Cosmic Cleric

No, the targeting committee was very clear that the targets were selected mainly based on spectacle and effect.

That’s not my understanding at all, only just that having witnesses was a side effect, but not the primary reason.

From what I remember from watching documentaries there were military targets in the cities, I think (don’t hold me to it) bomb making factories.

Feel free to pass on some links if you know otherwise, as history is always a learning experience. (See edit below.)

Edit: Looking at the Wiki page, under the section about targeting, it mentions this about Hiroshima…

Hiroshima, an embarkation port and industrial center that was the site of a major military headquarters

… and…

Hiroshima was described as "an important army depot and port of embarkation in the middle of an urban industrial area. It is a good radar target and it is such a size that a large part of the city could be extensively damaged. There are adjacent hills which are likely to produce a focusing effect which would considerably increase the blast damage.

The wiki article does mention what you’re stating as well, so in essence we’re both right, though I would still argue that the military objective was primary, and the spectacle as you call it was secondary, even if it was a close secondary.

why drop the nukes when they can just bomb the manufacturing hubs without incurring as much civilian death

That’s just it, they had been, for quite a while, but the Japanese would not capitulate.

So just bombing military targets with regular ordinance wasn’t enough. The type of bombing was a signal and a message in and of itself.

That to me seems like the same logic being used by the israelis to justify killing the Palestinians.

The difference though is the availability of precise targeting of the enemy versus the civilians.

Do you potentially end the lives of a million of your own drafted citizens just for more precise targeting of the enemy? One hell of a moral dilemma for any leader to decide.

Its never justified to go after the civilian population and non combatants.

Absolutely agree with this, and one of the reasons I’m upset personally with Israel right now is that they are fairly infamous for being able to precisely target their enemy when they want to, and hence what they’ve done in Gaza to the civilian population that had nothing to do with the conflict is just horrific.

Having said all that, there is a nuance in the two scenarios, they are not equal.

But to say that made it okay to drop two nukes instantly killing thousands of civilians is not okay in any case.

My understanding was they were actually attacking manufacturing for the war, it’s just that an atom bomb is not that discriminatory, and that all the military-only targets had already been bombed out of existence by that point.

Not saying it was right, just explaining it wasn’t as black-and-white as you express.