The rules are changing, we are going to start showing the assholes the door

Never understood the taboo of civilian casualties in war.

I think the historical facts clearly show otherwise. Check out the spot chosen to drop the A-Bomb in Nagasaki, for example. Sure, Truman got on the radio and said we had bombed a japanese naval base. But that's not where the bomb was aimed. It was aimed at a bridge in the center of the civilian population.

Call it terrorism, if you want. If it saved a million american lives at the expense of a couple hundred thousand japs, I'm cool with that.

oraloy' fake history posture

The evidence is that the US nuked Japanese civilians and soldiers indiscriminately as a way to forces Japan to surrender,

and that it wasn't by far the highest point of the war.

Gime another of your "absolute truths", just for the fun of it.

History is not a person. She's usually not that talkative either. These things are inherently debatable, murky and subjective.

But I think anyone not naively buying US war propaganda would agree that the goal was to kill as many civilians as possible.

Such was already an important goal of the fire bombing of various Japanese cities (Tokyo, Yokohama, Nagoya, etc) immediately prior to Hiroshima and Nagazaki.

WWII Hiroshima and today's Norfolk both hold important military headquarters.

Terrorists target civilians. The A-bombs targeted vital military headquarters, major weapons factories, and tens of thousands of soldiers.

In 1948, Truman told a group of advisors and generals that the atomic bomb was not a regular weapon of war, because, “it is used to wipe out women and children and unarmed people, and not for military uses.” (Diary entry of 21 July 1948, in David E. Lilienthal, Journals of David E. Lilienthal, Volume II: The atomic energy years, 1945-1950 (New York: Harper & Row, 1964), 390-391.)

In the spring of 1945, the military convened a target committee, a mix of officers and scientists, to decide where the bomb should fall. Alex Wellerstein, a historian at the Stevens Institute of Technology, devoted his career to studying nuclear weapons and the decision to use them.

He notes that the Target Committee Meeting at Los Alamos in May 1945, it was recommended that “pure military” targets not be considered: “It was agreed that for the initial use of the weapon any small and strictly military objective should be located in a much larger area subject to blast damage” — that is, a city, an urban area — ...

The initial list included a remote military installation and Tokyo Bay, but the target committee decided those options wouldn't show the world the power of the new bomb. "They want people to understand that this is something different, and so picking a place that will showcase how different it is, is very important," Wellerstein says.

The committee settled on two "psychological" objectives of the first atomic bombing: to scare the Japanese into unconditional surrender and to impress upon the world the power of the new weapon.

The target committee decided the A-bomb had to kill. At the time, American bombers were already firebombing many cities, killing tens of thousands.

So, they decided this bomb would not just kill — it would do something biblical: One bomb, from one plane, would wipe a city off the map. It would be horrible. But they wanted it to be horrible, to end the war and to try to stop the future use of nuclear bombs.

Did they "aim at' (target) any "important military headquarters?" The answer, as you seem to know, is "no, they did not." That was not the target.

Truman genuinely wanted to minimize civilian casualties, but the military had other ideas.

Simply put, you stated that Hiroshima and Nagazaki were nuked "at the highest of ww2", and I proved that this was not true. The points in WW2 that could be conceived as "highest" in terms of battle deaths are the battle of Stalingrad and D day. That's all there is to say re. the timing of those bombings.

On the intent (whether the A bombs and prior firebombing campaigns were meant ti kill civilians or not) you opted to believe the US official version, and I chose not to believe it. In my mind, nobody burns entire cities just for shutting down a few factories.

Before World War II, most nations condemned targeting civilians in bombing raids. As that war went on, the nations participating in the war expanded their bombing targets from military to industrial ones, then to workers' houses, and finally to entire cities and their civilian populations.

layman wrote:

Did they "aim at' (target) any "important military headquarters?" The answer, as you seem to know, is "no, they did not." That was not the target.

The aimpoint was a bridge that would be easy to spot by the bomber, and was in such a position that the bomb would kill lots of soldiers and destroy the military headquarters if it exploded at that point.

layman wrote:

Truman genuinely wanted to minimize civilian casualties, but the military had other ideas.

They leafleted the cities warning the civilians to flee. What more could they do to prevent civilians from being killed?

In 1948, Truman told a group of advisors and generals that the atomic bomb was not a regular weapon of war, because, “it is used to wipe out women and children and unarmed people, and not for military uses.” (Diary entry of 21 July 1948, in David E. Lilienthal, Journals of David E. Lilienthal, Volume II: The atomic energy years, 1945-1950 (New York: Harper & Row, 1964), 390-391.)

In the spring of 1945, the military convened a target committee, a mix of officers and scientists, to decide where the bomb should fall. Alex Wellerstein, a historian at the Stevens Institute of Technology, devoted his career to studying nuclear weapons and the decision to use them.

He notes that the Target Committee Meeting at Los Alamos in May 1945, it was recommended that “pure military” targets not be considered: “It was agreed that for the initial use of the weapon any small and strictly military objective should be located in a much larger area subject to blast damage” — that is, a city, an urban area — ...

Quote:

The initial list included a remote military installation and Tokyo Bay, but the target committee decided those options wouldn't show the world the power of the new bomb. "They want people to understand that this is something different, and so picking a place that will showcase how different it is, is very important," Wellerstein says.

The committee settled on two "psychological" objectives of the first atomic bombing: to scare the Japanese into unconditional surrender and to impress upon the world the power of the new weapon.

The target committee decided the A-bomb had to kill. At the time, American bombers were already firebombing many cities, killing tens of thousands.

So, they decided this bomb would not just kill — it would do something biblical: One bomb, from one plane, would wipe a city off the map. It would be horrible. But they wanted it to be horrible, to end the war and to try to stop the future use of nuclear bombs.

https://www.npr.org/2015/08/06/429433621/why-did-the-u-s-choose-hiroshima

When the "psychological objective" is to "scare people," I think it's quite appropriate to call it "terrorim."

Terrorism involves targeting civilians. The A-bombs targeted Japan's military and its war industry.