PS, don't pay attention to spanalot anymore. You;ll sleep better that way.
Secondly, I don;tobject to the notion that "every weapon is an expedient" but I do object to the notion that instant vaporization of people (or a slower, more painful death due to raditation sickness and cancers) is more "humane" than slow starvation, immolation via napalm, or a bullet to the brainpan.
Death is still death, and a violently inflicted death, regardless of how quick and painless, is a violently inflicted death. The great crime of WWII is that death and destruction were PURPOSELY visited upon those not directly involved as a matter of strategy and policy, and the technology and ideologies existed (and evolved) to make those things commonplace, and not something reserved for the bad old days of Atilla the Hun and Ghengis Khan. I know this is not the first time such things have happened in the history of warfare, but you would think that at perhaps some point someone would have protested (and I know many did) at this type of barbarity.
What were once considerd criminal acts beyond the pale became the standard operating procedure of the Second World War.
In my youth, I lived next door to a very refined and educated Japanese lady. It was her opinion that the A-bombs, horrible as they were, saved many lives. As they came out of left field so to speak, they allowed the Japanese to save 'face' and then they could surrender with honor. I had been of the opinion, the first nukes should have been used on strictly military locations. Her position was the C. LeMay had leveled everything worth while previously. I later learned that Nagasaki/Hiroshima were taken off target lists, just for purposes of a demonstration.
"PS, don't pay attention to spanalot anymore."
And we won't listen to US bashing, armchair generals who presume to know more than Patton.
I don't take Spanalot seriously enough to lose any sleep over. This is like a discussion of what one should/could have done in a Risk game.