"Also, they bombed Japan because they could - and they bombed it twice because they had two different designs and wanted to compare them."
They bombed it twice because they had two bombs. If they only wanted to "compare them", they could've dropped them in Nevada like they did previously and subsequently.
And they bombed Japan because they needed to, or at least felt like they needed to given the circumstances of defending themselves against an imperialist threat to all of the Pacific - including, by the way, China.
"And they bombed Japan because they needed to, or at least felt like they needed"
What a load of crap. That exact same reasoning can be applied to everything the government of China does. They did X because they needed to or they felt they needed to.
That has nothing to do with the morality of it as you keep trying to bring up. So what is it? The ends justify the means or not? You don't get to apply different standards, utilitarian to the US and deontological to China. Scratch that, no you can, it'll just reveal the bias that you have.
You're ignoring the context of Japan having been the aggressor and the United States (and its allies in the Pacific, including - again - China) wanting to end the war as quickly as possible.
Like, you do know about World War II, right? How Japan bombed Pearl Harbor? How Japan invaded China and murdered/raped its people? How Japan threatened and attempted to do the same to the rest of the Pacific, including the US? Four years of bloody non-stop full-scale war led up to the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombings. Those bombings were not done lightly.
It was a regrettable but necessary decision. China's past and present atrocities do not carry anywhere near that degree of necessity.
"You're ignoring the context of Japan having been the aggressor and the United States (and its allies in the Pacific, including - again - China) wanting to end the war as quickly as possible."
Who being the aggressor is irrelevant in the moral calculation of whether or not to use nukes. Defeat was inevitable for Japan.
"Like, you do know about World War II, right? How Japan bombed Pearl Harbor? How Japan invaded China and murdered/raped its people?"
Those considerations only matter if you care about revenge when it comes to a foe that can no longer do those things. That can't be what you're advocating for now can it?
Wanting to end the war as quickly as possible is not a morally justifiable reason to use nukes. Waiting out Japan was an absolutely viable option. The recommendations for using the nukes included seeing how they would work in a real use case, not wasting the money put into the Manhattan Project, as well as intimidating the Soviet Union. It was also partly influenced by the Soviets entering the war against Japan
"It was a regrettable but necessary decision. China's past and present atrocities do not carry anywhere near that degree of necessity."
This is a myth bordering on propaganda to justify the usage of nukes.
Quote:
General Douglas MacArthur, Commander of US Army forces in the Pacific, stated on numerous occasions before his death that the atomic bomb was completely unnecessary from a military point of view: "My staff was unanimous in believing that Japan was on the point of collapse and surrender."
General Curtis LeMay, who had pioneered precision bombing of Germany and Japan (and who later headed the Strategic Air Command and served as Air Force chief of staff), put it most succinctly: "The atomic bomb had nothing to do with the end of the war."
They bombed it twice because they had two bombs. If they only wanted to "compare them", they could've dropped them in Nevada like they did previously and subsequently.
And they bombed Japan because they needed to, or at least felt like they needed to given the circumstances of defending themselves against an imperialist threat to all of the Pacific - including, by the way, China.