how do you call acts of agression performed by governments against non combatants?
Since the only reason not to call them terrorism is to paint (your?) government actions with a nicer brush, I assume you call those acts "liberation events"
> So, how do you call acts of agression performed by governments against non combatants?
War crimes.
The reason not to call it terrorism is because that is not what the word means. If a sovereign nation formally declares war to another, any action covered by international convention is classified seperately from "civil" or militant violence.
PS, Pearl Harbour was against military targets, and peacetime is arguable considering the embargoes, etc. Still not "high ground" by any means, but hardly unprecedented. The US already had a fleet there precisely in case it was needed against the Japanese empire.