Hiroshima, Mon Amour [Cliff May]
corner.nationalreview.com
Noemie Emery weighs in on the interrogations controversy in the Washington Examiner today, noting:
...a curious mindset, which seems to believe that a) America’s leaders owe more to the enemy than they do to their allies and people, b) that one can wage war in a fastidious manner, deterring or defeating bloodthirsty people without resorting to ugliness, and c), that anything done by Americans to win a war, end a war, or forestall an attack on the country and the people is wrong.
This began to emerge even before Iraq, George W. Bush, and the issue of “torture,” in the late 1990’s, when the Smithsonian mounted a display of the Enola Gay suggesting the bombing was a matter of race-induced genocide, and forgetting to mention such things as a) the fact that Japan started the war with the surprise attack on Pearl Harbor, b) the Japanese atrocities against helpless civilians, and c) the thousands and thousands of Allied and American servicemen whose lives had been saved by the end of the war.…
Once upon a time, literate and intelligent people understood the difference between attack and defense, assault and pre-emption, and the use of force to conquer, destroy, enslave, or cause pain to large numbers of innocents; and the use of force deployed on aggressors to deflect or prevent the slaughter of thousands, to reverse an invasion, or to end a war others began. Once upon a time, they understood that presidents don’t have the luxury of indulging their qualms at the expense of their countrymen.
Once upon a time, American presidents believed that their first job was protecting the country and people, which is the reason why John Kennedy, an aspiring war criminal, by some critics’ standards, thought he would have deserved being impeachment if he left American cities on the East Coast of the country vulnerable to attack by Soviet missiles in Cuba. And between 1942 and 1945, Americans in foreign countries shot and bombed people without reservation or mercy, while in Los Alamos scientists worked night and day to produce weapons of vast and unheard of destructive capacity. And people voted for Roosevelt anyhow, who was a war criminal, exactly like Truman, and Bush. |
