Wow. I was reading a current article by Justin Raimondo, when I linked to one of his articles dated August 10, 2001, Harry Truman, War Criminal, in which he responded to Tom Ambrose of "God is pro-war" WorldNetDaily, who criticized Justin's earlier article "Hiroshima Mon Amour: Why Americans are barbarians."
Justin cleaned Tom's clock, but read one of Tom's paragraphs:
"And it must be noted that as awful as those two bomb blasts were, they ultimately saved many lives. Indeed, they inadvertently continue to save lives to this very day. How so? Because having seen the horrible devastation wrought by those two ghastly events, political leaders everywhere have so far refrained from actually using the even more powerful, more devastating weapons they have built. Let the revisionists say what they want to, but the fact remains the war ended because of those two bombs and millions more Japanese and Americans alike were spared further anguish."
Of course, those words were written pre 9/11, Before Everything Changed. They were written before we discovered that Iran is just days away from nuking Kansas (or worse, Israel!). They were written before the neocons declared pre-emptive wars are justified. They were written before neocons declared that just pissing them off were grounds for pre-emptive wars (and therefore justified).
The term "political leaders everywhere" is govspeak for "political leaders everywhere but here," because just 16 hours after the FIRST bomb was dropped, Harry Truman issued a press release promising even more destruction on the Japanese:
The Japanese began the war from the air at Pearl Harbor. They have been repaid many fold. And the end is not yet.
We are now prepared to obliterate more rapidly and completely every productive enterprise the Japanese have above ground in any city. We shall destroy their docks, their factories, and their communications. Let there be no mistake; we shall completely destroy Japan's power to make war.
It was to spare the Japanese people from utter destruction that the ultimatum of July 26 was issued at Potsdam. Their leaders promptly rejected that ultimatum. If they do not now accept our terms they may expect a rain of ruin from the air, the like of which has never been seen on this earth. Behind this air attack will follow sea and land forces in such numbers and power as they have not yet seen and with the fighting skill of which they are already well aware.
Does that sound like Truman, after seeing the "horrible devastation" wrought by the FIRST bomb, vowed to refrain from dropping the SECOND bomb?
The entire press release is nothing but the sickening chest-thumping braggadocio of a demented little psychopathic haberdasher, aka, a typical American President. The last sentence of Truman's press release is quite frightening:
I shall give further consideration and make further recommendations to the Congress as to how atomic power can become a powerful and forceful influence towards the maintenance of world peace.
We won't know until the last minute whether the entire world can restrain Bush from nuking Iran for the cause of World Peace. (One of those old Podhoretz men told Bush, "You are the only one who can prevent a second Holocaust.")
What is missing from Truman's press release is any mention of the "millions of American lives saved." I have heard that we use this excuse to assuage our consciences, but I disagree. Our consciences have long been seared; up until Brig Gen Paul Tibbets, pilot of the Enola Gay, died at the age of 92 in 2007, people flocked to get his autograph at book signings and public appearances. At the age of 90 he was still giving interviews.
I wonder if the "Christian neocon pro-life war-mongers" at WorldNetDaily know that the "shedding of innocent blood" is mentioned 24 times in the NKJ Version of the Bible as in Proverbs 6:16–19, where the "shedding of innocent blood" is listed as one of the seven things that are an abomination to God or Jeremiah 22:3 where God admonished the King of Judah: "Do no wrong and do no violence to the stranger, the fatherless, or the widow, nor shed innocent blood in this place."
Of course, to neocons and our government, no one is innocent outside Washington, D.C., so what if God does hate the shedding of innocent blood? What does that have to do with them?
May 9, 2008
