I need to be careful about how I say this…
The nuclear “bunker buster” is not a particularly good idea. Militarily, it would probably work. Politically, it would be suicide.
My opinion is actually much stronger than that, but I need to be discreet.
Im perplexed by this use of the word “liberal”.
Does it mean Democrats like, say, Jimmy Carter, or does it mean actual left-wingers, like Noam Chomsky. Or is it just a blanket term for anyone not definitely right wing?
Truman was a Dem (liberal? Or does that term apply to which generation of dems?).
I personally don’t agree with that decision. I argued with my mother on it…Of course, she was in agreement on using the bomb.
Hindsight being the best wisdom, and looking at modern warfare, it seems obvious that, we, having superiority of the air and sea, could have simply used air bombardment with conventional weapons, cut them off from the rest of the world, via the seas, and waited them out. Eventually, civilian casualties would mount to the point where surrender was the only option for survival.
However, more people possibly would’ve died in that manner, over a long period of time…
The kamakazee tactic was used out of desperation. They had run out of pilots, they were running out of money to support the war effort, they had lost (almost) all of their naval might, and all of their skilled pilots, so pilots were quickly trained for one mission flights, to attempt to weaken U.S. power on the seas. Rather than being a threat, it exposed the Japanese as being on the verge of losing the war.
All they had left were ground troops. I would agree that they would fight to the last man. Or would they? Would the war have continued if moral was gone, civilians were starving, and the country was in caos? I honestly don’t know…
I just know I wouldn’t have dropped the bomb…But, that’s my .02
What about all the liberals before Karl Marx? We’ve been left out in the cold. Nobody cares about tyrrany any more, except establishing a really good one of their own. Back in my day…
I see you can’t actually read what I write. Please quote SPECIFICALLY where I stated that sympathy for the victims is anti-American. I want a SPECIFIC quote. I am talking about the blind, mindless, knee-jerk liberal attitude, every bit as stupid and short-sided as its converse among conservatives, of demonizing the USA whenever possible and rewriting history. The truth is that the left in the USA WANTED the bomb to be used and the right did not and now they very CONVENIENTLY sweep that under the rug because it doesn’t agree with their current groupthink of “everything the USA does is bad, no matter what”.
I don’t know why you think the bolded element wasn’t a factor. Its also hardly a recent “Liberal revisionist” proposition as I’ve been encountering the notion for over twenty years in publications with no particular ideological barrow to push. It was always probable that the allied coalition was going to fall out at the war’s end, and indeed they were already doing so over issues like Poland before the fighting had even finished.
Not assured no, but probable, with or without the bomb the war was coming to a close given Japan’s debilitated condition in 1945, and they were looking for a way out of the war long before Hiroshima. Your figures on troop numbers etc are somewhat misleading as they dont reveal the reality of the collapse of the Japanese economy, massacre of the merchant fleet, destruction of the transport system and impending famine. The economic basis for continued resistance was ceasing to exist.
Personally I think the significance of the bomb in its effect on Japan has been exaggerated. After the Hiroshima bomb the Japanese government sent their own scientists to the scene and they concluded that the damage was no worse then the mass fireraids that they were already enduring, and that the Americans could not possibly have more then a few atom bombs in any case (they were correct). It really didn’t change their military position as they were already exposed to similar levels of devastation from the air. Much more shocking to them was the Soviet declaration of war two days later and the invasion of Manchuria. This killed off such faint hopes as they still had that a neutral Russia would help negotiate a peace for them.
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Well, you’re not going to get one. I said some people. I don’t know why you took that to mean *you. *
Specifically, I was referring to Mel and Norma Gabler, whose efforts to cleanse history texts of anything they feel is critical to America have met with remarkable success. There are many others like them. They are the “some people” that I mentioned.
As an avid reader of history, including some revisionist works, I have yet to see any of them say “everything the USA does is bad, no matter what,” nor is it the “party line” of any group I’m aware of. Can you give me a few examples of history books you’ve read that fit what you’re talking about?
History is not set in stone. New documents, sources, and theories come to light all of the time, and each generation re-interperets it.
I’m a Tudor history buff. In David Starkey’s latest book, he shows how Catherine of Aragon is not necessarily the saint she has always been portrayed as. Is this “revisionist” history? Should I dismiss Starkey as merely “Anti-Catherine” and ignore his work because of it?
Of course, there are biased scholars out there who try to use history to prove their own idealogical points, but anyone who gets their history from just one book, or from just one point of view is an idiot and deserves to be duped. (Personally, I read five to six books on a subject, trying to explore every side of the issue, before I’ll even hazard an opinion.)
“Revisionism” just means opposition to the current historical orthodoxy. Of course, what is revisionist to one generation of historians may become the orthodoxy of the next.
Cold War Revisionists are left wingers (not liberals) who criticise the US and basically blame the West rather than Stalin for the Cold War.
On other issues , the Revisionist/Orthodox struggle may be completely apolitical.
However “Revisionism” has got a bad name because Holocaust Deniers like to call themselves “Holocaust Revisionists”, as it gives their lies/delusions an aura of respectability, as if they were regular historians challenging orthodoxy rather than nazis and nutcases.
“Revisionism” just means opposition to the current historical orthodoxy. Of course, what is revisionist to one generation of historians may become the orthodoxy of the next.
Cold War Revisionists are left wingers (not liberals) who criticise the US and basically blame the West rather than Stalin for the Cold War.
On other issues , the Revisionist/Orthodox struggle may be completely apolitical.
However “Revisionism” has got a bad name because Holocaust Deniers like to call themselves “Holocaust Revisionists”, as it gives their lies/delusions an aura of respectability, as if they were regular historians challenging orthodoxy rather than nazis and nutcases.
You love strawmen, don’t you?
After four years of that sort of rubbish spewed by the “liberals” at my college, I got my degree and was free. Not a straw man at all. It’s reality. I’ve experienced it.
Gee, maybe it was the way you DIRECTLY ADRESSED ME BY MY HANDLE in order to make the accusation that you’re now trying to weasel out of.
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As usual, tomndebb makes a bunch of perfectly apposite points and gets to the nub of the matter. The battle over the Enola Gay exhibit was much more complex than most people seem to realize, and was far from being a simple matter of rescuing the “truth” from a bunch of whacko anti-Americans.
The term “revisionist history” has, over the past decades, turned into a stick that blinkered conservatives use to bludgeon anyone who happens to disagree with their own sanitized version of the American past. It is most commonly wielded against “ivory tower academics” and “college liberals” who actually have the temerity to make public the results of years of research in archives and libraries. I mean, why should we listen to people who have actually examined just about every available document, article, book and manuscript dealing with the decision to use the atomic bomb? What the hell could they know?
Unfortunately, historian Michael Kammen seems to have been correct when he wrote, just after the whole battle over the Enola Gay exhibition:
The funny thing is that the whole debate over the use of the bomb had been going within the historical profession since at least 1965, when Gar Alperovitz published his first book on the subject. While many historians disagreed strongly with Alperovitz’s conclusions, the debate within the profession was carried out on the level of evidence and analysis, not the teeth-gnashing histrionics that characterized the public debate over the exhibition. It’s not that people disagree with the one another’s conclusions that is so troubling about the whole thing–it’s the way that some people refuse even to examine any evidence that contradicts their own comfortable preconceptions, and simply resort to characterizing their opponents as anti-American zealots.
Along with bonzer, i would encourage people to read the original script of the Smithsonian’s exhibition and decide for yourself whether or not it’s a reasonable document. I would also like to suggest this book, which looks back on the whole controversy.
I haven’t seen the History Channel show.
You have to remember that massive conventional firebombing of civilians was already the norm by the end of the war. Tokyo was leveled by firebombs, and just about every Japanese city was being bombed heavily.
One could argue that the bombing was wrong, that we shouldn’t have bombed civilian targets and industry. But the nuclear bombs didn’t do anything we weren’t already doing conventionally. They just did it with one bomb and one plane instead of hundreds of planes and thousands of napalm cannisters.
Probably not very PC, but my opinion, as it is of the bombing of Dresden, is: They Started It. We Finished It.
I’ve got nothing against Japanese or Germans*, but at the time it was the right thing to do.
*Except for football
Jeeze, what’s with the hositilty? The first paragraph was adressed to you, the third was more of a general statement about my views on *some people’s * outrage at anything they see as critical of the US. I see this as a simple misunderstanding, and I apologize if my post was confusing.
You didn’t answer my question, though. Would you please let me know a few titles of history books which have the “USA Always Wrong” mentality? I’d like to see what you’re referring to in your first post.
[Emphasis added]
Name names.
During 1945 a broadish (but not universal) concensus emerged in the Manhatten Project and Washington to use the new weapon. Some of those implicated - possibly even a majority - in this decision were certainly leftwing. A minority of the informed opposed the use in advance.
Now, who were the rightwingers among the latter?
Name one liberal who believes this. Bear in mind that George Bush and his administration are not synonomous with America.
Any way you look at it “Living” History, a “Living” Constitution, etc. are just ways for those who have an axe to grind to distort facts to suit their agenda.
Witness books that turn facts on their heads. Newspapers printing opinions as news etc. ad nauseum. There once was a time when researching newspaper articles was a dependqable source of factual information. Now so much published is fiction in disguise!
As to the Bomb(s): There was much agonizing over the decision. Sure there was some distortion of facts, BUT the overall result was far fewer lives lost, both US and Japanese than if there had been a bloody bloody protacted invasion and land war…
I did watch the program and the point is that, as they presented it, there was not going to be a bloody, protracted invasion and land war because the Japanese were looking to surrender. Truman went ahead and dropped the bombs anyway, as a show of strength to the Russians. At least, that is how the History Channel presented it.