[yencabulator]

The difference is in targeting cities. Civilian targets. Let me remind you of the paragraph above:

> Beyond that, there are moral questions about the use of nuclear weapons. I know people who think it would have been more moral to force a Japanese surrender via many Japanese and American soldiers to die during an invasion of Japan, than for the US to kill civilians with nuclear weapons. [...]

[ericmay]

A civilian is just a soldier who hasn’t put on a uniform in this scenario, and a soldier is just a civilian who has put on a uniform. You’re making a meaningless distinction in this context. There isn’t some sort of magic status that changes here - the same Japanese civilians were working at shipyards and ordinance factories to build weapons to kill American soldiers - you think we shouldn’t bomb those factories because we would kill Japanese civilians building weapons to kill American soldiers and that’s ok because the Americans were wearing a costume and we call them “military personnel”?

Nuts!

[yencabulator]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geneva_Conventions

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hague_Conventions_of_1899_and_...

[ericmay]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_war_crimes?wprov=sfti...

[yencabulator]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_war_crimes#World...

[ericmay]

What does this have to do with Japanese war crimes and violations of the conventions you linked?

[yencabulator]

If I follow your logic, you believe that other countries should have nuked a couple of major US cities. I think that's.. not a great way to go.

[rstupek]

We killed almost as many civilians when we firebombed Tokyo. Is the use of the atomic bomb somehow different in your mind?

[yencabulator]

I can think of three things off the top of my head, the scale enabled by them, the timeline of the deaths, and the residual effects.