Sure, if you don't care about all the lives lost, and all the families destroyed on both sides.

A combination of what you've described, but you also had severe mental health (revenge) concerns among US troops.  By the time they were preparing for the final push to the Japanese mainland, word had spread regarding the treatment of US PoW's in Palawan, Cabanatuan, Corregidor, and the Bataan Death March (among other things).  There was a genuine concern that US soldiers, driven to the near breaking point after going through the Pacific Isles, would simply kill everything they came across in Japan. 

And to add to the suicide attacks, even injured soliders, or not wounded at all, would pretend to be dead, and then suicide grenade troops as they approached/passed by.

I recommend watching the Pacific series (HBO), reading the accompanying book by Ambrose (The Pacific), and Helmet for my Pillow and With the Old Breed.  Mental health was a huge problem in the Pacific, and they go into it throughout those books and the episodes.

It was a barbaric end to a barbaric war.
Many today believe it wasn't necessary, that Japan was already defeated militarily and ready to surrender, not because of the atomic bombs but because Russia also turned against them. Yet in the end it might have prevented world war 3. After seeing the effects of the relatively small nuclear bombs dropped on Japan, no one in their right mind was going to risk all out nuclear war.

Now we're back to killing on a small scale again which still adds up to the same number of deaths over time. At least we're beyond the use of chemical weapons, I think...

Eh, I thought you were quoting a song, and expected you to keep on going.

I was quoting a song, but that's the only line I remember of it

War is reprehensible as, once you are engaged, the only options left available to you are all terrible.

No one likes to think about civilian cities being wiped out, but that's often a reality of war (Japan certainly had no qualms about committing some of the most heinous war crimes of the 20th century against civilian populations). The obvious hypothetical everyone always asks is just how many people would have been lost in an invasion of the mainland, but even the conservative estimates I've come across always far and away exceed the two atomic bombs.

When you consider the repeated attempts by Japan to unleash plague carrying insects on the Americans (after having tested them thoroughly in China) and that they were still attempting to find a means of delivering them to the U.S. mainland (San Diego specifically) it's pretty clear this was not your average, reasonable nation preparing to surrender... Their policy just prior to the atomic bombs was to make invasion so difficult that a more favorable surrender could be reached. Specifically, they wanted to preserve the honor of the emperor.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unit_731#Biological_warfare

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Cherry_Blossoms_at_Night

What can you really say? Nuclear bombs are terrible, but what would have followed if they'd not been dropped is every bit as terrible. The problem, of course, is that when the numbers are this high it begins to feel more like a math problem than considering the lives of human individuals, but that's the nature of war and why it is to be avoided.

Look at it this way, with all you know of Japan's activities across the pacific, does a single person out there not believe that Japan would have used nuclear weapons had it been possible? Pearl Harbor would be an irradiated crater to this day.

By the way, for those making the claim that the Japanese were about to surrender prior to Hiroshima and Nagasaki, I suggest you look up the story of Hiroo Onoda (Also, Private Yuichi Akatsu, Corporal Shoichi Shimada and PFC Kinshichi Kozaku) . These soldiers were ordered to the Lupang Islands in the Philipines and ordered to hamper enemy attacks on the island. He was also ordered to neither surrender, or take his own life.

Hiroo, finally stood down on March 9th, 1974, after his former commander Major Yoshimi Taniguchi brought orders, relieving him of duty. Philipino villagers, had attempted over the years to inform them of the surrender of Japan, but the soldiers believed the communique's to be fakes.

It was a terrible war, and we saw the price that's paid when people assume they have a living deity on their side. It relates to the problems with divine command theory. I do not say this to justify anything, I've no idea what choice I would've made, and I'm glad I'm not in a position to have to make those decisions.

Exactly, we saw this same issue with Alan Turing, and Enigma.

Are you referring to when they had to not respond to attacks at times so as to not give away that they knew they were coming?

Aye, they had to choose the lesser of two evils, in order to maintain the secret.  Likewise, the Allies had to decide whether an invasion of the Japanese mainland would be more costly, than the bombs.