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Jon Stewart: Truman Was a War Criminal, Too
Weekly Standard ^ | 4/30/2009 | Michael Goldfarb

Posted on 04/30/2009 1:13:32 PM PDT by mojito

It comes at about the 5:50 mark. Cliff May asks Stewart whether Truman's use of the atomic bomb was a war crime, Stewart ruminates and then responds with an unequivocal "yes." He's certainly not the only American who would take that view, but it's a useful reminder that the most vocal and popular criticism of the Bush administration's war on terror policies comes from people who, if they were being as honest as Stewart, would also judge Lincoln (suspension of habeas), FDR (internment), and Truman (use of nuclear weapons) as war criminals or tyrants or worse.

Stewart repeats the charge again later in the interview, but you have to wonder whether this was one of the rare times that he just got outmaneuvered on his own show. Serious people have debated Truman's decision for 60 years, but even those who disagree with that decision rarely describe it as "criminal." And if it was criminal, whatever crimes the left alleges of President Bush seem pretty trivial in comparison.


TOPICS: Culture/Society; Extended News; Foreign Affairs; Government; Politics/Elections; War on Terror
KEYWORDS: atomicbomb; jonstewart; revisionisthistory; truman; usefulidiot; war; warcrimes; wwii
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I guess Sherman and Grant and Patton and MacArthur were war criminals too.
1 posted on 04/30/2009 1:13:32 PM PDT by mojito
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To: All

To the left, every great figure in American history, with the grand exception of Martin Luther King, is a criminal.

That’s how the left views their country.


2 posted on 04/30/2009 1:15:01 PM PDT by mojito
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To: mojito

Stewart- king of the ‘armchair quarterbacks’....


3 posted on 04/30/2009 1:16:15 PM PDT by keep your powder dry
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To: mojito

Oh, gawd.

Hey, John, you’re 50 or so, ask your Dad if he had been a WW2 vet, and facing the invasion of Japan, whether he supported the bombdrops.

One little not so well known secret is many, many Japanese were thankful the war ended, since otherwise, all men and kids were to be used in kamikaze type attacks all over the country against American troops.

The costs would have made the horrendous casualty lists of Hiroshima and Nagasaki look like child’s play.


4 posted on 04/30/2009 1:16:21 PM PDT by swarthyguy ("We may be crazy in Pakistan, but not completely out of our minds," ISI Gen. Ahmed Shujaa Pasha)
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To: mojito
Look, there are penalties for helping guys who load Jews into box cars bound for ovens. I guarantee you, Stewart, as they were prodding your Jewish ass with a bayonet through the gates of Buchenvald, you'd pray for an atomic bomb just to take those kraut bastards with you to the ninth circle of hell, you jackball.

That's the end of that discussion.

5 posted on 04/30/2009 1:16:48 PM PDT by domenad (In all things, in all ways, at all times, let honor guide me.)
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To: mojito
To the left, every great figure in American history, with the grand exception of Martin Luther King, is a criminal.

...and all the sinners saints.

6 posted on 04/30/2009 1:16:54 PM PDT by dfwgator (1996 2006 2008 - Good Things Come in Threes)
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To: mojito

Just keep repeating this:

John Stewart is a comedian...John Stewart is a comedian...John Stewart is a comedian...


7 posted on 04/30/2009 1:17:16 PM PDT by NMEwithin
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To: mojito

From what I hear, MLK, Jr. was just a womanizer and palagerist.


8 posted on 04/30/2009 1:17:25 PM PDT by NCC-1701 (ON 1-19-09 GAS WAS, ON AVERAGE IN MEMPHIS, $1.43 A GALLON.)
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To: mojito

My late father’s life, and millions of others, were spared because President Truman had the stones to do the right thing.


9 posted on 04/30/2009 1:17:37 PM PDT by 2ndDivisionVet ("The unarmed man is not just defenseless - he is also contemptible." Machiavelli)
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To: mojito

>>war criminals or tyrants or worse.

Hell, don’t forget Woodrow Wilson’s sterling record on civil right and ethnic concerns, not to mention free speech.

German Americans were pretty badly treated, to say the least..


10 posted on 04/30/2009 1:17:56 PM PDT by swarthyguy ("We may be crazy in Pakistan, but not completely out of our minds," ISI Gen. Ahmed Shujaa Pasha)
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To: mojito

Yes Jon you should thank your lucky stars for these “War Criminals”. They made it possible for you to live in a Country where you can make a living being a Commie Propagandist and liberal butt-boy! (Although if Hitler had won I guess you would be asking what Enchanted him most about the Holocaust?


11 posted on 04/30/2009 1:18:51 PM PDT by jakerobins
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To: mojito

When you’re filled with self-loathing and cultural self-hatred for the United States, any incident which demonstrates real or potential wrong-doing by the country or its citizens is considered criminal because it confirms your view of the world.

Washington and his men shot down Hessians at a holiday celebration, I believe. And he’s a slave owner. So the country was a criminal enterprise from its founding.

And so the bullsh*t goes. Sadly, the Jon Stewarts of the world will discover the weary truth that it is easier to tear something down than to build it up.


12 posted on 04/30/2009 1:19:21 PM PDT by redpoll
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To: mojito
To the left, every great figure in American history, with the grand exception of Martin Luther King, is a criminal.

And the Dyke Dollar worked out for 'em real good, too.

Oh, wait.....

13 posted on 04/30/2009 1:19:31 PM PDT by randog (Tap into America!)
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To: mojito

When you’re filled with self-loathing and cultural self-hatred for the United States, any incident which demonstrates real or potential wrong-doing by the country or its citizens is considered criminal because it confirms your view of the world.

Washington and his men shot down Hessians at a holiday celebration, I believe. And he’s a slave owner. So the country was a criminal enterprise from its founding.

And so the bullsh*t goes. Sadly, the Jon Stewarts of the world will discover the weary truth that it is easier to tear something down than to build it up.


14 posted on 04/30/2009 1:20:24 PM PDT by redpoll
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To: mojito

What the likes of Stewart don’t understand is that the US killed far more Japanese in the firebombing campaign that immediately preceded the nuke attacks than in the latter. Furthermore, he does not seem to comprehend that he very likely would not be on Earth to criticize leaders like Truman had he decided to invade the main islands (we did invade Imperial Japanese territory, but Iwo Jima and Okinawa as bad as they were would pale next to the main island) as his father, my father, and many more fathers of Boomers would have been killed there. It would have been history-changing, indeed. Stewart would be well-advised to read some history before spouting off.


15 posted on 04/30/2009 1:20:56 PM PDT by astounded (The democrat party is a clear and present danger to America.)
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To: mojito
I am always offended by the argument against the use of the A Bomb.

I know lots of people who finished that war and who would have been involved with the invasion of Japan if the bomb had not ended that war.

I had the opportunity to see the prep the Japanese had made for the expected invasion and I will promise the killing would have been huge.

16 posted on 04/30/2009 1:22:11 PM PDT by Oldsailor
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To: keep your powder dry

If Stewart somehow were to “see the light” and change his humor, in the same way Dennis Miller did, it would be enormously beneficial. He is the news source of many 30 and younger. At some point it seems that logic could kick in, it has happened to others. So, everybody, let’s pray or visualise or both that this might happen. Desperate times call for desperate measures.


17 posted on 04/30/2009 1:22:51 PM PDT by Anima Mundi
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To: NMEwithin

“John Stewart is a comedian”

Bingo. I think he gets way too much credit.


18 posted on 04/30/2009 1:22:57 PM PDT by y6162
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To: redpoll
Sadly, the Jon Stewarts of the world will discover the weary truth that it is easier to tear something down than to build it up.

No truer words ever said.

19 posted on 04/30/2009 1:23:06 PM PDT by AmericaUnite
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To: mojito

So a full-scale assault on the Japanese mainland with hundreds of thousands of American dead, dwarfed by the millions of Japanese who would have killed, how does that rate on your worthless, uneducated, historically ignorant “war criminal” scale?

Why am I even wasting the time to respond to an over-rated nothing like Stewart?


20 posted on 04/30/2009 1:23:11 PM PDT by EyeGuy
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