New Member Tournament: The Atomic Bombings on Hiroshima and Nagasaki were not justified.

I will start with my rebuttal, and then go into my defense. REBUTTALR1) My opponent says that my assertion that fire bombing was worse than atomic bombing is illogical, because the atomic bombs killed their victims in two days compared to multiple missions with fire bombing. However, does it matter in this context how long it took to kill the Japanese? Whether or in two days, or 2 years, lives were still being lost. Fire bombing cost more lives than atomic bombings, but fire bombs would not have ended the war. Only through shocking the Japanese into submission could we end this war and save both Japanese and American lives. Since it is known that 500,000>250,000 (Fire bombs vs. Atomic Bombs), the atomic bombs saved lives. Now, this is all of course dependent on the fact that the Japanese would not surrender and that the ensuing land invasions would cost more lives. I will get to that below. R2) The United States did not have many atomic bombs, and so they needed to make good use of the ones they had. They chose a location (in Hiroshima) that was both militarily and industrially important to the Japanese. We needed to make a statement with this bomb so that the Japanese would surrender and so we could end this war and save lives. My opponent has completely overlooked the purpose for my 9/11 comparison, and has thus only made a shallow refutation. 9/11 did not work the same way as with Japan because of the considerable difference in military and political strength of the two entities involved (United States and Al-Queda). However, 9/11 did have an enormous psychological effect on the population. That is, it was devastating. That is the only correlation I made between 9/11 and the atomic bombings. R3) There wouldn't be proof if there was a third bomb, as we would want to hold onto the tactical advantage of uncertainty (especially with the coming Cold War). "As I already pointed out the US planned two bombs right from the beginning regardless of whether the Japanese had time to respond to the first one with a surrender. " We were in a war, and we needed to plan for the worst (aka, Japan not surrendering). My opponent, however, seems to be suggesting that we would have dropped both bombs, even if Japan surrendered after the first one. Obviously this wouldn't have happened. Secondly, my opponent mentions that we only waited for 3 days because we needed more plutonium for the bomb. The reason we waited is immaterial, because the fact remains that Japan still had 3 more days to consider surrender. Remember, we had already offered them a treaty for surrender 2 weeks prior [1]. If Japan was truly going to surrender, they would've done it in the 3 days allotted to them. I don't respond to the contention about Russia because it is merely speculation. Even if that was a motivation, it would've been secondary to ending the war with Japan (the real purpose for the bombings). R4) The only way the US could've got a peaceful ceasefire before the bombings was if they signed a very unfavorable treaty. For all intents in purposes, we had won the war, but Japan wanted to bargain as if they and the US were on equal terms. They were not. Japan started a war and was losing it, badly. They had no leverage and it would've been foolish of the US to leave their government intact. You don't go to war with a country, kill thousands of soldiers, and then leave things as they were. The war would've served no purpose except to waste the lives of so many youths. Japan was not ready to surrender before the bombings, as they themselves were planning a biological attack on the Untied States [2]. DEFENSED1)Japan, as I've already proven, was no wear near the edge of surrendering. Unless you count a ceasefire where everything resets to how it was and Japan's imperialistic, expansionist government is left in control as fair terms of surrender. If you invade a country, the inhabitants are going to fight back. People would've died, and even though these estimates are not exact, they are not going to be extremely far off. It was estimated that the American causalties alone would be between 1.7-4 million[3], not to mention the Japanese casualties. D2)Read the third to last paragraph under the "battle" section and I think you will understand the Japanese "no-surrender" policy [4]. Did some innocent civilians die? Probably, but it was a war and the innocent die. I have contended that the atomic bombs saved more innocent lives in the long-run and that many of the Japanese civilians would've rather died than to dishonor their country and family. I look forward to the closing round. [1] . http://en.wikipedia.org... [2] . http://www.damninteresting.com... [3] . http://en.wikipedia.org... [4]. http://en.wikipedia.org...