“The use of the atomic bomb, with its indiscriminate killing of women and children, revolts my soul,” he wrote. “The only difference between this and the use of gas (which President Franklin D. Roosevelt had barred as a first-use weapon in World War II) is the fear of retaliation.”
Those harsh words, written three days after the Hiroshima bombing in August, 1945, were not by a man of the American left, but rather by a very prominent conservative—former President Herbert Hoover, a foe of the New Deal and Fair Deal.
In 1959, Medford Evans, a conservative writing in William Buckley’s strongly nationalistic, energetically right-wing magazine, National Review, stated: “The indefensibility of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima is becoming a part of the national conservative creed.” Just the year before, the National Review had featured an angry, anti-atomic bomb article, “Hiroshima: Assault on a Beaten Foe.” Like Hoover, that 1958 essay had decried the atomic bombing as wanton murder. National Review’s editors, impressed by that article, had offered special reprints.
Those two sets of events—Hoover in 1945 and National Review in 1968-69—were not anomalies in early post-Hiroshima U.S. conservatism. In fact, many noted American conservatives—journalists, former diplomats and retired and occasionally on-duty military officers, and some right-wing historians and political scientists—criticized the atomic bombing. They frequently contended it was unnecessary, and often maintained it was immoral and that softer surrender terms could have ended the war without such mass killing. They sometimes charged Truman and the atomic bombing with “criminality” and “slaughter.”
Yet today, this history of early anti-A-bomb dissent by conservatives is largely unknown. In about the past 20 years, various American conservatives have even assailed A-bomb dissent as typically leftist and anti-American, and as having begun in the tumultuous 1960s. Such a view of postwar American history is remarkably incorrect.
Journalists
In mid-August, 1945, in the conservative United States News (now U.S. News & World Report), with a circulation somewhat under 200,000, that magazine’s founder and longtime editor, David Lawrence, condemned the atomic bombing in a spirited editorial, “What Hath Man Wrought!” America, he asserted, should be “ashamed” of the atomic bombing. During the next 27 years, on some A-bomb anniversaries, Lawrence, a well known conservative who died in 1973, proudly republished his 1945 editorial.
Felix Morley, the former editor of the Washington Post and ex-president of Haverford College, felt similarly about the atomic bombing. A recognized conservative, he published in 1945 a strong anti-A-bomb editorial—“The Return to Nothingness”—in his small circulation, conservative newsletter, Human Events. He called Hiroshima and Pearl Harbor atrocities. The atomic bombing, he charged, was “an infamous act of atrocious revenge.”
The right-wing journalist Walter Trohan of the conservative Chicago Tribune periodically contended that the atomic bombing had been unnecessary and that an early Japanese surrender could have been otherwise achieved. Charging a coverup, he implied there had been a Roosevelt-Truman conspiracy to prolong the war. Beginning in August 1945, Trohan’s anti-A-bomb articles received front-page attention, and the Tribune in 1947 termed the bombings “criminality.”
In 1948, the rightward-leaning Time-Life-Fortune publisher Henry Luce told an international Protestant meeting that “unconditional surrender” had violated St. Thomas’ just-war doctrine, and that softer surrender terms in 1945 could have ended the war without the atomic bombing, which “so jarred the Christian conscience.”
Ex-U.S. Diplomats
Truman’s former 1945 Under Secretary of State Joseph Grew, who retired shortly after Japan’s surrender, and two of his former State Department associates, Japan experts Eugene Dooman and Joseph Ballantine, later angrily castigated the atomic bombing. Recognized as conservatives, they sharply criticized the defense of the bombings by President Truman and the retired Secretary of War Henry L. Stimson, who had presided over the wartime A-bomb project.
Grew, Dooman and Ballantine all believed that the atomic bombing had been unnecessary, that softer surrender terms (mostly allowing a constitutional monarchy) would have ended the war, and that Truman had gravely erred. Dooman often charged that the bombing had been immoral.
Similar harsh judgments came from William Castle, a close associate of Herbert Hoover who had served as Hoover’s Under Secretary of State when Stimson was secretary. Castle complained that Stimson’s postwar, widely publicized A-bomb defense “was consciously dishonest.” Japan, Castle believed, had been near surrender before the atomic bomb was used. He even suspected that Stimson and others had prolonged the war in order to use the A-bomb on Japan.
U.S. Military Leaders
Perhaps surprisingly, after V-J day, the right-wing Gen. Curtis LeMay, whose Air Force had pummeled Japan in the last months of the Asian war, periodically criticized the atomic bombing. In mid-September 1945, for example, he publicly declared that it had been unnecessary and that Japan would have speedily surrendered without it. The bomb, he asserted, “had nothing to do with the end of the war.”
Public criticism of the atomic bombing also appeared in the postwar memoirs by two retired military leaders on the moderate right—in 1949 by Gen. Henry H. Arnold, the wartime head of the Army Air Forces, and in 1952 by Admiral Ernest J. King, wartime chief of naval operations.
Shortly after the end of the war, Gen. Douglas MacArthur, a fervent anti-New Dealer, had publicly contended that the atomic bombing was unnecessary. In 1960, in discussing that bombing with ex-President Hoover, MacArthur condemned it as unnecessary “slaughter.”
MacArthur’s 1945 psychological-warfare chief, Gen. Bonner Fellers (later Colonel) after retiring from the Army, wrote a widely read article contending that Japan had been near surrender and that the nuclear bombing had been unnecessary. A proud conservative serving as public relations director for the Veterans of Foreign War (VFW), he published his article in the VFW’s monthly, Foreign Service, with a circulation of over a half-million. That month, the conservative-leaning Reader’s Digest, with a readership probably exceeding 10 million, reissued it in slightly compressed form.
The strongest postwar criticism of the atomic bombing by a prominent American ex-military leader probably came from Admiral William Leahy, a conservative who had also been a top military adviser to Presidents Roosevelt and Truman. In his 1950 memoir, the recently retired Leahy declared, “the use of this barbarous weapon at Hiroshima and Nagasaki was of not material assistance in our war against Japan.” That nation, he contended, was defeated and ready to surrender before the atomic bombing. He likened the use of the bomb to the morality of Genghis Khan. The crusty admiral wrote about the 1945 bombing, “I was not taught to make war in that fashion.” The United States, he asserted, “had adopted an ethical standard common to the barbarians of the Dark Ages.”
Meanings
Spirited contentions that the atomic bombing was unwise, unnecessary and immoral are not new, nor did they start in the 1960s. These charges appeared in much of the earlier post-Hiroshima criticism, which came substantially from conservative American publications and people. Such conservative support does not necessarily make those criticisms right or wrong, or good or bad history, but certainly an important part of an earlier postwar dissenting culture.
That is an important but mostly forgotten part of the past, which Americans today—whether young or old, Republicans or Democrats—usually do not know. Mistakenly, many believe that the loose conservative-liberal/radical divide of recent years on attitudes toward the 1945 atomic bombings and that prominent American conservatives in contrast overwhelmingly endorsed those atomic bombings. That history is far more complex, and is important to understand to gain perspective on American attitudes and values on war-fighting, forms of killing, and uses of nuclear weapons on enemies.
Written for the San Jose Mercury News.
#1: Cynicom To: Ada (#0)
Cynicom posted on 2020-08-06 09:33:11 Reply Private Reply
#2: Ada To: Cynicom (#1)
Ada posted on 2020-08-08 15:49:36 Reply Private Reply
#3: Cynicom To: Ada, Lod, noone222, Esso, BTP Holdings, All (#2)
During Korean war I served with American and Australian men that had been in Pacific during WWII. Australians told of Japanese harvesting the liver of..men while alive... to cook for their breakfast. At the time I thot they were full of it. They were not.
One survived the Bataan death march.
What Hoover or any hand wringer had to say about A bombing Japan is of no interest.
http://ahrp.org/hidden-horrors-j...-evidence-of-cannibalism/
Cynicom posted on 2020-08-08 17:15:44 Reply Private Reply
#4: NeoconsNailed To: Cynicom (#3)
Now that we know FDR goaded and tricked them into bombing Pearl Harbor the entire gig is up.
NeoconsNailed posted on 2020-08-08 18:10:38 Reply Private Reply
#5: AllTheKings'HorsesWontDoIt To: Ada (#0)
ZOG was pretty well entrenched by then.
All Wars Are Banker's Wars
http://www.whatreallyhappened.com/WRHARTICLES/allwarsarebankerwars.php
"Thanks to the terrible power of our International Banks, we have forced the Christians into wars without number. Wars have a special value for Jews, since Christians massacre each other and make more room for us Jews. Wars are the Jews' Harvest: The Jew banks grow fat on Christian wars. Over 100-million Christians have been swept off the face of the earth by wars, and the end is not yet." ~ Rabbi Reichorn, speaking at the funeral of Grand Rabbi Simeon Ben-Iudah, 1869
===================
"...prior to the bomb exploding directly over the Urakami Cathedral, Nagasaki was the most Christian city in Japan, and the massive cathedral had been the largest Christian church building in the Orient...
Ironically, prior to August 6 and 9, the residents of those five cities had considered themselves lucky for not having been bombed as had the other large cities. Little did the residents of Hiroshima and Nagasaki know that they were only being temporarily spared for an even worse carnage from a revolutionary experimental weapon that could cause the mass annihilation of entire cities and their human guinea pig inhabitants.The list of protected cities included Hiroshima, Niigata, Kokura, Kyoto and Nagasaki. Those five cities were to be off-limits to the terror bombings that the other cities were being subjected to. They were to be preserved as potential targets for the new “gimmick” weapon that had been researched and developed in labs and manufacturing plants all across America over the several years since the Manhattan Project had begun.
The plutonium bomb that had been field tested at Alamogordo, New Mexico, was identical to the one that was dropped at Nagasaki. It had been blasphemously code-named “Trinity” (a distinctly Christian term) and had been detonated in secrecy three weeks earlier on July 16, 1945. The results were impressive, but the blast had just killed a few hapless coyotes, rabbits, snakes and some other desert varmints...
From 1600 until 1850, being a Christian in Japan was a capital crime (punishable by death). In the early 1600s, Japanese Christians who refused to recant of their new faith were subject to unspeakable tortures – including crucifixion. After a well-publicized mass crucifixion was orchestrated, the reign of terror stopped, and it appeared to all observers that Japanese Christianity was extinct.
However, 250 years later, after the gunboat diplomacy of U.S. Commodore Matthew Perry forced open an offshore island for American trade purposes, it was discovered that there were thousands of baptized Christians in Nagasaki, living their faith in secret in a catacomb-like existence, completely unknown to the government.
With this revelation, the Japanese government started another purge; but because of international pressure, the persecutions stopped and Nagasaki Christianity came up from the underground. By 1917, with no financial help from the government, the re-vitalized Christian community had built their massive cathedral in the Urakami River district of Nagasaki.
So it was the height of irony that the massive Cathedral – one of only two Nagasaki landmarks that could be positively identified from 31,000 feet up – became Ground Zero. (The other identifiable aiming point landmark was the Mitsubishi armaments factory complex – which had run out of raw materials because of the successful Allied naval blockade.)
At 11:02 a.m., during Thursday morning confessions, an unknown number of Nagasaki Christians were boiled, evaporated, carbonized or otherwise disappeared in a scorching, radioactive fireball that exploded 500 meters above the cathedral.
The “black rain” that soon came down from the mushroom cloud also contained the mingled cellular remains of many Nagasaki Christians as well as many more Shintoists and Buddhists. The theological implications of Nagasaki’s Black Rain surely should boggle the minds of theologians of all denominations.
Nagasaki Christian Body Count
Most Nagasaki Christians did not survive the blast. Six thousand of them died instantly, including all who were at confession that morning. Of the 12,000 church members, 8,500 of them eventually died as a result of the bomb. Many of the others were seriously sickened with a highly lethal entirely new disease: radiation sickness.
Located near the cathedral were three orders of nuns and a Christian girl’s school. They all disappeared into black smoke or became chunks of charcoal. Tens of thousands of other innocent non-Christian non-combatants also died instantly, and many more were mortally or incurably wounded. Some of the original victims (and their progeny) are still suffering from the trans-generational malignancies and immune deficiencies caused by the deadly plutonium and other radioactive isotopes produced by the bomb.
And here is one of the most important ironies: What the Japanese Imperial government could not do in 250 years of persecution (i.e., to destroy Japanese Christianity) American Christians did in mere seconds.
Even after a slow revival of Christianity after WWII, membership in Japanese Christian churches still represents a tiny fraction of 1 percent of the general population, and the average attendance at Christian worship services across the nation is reported to be only 30 per Sunday. The decimation of Nagasaki crippled what at one time was a vibrant church.
Father George Zabelka was the Catholic chaplain for the 509th Composite Group (the 1,500-man USAAF group whose only mission was to deliver atomic bombs to Japanese civilian targets). Zabelka was one of the few World War II clergy leaders who eventually came to recognize the serious contradictions between what his modern church had taught him and what the early pacifist church believed concerning homicidal violence.
Several decades after Zabelka was discharged from the military chaplaincy, he finally concluded that both he and his church had made serious ethical and theological errors in religiously legitimating the organized mass slaughter that is modern war. He eventually came to understand that (as he articulated it) “the enemy of me and the enemy of my nation is not an enemy of God. Rather my enemy and my nation’s enemy are children of God who are loved by God and who therefore are to be loved (and not killed) by me as a follower of that loving God.”
Father Zabelka’s sudden conversion away from the standardized war-tolerant Christianity changed his Detroit, Michigan ministry around 180 degrees. His absolute commitment to the truth of gospel nonviolence – just like Martin Luther King’s commitment – inspired him to devote the remaining decades of his life to speaking out against violence in all its forms, including the violence of militarism, racism and economic exploitation.
Zabelka travelled to Nagasaki on the 50th anniversary of the bombing, tearfully repenting and asking for forgiveness for the part he had played in the crime.
Likewise, the Lutheran chaplain for the 509th, Pastor William Downey (formerly of Hope Evangelical Lutheran Church in Minneapolis, Minnesota), in his counseling of soldiers who had become troubled by their participation in making murder for the state, later denounced all killing, whether by a single bullet or by weapons of mass destruction...
https://www.mintpressnews.com/christianity-nagasaki-bomb/219373/
AllTheKings'HorsesWontDoIt posted on 2020-08-08 18:13:35 Reply Private Reply
#6: Ada To: Cynicom (#3)
We didn't have to do it.
Even if you don't care for Herbie Hoover's assessment, seven of the United States’ eight five-star Army and Navy officers in 1945 agreed with that assessment as an op ed in the LA Times points out.
Generals Dwight Eisenhower, Douglas MacArthur and Henry “Hap” Arnold and Admirals William Leahy, Chester Nimitz, Ernest King, and William Halsey are on record stating that the atomic bombs were either militarily unnecessary, morally reprehensible, or both.
Basically we did it to impress the USSR.
Ada posted on 2020-08-08 18:27:54 Reply Private Reply
#7: Ada To: AllTheKings'HorsesWontDoIt (#5)
Ada posted on 2020-08-08 18:30:09 Reply Private Reply
#8: Cynicom To: NeoconsNailed (#4)
Available research on the internet does not support that, in fact warnings about Japan go back to Teddy Roosevelt. Back around 1900 Teddy warned the government that Japan was coming, in fact his letter is available on the internet to read.
Twenty years later Col. Billy Mitchell warned War Dept. Japan was coming, they court-martialed him.
Then late 1930s, Col. George Patton warned war dept Japs were coming, he was ignored. Copy is on internet.
Cynicom posted on 2020-08-08 18:35:26 Reply Private Reply
#9: NeoconsNailed To: Cynicom (#8)
And why did they murder Patton once again?
NeoconsNailed posted on 2020-08-08 19:21:00 Reply Private Reply
#10: Cynicom To: NeoconsNailed (#9)
History is a dull subject, however it is all recorded.
People form quick and glib opinions without ever having studied history.
For instance in 1920, the US in FACT STARTED PREPARING FOR WAR WITH JAPAN. That happened shortly after treaty of Versailles was signed.
Congress knew Japan was coming, they authorized money to build the Malinta tunnel on Corregidor that MacArthur used.
War Plan Orange was developed in ...1919... take a read sometime.
Cynicom posted on 2020-08-08 19:54:00 Reply Private Reply
#11: NeoconsNailed To: Cynicom (#10)
The basic point is obvious and needs no research: if ameriKa can't exist without ceaselessly killing other countries, then we're the problem on this earth -- not them.
NeoconsNailed posted on 2020-08-08 20:14:41 Reply Private Reply
#12: BTP Holdings To: NeoconsNailed (#9)
Patton wanted to kick the Russians back into Russia "while we still had the men and equipment there to do it."
Of course that would have screwed up the agreements the Allies had made in Tehran in 1943. ;)
BTP Holdings posted on 2020-08-08 20:24:32 Reply Private Reply
#13: BTP Holdings To: NeoconsNailed (#11)
The modern politicians still fail to heed the advice of George Washington, "Friends and trading partners with all, favorites to none." ;)
BTP Holdings posted on 2020-08-08 20:28:04 Reply Private Reply
#14: NeoconsNailed To: BTP Holdings (#12)
NeoconsNailed posted on 2020-08-08 20:30:58 Reply Private Reply
#15: NeoconsNailed To: BTP Holdings (#13)
NeoconsNailed posted on 2020-08-08 20:33:15 Reply Private Reply
#16: BTP Holdings To: Cynicom (#10)
I took a cursory look at that plan. Although every step was not completely fulfilled, it did come in close to what was expected. ;)
BTP Holdings posted on 2020-08-08 20:34:36 Reply Private Reply
#17: Cynicom To: NeoconsNailed (#11)
History...
After the war we obtained much of their war plans that went back many years. Everything was there, black and white.
History cannot be erased that easily.
Cynicom posted on 2020-08-08 20:34:45 Reply Private Reply
#18: Cynicom To: BTP Holdings (#16)
Records show that beginning in June 1941 FDR began withdrawing military and civilian dependents from Pacific to Hawaii and US. It was very open and well known, he was aware and waiting. However very little was done to reinforce the military.
Cynicom posted on 2020-08-08 20:49:09 Reply Private Reply
#19: NeoconsNailed To: Cynicom (#17)
So the hell what? They're Japan, we're (or WERE) America.
You're out of gas, Cyni. America's jewed condition (which you conspicuously do not address) was the problem if there was one, not Japan.
Most Americans didn't want any more foreign wars, so they violated their own better nature and then-common sense by backing WW2.
Wouldn't you say it's a rather lamebrained way for a country to live? People think strait and apply "common sense" until some presidential whore, ANY presidential whore no matter how otherwise horrible, plays the foreign threat card -- and then they just line up to support it. Sickening, degrading, appalling -- fatal!
NeoconsNailed posted on 2020-08-09 01:30:33 Reply Private Reply
#20: Cynicom To: NeoconsNailed (#19)
Uhhh, empty quiver?
Total failure, E failing grade.
Cynicom posted on 2020-08-09 05:46:19 Reply Private Reply
#21: NeoconsNailed To: Cynicom (#20)
When were you drafted, and how old were you?
NeoconsNailed posted on 2020-08-10 13:58:00 Reply Private Reply
#22: NeoconsNailed To: Cynicom (#18)
Because the jew bastard urgently wanted Japan to attack and make it clear to them they were welcome to. He was aware and waiting all right!
NeoconsNailed posted on 2020-08-10 14:00:08 Reply Private Reply
#23: BTP Holdings To: Cynicom (#17)
MacArthur refused to allow the Soviets into Japan, even though they captured the Kuril Islands in the north.
Those islands still have not been given back to Japan. ;)
BTP Holdings posted on 2020-08-10 14:11:18 Reply Private Reply
#24: NeoconsNailed To: BTP Holdings (#23)
NeoconsNailed posted on 2020-08-10 14:45:02 Reply Private Reply
#25: Ada To: NeoconsNailed, Cynicom (#21)
Ada posted on 2020-08-11 10:29:03 Reply Private Reply
#26: randge To: Ada, NeoconsNailed, Cynicom, BTP Holdings (#25)
Short memories here or what?
Cyni was drafted and fought in Korea, if I'm not mistaken.
War is unsurpassed horror, and I tend to the pacifist side of things having been surrounded by so many ground-level survivors of the last Big War all my life.
But the question here dealt with the problem of ending that war in the Pacific.
Of the two conventional Allied solutions, blockade was indeterminate in terms of time, resources, manpower, and of course public patience.
The other obvious solution lay in invasion, and there would have had to be multiple large invasions. The first alone, Kyushu, would have required at least half again the forces required on D-Day Europe.
Lissen at the young Kraut. He's got some of this shit put together.
Why not blockade Japan into Surrender? (feat. D.M. Giangreco)
The Invasion of Japan - Operation Olympic / Downfall
randge posted on 2020-08-11 11:03:10 Reply Private Reply
#27: Lod To: randge, Cynicom, all (#26)
Lod posted on 2020-08-11 11:09:00 Reply Private Reply
#28: BTP Holdings To: Lod (#27)
I worked with a Jew boy that was in Korea. He smoked Lucky Strikes.
When we got the new Lead, Lead Worker at Northbrook yard he said, "This guy is a Captain Queeg."
And that new Lead, Lead proved it many times over. :-/
BTP Holdings posted on 2020-08-11 12:03:59 Reply Private Reply
#29: Cynicom To: NeoconsNailed (#21)
Empty quiver...Means simply that a person cannot discuss the facts and history, so they revert to PERSONAL MODE, to hide their shortcomings.
Ask anyone here if I abide the overly free use of the word """YOU""".
Check the dictionary, the word YOU is accusatory in nature and should be used with caution, not impolite abandon.
Cynicom posted on 2020-08-11 12:14:47 Reply Private Reply
#30: randge To: Lod (#27)
You're right, thanks. My bad. Knew he was in the AF, but Korea is the correct theater. (Was that do avoid being run around with the infantry? Couldn't blame him.)
randge posted on 2020-08-11 12:24:19 Reply Private Reply
#31: Cynicom To: randge, Lod (#30)
As poorest of the poor and children of the Great Depression, my brother and I had no illusions about war and our lives.
My brother gave his life in 1945, days before the end. When Korea began, I well knew it was my turn. My brother never returned, just a name on a Granite wall in Netherlands.
My goal was not to avoid the infantry, rather I wanted to live.
In 1952 the FBI and police surrounded my Fathers house, demanding he send out my person as a horrible draft dodger. That day, I was on an A-bomb crew sitting in Japan, fearing a one way trip into Russia.
Society scorned us but we were useful in dying.
Cynicom posted on 2020-08-11 13:08:56 Reply Private Reply
#32: randge To: Cynicom (#31)
I remember your story. And still for whatever reason, I cannot blame you.
Lotsa pictures of guys in our family that went off to fight. Many of them gone. Some with no graves to visit. Just pictures.
Good and 4-F'd out of it all myself, so I can't speak to it all that much. Still and all, I wonder what the world would be like if all those guys hadn't been dragged out to fight.
PS: I smell another big one coming.
randge posted on 2020-08-11 13:19:46 Reply Private Reply
#33: BTP Holdings To: randge (#32)
According to George Washington's vision at Valley Forge, there are to be three wars on American soil.
The Revolution and the War Between the States (Civil War) were the first two.
What will be the third war and which nations will be involved? ;)
BTP Holdings posted on 2020-08-11 14:31:51 Reply Private Reply
#34: Cynicom To: randge, Lod (#32)
This what the Japanese had in store for American civilians in Ca. Millions of "innocent" Americans would have died horrible deaths.
nationalinterest.org/blog...rica-using-aircraft-21555
Cynicom posted on 2020-08-11 14:34:17 Reply Private Reply
#35: NeoconsNailed To: Cynicom (#29)
NeoconsNailed posted on 2020-08-11 15:18:22 Reply Private Reply
#36: NeoconsNailed To: randge (#26)
NeoconsNailed posted on 2020-08-11 15:30:23 Reply Private Reply
#37: NeoconsNailed To: Cynicom (#34)
NeoconsNailed posted on 2020-08-11 15:37:06 Reply Private Reply
#38: NeoconsNailed To: Ada, randge (#25)
I guess we know now ;)
NeoconsNailed posted on 2020-08-11 15:38:01 Reply Private Reply
#39: randge To: Cynicom, Ada, Lod, Esso, Neocons Nailed, BTP Holdings, noone222, Darkwing (#34)
I might disagree with her though that "We didn't have to do it." The insect logic of large scale armed conflict made the choice inevitable. The alternatives didn't pan out and they likely would have resulted in more deaths in the long run than a nuclear attack. We will never know, however.
And with all respect, a discussion of the resources and historical alternatives available to the respective parties is more persuasive than "Horseshit first class Jew horseshit." I suspect that when a guy gets olde, he gives less and less a shit what others think or how much easier it is to catch flies with molasses than it is with vinegar. I sense that as older I get.
Cheers, y'all.
randge posted on 2020-08-11 15:38:18 Reply Private Reply
#40: NeoconsNailed To: randge (#39)
The glorification of these entanglements then and now is the biggest single reason we're stuck with a permanent War Of Terror. They've been quite up front about the fact the entire time, even yammering that since we 'stopt Hitler' we have to stop Saddam ad inf.
I'll ask you what I ask all War Of Terror defenders: WHY US. Why always US, especially when the other countries just sit back and watch the show. We'd have been in a better position to white knight against Japan if it weren't for the rape of Philippines -- et al.
NeoconsNailed posted on 2020-08-11 15:49:53 Reply Private Reply
#41: randge To: NeoconsNailed (#36)
This is true.
By the time 1945 rolled around, good choices were few and far between.
If a time could have been picked when this country might have chosen a better trajectory that might have been before 1913 and the creation of the Fed we know and entry into the Great War which entrained WWII as a direct consequence. A war with Japan was baked into that.
I believe that the Anglo elites were spoiling for a war as much as was Hitler - a plant of the West and recipient of Wall Street funding as crucial junctures in the story. The Poles, after the passing of Jozef Pilsudski, were the tool to goad the Germans into precipitous action. There was a campaign of provocations on the borders there that we do not today much recognize or discuss.
And Japan? Yes, at some point, this country had choices. But you can't unbreak an egg. And you won't change the minds of most if you attempt to recalculate the history of the past hundred years or so. It will be a couple of centuries before anything like objectivity will visit those events.
randge posted on 2020-08-11 16:03:06 Reply Private Reply
#42: randge To: NeoconsNailed (#40)
Like all lies that politicians speak, he knew it was a lie as it left his lips.
WHY US. Why always US
Because we got all the guns and bombs and the resources and folks to make more where they all came from. That makes us useful.
Stinks, don't it??
randge posted on 2020-08-11 16:08:18 Reply Private Reply
#43: NeoconsNailed To: randge (#41)
en.wikiped ia.org/wiki/Germany_Must_Perish!
Your last paragraff above is really a bit much. The facts are obvious and well-established. Obviously we have to pursue truth in everything or what are the study of science and history for.
NeoconsNailed posted on 2020-08-11 16:27:32 Reply Private Reply
#44: NeoconsNailed To: randge (#42)
No, ameriKa is just stupid and vain enuff to appoint itself world emperor/plunderer.
NeoconsNailed posted on 2020-08-11 16:29:50 Reply Private Reply
#45: randge To: NeoconsNailed (#43)
randge posted on 2020-08-11 16:34:38 Reply Private Reply
#46: Cynicom To: NeoconsNailed (#36)
That is total lack of long existing and accepted world history.
Cynicom posted on 2020-08-11 17:20:57 Reply Private Reply
#47: NeoconsNailed To: Cynicom (#46)
"the main question of how ameriKa and Japan got into a fight", Cyni?
BTW, did you catch my reply #13 here?
freedom4um.com/cgi-bin/readart.cgi? ArtNum=238443&Disp=13#C13
Why have you never told us how gay and lesbianistic the forces have been through the centuries? Why is this subject kept under lock and key by war fans everywhere.
NeoconsNailed posted on 2020-08-11 17:27:54 Reply Private Reply
#48: Cynicom To: NeoconsNailed (#47)
Cynicom posted on 2020-08-11 17:52:35 Reply Private Reply
#49: Ada To: randge (#39)
We didn't have to because Japan had offered to surrender with the condition that the emperor not be touched. We insisted on unconditional but we didn't bother the emperor.
Ada posted on 2020-08-11 18:14:10 Reply Private Reply
#50: X-15 To: Ada (#49)
Losers Do Not dictate their terms of surrender. Period.
X-15 posted on 2020-08-11 18:15:51 Reply Private Reply
#51: Ada To: X-15 (#50)
Ada posted on 2020-08-11 18:19:16 Reply Private Reply
#52: X-15 To: Ada (#51)
X-15 posted on 2020-08-11 18:28:50 Reply Private Reply
#53: Cynicom To: Ada, X-15 (#51)
That has NO basis in fact, in history nor in reality.
The last man standing dictates terms.
I spent time in Japan after the war, NEVER ONCE DID I SEE OIR HEAR, the sniveling or handwringing displayed by current Americans.
Cynicom posted on 2020-08-11 18:47:22 Reply Private Reply
#54: Ada To: Cynicom (#53)
Most wars are not ended by unconditional surrender. We did not demand Britain surrender unconditionally at Yorktown nor did Grant demand unconditional surrender from Lee. Nor did Spain surrender unconditionally in 1898.
Thanks to MacArthur's diplomacy and tact, the Japanese rather liked the American victors if only because they were not treated the way they expected, i.e., the way they treated others.
Ada posted on 2020-08-11 20:03:19 Reply Private Reply
#55: NeoconsNailed To: Cynicom (#48)
It will become crystal clear, but you still won't see it.
NeoconsNailed posted on 2020-08-11 20:31:45 Reply Private Reply
#56: Cynicom To: NeoconsNailed (#55)
Cynicom posted on 2020-08-11 21:41:53 Reply Private Reply
#57: NeoconsNailed To: Cynicom (#56)
NeoconsNailed posted on 2020-08-11 22:22:32 Reply Private Reply
#58: Cynicom To: NeoconsNailed (#57)
Am non plused.
Do have an observation however???
Cynicom posted on 2020-08-12 01:34:57 Reply Private Reply