That's some pretty convoluted logic there.
Here's an idea that's a little more simple: in war, you never intentionally target innocent civilians.
Do you agree with that principle, or do you think innocent civilians SHOULD be targetted if it helps us achieve our ultimate objectives?
Civilians were not deliberately targeted.
1. Both Hiroshima and Nagasaki were military targets. The military value of the targets has been listed hundreds of times in hundreds of these types of conversations. The military aspects of the cities were numerous and scattered throughout the area, making hitting all of them in traditional bombing missions difficult and expensive. (Militarily expensive, not dollars expensive.)
2. The destructive radius of the bombs were not known. We knew they were powerful, but to that date we had only ONE test firing of a nuclear weapon, and we were far more interested in whether it worked or not than closely measuring destructive power. And the test device was smaller. They did not know how much more destructive little boy would be compared to the test device, nor did we know how much more destructive Fat Man would be over Little Boy.
3. While deliberately targeting civilians was and is considered unacceptable (though all members of the Axis powers did so themselves) the death of civilians in military targeted bombing raids was considered (and still is) an unfortunate but unavoidable side effect of modern warfare. The target of Hiroshima and Nagasaki were the military-industrial complexes and associated transportation facilities. The ability to hit them all at once from a single plane was considered and enormous advantage.
5. Had the war continued even 6 more months, traditional bombing raids would have ended up killing at least as many civilians (without "deliberately targeting civilians" as the brain dead like to claim) and probably twice that many in the artillery and bombing barrages that would have been conducted in an invasion assault.
6. While hindsight is 20/20, it is rarely accurate in accounting for the knowledge (or lack thereof) at the time being criticized. Information received from Japan AFTER the end of the war indicated that other strategies, such as using bombers to drop mines to close Japanese ports and destroy Japanese shipping would have been more effective than bombing their industrial complex. But we did not know that at the time. Bombing Germany's industrial complex had been critically successful in the European theater, so the same was used against Japan. With all we know today, including the horrific after effects of a nuclear strike. we probably would not have used nuclear weapons against Japan. But the critical factor is WE DID NOT KNOW what we do know today. By what was known at the time, including the estimate (since proven inaccurate - but again not known at the time) that the only alternative was an invasion of the Japanese homeland, the use of nuclear bombs was considered the best alternative we had available to us at that time.
Was it a mistake? Yes, in retrospect, other options would have been as effective in bringing an end to the war.
Was it "reprehensible"? No, not when one considers the knowledge and military estimates available at the time the decision was made.
