You are, in fact, pretending to know what would’ve happened b/c you claimed Japan was beaten, wanted no more and that it’s not even a question that the nuclear option was unnecessary despite evidence that the Japanese gov’t did not feel it was beaten and was prepared to fight on unless it got what it wanted. I see no indication that Japan offered to surrender in any meaningful way unless you consider vague outreach to the Soviet Union that never contemplated Allied-imposed disarmament, prosecution of war criminals, changes to the existing government, etc.
The only way you can claim that anything was better than the nuclear option is by implicitly arguing that nothing else could’ve been worse. You don’t know that.
For example:
“America could have accepted Japan’s conditional surrender and watched what happens instead of nuking hundreds of thousands of civilians and starting the nuclear arms race.”
Yep, and if Japan had recovered and rebuilt enough infrastructure—a possibility since internal deliberations indicate any conditional surrender would’ve rejected Allied oversight or presence in Japan—to provoke America again, America might’ve responded with even more powerful bombs creating even more death and devastation.
Or Stalin and Russia could’ve annihilated the population. Or. Or. Or.
Incidentally, if you believe America’s Deep State would nuke Guam, an island with a population of over 160K people, as a false flag operation, then logic would imply you believe killing roughly 3K people would barely give the Deep State pause.
Do you also believe the attacks of September 11th were part of an American-led false flag operation?
