"Careful scholarly treatment of the records and manuscripts opened over the past few years has greatly enhanced our understanding of why Truman administration used atomic weapons against Japan. Experts continue to disagree on some issues, but critical questions have been answered. The consensus among scholars is the that the bomb was not needed to avoid an invasion of Japan… It is clear that alternatives to the bomb existed and that Truman and his advisers knew it.
-J. Samuel Walker
Chief Historian
U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission
"I am absolutely convinced that had we said they could keep the emperor, together with the threat of an atomic bomb, they would have accepted, and we would never have had to drop the bomb."
-John McCloy
"It is my opinion that the use of this barbarous weapon at Hiroshima and Nagasaki was of no material assistance in our war against Japan. The Japanese were already defeated and ready to surrender… My own feeling was that in being the first to use it, we had adopted an ethical standard common to the barbarians of the Dark Ages. I was taught not to make war in that fashion, and wars cannot be won by destroying woman and children."
-Admiral William D. Leahy
Former Chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
"It always appeared to us that, atomic bomb or no atomic bomb, the Japanese were already on the verge of collapse."
-General Henry H. "Hap" Arnold
Commanding General of the U.S. Army
Air Forces Under President Truman
"...Japan was already defeated and that dropping the bomb was completely unnecessary, and secondly because I thought that our country should avoid shocking world opinion by the use of a weapon whose employment was, I thought, no longer mandatory as a measure to save American lives. It was my belief that Japan was, at this very moment, seeking a way to surrender with a minimum loss of 'face.' "
-General Dwight D. Eisenhower
Yes, Dithers! I should be so ashamed to respect the opinions of these people, and others of the vast majority of educated and involved people who make it clear that the reasons for dropping the bomb had little to do with popular myth! I have no right to voice my opinion, Dithers! If I stand shoulder to shoulder with other educated and informed Americans, then I am trying to "pin shame and blame" on them; right, Dithers! I am trying to condemn my neighbours; right, Dithers! You know, Dithers: like Einstein, Roosevelt,... :-)
As always when you have been cornered like a rat, you bounce back like a weasel! ;-)
Setting aside your "serious"<g> arguments about the number of casualties...you come raging back with all the lies, innuendo, insinuations, and deceitfulness which your limited wit can muster! As previously: that indicates to me that you have fully capitulated! <ggg>
Intellectually you are harmless; but of course I am wary of your passionate hatred, and your unstable ego. Take a look up, Dithers. Do you see how far down you have fallen!<ggg>
Look at the time you have wasted, Dithers: skulking through old posts, praying to find the slightest word or sentence capable of being misrepresented or falsely interpreted. And then braying at the top of your lungs when you think you found something! Just look at you! You really have become a slave to your passionate hatred of me, haven't you?! I can almost hear your teeth grinding, LOL!
As you have fully revealed yourself in the latest personal attack, I will not waste a lot of time on chastising you.
It is pitiful how you have pored through my posts: desperately looking for an artificial point of condemnation. In the end you find nothing but a challenge of my sources for civilian casualty figures. How meaningless to the point of our discussion! The point was for you to develop a sensitivity to the shared humanity which makes all deaths personal. But you don't even wish to acknowledge that there were any.
Finding nothing, you contrive a grand production out of the fact that my estimate of civilian casualties (which, of course, was not even germane to the ethic being discussed!) was supported by different sources than yours. Having worried a non-issue to death (and we know the real reason why, don't we, Dith ;-))...you then lowered your belly to the ground, and proceeded to spew your jackal-tongued utterances.
"rooting and cheering...and wishing...that three or four times as many died..."
So, a difference of opinion on civilian casualties means that I was "wishing" more innocent victims had been killed, eh Dithers?? That I was "rooting" and "cheering"??
When I read such malignant constructions as the above, Dithers, I am grateful that you are nothing but a weak and hapless nobody. I am sure there is no more power in your person than what shows in your character and wit. And thank goodness for that! There is a malignant depth of viciousness, and a shallow pittance of conscience in you: frightening, disturbing, and ominous.
How contrived your whole post, how insincere, how dishonest: did I forget to mention...how malignant and unprincipled??
I am sure you blame me for your feeling like a worm; but you know what, Dithers? The reason you feel like a worm is because you act like one. I have seen people crawl; but I have not seen them crawl as low as you have done--not publicly anyway.
This RCAF officer laments the bombing of Japan (and Europe as well), and questions its morality. But he does so in a sensitive and balanced way, taking into account the context of the times more than half a century ago
I'm glad you have finally liked what he had to say, Dithers! How many times have I posted this link, with only your sneers until now?! 4 times--or maybe 5??
Anyhow, he said this, didn't he!!
"Before any atomic weapons were even ready for use, the Americans had already killed well over half a million Japanese civilians by these conventional means, perhaps nearly a million."
However, when I defended your rabid attack against my numbers by citing his and other information, you accused me of wishing that the death toll had been 3 or 4 times as high! Now you tell me that the intelligent person whom I quoted IS an intelligent and thoughtful person! But you don't accuse him of wishing that more people had died, etc. (one of your most ignorant posts of all time, btw).
You abrade me for making casualty estimates from sources which are far different (I'll take your word for it) than "your" sources. But where was the original source of my off-the-cuff estimate on Dec. 21?!!
Your new "respected" friend also said this (as I have been saying to your vociferous criticism):
"Strictly speaking, it is almost certainly true that the atomic bombs themselves did not end the war. The emerging historical consensus, excellently summarized in Murray Sayle's long article in the July 1995 issue of "The New Yorker", is that the two atomic bombings were not, in fact, the real cause of Japan's surrender, but merely coincident with it. Some traditionalists consider this heretical revisionism, but scholarly research is making it clear that the Japanese leadership began looking for a face-saving way out of the war weeks, if not months, before they had ever heard of atomic bombs"
Your new "respected" friend also said this:
"But I must say, my instinct is that we should indeed have been willing to accept some casualties in order to leave the civilians out of it"
And he said this:
"the real issue raised at Hiroshima and Nagasaki is not the merely technical matter of the weapons' atomic design, but the moral question of what means may be used -- even in war -- to achieve victory?"
home.istar.ca
So, in your rabid urge to invent things to demonize me, you have put your foot in your mouth?!! And do you want to know why? I will tell you why: because you are not giving yourself a chance to be honest, intelligent, or informed. You are letting your hatred of me (poor boy <ggg>), and your ridiculous ego dictate your responses...and you are studiously avoiding any agreement with the sentiments of people such as Roosevelt and Einstein whom I have quoted.
BY agreeing with the above link, you have agreed now with pretty much all I have said so give yourself a clap;-)!
You have put your imagined slights and your silly ego ahead of learning, truth, and honesty. Well, it is your life. If you wish to keep up your phoney and infantile attacks-please be my guest!
"What, precisely, is your motivation?"
I have told you several times: The only thing you were "contributing" to the discussion was a pigheaded dismissal of the debatable value of the question of targeting civilians in war. You went so far as to viciously attack those who wished to provide a balanced assessment of the debate, and you tried to pretend that "patriotism" put moral issues outside of the need for discussion. Your attitude was insolent and arrogant; your "contributions" were immature and uncouth.
I exposed you for the rogue, brute, and ignoramus which you are: at the same time, I gave you many links to give you the opportunity to discuss the issue on a factual basis like a man--leaving race hatred and false ideas of racial moral superiority behind you.
In the end, however, even with a guide, a man must choose his own footfalls. Your emotional immaturity, and reliance on a superficial ego, prevents you from being honest with yourself, or with me.
After trying so hard to encourage you to learn and to grow, we arrive here: you still insist that people must be morally neutral about issues that are essential to the survival of our race. You still insist that no moral qualification may be made to resolve and learn from these issues, but rather that we must all swim blindly in the current of our darkest passions and await the rapids to reward our ignorance, and to punish our avoidance of moral responsibility. You make no admission that you are not yet entirely insensitive to the victims of warfare.
I am disappointed in you. There is still too much of the churlish, the arrogant, the unreflective, and the smug.
You, "Solon," do need to defend your claim that you possess omniscience, because only that would allow you to tell us exactly what the Japanese war government would have done, and when.
See how wasteful your posts are?!! What a BABY reponse; childish and green! It is well known that the estimates range from about 3 months before the atom bombs were dropped to about 3 months after (leaving aside the buffoons who talk about "years" of heavy fighting!). It is almost 100 % certain (IMO, and that of many others) that a desire for a diplomatic end to the war would have resulted in a surrender probably in JUne or July.
I gave my own estimate as everybody does. It is unfortunate that this should attract your ridiculous and transparent insults and insinuations. But you have nothing to attack in my posts legitimately, so, of course, you must invent, distort, and contrive. So if I give an estimate based on my opinion, then I need to answer to charges of omniscience?!! What a twit you are, Dithers!
"Choose if you will to continue your crusade of pinning blame and shame on your neighbors
I will continue to dress you down when you are arrogant and unrepentant; and I will continue to post good links with facts instead of prejudices. As to blaming my neighbours for something--I'm afraid you are out in your own little twilight zone episode there, Kid!
Compare that to your statements, such as "We chose to bomb them indiscriminately"
You see, Dithers: when one bombs without discriminating between civilians and non-civilians, it is called "indiscriminatel". This is also a way of describing incenduary bombing which spreads "indiscriminately" throughout a city. Oh, forget it, Dithers! You are too bone-headed to figure any of this out.
Enough about you. You are a colossal bore, and a waste of time and effort.
When I think of allied sacrifices, I like to remember this poem by Nicholas V. Lindsay . It is about soldiers from one country, and yet from all...
Sleep softly ... eagle forgotten ... under the stone.
Time has its way with you there, and the clay has its own.
"We have buried him now," thought your foes , and in secret rejoiced.
They made a brave show of their mourning , their hatred unvoiced.
They had snarled at you, barked at you, foamed at you, day after day.
Now you were ended . They praised you ... and laid you away.
The others, that mourned you in silence and terror and truth,
The window bereft of her crust, and the boy without youth,
The mocked and the scorned and the sounded, the lame and the poor,
That should have remembered forever, ... Remember no more.
Where are those lovers of yours, on what name do they call,
The lost, that in armies wept over your funeral pall?
They call on the names of a hundred high-valiant ones,
A hundred white eagles have risen, the sons of your sons,
The zeal in their wings is a zeal that your dreaming began.
The valor that wore out your soul in the service of man.
Sleep softly ... eagle forgotten... under the stone.
Time has its way with you there, and the clay has its own.
Sleep on, O brave-hearted, O wise man that kindled the flame --
To live in mankind is far more than to live in a name,
To live in mankind, far, far more than ... to live in a name.
This is also appropriate as we struggle with racism in our midst, and with the threats of nuclear war at the doorstep, and of course the religious wars in the fields:
No man is an island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main. If a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe is the less, as well as if a promontory were, as well as if a manor of thy friend's or of thine own were. Any man's death diminishes me because I am involved in mankind; and therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee. . . .
Here is another dummy like me! They seem to be everywhere except in DitherTown!
"...I offer my belief that the existence of the first atomic bombs may have prolonged -- rather than shortened - World War II by influencing Secretary of War Henry L. Stimson and President Harry S. Truman to ignore an opportunity to negotiate a surrender that would have ended the killing in the Pacific in May or June of 1945.
"And I have come to view the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombings that August as an American tragedy that should be viewed as a moral atrocity."
-Stewart L. Udall
US Congressman and
Author of "Myths of August" |
