A fetus is a living human organism. Whether you consider it a person is up to you, I guess, but it is alive.
A sperm is alive too. Again, the trouble with this debate is that slippery-slope arguments are pretty much unavoidable.
I think humans are naturally inclined towards apocalyptic thinking, and that as a result of this people massively overestimate the damage and likelihood of a nuclear war.
I think it was a Stross post I read a few months back that posited we'll never see nukes dropped again simply because of the cost involved. You want to kill a few thousand people, you can do it just fine by hijacking a plane.
The other key difference between WWII Japan and modern powers is that, well, as you may have noticed, 9/11 didn't result in an immediate surrender, it just pissed us the hell off. You can make "the terrorists won" arguments for various subsequent infringements on our rights, but I don't think anyone can really say that bin Laden got what he wanted.
Unless what he wanted was to be shot in the face.