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Comment by sklinger | Hacker News Reader

Except that Japan and the US were at war at the time (therefore not peacetime targets). Maybe you're thinking of the 1941 attack on Pearl Harbor?

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Did you miss "in war against non-combatants"? Hiroshima and Nagasaki were exactly that. Even Tokyo was considered.

PS, Pearl Harbour was against military targets, and peacetime is arguable considering the embargoes, etc. Still not "high ground" by any means, but hardly unprecedented. The US already had a fleet there precisely in case it was needed against the Japanese empire.

There was no point in nuking Tokyo and such because it had already been almost entirely burned to the ground by firestorms from previous firebombings.

From the US Civil War to the atomic age, there was no such thing as a non-combatant. Industrialization meant that a modern society could indefinitely sustain mobilization and fight until economic collapse.

World War 1 was where his really came to roost. The machine gun and artillery turned the western front into an industrial scale killing machine that only ended when the German economy ground to a halt. Technology improvements in WW2 enabled destruction at a scale never witnessed in history and incomparable on a relative scale to nothing except Caesar’s Gallic campaign.

The way to win was about metrics — building more arms and killing as many people as possible. Japan was no different than cavalrymen in WW1, who believed that elan and decisive victory in the field would carry the day. Sociopaths like Curtis Lemay figured that out.

Japan hadn't declared war.

US never declared war in Vietnam.

And since when did saying "I hate you, I'm going to war with you" make it OK to indiscriminately kill civilians.

ISIS has declared war on England. Does that make it OK for them to bomb the subway?

What are you trying to argue? That Pearl Harbor wasn't a surprise attack?

That the Japanese didn't employ terrorist tactics against American civilians? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fire_balloon

> And since when did saying "I hate you, I'm going to war with you" make it OK to indiscriminately kill civilians

Maybe ask the Japanese? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nanking_Massacre

If you can't understand a strategic decision to bring a war to an end and avoid a larger loss of life, I don't know what to tell you.

The Japanese were in Nanking as part of a strategic decision to bring the war to a quick end, does that justify that massacre of civilians?

My point is, that this "everything's fair in love and war" attitude is without moral basis. It's not magically OK to be evil just because you are at war, and using wartime tactics when you are not officially at war is not worse than doing them during a war.

Also, keep in mind that Hawaii was not even a US State at this point. It was an independent island nation that happened to have a US military base.

No, it was a U.S. possession, not unlike Alaska (bound for statehood) or the Philippines (preparing for independence).

It’s not terrorism if a government does it openly. It was a breach of international law but to call an attack by one nation’s military on another’s terrorism is well outside any non propagandistic usage.

So you are saying that governments can not be terrorists (as long as they are open about it)?

Funny definition is that.

So, how do you call acts of agression performed by governments against non combatants?

Since the only reason not to call them terrorism is to paint (your?) government actions with a nicer brush, I assume you call those acts "liberation events"

> So, how do you call acts of agression performed by governments against non combatants?

War crimes.

The reason not to call it terrorism is because that is not what the word means. If a sovereign nation formally declares war to another, any action covered by international convention is classified seperately from "civil" or militant violence.

Fair enough!

If you want to learn more about international humanitarian law there’s an excellent MOOC from UC Louvain on EdX.

https://courses.edx.org/courses/course-v1:LouvainX+Louv16x+1...

Is there any non propogandistic use of the word "terrorism"?

It was certainly "war against non-combatants" though. Two cities filled with civilians.

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