U.S. reviews 9/11 documents for possible release

[Spongebob]

Al Quaeda was an organisation. Japan was a state. States can be at war with each other, organisations can not (according to international law, customs and treaties). Thats the crucial difference. Thats why the US was never at war with Al Quaeda, but with Japan.*

Accordingly, when an organisation, like Al Quaeda, tries to "achieve political goals by causing terror", its terrorism, its a terrorist organisation, by definition. What the US did was part of a military strategy to win a war. While the nukes can be viewed as terrorism in a colloquial sense, they were a military action with a military goal, to make Japan surrender.

Of course, according to international "law" (The Hague convention) attacks on any non-military installations were condemned, so about anything everyone ever did since WWI could be considered terror(ism) and in violation to customs.

Now one may argue according to Clausewitz (and i am sure you will try to do, without having second thoughts about the ultimate consequence of this proposition) that "war is the continuation of politics with alternative means". In this case any military action in any war ever was terrorism and the nukes were .....while having had cost more lifes in a single action than ever before..." just another terrorist attack on someones civilian population. Still, the issue remains open, that Al Quaeda was an organisation, not a state, and we dont grant organisations the same rights (on the international stage) as states. Thats the point at which your equivocation will always fail.

*actually Japan declared war on the US and attacked first, but thats rather irrelevant for the core of the issue

...and now, without ever reading what i just wrote, without absorbing, processing and understanding new information, please go on with your rants about "the evil west", how suppressed poor muslims are and how you have the one and only correct version of Islam.  

I think this comparison of a state vs an organization is putting too fine a point to it.  That hardly matters.  The critical difference between Japan and Al Queda is that Japan declared war and destroyed the US navy in Hawaii.  Once you're engaged in all out war with another country, the point is to end the war.  The US did the natural thing, the thing any nation would do, and took the war to Japan, and the US was winning the war with conventional weapons.  At the point where a country is getting its clock cleaned, its leaders have to make the wise decision to surrender and spare the lives of its people.  Japan made it clear that surrender wasn't going to happen and it's people worshiped their emperor.  So there were three alternatives, 1) the US could have said that's enough and pulled out of the war, leaving Japan's government intact and with a grudge, making it likely they would do it again in the future, 2) continue the conventional war and cost the lives of hundreds of thousands of Japanese and Americans, or 3) use the nukes and scare the shit out of Japan and end the war.  I believe Truman made the right choice.  Mind you, It took two nukes and a third was inconsideration before Japan wised up, so their noggin's were pretty hard.

The US wasn't engaged in any war with Al Queada.  The reason for 9/11 was the perception that the US supported attacks on various Muslim countries despite the fact that we had just helped them run the Soviets out of Afghanistan.  And despite the facts of each case they argue over.  But Muslims mostly don't reason.  They are brainwashed to hate anyone who's not a Muslim and foolish enough to believe that a few terrorist attacks will cause the downfall of western civilization.  They also are too brainwashed to realize that if the "West" wanted to rid the world of Islam, the military efforts around the world would look very different.  So far all they've seen is a scalpel; they haven't seen a sledgehammer.

So equating these two events is no more accurate than equating the Allied invasion of Germany to Saddam Hussein's invasion of Kuwait.