<<We have access to one spirit, but do NOT place mein the "same spirit" camp as the sick and disturbed whackos minds who conceived and who executed
the devastation wrecked upon NY, WA, and PA citizenry. ( A pasel of passengers were from Mass. as well) as well as the entire free world.>>
Please read the following then tell us again how we are justified while others are not. Isn't the truth rather that neither side is justified?
HIROSHIMA MON AMOUR
WHY AMERICANS ARE BARBARIANS
By: Justin Raimondo
The idea that America is, in any sense, a civilized country is easily dispelled by the
orgy of self-congratulation and rationalization that accompanies the dual anniversaries
of Harry Truman's decision to atom bomb the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
Want your gorge to rise? Check out the New York Post editorial "The Bomb That Saved
Millions," (August 6) which justifies the bombings as a "military necessity." The
editorial opines that "few at the time questioned President Harry S. Truman's wisdom in
using the devastating new weapon, but revisionist historians and political activists
maintain now – more than a half-century later – that the atomic bombing of Japan was
militarily unnecessary and morally unacceptable." The Post is New York City's most
popular newspaper – a place where the official standard of morality is closer to the
Code of Lek than the Ten Commandants. So why are we not surprised that the Post finds
all this appalling?
TRASHING AMERICA?
The incineration of hundreds of thousands, and the slow death by radiation sickness of
tens of thousands more, morally unacceptable? The nerve of these "revisionists"! Why,
they must be Commies or unrepentant hippies to believe such a thing, and sure enough,
as it turns out:
"Indeed, these historians – many of whom came of age during the Vietnam era, when
trashing America was all the rage in academia – consider Truman and others who
approved the bomb's use to be nothing less than war criminals."
This, we are told, is "nonsense." All those deaths, and possibly more, were justified
by "military necessity": to hear them tell it, without the bombing of Hiroshima and
Nagasaki, World War II might well be going on to this day.
DISSENTING VOICES
One of the job qualifications for being a New York Post editorial writer is a complete
ignorance of history, as well as an amorality that might be called Murdochian, as this
little screed makes all too clear. For the myth of "military necessity" as a
justification for the incineration of two cities has been convincingly debunked by the
so-called revisionists, who have shown that the decision to drop the bomb was opposed
by an impressive list of Truman's top commanders, General Douglas MacArthur among them.
In The Decision to Use the Atomic Bomb, historian Gar Alperovitz reveals that Truman's
chief of staff, Admiral William Leahy, chief of Naval Operations Admiral Ernest J.
King, Fleet Admiral Chester W. Nimitz, Admiral William "Bull" Halsey, Rear Admiral
Lewis L. Strauss, commanding general of the U.S. Army Air Forces Henry H. "Hap" Arnold,
General Claire Chennault of the Flying Tigers, Army Strategic Air Forces Commander Carl
Spatz, and Army Air Force General Curtis "Bombs Away" Lemay, all challenged the
military necessity argument. Among Truman's top advisors, Secretary of State Stimson,
Assistant Secretary of War John McCloy, former Ambassador to Japan Joseph Grew, Navy
Under Secretary Ralph Bard, and the Joint Chiefs of Staff, all took issue with the
decision in one way or another. In 1963, Dwight Eisenhower told Newsweek that "it
wasn't necessary to hit them with that awful thing."
ALTERNATIVES TO MASS MURDER
There were a lot of alternatives: Truman could have demonstrated the power of the bomb
without wiping out several hundred thousand civilians. He could have altered the
Rooseveltian insistence on unconditional surrender. At the time, the US was
intercepting all Japanese coded messages, and deciphering them, and Truman knew that
this was the main obstacle to Japan's peace party. British Prime Minister Winston
Churchill urged Truman to relent and allow the Japanese to surrender, keeping their
Emperor system and their honor intact. But it was no go. When Truman stook the reins,
US pronouncements on the subject did not significantly deviate from the unconditional
surrender formula, and were purposefully vague.
THE HIROHITO FACTOR
Another argument against the "military necessity" rationale is that even after the
bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki the Japanese refused to surrender. Nagasaki was still
burning as the Japanese Cabinet met to consider the question: the vote was 12 in favor
of surrender, with 3 against and 1 undecided. Since unanimity was required, the war was
not stopped until Emperor Hirohito personally intervened. He was persuaded to do so by
the proponents of peace within the Japanese government, who were given the upper hand
not by the dropping of the bomb but by the understanding that the Emperor system would
be preserved by the Allied victors.
TRUMP CARD
This is underscored by General MacArthur's belief that a full-scale invasion of Japan
would be necessary even after the atom bombs were dropped. For, as many of Truman's
political and military advisors informed him, the Japanese considered their Emperor to
be a god, and could never permit his demise or that of his dynasty. As Japan's Prime
Minister Suzuki announced on June 9, 1945, "Should the emperor system be abolished,
they [the Japanese people] would lose all reason for existence. 'Unconditional
surrender', therefore, means death to the hundred million: it leaves us no choice but
to go on fighting to the last man." It was only the Emperor's understanding that the
Chrysanthemum Throne would be retained that gave the peace party the trump card:
otherwise, those who preferred national self-immolation to surrender would almost
certainly have won out.
DOWN THE MEMORY HOLE
A panel set up by President Truman to study the Pacific war issued a report, the
United States Strategic Bombing Survey, in July 1946, which declared,
"Based on a detailed investigation of all the facts, and supported by the testimony of
the surviving Japanese leaders involved, it is the Survey's opinion that certainly
prior to 31 December 1945, Japan would have surrendered even if atomic bombs had not
been dropped, even if Russia had not entered the war, and even if no invasion had been
planned or contemplated."
The report was suppressed, ignored, and shoved down the Memory Hole.
'JUSTICE' OF THE VICTORS
Justice in wartime is the justice of the victors. This is why the war crimes of the
Allies were not allowed to be introduced into evidence at the Nuremberg trials, or the
trials of the Japanese leaders. It is why evidence of NATO's war crimes will be
dismissed out of hand by the International Criminal Tribunal when they put Slobodan
Milosevic in the dock.
THE CODE OF LEK
In explaining why, in the face of opposition from the military, as well as top
officials in his administration, Truman ignored the religious and moral traditions of
Western civilization, we are back to the Code of Lek and the ethical norms of New
York's concrete canyons (and Washington's corridors of power) where revenge is
considered the sweetest liquor. This cultural ethos was reflected in a radio address
given August 9, after Nagasaki fell victim to the fire from heaven, in which Truman
declaimed:
"Having found the bomb we have used it. We have used it against those who attacked us
without warning at Pearl Harbor, against those who have starved and beaten and
executed American prisoners of war, against those who have abandoned all pretense of
obeying international laws of warfare."
THE AMERICAN PARAGON
So here was the great guardian of democratic liberal values, the chief executive and
symbol of the West's triumph over the powers of totalitarian darkness, exhibiting a
lust for inflicting pain bordering on the pathological. A more overt appeal to savagery
can hardly be imagined. Equating the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor with the wholesale
vaporization of innocent civilians at Hiroshima and Nagasaki would be funny – to
someone with a really grotesque sense of humor. In any case, it is not as if the
inhabitants of those unfortunate cities had any say in determining the military
policies of their leaders.
PRAGMATISM AND DECLINE
Truman may have had his own doubts about the morality of the decision, but in the end
domestic political considerations won out over ethical concerns. Never mind about
highfalutin' ethical principles, let's just get the job done: this sort of pragmatism
is supposedly synonymous with the American Way. It was, however, a degeneration of the
American character that only occurred at the turn of the century, after World War I,
waves of immigration, and the vulgarization of the culture had already eroded the
foundations of our old Republic. That such a barbaric act as the fiery immolation of
two Japanese cities is, today, being justified and even celebrated in the US is proof
positive of our advanced state of moral decadence.
JUST IMAGINE
The great horror is that this heinous deed was committed against Japan, a civilization
as far removed from our own as the streets of New York are from the African savannas.
It's at times like these that I tend to believe the wrong side won the war in the
Pacific. Just think: if we all woke up one day living in some alternate history, as in
Phillip K. Dick's The Man in the High Castle, our cultural malaise would disappear
overnight. Instead of listening to the latest loutish lyrics of Eminem, American
teenagers would be contemplating the subtle beauty of the Japanese tea ceremony. If
contemporary Japan is any clue, the crime rate would be cut by 95 percent, and the
literacy rate would skyrocket. Certainly everyone's manners would improve. All in all,
life would be far more civilized, imbued with a gentility that would make the New York
Post an impossibility.
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