I'm Irish, so I guess I get the privilege to say this today. Hey, John, kiss my royal Irish ass.
Posted on 03/17/2008 7:54:33 PM PDT by NotChosenName
It was a horrible, shocking, unnerving experience. Reading some of the things Barack Obama's pastor has said, I suddenly saw something with which I completely agree!! He said five days after 9/11: "We bombed Hiroshima, we bombed Nagasaki, and we nuked far more than the thousands in New York and the Pentagon, and we never batted an eye...." His point: Chickens were coming home to roost. I agree. We certainly committed terrorism and murder when we dropped two atomic bombs on open cities in Japan. And, as Ron Paul has said, correctly, re: 9/11: The terrorists were over here because, first, we were over there in their part of the world sticking our nose into fights none of our business. Finally, none other than God Himself tells us in Galatians 6:7: "Be not deceived; God is not mocked: for whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap."
JLof@aol.com
From my reading, only a very few agonized over it. One who did was Robert Wilson, founder of Fermilab and member of the Manhattan Project. Another one was some Lieutenant I read of who was on the Hiroshima assessment team. He was rocked by what he saw and wrote that no one who had seen what he had seen would consider doing it again. There were other military intellectual types who frankly admitted it was morally unjustifiable, but did not shrink from it nevertheless. The War transcended morality.
My impression is that Truman himself was actually a rather bloodthirsty sort of fellow when it came to this sort of thing. He made a strange statement in his announcement speech of the bombing, “The world will note that the first atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima, a military base.” This was obviously intended as moral justification, but it fulfills that function only in the most formal sense. The real moral adjustment was the acceptance of “Total War”. I think most accepted it as a fact, but there were still all these treaties and what not.
I think the American population in general did not concern themselves at all over Japanese losses, and felt elation and excitement that the war was ended by such a triumphant and stupendous technological achievement.
I also think that criticism of “the decision” decades later is absurd and unrealistic, even childish. The War had its own logic and necessities, and no one was master over it. It was all a question of duty at every level.
The idea that Arab terrorists are inspired or justified by our use of the atomic bomb is pure rhetoric. I mentioned in another thread that Seymour Hersh made this assertion on 9/12, saying as I recall, “Well, they saw us using the atomic bomb ...” like we were supposed to think, “Oh gosh, yeah, well lets just call it even then.” What occurred to me was, “You just equated 9/11 to a nuclear attack. Why then, shouldn’t we respond in kind?”
I'm Irish, so I guess I get the privilege to say this today. Hey, John, kiss my royal Irish ass.
Tens of millions of Americans and JAPANESE are alive today because we dropped those bombs. They are the sons and daughters, grandsons and grandaughters, and great-grandchildren of the millions of Americans and Japanese (especially Japanese civilians who were to be armed with bamboo staves and drafted into suicide attacks) that would have been killed in an invasion of Japan that would have happened otherwise. I’m possibly one, although my dad was serving as a meteorologist for the USAAF in Italy at the time. A lot of non-infantry would have been converted to footsoldiers to meet the demand that an invasion would have required. Indeed, my dad’s unit was awaiting orders for transfer to the Pacific Theater when they heard about the bombs.
In any case, no such benefit to humanity can be pointed to as a result of the random murder of 3,000 civilians on 9/11.
IBTZ
I don’t know if he know how to read or he would know we killed more Japanese before the nukes with the fire bombing.
We won the war and Japan is still an ally.
Of course it did. Truman knew that many civilians would die. No decision like that is ever easy for those on our side who value life. For the Nazis, Fascists, imperial Japenese, and now the Islamofascists, I submit that the decision would be easy. We beat people in wars, help rebuild their country, and hope we can ultimately develop trading partners and friends. That is what my country does, and I am proud to be an American.
Lofton, you’re a buffoon.
Actually the atomic bomb saved japan. If the war continued uncle hjoe would have partitioned japan and we would have even more of a mess. That is one reason truman dropped the bomb.
Did you hear about the guy who was half black and half Japanese?
Every December 7th he would attack Pearl Bailey.
Get your facts straight. Hiroshima and Nagasaki were not "open cities". Japan never ceded any city to invasion on the main islands.
Japan did not recognize the open city idea, as can be seen with Manila and several Chinese cities that the Japs destroyed even though they were declared open.
Japan attacked us without warning.
We went to war and warned them to cease or we would drop that bomb.
We rather than lose a hundred thousand American troops dropped bomb number one.
We then said that they should surrender or we drop bomb number two.
They did NOT surrender and we had to drop number two.
They surrendered, we spent 50 years in Japan turning them around and now they are our friends.
What is this ignorant rot doing here?
Just a small tangential clue. When two countries are at war, their battles and attacks on each other are not called terrorism. In fact it is the classic example of when it’s not.
We certainly committed terrorism and murder when we dropped two atomic bombs on open cities in Japan
“John Lofton, Recovering Republican”
Barack - is that you playing tricks again?
>>Has it occurred to him just how many Japanese would have died in an invasion of Japan? Extrapolating from the invasion of Okinawa we are looking at 400,000 American Dead and 5 to 10 million dead Japanese, depending on the number of civilaisn involved in suicidal attacks and suicide to flee the Americans. The 210,000 Japanese killed in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, though sad saved millions of people and the destruction of Japan.<<
Quite right. The bombings, tragic as they were, saved Japanese lives, and indeed, probably the Japanese culture. The Russians were more than ready to invade Japan. It would be likely that not only would Truman be tempted to OK Russian “help” to save US lives, but also the Russians might not ask his permission. A Russian occupation would kill millions more Japanese.
>>Actually the atomic bomb saved japan. If the war continued uncle hjoe would have partitioned japan and we would have even more of a mess. That is one reason truman dropped the bomb.<<
See #56.
What was that about between Zappa and Lofton?
They were on Crossfire in 1986 debating dirty lyrics. The video is somewhere. I thought it was on YouTube, but that one was pulled. Someone probably has it handy.
Oh, I found this: "My name is John Lofton. I am a recovering Republican. And I would ask you to be gentle with me because I have a lot from which to recover -- "
Are you recovered yet? Is that why you haven't responded to anyone?
IBTZ.
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