Telling it like it is about Obama’s Hiroshima speech — comments follow
Obama knows about war, he was member of the “Choom gang.” By the way, nice bomber jacket. *
Some of these guys were about the same age as Obama n this photo. Members of the” Suribachi gang.*
Over the last couple of days, Daniel Greenfield writing at Sultan Knish and Front Page (where he is editor) posted a series responding to Obama’s much publicized visit and speech in Hiroshima. He is the first US president to visit the city although the importance of that historically seems skewed as US presidents have visited Tokyo many times and more Japanese died there as a result of American bombing in the effort to stop Japan’s war machine than any other city in Japan.
Oh, it is because the first atomic bomb “used in anger” was dropped on Hiroshima (and later Nagasaki), that is the difference?
The truth is that Hiroshima’s and Nagasaki’s destruction likely saved far more lives than if it did not happen. The two bombs forced, shall we say, some clear thinking on Japan’s leadership and their life-saving surrender. Hundreds of thousands more Japanese would likely have died in a protracted war (Greenfield and others point this out).
And, by the way, Hiroshima and Nagasaki were not expiation for Japan’s sins for starting their Pacific war of conquest. Japan inflicted far more deaths than they experienced. Millions more, especially in China. And Germany inflicted millions more deaths than it experienced, particularly in Russia and Poland. Although it is worth noting that Germany lost a greater percentage of its population to prosecuting the war than Japan did. Roughly 4% for Japan and 8% for Germany.
Daniel Greenfield’s posts rightly characterize Obama’s Hiroshima speech and its implications. The articles are quite short but effective. Some excerpts are set forth below but each post is highly recommended in its entirety. Obama’s words are set in red.
Obama in Japan: US Fought WW2 Out of “Base Instinct for Domination”
The media is claiming that Obama’s Hiroshima speech isn’t an apology. It’s much worse than that. It’s full of moral equivalence between the US and Imperial Japan. Obscene equivalence like this.
The world war that reached its brutal end in Hiroshima and Nagasaki was fought among the wealthiest and most powerful of nations. Their civilizations had given the world great cities and magnificent art, their thinkers had advanced ideas of justice and harmony and truth. And yet, the war grew out of the same base instinct for domination or conquest that had caused conflicts among the simplest tribes. An old pattern amplified by new capabilities and without new constraints.
Did the US fight WW2 out of a base instinct for domination? Apparently we did.
Remember when we were bombed at Pearl Harbor because in our base instinct for domination, we decided that maybe Japan shouldn’t be killing quite as many people in its Asian war? And then in our base instinct for domination, we conquered Japan and treated it the way the Japanese had treated the Chinese.
None of that happened.
Defenders of Obama will claim that he’s referring to Japan and Nazi Germany, but he makes no such exclusions. His topic is the US dropping the bomb on Hiroshima. The entire speech is one long passage of equivalence in which war is bad and every nation who fought in WW2 was doing it out of humanity’s destructive impulses.
It’s a completely amoral perspective that rejects the sacrifices Americans made to save the world and instead indicts us for them.
Yes, Obama Apologized for Dropping the Bomb on Japan (excerpt)
Now some people would say that the heavy price we paid to stop Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan, genocidal monster states that were killing, represented a moral revolution. We sought no territory. We did not come to conquer. We sacrificed terrible numbers of people to do the right thing.
But to Obama, the war itself is a moral failure. Because it involved bombs.
“Why do we come to this place? To Hiroshima? We come to ponder a terrible force unleashed in a not-so-distant past. …They ask us to look inward, to take stock of who we are and what we might become.”
Remember when we honored WW2 veterans as the Greatest Generation? No more. Now we treat them as examples of savagery.
Why Obama is Wrong About Hiroshima (excerpt)
In fact WW2 was a moral revolution. We made use of all that science and technology to stop genocide and prevent the killing of millions more and the triumph of evil. Obama throws in something about preventing wars through multilateral diplomacy, but that approach was tried before WW2 and not only did it fail, but it brought on the war. . . .
Obama gives a great deal of moral weight to Japan’s grievances over Hiroshima. But he forgets that…
1. Japan helped innovate the terror bombing of civilian populations in China
2. Japan made Hiroshima into a target
3. The bombing of Hiroshima averted a horrifyingly costly invasion that would have cost far more American and Japanese lives. It was a highly moral action.
The Japanese fetishization of the bomb goes hand in hand with an utter refusal to admit their own crimes. Obama has played into that narrative, instead of challenging it. Neither the Japanese in Hiroshima nor the Germans in Dresden were innocent victims. Support among the civilian population was widespread. Dissent was light; And while Germany has disavowed the Nazis, Japan continues pretending that Hiroshima just suddenly happened for no reason. And Obama seems only too happy to feed into it with claims every nation in WW2 was the inheritor of some basic human evil.
The truth is that America defeated evil then. Only to see evil take it over now.
More reading at Western Journalism :
Lawmakers Urged To Respond After Obama Implies WWII Acts Of Japan, US Morally Equivalent
R Mall
- photo picks adapted from Greenfield choices. Verbiage ours.
