Hiroshima and Nagasaki

With the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the U.S. DIRECTLY targeted civilians.  They also directly targeted civilians with the firebombing of Tokyo and Dresden.  The Japanese and German GOVERNMENTS committed many atrocities, but that in no way makes it moral or right for the U.S. to murder civilians in those countries.

You can make all the arguments you want about how murdering these civilians brought an early end to the war.  This does not change the fact that civilian men, women, and children were murdered.  When other people do this, we call them terrorists.  That label applies equally here.

Human rights commonly include:

    * security rights that prohibit crimes such as murder/"enforced" involuntary suicide, massacre, torture and rape
    * liberty rights that protect freedoms in areas such as belief and religion, association, assembling and movement
    * political rights that protect the liberty to participate in politics by expressing themselves, protesting, participating in a republic
    * due process rights that protect against abuses of the legal system such as arrest and imprisonment without trial, secret trials and excessive punishments
    * equality rights that guarantee equal citizenship, equality before the law and nondiscrimination
    * welfare rights (also known as economic rights) that require the provision of, e.g., education, paid holidays, and protections against severe poverty and starvation
    * group rights

America leads the way in many of these areas. Only some liberal European countries have such a good record.