Welcome to the kingdom of historical armchair quarterbacks ever ready to denigrate or minimize the courage, integrity, stamina, and creativity of Americans in order to imply they bear responsibility for the murderous actions of others.
That’s precisely the logic leftists use, and which has proven time and time again to be flawed. Not a single attempt to prevent or dissuade an aggrieved group from immoral choices — be they German, Japanese, African American, or Hispanic — has ever succeeded.
The raid showed the Japanese that Americans would not cower in the face of their amoral ferocity. The Japanese were looking for any excuse to murder Chinese (Rape of Nanjing), and your supposition that those 250,000 would not have died may be partially true, but only because the Japanese are more likely than not to have found some other excuse to kill just as many.
Every sword has two edges, and I’m sick of people who call themselves conservatives denigrating a heroic mission because they think they know what might have happened otherwise. You have NO IDEA of what horrors that raid prevented.
Is it possible to have such a view on this topic that sees more than one side? (Apparently not.)
I've read "Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo" and I'm well aware of the heroism these men possessed in flying B-25s off a pitching aircraft carrier. As I am sure you know, the discovery of the American fleet by the Japanese fishing boats meant a premature launch; they flew off that ship knowing that they would not be able to reach their planned destinations. (If there is a better demonstration of heroism than what these men displayed that day, I'm all ears; tell me.)
I've only pointed out that the cost in human life (learned after the fact) was incredibly high in light of the benefits that the raid provided (which, by every admission of those involved, was primarily a morale-building operation for the American public).
I don't take anything away from the efforts those men made; each and every one of them was a giant.
But I think it looks something like a SWAT team backslapping each other over a dead hostage-taker as they step gingerly over the bodies of the hostages that the guy himself took out before they brought him down. There may have been no other way for them to go about it and they may have prevented an even larger loss of life, but I do think they would be more subdued in their congratulations.