Just what IS terrorism?

So, we used the destruction of civilian lives and the psychological aspect of fear to affect Japanese policy? And you consider that different than terrorism?

Ok, well, you did say this, though:

quote:

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Changing the reality of warfare was the only way to make the Japanese military surrender and by doing that the lives of untold numbers of Americans and Japanese were saved. For this reason I have never believed the dropping of the atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki should be regarded as a war crime (as many argue) or, as we are talking about here, an act of terrorism.

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Which is what I meant. By your own admission, we slaughtered Japanese civilians in a way so horrible that the use of these weapons again, in any situation, is a worldwide nightmare to this day. (I mean, now we even measure atomic detonations, colloquially, in "Hiroshimas.") And we did that to get them to change their minds about something.I mean, that's the exact definition of terrorism - the use of shocking brutality to change the policy of another country. The fact that we had soldiers do it makes it a war crime. Ends don't justify means.

Invading the home islands. You may or may not be right that more civilians would have died, I don't know. But certainly we wouldn't have terrorized the entire world for generations.