(e:jason) [inlink]jason,211[/inlink] thanks for turning the discussion to nuclear weapons instead of site politic. I would most like to respond to your question about " What is preferable, dropping a nuke or using infantry to cut, shoot, and maim?"
In my opinion using infantry to cut, shoot, and main is a better option to nuclear war on several accounts.
Nuclear war make such an extreme abstraction of mass murder. An abstraction that makes killing easier. I do not think that the a man who killed hundred of thousands of people should be afforded the comfort of this abstraction. It becomes, one man pressing a button instead of thousands of people having to cut each other open and witness the agonizing terror of death. Moreover, one man could never kill hundreds of thousands of people with a knife or even a machine gun.
While the Japanese were feirce and terrible, we can jusge this by their actions in China, we also cannot say for certain that every Japanese man, woman and child of hiroshima and nagasaki would have fought to the death. For all we know there were tens of thousands of peaceful, anti-war citizens that lived in those cities. I imagine that at that late point in the war, most japanese war mongering men were at the forefront of the war, and not living at home in the city. Most of the people that were probably left were the woman, children, and old people.
That is how it was for my grandmother's family in Italy. All of her brothers left for the war, with her left much in charge of the family farm. Unlike the infantry option, nuclear attack left no chance for the people of hiroshima and nagasaki to surrender. They were instantly incinerated or slowly died of radiation sickness. The people who were "condemned with no trial" were not necessarily war mongers, yet they suffered greatly for the "sins of their country."
