>>>The situation could have been just as cleanly settled as all the conflicts the US has been involved in since WWII (you know, Korea, Vietnam, Afghanistan, Iraq, etc) where we did not finish the job because we wanted to play nice.
>>>
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>>Well eh no...A bombs are not so nice when you're on the receiving end.
>
>Neither was the attack on Pearl Harbor.

Not at all. You are ignoring the crucial distinction, though, between targeting a military base and targeting civilians. Please don't misunderstand that as a defense of the attack on Pearl Harbor, because there is none. We had done nothing to provoke it. We were not even in the war apart from providing some supplies for the countries who became our Allies. Still, there is a fundamental difference.

I saw what you wrote yesterday about the annihilation of Hiroshima and Nagasaki possibly sparing the lives of your grandparents and your wife's. That is a valid viewpoint. I get it, I really do. And I'm not getting all preachy here because I know it's a murky moral question. Let's just say I am disquieted that we intentionally attacked civilians. That has been a no-no in war for a long time, even before the Geneva Conventions. The only other violation on such a scale was 9/11, and that was by a terrorist organization, not a country.