Document 3
The face of war is the face of death; death is an inevitable part of every order that a wartime leader gives. The decision to use the atomic bomb was a decision that brought death to over a hundred thousand Japanese. No explanation can change that fact and I do not wish to gloss it over. But this deliberate, premeditated destruction was our least abhorrent [horrid] choice. The destruction of Hiroshima and Nagasaki put an end to the Japanese war. It stopped the fire raids and the strangling blockade; it ended the ghastly specter [potential] of a clash of great land armies.

-Secretary of War, Harry Stimson, The Decision to Use the Atomic Bomb, Harpers Magazine 1950
What argument is Secretary Stimson making when he writes: “The face of war is the face of death; death is an inevitable part of every order that a wartime leader gives”?

Why does Secretary Stimson think that the use of the bomb was the right choice?