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The debate about the morality of dropping the bombs, for me, doesn't really have anything to do with the number of people killed. It has to do with the nature of the people killed.
Total war is, in my opinion, immoral. Which means that killing 40,000 foreign civilians to prevent the deaths of 100,000 American soldiers is unacceptable. Using the a bombs was not immoral, the targets were. But killing 1 million Japanese soldiers to prevent the death of 100,000 American soldiers would be palatable.
This is not, of course, to say that the Japanese were any more "clean" in their treatment and respect of noncombattants. But two wrongs, so they say, don't make a right.
But that is an easy position to take when I'm not the one sending those 100,000 American soldiers into battle.
And even if the act were right, I don't know that being able to sleep soundly after killing that many people is necessarily a good thing. Being able to live with it is fine but to not be bothered by it?
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