No Brooding about 80,000 deaths [Archive] - Two Plus Two Older Archives

HDPM

03-30-2004, 09:42 PM

Truman at least had some substance. Whatever you think of his Hiroshima decision. Also, after Truman dropped the bombs on Hiroshima, don't think we didn't think of gearing up to drop them on the Soviets. Eisenhower was faced with that at various points as well. It was likely that moral factors stopped us from going forward witrh a first strike on the soviets. We considered it and there were times we probably could have done it. I don't think we would have though.

I don't get the desire to find another Kennedy. I think they are all over. Just pick any undeserving guy of no substance with bad ideas and have him capture people's imagination. There, there's your Kennedy. I would submit that Bill Clinton is a perfect example. Except he is smarter than kennedy, more moral than kennedy, won his election fair and square unlike kennedy, was less dangerous than Kennedy, took fewer drugs than Kennedy, and had a better foreign policy than Kennedy. And Clinton was suspect in all these areas. Clinton came from nothing and became president. Granted, Joe Kennedy was a vile criminal and Nazi sympathizer, but he did have enough money and mob connections to buy elections. Bill didn't have that advantage. Don't get me wrong, I think Clinton is awful. But he was a better president than Kennedy and a better person. So why anybody wants to find the next JFK is beyond me.

andyfox

03-30-2004, 09:48 PM

Truman did have some substance, but I'm not wild about Harry. He did some good things domestically (most of which you probaly diagree with /images/graemlins/smile.gif but I think (and I'm sure we disagree here too) he was a disaster where it counted most, on foreign policy. Roosevelt kept him out of the loop and when he died, Truman was completely unprepared. Plus his Missouri personality was a detriment. He let Harriman lead him around by the nose and basically messed everything up that he stuck his nose into. Whatever justification can be made for the Hiroshima bomb, none whatsoever can be made for the Nagasaki one.

I agree 100% on JFK. A bad person and a bad president. Republicans bemoan the "good" Democrats who, of course, they crucified when they were in office (Buckley especially). It's all part of longing for the good old days. What was liberal in 1948 or 1960 is old news today, but they don't understand that.

Jimbo

03-30-2004, 11:42 PM

[ QUOTE ]
Whatever justification can be made for the Hiroshima bomb, none whatsoever can be made for the Nagasaki one.

[/ QUOTE ]

Other than perhaps the minor fact that we were still at war Andy. Besides they were so overcrowded we did the Japanese a favor. Now all we need to do is offer the same favor to the Arab world.

Jimbo

adios

03-31-2004, 01:02 AM

My understanding is that Dresden and the fire bombing of Tokyo took more lives. Lot of bad things happened in WWII. Anyway:

<ul type="square"> Truman Ike Kennedy Johnson Nixon Ford Carter Reagan Bush Clinton Bush [/list] Any good presidents here?

Zeno

03-31-2004, 01:21 AM

Ike
Truman
Carter

Passable, sort of - The rest were bums, three-rate demogagues, powermongers, and megalomaniacs.

Now Calvin Coolidge - He was a quick man on a mission from Gawd and an agenda and something and something etc.

What about The semi-deity Woodrow Wilson? What's his rating among the slobbering presidential Historians?

Perhaps we should look up some 'Presidential Ratings' and then haggle over them. It will give the 'Other Topics folks' something to do while the world crumbles around us into worthless dust.

Sounds fun.

-Zeno

andyfox

03-31-2004, 01:34 AM

Yes, the atomic bombings were part and parcel of the general fire bombings of all Japanese cities. Indeed, over 100,000 people perished in Tokyo in one night. Many were boiled alive as they frantically tried to jump into the river to excape the firestorm, not realizing the river was boiling.

As for the list, tough to find a good one. I suppose Ike and JFK did the least damage. Carter and Ike were good people.

ThaSaltCracka

03-31-2004, 01:35 AM

[ QUOTE ]
Truman
Ike
Kennedy
Johnson
Nixon
Ford
Carter
Reagan
Bush
Clinton
Bush
Any good presidents here?

[/ QUOTE ]
sadly I don't think anything great came from these guys, although they all have done some good things. But honestly when I look at the list all I see is missed oppurtunities. But for what its worth have there been any good world leaders since 1950?
Ghandi?
I really don't know..... /images/graemlins/confused.gif

andyfox

03-31-2004, 01:41 AM

I knew I could goad you back here. /images/graemlins/wink.gif Welcome!

"Other than perhaps the minor fact that we were still at war Andy. Besides they were so overcrowded we did the Japanese a favor. Now all we need to do is offer the same favor to the Arab world."

Your first sentence actually make sense in the fact that we had the bomb and, damn it, we were going to use it. However, this is a reason, not a justification. Having broken the Japanese codes, we knew surrender was imminent. But what's another 60,000 women and children's lives?

Your second and third sentences are, I'm assuming, used in similar fashion to the way I sometimes say things, to get people's attention. But I know you don't mean them, since if you did, it would put you on the same page morals-wise with Buckley, Hannity, Bin Laden and Stalin. And I know you don't belong there.

Hey, if I'm wrong here or speaking out of school, forgive me, but I seem to remember somebody posting you had been struggling health-wise. I hope your presence back here means you've turned the corner. I had always heard the expression if you have your health you have everything, or whatever the hell that expression is, and it took a bad battle for me to realize just how much it does indeed mean. Even for right-wing fanatics (and us lefties too).

Best wishes.

adios

03-31-2004, 01:54 AM

FWIW the irony is that I think the US is a MUCH better place to live today than it was back in Truman's or Ike's time which implies to me that the US has made progress in many areas and that who is president may not be all that important.

Yeah I think Ghandi was a great leader which many who are aggrieved around the world could learn a lot from.

ThaSaltCracka

03-31-2004, 02:06 AM

well you kind of expressed my thoughts as well. I mean the U.S. is much better than the 50's atleast in some aspects. But I would agree with you that the credit doesn't really go to the president. IMO it should go more to Entrepreneaurs, investors, philanthropists, etc...

I simply said Ghandi because no other great wolrd leaders came to mind. Maybe some of the greatest men and women weren't even inlvolved in politics. People like MLK, Mother Theresa, Bill Gates, people like that.

adios

03-31-2004, 02:11 AM

Andy dissed Truman pretty bad. Carter to me was a total incompetant as president but I agree he was a nice guy. Ike seems to make everyone's list as at least someone that was ok. Ike did some good things like sending in the troops to Little Rock and warned about the military industrial complex. However Ike had his bad points:

5. He Failed to Improve the Plight of the American Farmer.

The goal of his farm policy was to get government out of agriculture and strengthen the family farmer. He failed at both.

4. He Failed to Moderate the Republican Party.

This was a personal goal of Eisenhower's. He wanted to reenergize and modernize the Republican Party, making it less conservative and more acceptable to mainstream America. His failure became evident when Republicans nominated the conservative Barry Goldwater as their presidential candidate in 1964.

3. He Failed to Provide Leadership in Civil Rights.

He did not actively support the 1954 Brown decision abolishing segregation in public schools. In fact, he believed that to immediately enforce the Court's ruling was a mistake and would only lead to conflict. Critics suggest that if he had expressed a personal commitment to civil rights, the Court's ruling would not have met with such defiance in Little Rock, and Central High could have been integrated without the employment of the U.S. Army. To his credit though, he did sponsor and sign the Civil Rights Act of 1957.

2. He Failed to Denounce Senator Joseph McCarthy.

Had he publicly condemned McCarthy and his investigations, there would have been much less damage inflicted on innocent lives and the country's morale. But Eisenhower believed that to personally confront McCarthy would demean the Presidency and give McCarthy exactly what he craved: more publicity.

AND EISENHOWER'S NO.1 FAILURE AS PRESIDENT:

1. He Failed to Defuse the Cold War.

He certainly tried. And he seemed to be on the verge of success when the Premier of the Soviet Union, Nikita Khrushchev, visited the U.S. in 1959 and agreed to a Paris Peace Conference for the following spring. But then the Soviets shot down the U-2 spy plane, Khrushchev scuttled the peace conference, and all hope of deflating the Cold War ended. When Eisenhower left office, the Cold War was even more threatening than when he embarked upon the presidency eight years before.

Do they outweigh his good points:

5. He Sponsored and Signed the Civil Rights Bill of 1957.

This was the first civil rights bill since Reconstruction. Much to Eisenhower's dismay, Congress amended the bill and critically weakened its effectiveness.

4. He Sponsored and Signed the Federal Aid Highway Act of 1956.

This gave birth to America's interstate highway system. Eisenhower worked hard to get the bill passed and it was his favorite piece of legislation.

3. He Balanced the Budget, Not Just Once, But Three Times.

Despite much pressure to do otherwise, he also refused to cut taxes and raise defense spending. His fiscal policy contributed to the prosperity of the 1950's.

2. He Ended the Korean War.

He alone had the prestige to persuade Americans to accept a negotiated peace and convince the Chinese that failure to reach an agreement would lead to dire consequences. Eisenhower considered this to be his greatest presidential accomplishment.

AND EISENHOWER'S NO.1 ACCOMPLISHMENT AS PRESIDENT:

1. He Kept America at Peace.

Eisenhower was confronted with major Cold War crises every year he was in office: Korea, Vietnam, Formosa, Suez, Hungary, Berlin, and the U-2. While more than once America seemed on the brink of war and those around him clamored to drop the Bomb, Eisenhower always kept a level head. He dealt calmly and rationally with each situation, always finding a solution that avoided war without diminishing America's prestige.

Ike Accomplishments and Failures (http://www.nps.gov/eise/5accomp.htm)

Zeno

03-31-2004, 02:47 AM

Good post.

I think your post helps illustrates an important point. All presidents are limited by political intrigues and expediency and are sometimes caught in positions that are intractable in many ways (The Eisenhower/McCarthy issue for example). Some will give way to it more than others but that is a constant factor and battle. In addition, the president is not a Monarch. He has limited powers and scope of influence both foreign and domestic and must work and compromise with other branches of the government. There are also practical bounds that limit the effectiveness of power in all its forms.

And chance or Fate always plays a major role in any presidency. Something no president has much if any control over. The presidency, I think, is not as powerful an office as many would think.

-Zeno

Mano

03-31-2004, 05:04 AM

I would submit that Bill Clinton is a perfect example. Except he is smarter than kennedy, more moral than kennedy, won his election fair and square unlike kennedy, was less dangerous than Kennedy, took fewer drugs than Kennedy, and had a better foreign policy than Kennedy.

If you substitute Bush for Kennedy, the above still holds.

WTF

03-31-2004, 05:18 AM

In a thread titled, "Launch of Liberal Talk Radio," you wrote:

[ QUOTE ]
Here in L.A., we get the likes of Bill O'Reilly, Sean Hannity, Michael Savage, Dennis Prager, Rush Limbaugh, Larry Elder, and Dr. Laura Schlesinger. Bombastic insult is their modus operandus.

[/ QUOTE ]

Now you say:

[ QUOTE ]
Hannity, and Buckley are sick fuucks,..

[/ QUOTE ]

I guess this is your idea of taking the high road huh? Impressive.

Ray Zee

03-31-2004, 11:40 AM

plus no one ever seems to realize that even though we were very close to winning the war, but in war you can never be sure you will win till its over. and the chance that the japenese could still come up with a weapon, or a way to win meant that we should use all force at hand to end it. remember this wasnt a war tover religion or a piece of land. if we lost we would have been occupied and probably exterminated. there was no way in hell that we should take any risk of that happening.

andyfox

03-31-2004, 01:24 PM

Hannity and Buckley said they long for someone in the Democratic Party who can sleep well and not worry about killing 80,000 women and children. Calling them warped is not bombastic insult.

andyfox

03-31-2004, 01:27 PM

Nobody posts more informatively than Adios. Even when I disagree with him, he gives cogent reasoning, and complete citations for all of us to see. A great poster.

Sloats

03-31-2004, 01:34 PM

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
Whatever justification can be made for the Hiroshima bomb, none whatsoever can be made for the Nagasaki one.

[/ QUOTE ]

Other than perhaps the minor fact that we were still at war Andy. Besides they were so overcrowded we did the Japanese a favor. Now all we need to do is offer the same favor to the Arab world.

Jimbo

[/ QUOTE ]

And let's completely disregard the fact that Japan was preparing to drop Beubonic Plague in fleas on San Fransisco.

It is EASY for us to say 60 years removed and as powerful of a country that we are now that dropping the atomic bombs was a bad idea, but if we did not, the battle for Japan would have been the bloodiest battles even known to man. If the war lasted until 1946, Japan would of had 20-40 jet fighters built and hidden in montains to attack our carriers. The US Army, after Imo Jima, was planning on dropping 5 Atomic bombs in a row to clean a lane to enter Japan.

This was all avoided because the second bomb convinced the Emperor that it was in the best interest of the Japanese people if Japan surrendered. (And the surrender almost did not happen too.)

andyfox

03-31-2004, 01:36 PM

Many arguments have been made both ways about whether the bombs were necessary.

My point is not that they were or weren't (although I believe they weren't and our suvival and a country was not at stake in August, 1945). It is that Truman claimed he didn't lose any sleep or brood over it. Not then nor ever. Even when he found out the tremendous damage done years later from the radioactivity.

andyfox

03-31-2004, 01:54 PM

Arguments against dropping the bombs were made at the time, including by many scientists (for example, Leo Szilard) who were instrumental in developing the weapons. Secretary of War Stimson, who wrote a ringing defense of the use of the bombs in Life magazine, eventually, when out of office, admitted, in his autobiography, that the usage was probably not necessary. All of the military people who were consulted about the proposed invasion of Japan indicated far fewer casualties than Truman later publicized in his biography and in interviews and speeches. The Russians entered the war on August 8, as they had promised and this, plus the results of our embargo, pushed the Japanese to surrender.

I don't think it was the second bomb which convinced the Emperor at all. News about what the bombs had accomplished was not readily available. And the Japanese cities had been subjected to an endless onslaught by conventional firebombing under the aegis of General Curtis LeMay; for example, more Japanese died in the conventional bombing of Tokyo than in the atomic bombing of Hiroshima or Nagasaki.

The bombs' defenders usually posit the choice as being between dropping the bombs or a fantastically bloody invasion. Such was not the case.

I think the bombs were used for a number of reasons. First and foremost, they were military weapons and we were indeed at war, a war we saw as a war for our survivial. It would have been unusual for us not to have used a weapon at our disposal.

Second, Truman was ill-prepared to make a decision not to use the bomb. He was an intellectual and moral lightweight, easily persuaded by his generation of the best and the brightest who were advising him. I'm not saying Roosevelt wouldn't have used the bombs, just that whatever chance there might have been not to went to the grave with FDR.

Third, there was a racist element to our war with Japan (as there was to Japan's ideology). The Japanese were stigmatized in ways that the Germans and Italians were not. We had put Japanese Americans in concentration camps. The memory of Pearl Harbor added an element of revenge to our thinking.

Fourth, we thought the use of the bomb would make Russia more manageable in the post-war world. Secretary of State Byrnes carried the bomb in his hip pocket. He said as much to Leo Szilard when Szilard met with him prior to him becoming Secretary of State. Truman's advisers rushed the Alamo team to get the first Trinity test done before Truman met with Stalin so he could spring the news on him.

Fifth, we had put a great deal of energy and money into developing this weapons. What would history have said had we then decided to not use them and the war was prolonged?

We used two bombs because we had them. Had they not been available, we probably would have modified our unconditional surrender demand and the war would have ended without an invasion.

andyfox

03-31-2004, 02:00 PM

http://www.dannen.com/ae-fdr.html

Really interesting historical document. This is Albert Einstein's letter to FDR, which Leo Szilard, fearful that the Nazis were developing atomic weaponry, urged him to write. While written in 1939, we didn't get going with the Manhattan Project until after Pearl Harbor.

andyfox

03-31-2004, 02:00 PM

superleeds

03-31-2004, 03:21 PM

Altho as a liberal this may seem an odd choice, Nixon was a truly great man who saw the big picture

Diplomat

03-31-2004, 03:29 PM

Not many come to mind, and often it is a matter of perspective. If you define 'world leaders' as heads of state/government, a few that I can think of are Mandella, Trudeau (although many CDN's will disagree), Gorbachev (cuddos for Glasnost and Perestroika), De Gaulle.

Flame?

-Diplomat

hetron

03-31-2004, 06:24 PM

[ QUOTE ]
Altho as a liberal this may seem an odd choice, Nixon was a truly great man who saw the big picture

[/ QUOTE ]
Maybe in terms of detente and China, but the guy was paranoid as hell. The Watergate affair illustrated that pretty clearly.

andyfox

03-31-2004, 09:35 PM

Surely you jest. Have you read his books? A complete ignoramus. Not to mention a bigoted, anti-semitic, cruel, pathological liar and a murdering war criminal. Probably did more damage to this country than any other American of the 20th century, when you consider his roles in McCarthyism, Vietnam, and Watergate.

andyfox

03-31-2004, 09:37 PM

The guy is crucial in terms of closing off relations with China and Russia, and then gets credit when he re-opens?

Mason Malmuth

04-01-2004, 06:07 AM

Hi Andy:

One of the characteristics of Trumans presidency is that he had to make many tough decisions, one right after another. I suspect that if he was to stop and brood, as you put it, he would have been ineffective in making the next decision.

By the way, probably the most over looked reason for dropping the bomb, and one that I believe Truman considered, was that the Russians were now in China. It's puzzling to historians to this day why they left so quickly given to how they stayed in Eastern Europe.

Best wishes,
Mason

blackaces13

04-01-2004, 08:06 AM

Hey Andy,

Try listening to John Ziegler from 10pm to 1am on 640 KFI AM in LA, he's new. I suppose he can be called a conservative too but he's the man. Not all conservatives are bad and vice versa with regard to liberals. I'd also like to see if anyone could lump him in with any of the Limbaugh/Hannity types. Ziegler really comes off as being authentic and straight from the gut rather than a Republican Party fanboy ruled by agendas. I hate Limbaugh and Hannity too for this reason.

adios

04-01-2004, 08:08 AM

adios

04-01-2004, 08:14 AM

As bad as this sounds and it is bad, killing was so commonplace in WWII that people became numb to it. Ten thousand here, ten thousand there pretty soon we're talking about killing a lot of people. Must have an horror to live through.

scrub

04-01-2004, 12:29 PM

[ QUOTE ]
As bad as this sounds and it is bad, killing was so commonplace in WWII that people became numb to it. Ten thousand here, ten thousand there pretty soon we're talking about killing a lot of people. Must have an horror to live through.

[/ QUOTE ]

This got me thinking about an episode of This American Life that I listened to last spring right before the war in Iraq. For those of you who haven't heart it, it's a radio show produced by Chicago Public Radio that sometimes has some wonderful stuff on it.

If you have Realplayer, you can listen to the entire episode for free by clicking this link. (http://207.70.82.73/ra/195.ram) .

The third act on the show is a really interesting piece about the way that war gets remembered. The full text of the article is available here. (http://207.70.82.73/pages/trax/text/sandlin1.html)

This American Life has all of episodes available for free over the internet, and some of them are great listening. Check them out at www.thislife.org (http://www.thislife.org) .

They even did an episode about high stakes poker, which includes interviews with a bunch of the "name" pros. It's available here. (http://207.70.82.73/ra/192.ram)

scrub

andyfox

04-01-2004, 01:59 PM

I think that's a valid observation. It truly was "total war." How may people did the Russians lose? The Japanese were particularly brutal against the Chinese. And of course the concentration camps. Horrible times.

A firend of mine recently asked me what decade I thought was the most important of the 20th century for America. I told him the 1940s without question. (I imagine most people would say the 1960s.)

andyfox

04-01-2004, 02:05 PM

Yes, August 8 was the day Stalin promised he would declare was on Japan and he kept his word. It was no coincidence that the bombs were dropped then.

I don't think Stalin feared China. He knew what a mess-up Chiang-kai Shek was and that he could handle the Communists if and when they were victorious. He was paranoid, both as a Communist and as a Russian, about another invasion from his west. Perhaps it was an unspoken part of his quid pro quo with Churchill and Roosevelt that he would be allowed his cordon sanitaire in eastern Europe, given his fear of another invasion and the fact that the Russians bore the brunt of the fighting, and not bother the western powers in east Asia. Then again, perhaps he knew Mao would end up the winner in China and he'd have a Communist power there to watch things for him anyway.

andyfox

04-01-2004, 02:19 PM

Indeed, Truman did have to make a large number of important decisions upon assuming the presidency. And he was largely unprepared to do so, since Roosevelt really kept him out of the loop, even when he knew he was dying. Truman was truly a man on the spot, maybe the toughest spot anyone's ever been put into. While it's certainly easy for me to criticize here where it doesn't mean anything, I still think Truman made bad decisions all too often.

This is a minority position as most historians now rank Truman as either great or near-great.

Cyrus

04-01-2004, 02:33 PM

Nice to see you postin' again.

If, by any chance, your absence was due to a knock on the hayd, maybe your brain was shaken hard enough that you gonna vote 'gainst the Unahted States Pres'dent?

/images/graemlins/cool.gif

Here's hopin'.

HDPM

04-01-2004, 02:54 PM

Clearly the '40's. You are right.

BadBoyBenny

04-01-2004, 08:56 PM

Lech Walesa

Rick Nebiolo

04-02-2004, 05:25 AM

Andy,

Sometimes I'm saddened that I don't have the time to contribute to these forum as much as I have in the past. Posting from work would be nice but I can't. Anyway, it's late, I'm tired, the thread has probably wound down but I had a thought or two and I feel like writing.

You wrote:

[ QUOTE ]
Arguments against dropping the bombs were made at the time, including by many scientists (for example, Leo Szilard) who were instrumental in developing the weapons. Secretary of War Stimson, who wrote a ringing defense of the use of the bombs in Life magazine, eventually, when out of office, admitted, in his autobiography, that the usage was probably not necessary. All of the military people who were consulted about the proposed invasion of Japan indicated far fewer casualties than Truman later publicized in his biography and in interviews and speeches. The Russians entered the war on August 8, as they had promised and this, plus the results of our embargo, pushed the Japanese to surrender.

[/ QUOTE ]

We've discussed and argued regarding the dropping of the atomic bombs in long ago threads. Over the last few years I've read a lot about the war years (World War Two). Most recently I read "Flags of Our Fathers" by James Bradley. I wouldn't be surprised if you have read it too.

Iwo Jima was our first battle on the Japanese homeland. The battle was vicious, with the Japanese defending to almost the last man (we only captured the sick and wounded). The raising of the flag came early in the battle - most of the killing came after. Okinawa was next and almost as vicious, but on a greater scale. Extrapolate those casualties to an invasion of the main islands of Japan would have resulted in millions of dead (counting Japanese civilians).

Of course after Iwo Jima and Okinawa we might have lost heart and negotiated for peace. The miracle of postwar Japan may have never happened as the military culture of Japan would have been been left in place.

[ QUOTE ]
I don't think it was the second bomb which convinced the Emperor at all. News about what the bombs had accomplished was not readily available. And the Japanese cities had been subjected to an endless onslaught by conventional firebombing under the aegis of General Curtis LeMay; for example, more Japanese died in the conventional bombing of Tokyo than in the atomic bombing of Hiroshima or Nagasaki.

[/ QUOTE ]

If memory serves me the fire bombing of Tokyo took place in March of 1945. If was horrific, but perhaps the thought of LeMay with thousands of bombers and thousand of atomic weapons (even though we only could produce about one a month - they didn't know that) was too much.

[ QUOTE ]
The bombs' defenders usually posit the choice as being between dropping the bombs or a fantastically bloody invasion. Such was not the case.

[/ QUOTE ]

There were other choices, but would they have led to the postwar peace?

<I'll snip reasons one and two for brevities sake>

[ QUOTE ]
Third, there was a racist element to our war with Japan (as there was to Japan's ideology). The Japanese were stigmatized in ways that the Germans and Italians were not. We had put Japanese Americans in concentration camps. The memory of Pearl Harbor added an element of revenge to our thinking.

[/ QUOTE ]

I'm too tired to look at the exact figures from the Bradley book but there was much more hatred in the manner in which the war was fought in the Pacific as compared to the war in Europe. During the war with Germany the Allied soldiers had no knowledge of the Holocaust. The German Army for the most part fought fair. Medics were not targeted. Relatively few Allied prisoners died in captivity.

Not so in the war with Japan. More than 30% of Allied prisoners died in captivity. Japanese soldiers routinely targeted medics (James Bradley's father, an Iwo Jima flag raiser, was a Navy medic attached to the Marines). You might know better but the "Rape of Nanking" was probably well known to our leaders (certainly the "Bataan Death March" was).

[ QUOTE ]
Fourth, We used two bombs because we had them. Had they not been available, we probably would have modified our unconditional surrender demand and the war would have ended without an invasion.

[/ QUOTE ]

I agree, and I have misgivings regarding the second bomb. But as mentioned above a negotiated peace with a militarized Japan probably would have resulted in a much less prosperous and stable Japan and Asia.

Regards,

Rick

Rick Nebiolo

04-02-2004, 05:46 AM

Andy,

After posting the above I Googled around a bit and found this web page (http://www.metroactive.com/papers/metro/12.12.96/cover/china1-9650.html) regarding the Rape of Nanking.

Of course my guess is you aleady read it /images/graemlins/grin.gif

Regards,

Rick

John Cole

04-02-2004, 06:35 AM

Once source I've read states that Truman had read and underlined these lines while making his decision:

So shall you hear
Of carnal, bloody, and unnatural acts,
Of accidental judgments, casual slaughters,
Of deaths put on by cunning and forcéd cause,
And, in this upshot, purposes mistook
Fall'n on the inventors' heads.

andyfox

04-02-2004, 02:38 PM

Wow, if this is what you do when you don't have time and you're tired . . . Very insightful observations.

John Dower's War Without Mercy is a good read about the
brutality, on all sides, of the Pacific War. The Japanese
in China is one of the ugliest episodes in an ugly century.

Interesting, when you go to the bookstores, the World War II sub-section of the military section is the biggest, even bigger than the Civil War section. Perhaps Tom Brokaw's book was a catalyst to renewed interest.

I haven't read Bradley's book.

Because of my business, I have read a lot about Taiwan. While the Japanese ran a police state there while it was their colony (from 1895 to 1945), they tried to run it as a model colony, building roads, railroads, hospitals, etc., improving the educational system and really creating the makings of a vibrant economy (which the nationalist Chinese took credit for when they overran the island running away from the Communists). So in many ways it was a progressive despotism. The older I get, the less I see things in black and white (my "shocking" posts to the contrary).

Regards,
Andy

Rick Nebiolo

04-02-2004, 03:59 PM

[ QUOTE ]
John Dower's War Without Mercy is a good read about the
brutality, on all sides, of the Pacific War. The Japanese
in China is one of the ugliest episodes in an ugly century.

[/ QUOTE ]

I put the Dower book on my Amazon wish list. Let's hope this century isn't so ugly but so far it hasn't got off to a good start.

[ QUOTE ]
Interesting, when you go to the bookstores, the World War II sub-section of the military section is the biggest, even bigger than the Civil War section. Perhaps Tom Brokaw's book was a catalyst to renewed interest.

[/ QUOTE ]

I haven't read the Brokaw book. In the same vein I think the Ambrose books rank up there but if you can read only one (other than Ambrose's "Band of Brothers") I do recommend the Bradley book.

Of course "you" have probably read more than one /images/graemlins/grin.gif

[ QUOTE ]
"Because of my business, I have read a lot about Taiwan. While the Japanese ran a police state there while it was their colony (from 1895 to 1945), they tried to run it as a model colony, building roads, railroads, hospitals, etc., improving the educational system and really creating the makings of a vibrant economy (which the nationalist Chinese took credit for when they overran the island running away from the Communists). So in many ways it was a progressive despotism."

[/ QUOTE ]

The nature of conquest is that it often improves the society and lives of the conquered. But then again I'm of half Polish ancestry so being conquered is in my blood (and I suppose my other side balances that out - of course that goes back 2000 years).

Taiwan is a mystery to me. If there are one or two books you would recommend, post a link of let me know about it. I'm reading more and more history these days.

[ QUOTE ]
"The older I get, the less I see things in black and white (my "shocking" posts to the contrary)."

[/ QUOTE ]

The older I get the more I see gray. Hey, I am gray!

Regards,

Rick

andyfox

04-02-2004, 06:05 PM

"I'm of half Polish ancestry"

Me too. In fact, I'm defined as a first generation Americans as my father was born in the old country. He came over in 1921 as a two-year old. The family was illiterate and my grandmother signed her name with an "X". They needed to give her a name, and the easiest one from the "X" was "Fox." (The real family name was Menachem.)

"Taiwan is a mystery to me."

A remarkable story. From a virtual police state under Chiang Kai-Shek, his son opened up the society and allowed an opposition political party to form. They are now in power. The idiots who run China insist it's still part of their country, so the Taiwanese leaders have to walk a fine line.

I've been there perhaps 25 times. The tallest building in the world is now in Taipei (Taipei 101, over 1600 feet).

Let me check my library at home for recommendations.

hetron

04-02-2004, 06:37 PM

I'm not a big fan of Nixon. But to be fair, I think he did sign the first anti-nuke bill with the USSR, and relations with both the USSR and China were arguably the best they had been since the end of WWII. Henry Kissinger, who I will not argue had a history of backing leaders who were pro-American with disgustingly bad human rights records, also got the Nobel Prize for negotiation of the peace in the Middle East after the Yom Kippur war. If you want to argue that the bad outweighed the good with the Nixon administration, however, I would probably agree.

andyfox

04-02-2004, 09:07 PM

I think Kissinger's Nobel Prize was for ending the Vietnam War. What a joke.

I would argue that the bad outweighed the good in the Nixon administration to the same degree a blue whale outweighs a mosquito's perspiration.

andyfox

04-02-2004, 09:10 PM

Willem Van Kermenade, "China, Hong Kong, Taiwan, Inc." is very good, though a big outdated (1997--pre Hong Kong going back to China and pre- the opposition taking power in Taiwan).

Denny Roy, "Taiwan: A Political History"

CHao and Myers, "The First Chinese Democracy"

Rick Nebiolo

04-03-2004, 07:13 AM

[ QUOTE ]
Willem Van Kermenade, "China, Hong Kong, Taiwan, Inc." is very good, though a big outdated (1997--pre Hong Kong going back to China and pre- the opposition taking power in Taiwan).

Denny Roy, "Taiwan: A Political History"

CHao and Myers, "The First Chinese Democracy"

[/ QUOTE ]

I looked over the above on Amazon. I put the Roy book on my Wish List.

One reason Amazon is good is that you get "Customers who bought this book also bought" with links to other good reads. Check out the price on the book linked to here (http://tinyurl.com/3brae)!

Thanks for the information!

Regards,

Rick

John Cole

04-03-2004, 11:15 AM

Andy,

I'm just a bit curious. When you say "let me check my library at home," do you mean you have other libraries stashed here and there? It wouldn't surprise me. /images/graemlins/grin.gif

andyfox

04-03-2004, 02:26 PM

No, just one library. We've moved recently, and I can tell you books are damn heavy. Even the paperbacks.

While I'm not a big Thomas Jefferson fan, I too cannot live without books. Hopefully, I won't end up like he did (broke) and have to sell my slaves to make ends meet.

Jimbo

04-04-2004, 11:26 AM

[ QUOTE ]
Hopefully, I won't end up like he did (broke) and have to sell my slaves to make ends meet.

[/ QUOTE ]

If this is true Andy then it is not too late to convert to the Republican party and vote for Bush. With Kerry in office going broke would become as common as in the Great Depression.

/images/graemlins/smile.gif /images/graemlins/smile.gif /images/graemlins/smile.gif

Jimbo

Kenrick

04-04-2004, 01:58 PM

[ QUOTE ]
well you kind of expressed my thoughts as well. I mean the U.S. is much better than the 50's atleast in some aspects. But I would agree with you that the credit doesn't really go to the president. IMO it should go more to Entrepreneaurs, investors, philanthropists, etc...

[/ QUOTE ]

Credit should go to Presidents who have stayed out of these people's way. The bigger government gets and the more legislation and taxes required to make it run, the less opportunity citizens have to help make the country great.

Re: the bomb. It's interesting how times have changed. WWII was so terrible and so destructive, and it's been mentioned how so many people died that people just became numb to it, and now when the U.S. is in a fight people go crazy when even one non-military building is hit or a civilian is accidently killed, etc.

Until 9/11, I think people had forgotten how unsafe the world can be, and they seem to already be forgetting again. If I could drop a bomb on the 9/11 attackers, I would. And if I was there at Pearl Harbor, I probably wouldn't brood much over dropping a bomb on the people who did that, either. They're not quite the same scenarios, but I'll give the President of the time the benefit of the doubt that he did what he thought was necessary.

andyfox

04-05-2004, 02:19 AM

Yeah, yeah, I know. Fact is there's always a recession when a Republican comes into office and the stock market goes in the tank. Herbert Hoover, Ike, Nixon, Reagan, Bush 41 and W.

I am glad, though, you're reading the John Cole/Andy Fox posts. :-)

On a more important note, we've recently bought a pool table. Long shots are particularly troublesome for me (in my dotage). I read in a book somebody got me that a good way to practice is to close your eyes after you line up, that this helps with a good, smooth stroke. Seems to be helping a bit. Any other suggestions?

andyfox

04-05-2004, 02:30 AM

No one doubts that the president does what he thinks is necessary. But what the president may think is necesary may be based on a misunderstanding of the world situation, on an ignorance of history, or on a bizarre moral sense. A bizarre moral sense would be not to brood over killing 80,000 women and children because the military of the country in which those people lived bombed Pearl Harbor. It would be one thing to drop a bomb on the 9/11 attackers. It would be quite another, to most people, to kill 80,000 civilians because of it. Isn't such a morality the same as that of the 9/11 attackers?

MMMMMM

04-05-2004, 03:40 AM

Andy, I don't know whether the decision to drop the bomb saved or cost lives in aggregate. I suspect you may not know either (although you might--would you care to offer an opinion on this question?) At any rate I once again caution you against lumping all things of one type together without considering degree. My guess is that once something engenders a certain threshhold of disgust for you, you tend to ignore degree from that point forward. But degree is extremely important in most comparisons, even in extremely odious comparisons, and you lose some of that keen analytical ability which you otherwise possess when you allow your analytical mind to become so blocked. You analyze poker situations much better than certain other questions, because when analyzing poker (at least on these forums) your emotions do not short-prune the tree of your analysis.

Now maybe Truman was disgusting in his thinking, I don't really know...but "every bit as much" as was Stalin (or bin-Laden)??? Do you really lose the ability to compare once you encounter a certain level of abhorrence?

Ray Zee

04-05-2004, 10:37 AM

if you want to make long pool shots just lose 25 years. thats the long of it.

andyfox

04-05-2004, 12:41 PM

I think you're right. I saw The Color Of Money again last week and when Paul Newman said "I'm blind," and went for eyeglasses, I now know how he felt.

andyfox

04-05-2004, 01:15 PM

Thanks for the poker compliment, left-handed as it may be. /images/graemlins/wink.gif

Note that I'm talking about thinking. I made the distinction in another post somewhere in this thread. There's a big difference between thinking about killing people and actually doing it. When Hannity said that we should have killed those people and not worried about it, this is exactly the way Bin Laden thinks: there's a greater good to be had by killing them. That said, Truman made a decision to kill 80,000 people. He knew it would mostly be women and children because A) so many men were in uniform; and B) all of Japan's other cities had been firebombed (except Nagasaki, being saved for bomb #2, and Kyoto, spared by Secretary of War Stimson's knowledge of its historical and cultural importance), and thus Hiroshima had received quite a few refugees from those destroyed cities. Where does his thinking,in this regard, differ from the planners of 9/11, who bombed a city in order to inflict the most damage possible to civilians?

I don't think Bin Laden has killed nearly as many people as were killed by the two atomic bombs. All of our military leaders (MacArthur and Eisenhower, for example) both said they were unnecessary and cost more lives than would have been lost in ending the war by other means.

Perhaps you can elaborate further on your meaning by difference of degree. For example, should Stalin not be lumped together with Mao because Mao killed three times as many people? [I'm not sure of the actual numbers.]

My point is that a decision was made to murder massive numbers of women and children. And two political analysts bemoaned the fact that today's Democratic Party has no leaders who could have done this without worrying about moral considerations. That indeed reached my threshhold of disgust. I await your explanation of how it short-pruned my tree of analysis. [Great phrases in your post BTW.]

MMMMMM

04-05-2004, 03:58 PM

Well as I've said before I don't know whether the bombs resulted in more lives lost or saved in aggregate.

"Where does his (Truman's) thinking,in this regard, differ from the planners of 9/11, who bombed a city in order to inflict the most damage possible to civilians?"

The decision to drop the bomb was supposedly a decision to take action which would end the war; bin-Laden's decision to kill 3000 Americans was a decision to start or escalate a war, not end one...

"Perhaps you can elaborate further on your meaning by difference of degree. For example, should Stalin not be lumped together with Mao because Mao killed three times as many people? [I'm not sure of the actual numbers.]"

I was more comparing Truman with Stalin here; Truman's actions killed a small fraction of the number Stalin killed, and did effectively end the war to boot (also against an aggressor nation). Stalin on the other hand killed tens of millions of his own people, apparently for the primary purpose of consolidating his own hold on power. So degee here applies to raw numbers as well as to the moral issues involved. I'm not saying dropping the bomb was "moral" but it wasn't as immoral as Stalin's much vaster mass murders which were for a less worthy purpose as well.

As for the phrase the political analysts used, I think it could have been better phrased and hope they meant slightly otherwise than what it seems to mean taken literally. Of course, I believe moral considerations should be a major concern; just not necessarily a paralyzing concern in times of crisis and self-defense, and moral considerations must unfortunately sometimes often be weighed against pragmatics as well.

I suspect that some candidates would, if President, be perhaps unable to "pull the trigger" when necessary--sort of like the fairly solid poker player who can't quite bring himself to make that "special case" very uncomfortable aggressive play when it is actually extremely important.

As for your short-pruning, it is just an occasional and general observation. Here you did not compare Truman to Stalin or bin-Laden very well, IMO. I have noticed this occasional tendency during discussions of various topics, and will be buying you a pair of heavy-duty hedge-trimmers for your birthday;-) Hopefully your wife won't give you so much yard work this summer that you become disgusted with it all, or the Foxes might not have any hedges left come Autumn;-)

MMMMMM

04-05-2004, 03:59 PM

andyfox

04-05-2004, 08:39 PM

"The decision to drop the bomb was supposedly a decision to take action which would end the war; bin-Laden's decision to kill 3000 Americans was a decision to start or escalate a war, not end one..."

So it's OK to try to end a war by taking 80,000 lives? And then another 60,000 a few more days later. What if Japan had not unconditionally surrendered and we had fifty more bombs. Would another 3 to 4 million have been OK? We're getting up into Hitlerian numbers here. Supposing Bin Laden continues his "war" with us and thinks he can end it by dropping an H bomb on New York. OK because it's to end a war?

The atomic bombs were not what ended the war. People have argued, and in fact, the Secretary of State at the time confirmed, that one reason behind using hte bombs was to put the Russians in their place after the war. So the bombs were used to consolidate our power. The Russians were coming into the Pacific War and Stalin, as he promised he would, declared war on Japan on August 8.

I can actually use the hedge-trimmers. Literally, and it's probably true, figuratively as well. /images/graemlins/smile.gif

MMMMMM

04-05-2004, 11:05 PM

"So it's OK to try to end a war by taking 80,000 lives?"

I didn't say it is or was. Maybe it saved lives in aggregate, maybe it didn't. Do you think it might have?

"And then another 60,000 a few more days later. What if Japan had not unconditionally surrendered and we had fifty more bombs. Would another 3 to 4 million have been OK? We're getting up into Hitlerian numbers here. Supposing Bin Laden continues his "war" with us and thinks he can end it by dropping an H bomb on New York. OK because it's to end a war?"

As for bin-Laden's actions, he WAS escalating, not trying to end things.

Stalin's mass murders of tens of millions for purposes not of ending a war are even less OK than Truman's actions. Here again you are failing to differentiate between what may be very bad and what is truly terrible, or between what is terrible and what is massively horrendous. Cut it any way you want, one is MUCH worse than the other, no matter how bad a value you may assign to Truman's actions.

And please get off the "OK" stuff--try comparing DEGREES of badness, not just two artificial categories (to wit, "OK" and "not OK"...talk about seeing the world in terms of black and white;-)--).

"The atomic bombs were not what ended the war. People have argued, and in fact, the Secretary of State at the time confirmed, that one reason behind using hte bombs was to put the Russians in their place after the war. So the bombs were used to consolidate our power. The Russians were coming into the Pacific War and Stalin, as he promised he would, declared war on Japan on August 8."

Well the war did end very soon after we dropped the bombs: Japan surrendered. So: what do you make of estimates tossed around of what it would have cost in lives to have instead invaded Japan? Are those hypothetical numbers meaningless for some reason, and if so, what? And if they are not meaningless, might that imply anything or not?

Kenrick

04-06-2004, 12:40 AM

[ QUOTE ]

I suspect that some candidates would, if President, be perhaps unable to "pull the trigger" when necessary--sort of like the fairly solid poker player who can't quite bring himself to make that "special case" very uncomfortable aggressive play when it is actually extremely important.

[/ QUOTE ]

I'm constantly amazed at how many people take national security so lightly, as if the world is a safe and happy place where everyone wants to be your friend. Al Gore was almost the President right now, and I have little faith that he could pull the trigger to kill a tree, much less pull the trigger to protect his country.

MMMMMM

04-06-2004, 01:08 AM

AF: "So it's OK to try to end a war by taking 80,000 lives?"

Just to elaborate a bit, Andy, on why I don't care for your approach to this problem (intellectually speaking, of course; I know your heart is in the right place): consider if the means of ending the war were not dropping the bomb but rather invading the nearest islands and mainland Japan. So let's see: if it cost 80,00 lives to end the war by invading on land instead of by dropping the bomb, that's OK? "No", I can hear you say, "I never said that's OK";-) And further...what if it would have cost not 80,000, but 800,000 lives, to invade on land? Also: how many lives might it have cost to do neither?

These are tough questions and I don't purport to know the answers even roughly. But your rhetorical question/answer does nothing to address the hard real questions involved. Just because one alternative is "not OK" does not necessarily mean that any alternatives exist which which are "OK". Sometimes there is no "OK" solution to a practical problem; sometimes there are only choices between evils and the question becomes which appears to be the least of all evils.

It very well may be that the bomb was not the least evil choice. But if so, can you expound on a better pragmatic solution, given the time and the situation?

andyfox

04-06-2004, 01:53 AM

Based on what evidence?

andyfox

04-06-2004, 02:05 AM

"Do you think it might have?"

No. Not according to our military experts at the time.

"you are failing to differentiate between what may be very bad and what is truly terrible, or between what is terrible and what is massively horrendous."

OK, I'll accept that. I suppose, for me, it's much worse when the president of the United States does something bad or terrible, as opposed to when someone I know is a bastard does something truly terrible or horrendous. Shouldn't we expect more of our leaders than of Stalin? [BTW, there's a new biography of Stalin out that Time magazine gave a rave review to in their April 12 edition: "Stalin: The Court of the Red Tsar," by British biographer Simon Sebag Montefiore. And no, I didn't make up the biographer's name.]

"Well the war did end very soon after we dropped the bombs: Japan surrendered. So: what do you make of estimates tossed around of what it would have cost in lives to have instead invaded Japan? Are those hypothetical numbers meaningless for some reason, and if so, what? And if they are not meaningless, might that imply anything or not?"

Yeah, the war ended soon after my father came home too, but one had nothing to do with the other. We've been over this territory a few years back, I don't really want to go over it again. The "tossed around" estimates were mostly tossed around by Truman, who kept inflating them whenever he spoke of them. Had we not insisted on unconditional surrender, that would have saved many lives.

We're getting off-topic here, which is of course, OK, but not what I was getting at in my original post. Let's assume, for the sake of argument, that the bombs did end the war, and that they saved twice as many lives as would have been lost had they not been dropped to boot. I still don't want a man as president who wouldn't lose any sleep over having to kill 150,000 civilians to do so. One would think difficult decisions, both before and after they are made, would require reflection.

MMMMMM

04-06-2004, 05:05 AM

"OK, I'll accept that. I suppose, for me, it's much worse when the president of the United States does something bad or terrible, as opposed to when someone I know is a bastard does something truly terrible or horrendous. Shouldn't we expect more of our leaders than of Stalin?"

Yes, of course--but that does not address the situation from the victims' point of view. From only our perspective it is more important that we and our leaders do right. From the victims' perspective, however, pondering such concerns would be a relative luxury: their immediate concerns are for their own survival and they really don't much care who or why they are being victimzed, only whether they are or not. I find Chomsky's attitude that he would rather see 100 killed by "them" than one killed by "us" to smack of self-indulgence and to be severely lacking in compassion.

If Truman killed 1 for Stalin's 100, sorry but I DON'T find that more disturbing than Stalin's actions. I find the needless brutal killing of 100 far more disturbing than the needless brutal killing of 1, regardless of whoever did it. Same goes for, say, 100 million vs. 1 million. Maybe I just feel empathy for those people as if they were people living in my state whom I had simply never met.

I find it hard to imagine that the war's end had nothing to do with the dropping of the bomb. However I have in the past asked why the USA could't have merely demonstrated the bomb's efficacy to the Japanese and asked for their surrender else it would be used. Anyway my view is that I just don't know enough about the specifics to form an informed and reasoned opinion on this point.

"I still don't want a man as president who wouldn't lose any sleep over having to kill 150,000 civilians to do so. One would think difficult decisions, both before and after they are made, would require reflection."

I didn't see it clearly meaning that Truman didn't agonize over the decision before he decided to drop the bomb; if that were the case I would tend to agree with you. If however after much consideration (and hopefully some prayer and/or soul-searching) he decided it was truly necessary and would save many lives, then I could understand his sleeping soundly after finally reaching that resolution. Agonizing over the decision beforehand and losing sleep I would rather expect; once determined however maybe a night's rest would be in order. If Truman did not agonize at all over the decision prior to making it, I would be very inclined to agree with you. Based on your initial post however that wasn't clear at all.

andyfox

04-06-2004, 12:02 PM

"I find Chomsky's attitude that he would rather see 100 killed by "them" than one killed by "us" to smack of self-indulgence and to be severely lacking in compassion."

I wouldn't rather see them killing than us (if that is indeed what Chomsky said), but the point is that I live in a free country where we pick our leaders. It is undrstandable that someone who came to power by the means that, for example, Stalin came to power, and had the example of Lenin and the czars before him, would be liable to use dastardly means in his statescraft. It is less understandable in our country, where the examples are not Lenin and the czars, but rather Thomas Jefferson and James Madison. I expect more from our presidents.

As far as the bombs ending the war, remember times were different then. The true nature of the devastation was not known just a few days after they were used. And had the information been available, the extent of the killing was not more unusual than what had been inflicted with conventional fire-bombing. More than 100,000 people had been killed in Tokyo during one night. And every other city in Japan (save Kyoto) had been hit too.

There were suggestions that the bomb be demonstrated, rather than used. But there was no way we were going to "waste" one of the two we had.

Truman was not a soul-searcher. He was a bull in a china shop.

Kenrick

04-07-2004, 05:21 PM

[ QUOTE ]

We're getting off-topic here, which is of course, OK, but not what I was getting at in my original post. Let's assume, for the sake of argument, that the bombs did end the war, and that they saved twice as many lives as would have been lost had they not been dropped to boot. I still don't want a man as president who wouldn't lose any sleep over having to kill 150,000 civilians to do so. One would think difficult decisions, both before and after they are made, would require reflection.

[/ QUOTE ]

I'm sure he reflected on the decision beforehand. That's what any rational, thinking person would do. Reflecting on it afterwards can often have little point, however. If you are fighting for your life and have to kill someone at that moment, it doesn't do you much good to think back ten years after that and feel badly about it. You can think back to it and learn from it, sure, but other than that, the reason for the action in the first place will remain the same: that you had to kill someone else before they killed you.

When you're at war, you're at war. Another country wants to kill you and take over your country. Why stopping them in pretty much any way you can would require "brooding" and feeling bad about it, I don't know. You can also flip it around and say it's Japan's leaders' fault for being in a war in the first place since they know their civilians might get hurt. Where's the brooding interview of those guys for putting the people of their country at risk?

Leaders aren't supposed to brood and be wishy-washy. They lead and make tough decisions that most people couldn't make. The guy did what he thought he had to do at the time. The United States might not be here today if he hadn't. He's supposed to brood about that? Maybe he slept well because he knew this might save his country and end the war.

andyfox

04-08-2004, 12:57 PM

I'm not so sure he reflected on it beforehand. He knew we had an impressive weapon and we were going to use it because we had it. In that sense, there was never really a "decision" to use the bomb. Yes, some of the scientists suggested a demonstration, rather than its use, but they were overruled by "the" scientist (J. Robert Oppenheimer) and the idea of a demonstration would never have flown anyway. The idea that the United States wouldn't be here if hasn't used the bombs is ridiculous. The war was going to be over soon no matter what.

Truman knew the end of the war was imminent and that other methods could end it easily. Russia had just come into the war, and having broken the Japanese codes we knew the negotiating that was going on among the Japanese decision-makers. The option was not simply between using the bombs and invading in November. A modification of our unconditional surrdender demand, as was being suggested by many within and without the government, could have done the trick. Secretary of War Stimson, who wrote a ringing defense of the use of the bombs in Life magazine, admitted as much later in his more honest and nuanced memoirs.

Truman was an ignoramus. He read voraciously, but not critically, using history to justify his already preconcevied notions. We're not talking about wishy-washiness here. We're talking about how a person feels about killing hundred of thousands of people. Let's grant, for the sake of argument, that the bombs were necessary. What kind of person doesn't lose any sleep about having to use them?

He slept well because he didn't understand the rubicon he had crossed. He was a stubborn ignoramus.

Kenrick

04-08-2004, 04:27 PM

[ QUOTE ]
The war was going to be over soon no matter what.

[/ QUOTE ]

That's a different topic of discussion.

[ QUOTE ]

Let's grant, for the sake of argument, that the bombs were necessary. What kind of person doesn't lose any sleep about having to use them?

[/ QUOTE ]

Maybe a person who saw things such as the following happen:

"In the first hours of America’s Pacific war, the nation suffered one of her worst wartime losses: 2,388 men, women, and children were killed in the attack." "By 10:00 a.m. the tranquil Sunday calm had been shattered, 21 vessels lay sunk or damaged, the fighting backbone of the fleet apparently broken. Smoke from burning planes and hangers filled the sky. Oil from sinking ships clogged the harbor. Death was everywhere. The battleship USS Arizona remains sunken in Pearl Harbor with its crews onboard. The Arizona still leaks oil to this day."