Ending war with overwhelming force is quickest path to peace
The Washington Times
Friday, August 5, 1945
This month marks the anniversary of the last time the United States unequivocally won a war.
Sixty-years ago on Saturday and Tuesday, Hiroshima and Nagasaki were flattened with atomic bombs, causing the Japanese to surrender and bringing an end to World War II.
Ugly as the atomic bombs may seem through the politically correct lens of today, in 1945, when President Truman ordered them dropped on those cities, the weapons broke Japan’s will to fight.
There is no doubt in my mind that dropping the atomic bombs was the right thing to do. The massive explosions saved both American and Japanese lives. Those of you historical second-guessers who condemn Truman’s decision to destroy those cities would have done what in August 1945?
Had Truman not ordered them deployed and instead commanded our military to invade Japan, it is estimated that upward of 1 million U.S. casualties would have been the result. Millions of Japanese would have been killed or wounded in an assault on Japan. Only a psychopath would advocate such a senseless slaughter.
Argue the moral imperatives of flattening Hiroshima and Nagasaki if you must, but it can’t be argued that flattening those cities didn’t save lives on both sides of the war. Saving lives is good, and sometimes saving lives involves killing people.
American Civil War Gen. William T. Sherman said, “War is hell.” President Truman knew this as well but also knew that unleashing the power of the atomic bombs would bring an end to World War II.
While no rational person supports nuclear war - or any war, for that matter, what I do support is when we commit U.S. troops to halt evil only when we have a plan to crush our enemies and bring the survivors to the peace table in the shortest amount of time.
We face new enemies today, many of whom belong to voodoo terror cells that will use any weapon or means to kill as many Americans as possible. Let us pray that we have a plan to kill every one of these voodoo maggots before they kill another American.
The history of mankind is one of warfare, not peace. You don’t have to like that, but you do have to admit it. Knowing that it is true, it is fundamentally devious to weaken our military as is proposed in the new Con Job Debt Reduction Agreement.
We need more smart bombs, more predator drones, more advanced intelligence equipment and assets, more special-operations teams and more improved tactics, more ammo, better night-vision equipment, more human-intelligence capabilities, more stealth and a never-ending commitment to kill the enemies of freedom and America under whatever rock they may try to hide. Kill ‘em all as quickly as possible. That’s the most effective deterrent there is. Petting or negotiating with rabid dogs is never wise. Shoot them in the head at least twice. Ammo is cheap.
America is a peaceful nation. However, America must always maintain U.S. Marine Corps Gen. James Mattis’ philosophy: “Be polite, be professional, but have a plan to kill everybody you meet.” Perfect. If there were a Hall of Fame for butt-kickers, Gen. Mattis would be in it.
War is hell. What surely is an even worse hell is losing a war.
God bless the warriors of the U.S. military and their families. They deserve victory, and as we celebrate the greatest victory ever, let us hope we still know how to accomplish it.
© Copyright 2011 The Washington Times, MOONIE GROUP
COMMENTS
I'd like this column a whole lot better without the praise for the godless mass-murderer, William Tecumseh Sherman. Sherman is not a hero here.
This piece could have been written by a junior high kid attending a public school. Ol Hank
Any thing wrong with what was written? Yes. No one really wins a war. War is a failure of government, usually all governments involved to certain degrees. After a war is over, the warriors (never people like Ted!) are told that fighting is over, and the warriors after all the killing and suffering watch as deals are made and peace comes. And those warriors often ask, "Why in God's name didn't they do that before the killing and destruction?" Ted shows his utter ignorance about war and its costs with his stupid statement "ammo is cheap." Even that is incorrect. The defense industries are a group that has stripped this nation of much of its wealth by use of fear tactics. Ike said they would do this, and they did. No wonder Republicans talk more about a guy like Reagan and not so much about Ike. Ike served this nation just about as much as any American ever. If the so-called "greatest generation" had anyone to compare with George Washington, it was Ike. And Harry Truman was indeed a great man. Sort of like a John Adams, but not nearly so erudite. Ol Hank
A Like Reply 2 hours ago 1 Like F
Dave McGraw 1 comment collapsed Collapse Expand The bombs were dropped to forestall a Russian invasion, and although it was a laudable goal, the ends did not justified the incinerated children. Nailing the imperial palace and grounds with a nuke to send the national "god" to oblivion would have been preferable.
A Like Reply 2 hours ago 1 Like F
kenwhite 3 comments collapsed Collapse Expand I'll second guess what Truman did in August, 1945. I would have notified the Japanese leadership that we (America) are going to demonstrate what will happen to your country if you don't immediately surrender. I would tell them when and where this demonstration would be (an unpopulated area as close to Japan as possible) and tell them how far they should be away from it to survive while making sure they're close enough to get the full effect of the blast. Then I would have dropped the bomb with the hope that they would now get the message that they must surrender. Only if they didn't understand would I consider dropping a nuclear bomb on Japan.
Shortly after the blast that leveled those cities, a person wandering around one of them saw what used to be an elementary school that was destroyed in the blast. All that was left were the front steps. Unbelievably, someone had lined the surviving children up on the steps so their parents could come for them. There they sat, their clothes burned into their skin, and every last one of them was screaming for their mommies. Later that day, the same observer retraced his steps and came upon the same school. There, lined up on the steps, were all the children he'd seen earlier, but they were all dead. They died in agony, scared beyond imagining and crying for their mommies.
As Nooge himself writes, "Only a psychopath would advocate such a senseless slaughter." Truman wasn't a psychopath, but he could have explored other options
A Like Reply 3 hours ago 1 Like F
kenwhite 2 comments collapsed Collapse Expand Meant to put a period at the end. By the way, General Eisenhower and plenty of other top tier Americans voiced their disgust at the dropping of the bombs. As he and others noted, Japan was about to surrender. Russia, too, was poised to invade Japan and there's no doubt that the bombs were dropped to also send them a message.
A Like Reply 3 hours ago in reply to kenwhite 1 Like F
rlhailssrpe 1 comment collapsed Collapse Expand From my readings, I learned several facts which greatly impress me. All the major combatants knew of a possible fission bomb; a speculative design was presented in a Berlin conference prior to the war. It would have worked. Within a day after each bombing the Japanese high command understood what had hit them. Yet they unanimously voted to continue the war. The Emperor, for the first time in centuries, over ruled them. Japan had peace feelers out to Stalin, but neither side's power centers considered them as valid. Stalin entered the war when the bombs assured him of certain conquest. Truman wrote that Roosevelt kept him in the dark about the Manhattan Project, while he was the VP. Truman assumed the decision to use the new bomb had already been made by his predecessor, and judged he would have been impeached if he held back on a weapon while GIs died in combat. Eisenhower was ignorant of the bomb until it was used; he knew nothing of Japanese decision making. All sides resorted to unlimited warfare, killing civilians, after the London blitz. It is estimated that ~ 90% of all causalities in the war, were civilians.
A Like Reply 1 hour ago in reply to kenwhite 0 Like
F
sandblaster 1 comment collapsed Collapse Expand More truth from the MotorCity Madman!
A Like Reply 5 hours ago 1 Like F
sandblaster 1 comment collapsed Collapse Expand Boom. Boom. War over a few days later.
A Like Reply 20 minutes ago 0 Like
F
RGS_CA_USA 1 comment collapsed Collapse Expand My father was in the second to last group of recruits to receive combat training at Camp Roberts
in the Monterey area of California. The subsequent groups received occupation training. If not for those bombs, I doubt that I or much of the Baby Boom would be here.
I have heard that the million casualty figure is considered conservative for the U.S. forces. As for the Japanese, considering the actions of civilians at Okinawa (women throwing their children off cliffs and then jumping themselves to prevent capture by the Guy Jin (I apologize if that's not spelt correctly.), men fighting to the death or committing Hari Kari.) I believe the Japanese casualties would have been horrific. Imagine fighting house to house in the cities of the major islands against this determined an enemy.
Remember, this is the same society whose members willingly and gladly allowed themselves to be trained to fly the equivelent of a wooden box with an engine, wings and a bomb just to have a chance to aim it at one of our capital ships. The same Society that produced jungle fighters that refused to give up for twenty plus years. A land invasion of the Japanese Islands would have been long, bloody and left both countries in shambles.
From what I learned over the years, the Japanese leadership was warned. Requests for a conditional and then unconditional surrender where transmitted before the first bomb and then after it. Prior to the bombs, the Japanese (depending upon which military/political group you're discussing) were not ready to surrender. In fact, at least one attempted to oust the Emporer and install a military leader during the bombing of Tokyo.
Lastly, Hank, the defense industry is more responsible for the wealth of this nation than almost any other. Advances in aviation, space flight, advanced materials (can we say kevlar, nomex, etc.?), trauma surgery, communications (including the internet which was partially funded by DARPA and was first deployed as the ARPA-NET) and a wide variety of others came from research sponsored by the DOD.
If we had not taken action to contain Japanese Imerialism and expansion (the blockade which lead to Japan attempting to oust us from the Pacific) many areas of the Pacific region would be speaking Japanese today. We were trying to negotiate with the Japanese in the late '30's and '40's. All that talk did was give the Japanese the time they needed to plan what could have been a dibilitating attack against Hawai'i. If not for a little luck (the Carrier Group's being at sea) and a little poor intelligence (the Japanese though we had so much oil it was not worth attacking our supplies on Oahu, when in fact if they had, we would have been set back by many more months or even years), the Japanese could have knocked us out of the Pacific War could have ended the day it began instead of in August 1945.
A Like Reply 1 hour ago 0 Like
F
snowleopard (cat folk gallery) 1 comment collapsed Collapse Expand My grandfather fought in the Pacific part of the war, and I have talked to many veterans of the war who were in it actively or as POW's in the home islands of Japan.
Based on what they talked of, and what I have read personally; the fact is the President has only one of three realistic choices at hand:
A. Continue the full naval blockade of the islands; which may have worked eventually to strangle the Japanese government into surrender.
B. Physical invasion of the islands themselves, with prospects of upto 1 million casulties.
C. Use the bombs and possibly bring the war to a complete and utter ending with the utter shock value of two cities annhilated.
None was a good option to be chosen; and faced with them I feel he chose the least of the evils he faced in this matter. As I was not in his position, facing the dillema, I cannot honestly say which I would have chosen either.
A Like Reply
No comments:
Post a Comment