President Obama visited Japan this week, making him the first American president to enter that country, since WWII. This trip gave Obama’s right wing opponents an excuse to start whining about how he was going to apologize for America dropping the bomb on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, thereby ending WWII.
These are the same clowns who came out of the woodwork attacking Obama’s visit to Cuba and they are back at it. None of them seem to recognize that we have been at peace with Japan for seventy years, longer than most of them have been alive.
Of course there has always been controversy about Harry Truman ordering the bombs dropped but no matter how you look at it, it was definitely effective.
Shortly after the second bomb fell in Nagasaki, the Japanese surrendered, thereby cutting off the invasion of the Japanese mainland and saving an estimated 100,000 American lives and many more Japanese lives. Despite this there will always be those who question the decision that killed over 70,000 in Hiroshima. I have heard opponents of the bombing say that we should have dropped the bomb in Tokyo Bay, showing the Japanese generals what was coming if they didn’t surrender, thereby saving all those lives. Well, we dropped a bomb on Hiroshima and that didn’t bring them around. It was only when we hit Nagasaki and they saw that we had the ability to turn the entire country into a desolate rock that they got off their asses and surrendered.
Only the reality of this massive death toll was great enough to shake the almost religious fanaticism of the Japanese war machine. Whatever is true, it worked and many feel it was just retribution for the sneak attack on Pearl Harbor.
But why is it those on the Right are so eager to attack Obama every time he holds out an olive branch to anyone. Why are these people so worried about an American president apologizing, which he did not do, for our country’s past mistakes? It’s like every one of these guys is Donald Trump, a bombastic fool, who thinks he has never done anything wrong in his life.
We, as a country, have done a lot of bad stuff and there is nothing wrong with recognizing it and even apologizing for it. The guy who thinks he has never done anything wrong is most often the greatest offender. It isn’t like you have to go back very far in history. It was American and British jingoism that led to Iran becoming our enemy when we got involved in their politics and forced the Shah into the destructive leadership of that country which eventually led to the ayatollahs.
We were guilty, in the 60’s and 70’s, of interference in half a dozen Central and South American countries. We were too stupid and bullheaded to understand that the rebels we attacked became communists because the governments were crooked. The communists helped the rebels while we helped the crooks because it bolstered our corporate interests with no regard for the interests of the native people. This kind of repeated stupidity has led people all over the world to hate us.
While Communism was falling apart, our government, prodded by our corporate interests, was using it as an excuse to fight wars all over the globe. We had no interest other than profit, be it for United Sugar, big oil, diamonds or various American weapons manufacturers.
Our invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan have made us anathema in the Middle East, but we had already set that tone in regions all over the globe. What were we fighting about in Vietnam? Why didn’t we help Castro overthrow Batista when he asked us? Because it was bad for American business! Well it was worse for American kids, just ask them or the families they left behind. No amount of corporate profit can balance the shattered bodies that are the result of our profit motivated sallies into the, less able to defend themselves, countries of the Third World.
Yeah, we definitely have to apologize for a lot of stuff but the bullheaded Right thinks recognizing what you have done wrong and trying to make up for it is a sign of weakness. What they are too dumb to understand is that recognizing what you have done wrong and trying to set it right is the only way we can avoid making the same mistakes over and over again and possibly make this non-functional world work; just a little better
No, Obama didn’t apologize to Japan because, to put it in schoolyard terms, they started it. We just ended it. But if he had said something that sounded like an apology for the taking of all those lives it wouldn’t have been the end of the world.
Of course, the Republican Party’s presumptive nominee doesn’t believe in apologies, no matter how wrong you are. It’s okay to be a psycho who creates a supposed press agent that is actually, himself and who brags about how rich his boss is, how smart he is, how great he does with women. It’s just not okay to ever admit you did anything wrong. The GOP has as its nominee a man who made up an employee, who sucks up to the boss, who is that self same nominee. If you don’t think that’s insane you need serious help.
The GOP wants us to vote for this psychotic bully who attacks without provocation, lies without end and is seemingly completely without knowledge of what the job he is seeking entails. Yes, the GOP has as its nominee, a raving maniac who attacks anyone who has anything even slightly bad to say about him. This is the crackpot they want us to consider as head of a nation that is constantly attacked by people all over the world; this angry bully who goes crazy when anyone says anything, no matter how inconsequential, about him. Now think about this maniac with his finger on the nuclear button, and visit the image of a thousand mushroom clouds.