But no whining over the bombing of cities in Europe?
Deliberately targeting civilians is murder, and is never morally licit, even in pursuit of a good thing such as ending a war.
You can't target militarily important industry and supply chains without targeting civilians, and in some instances slave laborers and even POWs will be caught in the mix on the ground. Sometimes the collateral damage is light, other times unavoidable if the target is to be eliminated. We, more than any other nation, have taken incredible steps to minimize those casualties--to the point of filling smart bombs with concrete and using them as a kinetic energy weapon rather than an explosive weapon to destroy a single building instead of take out a whole block.
The incendiary bombing of Tokyo killed more people than Hiroshima and Nagasaki combined. Consider that the reason Hiroshima and Nagasaki were on the A-bomb target list is that they had not been extensively bombed already, and the scope of the bombing campaign against Japan becomes a little more clear.
Plans were in the works for the invasion of Japan, anticipating more than a million casualties.
The power of the bombs as evidenced by the destruction of relatively undamaged cities was a factor in bringing the war to a swift end.
I will not do the disservice to the memory of those who made a tough decision (based on what they knew) of second-guessing them. Their decision ended the war.
Payback is a bitch. The Japanese aligned themselves with a mass murderer in Hitler.
By dropping two bombs, several things were accomplished. Not only did it end the war with Japan, but it also sent a strong message to the Soviets. Only problem with that was a Democrat being in office in 1947.
In my humble opinion, if a Republican was in office in 1945 there may not have been Soviet expansion into Europe and a split of the Koreas. It wouldn’t have prevented the revolution in China, but that is for another day.