ost (Chris Mark) wrote:
Keep in mind that those who condemn the atomic
bombing are not interested in
the Japanese, except as stage props--innocent
victims useful for swaying
opinion; the more maimed (and in more horrific
ways) and the more killed, the
better. Thus the relentless exagerating of
deaths. They really do want more
to have been killed than really were, because
that makes the "crime" even more
heinous.
What is really "on trial" for these people is
the US, which they see as the
greatest force for evil in the world. The US
is not "bad" ...("bad" being a
catch-all for all sorts of perjoratives: evil,
racist, sexist, speciest,
fascist, imperialist, capitalist, money-worshipping,
rich, oppressive, selfish,
polluting, loud-mouthed, arrogant, over-tipping,
global-warming-increasing
meanies)... the US is not "bad" _because_ it
dropped the bomb; the US dropping
the bomb is Exhibit A in the pile of evidence
adduced to demonstrate the
wickedness of the US.
Thus, arguments about casualties in a projected
invasion are pooh-poohed, and
even the need for an invasion is questioned:
we could have negotiated an end to
the war.
(The question of the morality of leaving militarists
in power in Japan is
brushed aside, of course; it's all about Amerikkka.)
The mindset is not, of course, confined to Hiroshima.
You can see it in
discussions of the US attack on Iraq today.
What the Sadam regime did to
deserve or provoke the attack are irrelevant,
the suffering of the Iraqi people
under him is a red herring dragged across the
path to divert attention from the
true, malignant motives of the US. You can
also see the same mindset in
discussions of the Vietnam War, the Cold War
and.... It is _only_ US motives
and actions that are to be criticized. The
alleged and doubtless wildly
exaggerated crimes of those the US has opposed
are never an issue to be taken
seriously.
So debaters talk past each other. One side
says, "What the US did was bad. It
did what it did because itis a bad country."
The other side says, "The US felt
compelled to do what it did by circumstance,
to end a much greater evil."
The response to that is: "Did not!" Which gets
the retort: "Did too!"
repeated endlessly.
Of course, had Truman held back the bomb and
invaded, making of Japan a super
Okinawa, today's anti-bomb crowd would be excoriating
the US for having had the
means to quickly "end the killing" and not doing
so--because it wanted the
opportunity to conduct a genocidal extermination
campaign against the Japanese
people and firmly eliminate the possibility
that Japan could ever become an
economic rival in the future.
Damned if you do and ....


Chris Mark
I'll agree with that. Anyone else notice that nearly everyone who signed
that letter to the Smithsonian on the Enola Gay exhibit seem to be poster
childs of the far left? Especially Chomsky, who was an apologist for such
distinguished people as Pol Pot, Slobodoan Milosevic, Saddam Hussein, and
Fidel Castro, to name a few. How anybody could read or listen to this guy
is beyond me. A suitable punishment would be staking him out in the desert
and leave a trail of honey for the ants....

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