Posted on 05/01/2009 5:02:38 PM PDT by RobinMasters
A follow-up to Wednesday night’s Kinsleyan gaffe: He’s sorry, he’s just not sure why he’s sorry. The closest we get to an explanation is that the decision to drop the bomb was “complicated,” but of course that’s why Cliff May brought it up — to draw a parallel with the decision to waterboard terrorists. The moral calculus about how far to go in roughing up jihadis to save how many lives is difficult, as was the calculus about how many lives would be saved in the long run by incinerating Japanese kids in Hiroshima and Nagasaki to end the war. The fact that Stewart is a hard no on the former yet considers the latter iffy suggests a mentality I simply can’t fathom. Is it just a matter of Truman having been a Democrat, whose motives were therefore pure, as opposed to Bush supposedly getting his Republican rocks off by torturing terrorists? Or is it that Truman’s already been vindicated by history and isn’t safe to criticize the way Bush still is?
(Excerpt) Read more at hotair.com ...
“Harry’s best attribute was that he made a decision, stuck by it and didn’t try to pawn the responsibility for it off on someone else.”
Whatever you think of Truman’s politics you have to admire the fact he always took responsibility for every decision he made. He might later say he made the wrong decision, but he never tried to pass the buck.
Did you write this post yourself? Can I have permission to use it, with due credit, of course?
Two arguments concerning this issue which I have not seen given are as follows:
One, at the tine the decision was made to use the A-bombs, no one (excepting the scientists working on the bomb who were fully in the loop) really understood what its use meant. We had just spent the last four years making bigger, better, faster, more powerful weapons. The atomic bomb would have been thought of as simply an extension of this effort. After the world saw the results, attitudes changed, as well they should. You touch on this idea peripherally in your post.
Two, had the invasion of Japan taken place, the projected casualties would have more than doubled all of the American casualties up to that point. Would the American public have signed on to the rebuilding of Japan at that point? I rather doubt it. I think their attitude may have to let them rot.
As a post script, did you know that the US government had 490 thousand Purple Hearts made in preparation for the invasion of Japan? So many were made that none have been made since, with the exception of 9000 that were produced -- you're going to love this -- when the government temporarily lost track of the ones it already had. They were cleaned up and re-ribboned at least once.
I wonder what that smarmy little turd burglar thinks of FDR’s firebombing of Dresden and Hamburg, where the asphalt roads liquified and people-men, women, and kids-fleeing their burning homes were ensnared and trapped in the molten asphalt like dinosaurs in a tarpit....
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bombing_of_Hamburg_in_World_War_II
Just checked the top rated cable shows and surprise, surprise, I didn’t see Stewart/Stuart or Maher’s shows mentioned anywhere.
I doubt he has ever heard of it, he may have forgotten or it was never taught in NJ Public Schools. I get the impression John is not a history enthusiast really.
The court jesters are swaying the masses.
Good. Stuart has a lot of potential, but just doesn’t focus.
Maher has just devolved into this pathetic puddle of hate. And as much as I don’t like using the left’s terms, in this instance there’s no word that fits better.
His view of Christians is as bad as the Roman view shortly after Christ’s death. To see a person given a public platform to spew that stuff in today’s world, is very troublesome.
Name one other group that you could trash the way Maher does Christians. I guess it would be Conservatives, and that would be nearly as bad. The public debate doesn’t need to be what Maher and the left have made it.
It actually saved Japanese lives, considering their casualties would have been massive given a US land invasion of Japan.
Another fact that is glossed over, is that had the war dragged on, the Soviets would have been involved, and Japan would have wound up being divided, just like Germany and Korea, and it would have been another Cold War hotspot.
If memory serves me, Russia declared war on Japan with a few days left before the peace treaty was signed aboard the U.S.S. Missouri.
Japan had been pretty bad to anything in Asia for decades prior to WWII.
Probably a good thing for Japan that China, Russia and the U.S. didn’t team up to invade and kick their butts.
Good thing for us too, we might have ended up fighting each other.
Probably the network threatened to pull the plug after it got some angry phone calls from Demwit hot-shots. Also, the POS now realizes his hero Zero is going to continue the same policies but with semantic changes — and even expand the WOT.
Sorry to take so long for the response. I had heard about the surplus of Purple Hearts that served as adequate supply thru the Gulf War. Feel free to make use of my article particularly to counter the anti-war lefts distortions, half truths and untruths. Glad to be of assistance.
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