Posted on 08/10/2005 5:15:47 AM PDT by RepublicNewbie
On the 40th, 50th and 60th anniversaries of D-Day, Presidents Reagan, Clinton and George W. Bush traveled to Normandy to lead us in tribute to the bravery of the Greatest Generation of Americans, who had liberated Europe. Always a deeply moving occasion.
The 40th, 50th and 60th anniversaries of the dropping of the atom bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, however, were not times of celebration or warm remembrance. Angry arguments for and against the dropping of the bombs roil the airwaves and fill the press.
(Excerpt) Read more at postchronicle.com ...
Well, I tend to celebrate the anniversary of the atomic bombing of Japan. Dad was in the Marines, and was scheduled to be in the first assualt wave..........
Buchanan is a jerk.
I don’t believe Buckhannon’s unaware that estimates of US casualties were above a million, not "thousands", and the Japanese were estimated to suffer multi-millions of dead.
I don’t believe Buckhannon thinks Japanese fanaticism could be surrounded into submission.
I don’t believe that a Buckhannon can’t differentiate between targeting civilians and responding to the total war in kind but in a scale to end it.
This is just more noise from a tragic fool trying to get himself noticed and find a new base. This is part of the common foundation between the far left communists and KOOK right protectionists alliance that Rush spoke of 6 months ago.
Pat Buchanan is echoing the sentiments of Douglas MacArthur and Dwight Eisenhower. Were they part of the "hate America first" crowd?
Pat stirring the pot, as always. Intellectual arguments are all very well -- if we'd isolated the main island of Japan, she'd have withered on the vine eventually -- but don't most pundits agree that in the long run, blockades don't work? And what about the atom bomb Japan was developing, herself? They'd have used it against us in a nanno-second.
-Gen Lee
If we are to condemn the atomic bombing of these two towns, then we must also condemn the bombings of Hamburg, Dresden, and Tokyo (B-29 raid raid on Tokyo with incendiary bombs for paper houses).
The Doolittle raid on Tokyo (with little impact except for morale) resulted in over 200,000 Chinese being killed in retaliation for that raid by the Japanese in 1942.
There was an article I read last week that the US intended to use at least 9 atomic bombs as part of an invasion. Three bombs for each invasion area, with one bomb to "soften" the landing area, one bomb dropped behind the landing area, and a third bomb to nuke reinforcements.
Buchanan is flat wrong that Japan could not defend itself -- there were about 10,000 Kamikaze planes ready for the invasion, and Japan was constantly building more.
US Navy losses off Okinawa were horrific in World War II. The invasion of Japan would have made the losses to the US Navy at Okinawa pale by comparison
I guess if we only lost 5 battleship, 20 aircraft carriers, 30 cruisers, and a 100 destroyers in the invasion of Japan, then maybe Buchanan would see a different light. (These figures are extreme, but well within ball park figures of what could have happend.)
And in case you don't realize it, today we don't have 20 aircraft carriers to lose in a single battle.
The figures that the Truman administration estimated were 500,000 Allied soldiers killed and over 2 million Japanese soldiers if Japan was invaded. There was also fighting going on in the Philippines, and people dying in Japanese death camps.
Finally, even when the Japanese War Council met to discuss surrender after the atomic bombings, the War Council was deadlocked -- it was the Emperor's vote that broke the deadlock. In the next 24 hours, there were several military attempts on the Emperor's life. Japan's warlords were not that willing to surrender even after getting NUKED a couple of times.
So Buchanan is off in the weeds with some of his analysis and commentary.
Probably not. I see it as the lesser of two evils. Christians are supposed to line up and march through the gates to their symbolic ovens like the Jews did for centuries until they wised up and decided they weren't going to take it any more and started fighting back.
The guy writing this piece probably wouldn't be writing this stuff if we had lost. First he would have had to learn Japanese or German, and would only be able to write nice things about their conquerors who ruled over them.
I've said on other threads like this, I got my father back about three years before expected. My youngest years were fatherless. I'm grateful that mine came back and turned out to be a wonderful father.
How my heart goes out to people in our society who don't have anything but sperm donors for fathers, some of whom are family members. They don't know any better, but it has to affect them.
When Operation Coronet was planned, it was assumed that the Japanese had four divisions on southern Honshu. We would go in with six. After Okinawa, where my cousin Dicky O'Brian (marine) was killed it was learned that they actually had eight.
Buchanan had a relative killed at Aushwitz....He fell out of a guard tower.
Those guys didn't have 60 years to reflect. I can excuse those who were profoundly close to the horror.
If I had been there and known what I now know and had access to the proper weapon, I would have felt morally bound to shoot him with no moral qualms whatsoever, if only I had the courage to do so, which is an unknown. Hopefully I would have been single with no dependents to leave behind when they cornered me in the woods and shot me.
Pat Buchanan reeks anti-semitism at times. Must run in families for generations. That's why I don't read his drivel as a general rule.
That point isn't relevant to Buchanan's article. He's looking at the issue in the context of Christian principles, which don't change over time. If something was objectively "wrong" in 1945, then it would be objectively "wrong" today (and vice versa).
There have been a number of comments over the years by military people who suggested that an invasion of Japan was absolutely unnecessary for the U.S. to win the war. As an island nation with few natural resources, the country could not possibly have sustained a major military force for very long.
In my opinion, that happened years ago. I think America is home to too many Jooooos for his taste.
What an ass.
Indeed.
People who would normally be suspicious of government decisions will justify anything it does during wartime. War is the Health of the State.
A late "Happy Nagasaki Day!" to everyone I missed yesterday!
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