[Persevero]

“Otherwise, following the same line of moral thinking, a great many abortion deaths of infants would have to be considered non-intentional, because the aborter could say, “I did not intend to kill the baby, only to end the pregnancy; and I took prenatal vitamins right before the procedure.” Or something along those lines.”

You have to factor in, also, the thousands, ten thousands, or hundreds of thousands of innocent lives spared by the ending of the war - which was not ending, which is why we dropped the two nukes. They did end the war.

The “innocent” lives saved may have been mainly military, and therefore may not be as “innocent” as you consider the families of Hiroshima. HOWEVER, it is Japan that invaded us, so, strictly and truly speaking, we were the innocent party.

I see the dead of Hiroshima as victims of the Emperor of Japan.

[Mrs. Don-o]

"You have to factor in, also, the thousands, ten thousands, or hundreds of thousands of innocent lives spared by the ending of the war - which was not ending, which is why we dropped the two nukes. They did end the war."

It’s by no means settled that the atomic bombing was necessary to end the war. Let‘s look at who disagreed:

DWIGHT EISENHOWER
(General, U.S. Army; Supreme Commander of U.S. Forces in Europe);

• "..In July 1945... I voiced to him [Secretary of War Stimson] my grave misgivings, first on the basis of my belief that Japan was already defeated and that dropping the bomb was completely unnecessary, and secondly because I thought that our country should avoid shocking world opinion by the use of a weapon whose employment was, I thought, no longer mandatory as a measure to save American lives. It was my belief that Japan was, at that very moment, seeking some way to surrender with a minimum loss of 'face'. The Secretary was deeply perturbed by my attitude..."
  - Dwight Eisenhower, Mandate For Change, pg. 380

• "...the Japanese were ready to surrender and it wasn't necessary to hit them with that awful thing."
  - Ike on Ike, Newsweek, 11/11/63

Joined in this opinion by:

ADMIRAL WILLIAM D. LEAHY
(Chief of Staff to Presidents Franklin Roosevelt and Harry Truman);

HERBERT HOOVER
(former U.S. President);

GENERAL DOUGLAS MacARTHUR
(General of the Army, U.S. Army)

JOSEPH GREW
(Under Sec. of State)

JOHN McCLOY
(Assistant Sec. of War)

RALPH BARD
(Under Sec. of the Navy)

LEWIS STRAUSS
(Special Assistant to the Sec. of the Navy)

PAUL NITZE
(Vice Chairman, U.S. Strategic Bombing Survey)

ELLIS ZACHARIAS
(Deputy Director of the Office of Naval Intelligence)

GENERAL CARL "TOOEY" SPAATZ
(In charge of Air Force operations in the Pacific)

BRIGADIER GENERAL CARTER CLARKE
(The military intelligence officer in charge of preparing intercepted Japanese cables - the MAGIC summaries - for Truman and his advisors)

• "...when we didn't need to do it, and we knew we didn't need to do it, and they knew that we knew we didn't need to do it, we used them as an experiment for two atomic bombs."
  Quoted in Gar Alperovitz, The Decision To Use the Atomic Bomb, pg. 359.

This raises serious doubts, to say the least.

Moreover, Consequentialism is rejected by Catholic Moral Law: if something is in itself a grave moral wrong (as is target-equals-city bombing is , according to the Catholic Church,) it cannot be justified by a claim that good may come of it.

The Catholic Magisterium has explicitly condemned this kind of indiscriminate killing: “Any act of war aimed indiscriminately at the destruction of entire cities or extensive areas along with their population is a crime against God and man himself. It merits unequivocal and unhesitating condemnation." (Gaudium et Spes, 80. Also, Catechism of the Catholic Church)

"I see the dead of Hiroshima as victims of the Emperor of Japan."

True. We are in strong agreement on that. And they were also the victims of President Harry S. Truman.