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.

>>8
ITT we pretend peace negotiations were not going on during the atomic bombings.

He's the real metric

Cons: Kills thousands of innocent people, levels a city, and cause irreperable loss of cultural value.
Pros: We reserve the right to remove the royal family as head of state, which we decide against doing anyway.

The policy of unconditional surrender was one of the worst moves the Allies made in WWII. Not because they should have sought peace with Hitler, Mussolini, or Tojo, but because it gave those nations no alternative BUT those.

In 1943, The Italian Fascist Party Removed Mussolini from Power. Then sought to seek a peace agreement with the U.S. Fortunately we were smart enough to realize the opportunity, and the vast majority of Italian Troops throughout axis europe declared Neutrality.

However, if we had made it our policy from the beginning to offer peace, just not with Mussolini, the move against Il Duce by the Fascist Party would have come alot sooner, and would have been in negotiations with the Allies before the coup, possibly avoiding the entire Italian Campaign.

During the July 20th conspiracy, the biggest impediment the plotters had was that the Allies had guaranteed there would be no peace negotiations at all. Had they been offered "We will make peace, but not with the Nazis" there would have been much greater support for the coup. Instead most of the Army followed Hitler to his dying day and beyond.

By 1945, the government that had attacked the United States had been driven out. Since 1944 there was a new prime minister who was given the job in order to secure any peace conditions they could have. By the summer of 1945, they had a single demand for peace. Japan would allow itself to be occupied, allow its government and society to be dismantled, would give up its empire, would disband its military, and only asked in exchange that it be allowed to continue its royal dynasty.