- Jan 8, 2011
- 65,115
- 34,521
- 2,605
More proof that Truman was a disgusting war criminal...
The dropping of atom bombs on two Japanese cities did not protect our armed force or advance human goodness in the world. By August 1945 Japan was no longer a significant military threat to the advancing US military forces and might have been ready to surrender earlier if the US government had not demanded unconditional surrender. No less a presumed neocon hero than Winston Churchill had warned Truman against this course in July 1945. Even the American Secretary of War Henry Stimson, who had boldly challenged Japanese expansionists in 1940 and 1941, may not have been sufficiently belligerent for the likes of Krauthammer. In his memoirs, Stimson explicitly states that by insisting on unconditional surrender, we might have prolonged the war in the Pacific. The Japanese by 1945 were afraid they’d be stripped of their emperor; the imperial house would be executed and other humiliations would befall them if they were forced to surrender unconditionally. Many in Truman’s government and among US military leaders advised negotiations and thought that it was at least possible to end the war without further bloodshed. Americans, it was believed by some patriotic leaders in 1945, did not have to make a choice between invading the Japanese mainland and dropping nuclear weapons on a helpless civilian population. As late as 1963 former American president (and Allied Commander in the Second World War) Dwight D. Eisenhower had lamented that “we hit them with that awful thing”—and mind you, he did so in Newsweek.
Perhaps Eisenhower too, according to the exterminationist standards of neocon civilians, was insulting us all by not being sufficiently proud of bombing civilians in a neocon-approved crusade. A few years ago no less a neocon luminary than John Podhoretzgot bleary-eyed when he described the bombing of Dresden at the end of World War Two. Although Allied leaders also regretted this destruction of helpless civilians when the war was all but over, Pod, Jr. defended the carnage as a necessary blow for our values. One can never massacre enough people, providing our media-vetted “conservatives” give a war their post facto approval. All of this still puzzles someone like me, who recalls a time when conservatives believed in the restrained use of force and raged against ideologically driven foreign policies. If memory serves, the dropping of atomic weapons in 1945 elicited criticism from the American Right and particularly from that part of it that had been critical of FDR. The Left generally favored the nuclear option, while Soviet-sympathizers were particularly pleased since it would allow Soviet Russia to take advantage of Japan’s weakness to seize Sakhalin and the Curial Islands. But that was before our official Right became a caricature of the extreme Left, a development that I’m reminded of whenever I hear neocons go on and on about killing the enemies of democracy.
MORE>>>
FOX’s Exterminationist - LewRockwell LewRockwell.com
The dropping of atom bombs on two Japanese cities did not protect our armed force or advance human goodness in the world. By August 1945 Japan was no longer a significant military threat to the advancing US military forces and might have been ready to surrender earlier if the US government had not demanded unconditional surrender. No less a presumed neocon hero than Winston Churchill had warned Truman against this course in July 1945. Even the American Secretary of War Henry Stimson, who had boldly challenged Japanese expansionists in 1940 and 1941, may not have been sufficiently belligerent for the likes of Krauthammer. In his memoirs, Stimson explicitly states that by insisting on unconditional surrender, we might have prolonged the war in the Pacific. The Japanese by 1945 were afraid they’d be stripped of their emperor; the imperial house would be executed and other humiliations would befall them if they were forced to surrender unconditionally. Many in Truman’s government and among US military leaders advised negotiations and thought that it was at least possible to end the war without further bloodshed. Americans, it was believed by some patriotic leaders in 1945, did not have to make a choice between invading the Japanese mainland and dropping nuclear weapons on a helpless civilian population. As late as 1963 former American president (and Allied Commander in the Second World War) Dwight D. Eisenhower had lamented that “we hit them with that awful thing”—and mind you, he did so in Newsweek.
Perhaps Eisenhower too, according to the exterminationist standards of neocon civilians, was insulting us all by not being sufficiently proud of bombing civilians in a neocon-approved crusade. A few years ago no less a neocon luminary than John Podhoretzgot bleary-eyed when he described the bombing of Dresden at the end of World War Two. Although Allied leaders also regretted this destruction of helpless civilians when the war was all but over, Pod, Jr. defended the carnage as a necessary blow for our values. One can never massacre enough people, providing our media-vetted “conservatives” give a war their post facto approval. All of this still puzzles someone like me, who recalls a time when conservatives believed in the restrained use of force and raged against ideologically driven foreign policies. If memory serves, the dropping of atomic weapons in 1945 elicited criticism from the American Right and particularly from that part of it that had been critical of FDR. The Left generally favored the nuclear option, while Soviet-sympathizers were particularly pleased since it would allow Soviet Russia to take advantage of Japan’s weakness to seize Sakhalin and the Curial Islands. But that was before our official Right became a caricature of the extreme Left, a development that I’m reminded of whenever I hear neocons go on and on about killing the enemies of democracy.
MORE>>>
FOX’s Exterminationist - LewRockwell LewRockwell.com
