Today marks the 72nd anniversary of U.S. President Harry Truman's atomic bombing of Hiroshima, Japan. The atomic bombing of Nagasaki took place three days later in 1945. Some 90,000-166,000 individuals were killed in Hiroshima. The Nagasaki bombing killed 39,000-80,000 human beings. (It has come to my attention that the U.S. military bombed Tokyo on Aug. 14--after destroying Hiroshima and Nagasaki and after Emperor Hirohito expressed his readiness to surrender.)
There isn't much to be said about those unspeakable atrocities against civilians that hasn't been said many times before. The U.S. government never needed atomic bombs to commit mass murder, but it dropped them anyway. (Remember this when judging the official U.S. moralistic stance toward Iran.) Its "conventional" weapons have been potent enough. (See the earlier firebombing of Tokyo.) Nor did it need the bombs to persuade Japan to surrender; the Japanese government had been suing for peace. The U.S. government may not have used atomic weapons since 1945, but it has not yet given up mass murder as a political/military tactic. Presidents and presidential candidates are still expected to say that, with respect to nuclear weapons, "no options are off the table."
Mario Rizzo has pointed out that Americans were upset by the murder of 3,000 people on 9/11 yet seem not to be bothered that "their" government murdered many more Japanese civilians in two days. Many more died as a consequence of the bombings. Conservatives, ironically, were among the earliest critics of Truman's mass murder. It's also worth noting that the top military leaders of the day opposed the use of atomic bombs.
As Harry Truman once said, "I don't give 'em hell. I just drop A-bombs on their cities and they think it's hell." (Okay, he didn't really say that, but he might as well have.)
Some people still see the A-bombs as the only alternative to invasion, which would have cost many more civilian lives. Now there's the fallacy of the false alternative in dying color. Why couldn't the U.S. military have called it a day and gone home? Why the assumption that the state must destroy and conquer its "enemy"? Why demand unconditional surrender? (To back up a step, why go to war against Japan at all? Pearl Harbor was the result of systematic, intentional provocation -- as Herbert Hoover and others pointed out at the time) -- perhaps with Roosevelt's foreknowledge. A government less concerned with a rival for its and its allies' colonial possessions might have not gotten involved.)
Rad Geek People's Daily has a poignant post here. Rad says: "As far as I am aware, the atomic bombing of the Hiroshima city center, which deliberately targeted a civilian center and killed over half of the people living in the city, remains the deadliest act of terrorism in the history of the world."
Other things to read: Anthony Gregory’s “Hiroshima, Nagasaki, and the US Terror State,” David Henderson’s “Remembering Hiroshima,” and G.E.M. Anscombe's "Mr. Truman's Decree."
Finally, if you read nothing else on this subject, read Ralph Raico's article here.
[A version of this post appeared previously.]
Mario Rizzo has pointed out that Americans were upset by the murder of 3,000 people on 9/11 yet seem not to be bothered that "their" government murdered many more Japanese civilians in two days. Many more died as a consequence of the bombings. Conservatives, ironically, were among the earliest critics of Truman's mass murder. It's also worth noting that the top military leaders of the day opposed the use of atomic bombs.
As Harry Truman once said, "I don't give 'em hell. I just drop A-bombs on their cities and they think it's hell." (Okay, he didn't really say that, but he might as well have.)
Some people still see the A-bombs as the only alternative to invasion, which would have cost many more civilian lives. Now there's the fallacy of the false alternative in dying color. Why couldn't the U.S. military have called it a day and gone home? Why the assumption that the state must destroy and conquer its "enemy"? Why demand unconditional surrender? (To back up a step, why go to war against Japan at all? Pearl Harbor was the result of systematic, intentional provocation -- as Herbert Hoover and others pointed out at the time) -- perhaps with Roosevelt's foreknowledge. A government less concerned with a rival for its and its allies' colonial possessions might have not gotten involved.)
Rad Geek People's Daily has a poignant post here. Rad says: "As far as I am aware, the atomic bombing of the Hiroshima city center, which deliberately targeted a civilian center and killed over half of the people living in the city, remains the deadliest act of terrorism in the history of the world."
Other things to read: Anthony Gregory’s “Hiroshima, Nagasaki, and the US Terror State,” David Henderson’s “Remembering Hiroshima,” and G.E.M. Anscombe's "Mr. Truman's Decree."
Finally, if you read nothing else on this subject, read Ralph Raico's article here.
[A version of this post appeared previously.]
If I had (more) money, I'd pay (more) for this kind of wisdom and its dissemination.
ReplyDeleteAs it is, between guts, articulateness and alertness, ALL of which I had more of, I will continue to do my best to repeat and disseminate it on my own.
It's quite possible that the bombing of Dresden in February 1945 was the single most deadly mass killing in a single day in all of history. As no thorough examination was ever done of the atrocity by the victorious Allies, why should they as the victims were only hated Germans?, only rough estimates can be made. The normal population of the city was about 600,000, but it had swelled to over twice that number due to refugees fleeing the murderous Soviets. Additionally, the city held no strategic or military value at all yet the British and Americans had deliberately, and with demonic calculation, started a firestorm which consumed virtually all it. The Germans would have had no records for many of the people there at the time as they were transitory refugees so it is quite possible that more than half a million civilians were incinerated leaving almost no remains to be identified. 'Heroic' American pilots later machine gunned the shocked survivors as they staggered through the ruins or sought to escape the environs. Why would such evil people not drop two hell bombs on two defenceless Japanese cities later just to see the effects? Why would they not begin a nuclear war now as their mentality seems to be just as vicious as it was then?
ReplyDeleteThis kind of murder is so overwhelming that most people prefer to act as if it never happened. Others, incapable to ignore the massacres, claim that it was a necessary evil that has granted a long-standing peace to many people all over the world. Surprisingly enough, these kind people often disdain the Christian rhetoric of sacrifice, which, unlike Hiroshima and Nagasaki's "sacrifices", is voluntary and personal. Thus, for those who have their thinking contaminated by Hegelian philosophies, everything that is good comes at the expense of a great suffering of innocents, who never have an option.
ReplyDeleteMorality is dead. There are no limits to the Saviors.
WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 9, 2017
ReplyDeleteWhat Threat?
Every twittish utterance from our *AIC is likely to get a full panic response from Imperial Control and its lapdogs in government and media and his latest blurtings about fire and damnation if North Korea were to attack is no different in essence, but worse in substance. While his dimness is to be expected, reactions from alleged liberals, progressives and much of what passes for an american left speaks for historically underprivileged mentalities that make Trump’s own formed-by-popular-media consciousness seem almost sophisticated.
All the blather about an alleged menace from North Korea, going so far as to make light weight tv comics even giddier than in their normal low level humor about the AIC, is blessed with all-american ignorance and master race-self chosen people arrogance when it leaves out the dreadful and murderous American attack on that nation back in the 1950s.
In what was called a “police action” to stop the potential menace of communism – a dread phenomena that, among other things, would have people fed even if they couldn’t afford to pay for the food – the U.S.A., along with a token force called the United Nations, slaughtered hundreds of thousands of North Koreans, destroyed cities, towns, villages, farmlands, water supplies, manufacturing facilities and generally reduced the nation to near under-developed poverty, all the while preaching democracy, humanitarian values and peace for all the world.
Like a pimp lecturing on love, this party line never met and still does not meet the test of material reality, but minority control of almost all information flow and possibly the most under-developed consciousness level among any people in the history of consciousness has brought us to a current predicament in which people depicted as monstrously evil rape victims are seen as a deadly menace by their rapists who glorify in their crimes by convincing innocent people it was all about love.
After suffering massive slaughter and near destruction of their nation, North Korea has experienced a generation of something the infantile and brain dead refer to as “war games” being conducted off their shores, foreign armies patrolling their borders, and an endless american propaganda barrage about evil rulers, despotic regimes and malevolent threats to our benevolent society that operates for the good of all humanity, while leaving more than half a million of its people living in the street as it lavishes trillions of dollars on war, billions of dollars on its richest minority and its millions of pets, and righteously screams about injustice , menace and a threatening smell coming from everywhere else while paying no attention to the moral sewage and diseased stench emanating from its financial market place, its military industrial complex and its degenerate diet of fossil fuel .
Is this a great democracy or what?
North Korea represents a threat to Americans the way any would-be, might-be or wanna-be murderer, rapist, burglar or thief would represent a threat to Americans. Get the hell out of Korean waters and away from Korean borders with our military and such a threat will not only vanish from the propaganda encrusted minds into which it has been drilled, but from the material world as well. All the rest is political, economic, racist filth that could lead to not only even worse destruction of that nation than we performed on it in the past, but the reduction of america to a pile of ashes and human misery also worse than we once inflicted on an innocent people who never did anything harmful to any of us.
It is not only time to bring the AIC under control, but far more important, the political economic forces that created the atrocity we live by, and that he has assumed some responsibility to lead.
*Asshole In Chief
email: fpscott@gmail.com
Frank Scott writes political commentary and satire which appears online at the blog Legalienate
http://legalienate.blogspot.com