> They are horrendous war crimes. The only reason they aren't called as such is we were the victors. Who says they aren't called it? LeMay, for one, recognized

> They are horrendous war crimes. The only reason they aren't called as such is we were the victors. Who says they aren't called it? LeMay, for one, recognized it. * https://iro.uiowa.edu/esploro/outputs/undergraduate/If-We-Had-Lost-The-War/9984109954602771 https://iro.uiowa.edu/esploro/outputs/undergraduate/If-We-Ha... There is a paradox called “logical insanity.” The novel Catch 22 deals with this irony: basically, the idea was that the war was killing thousands daily, so in order to end it as fast as possible, they planned to be as brutal as possible. But what were alternatives? Drop the bomb somewhere 'harmless': how would that convince the War Cabinet of anything? The point of all weapons is to harm to convince the enemy to stop and re-evaluate their costs. Blockade and starve the Japanese out? Possibly millions dead. Invasion? The Japanese leadership thought that up to 20M of their own people would perish trying to repel the US landings. And that's just the Japanese numbers: what about all the peoples that were still living under Japanese rule in Manchuria, Korea, etc? And what about the American lives, which were Truman et al's first responsibility?