Challenge me.

I will now refute my opponent"s first contention. The flaw with this contention and with the entire case against the resolution is that my opponent seems to have forgotten that we were at war. War is not a slap, it is not a debate. Both of these comparisons are ludicrous. My opponent argues about "innocent" lives lost. The country of Japan attacked a nonagressive nation causing thousands of deaths, they are guilty of that if nothing else. How is a soldier who has been drafted and forced to fight in a foreign country or in his own, Japanese or American anything but innocent? In war people will die and their innocence is less of an issue than their nationality when two militaries are waging war. This is not perhaps how it should be, this is simply how it is. The bombing of a country is never a good thing, but sometimes a course of action is initially a painful one but eventually the wisest one. As I said before the United States had a clear choice, we could win the war or we could lose more American live. My opponent also brings up a telegram from the Japanese asking for peace. This was rejected because of the need for unconditional surrender the telegram only offered conditional surrender, one of my initial contentions which I will go over again. "The message Truman cited did not refer to anything even remotely resembling surrender. It referred instead to the Japanese foreign officials™s attempt (under the suspicious eyes of the military) to persuade the Soviet Union to broker a negotiated peace that would have permitted the Japanese to retain their pre war empire and their imperial system (not just the emperor) intact. " . http://hnn.us... To explain the need for unconditional surrender I will go over some of Japans Military history. First of all Japan has intuited conflict with the following nations. Russia, Korea, Malaysia, the Philippines, The United States, Manchuria, Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia. Japan has attacked, invaded or attempted to invade each of these nations without provocation since the beginning of the 20th century. In the Sino-Japanese war Japan attacked Korea, Manchuria and Taiwan resulting in over forty thousand casualties, in Russo-Japanese war Japan attacked Russians vessels near Port Arthur in China controlled waters before even declaring war, the following conflict resulted in more than one hundred and fifty thousand dead. Then came the second Sino-Japanese war resulting in over four million dead. All of these wars took place in a period of under forty five years, they all took place in neighboring countries and every single one of them was started by a Japanese attack. These do not include wars with the United States Europeans or any nations outside of Asia. So with this history, after the Japanese attacked the United States the need for unconditional surrender was apparent. Since the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki Japan has not initiated nor been involved in a single major conflict. The unconditional surrender of Japan was brought about only through use of the Atomic Bomb and it has clearly benefited not only Japan, but the Asian continent as well as the rest of the world. It is clear that Japans history necessitated unconditional surrender even without actions taken against the United States. Also and once again I will bring up that we were at war, we had the right and the responsibility to fight the Japanese threat. As I have already shown earlier in my arguments a single firebombing resulted in over one hundred thousand deaths, so all the Atomic Bombs did was allow for a similar death toll with more political influence. It saved lives if anything. Even with this new threat the Japanese still refused surrender after the first bomb was dropped. We gave them an ultimatum and they chose the deaths of thousands over the end of war. Even considering my opponents arguments my contentions still stand. 1. Necessity 2. Morality 3. Unconditional Surrender These three conditions justify the use of the Atomic Bomb.