[RepublicNewbie]

Vintage Buchanan

[G-Bear]

Well, I tend to celebrate the anniversary of the atomic bombing of Japan. Dad was in the Marines, and was scheduled to be in the first assualt wave..........

[Alex Marko]

Buchanan is a jerk.

[Dallas59]

Belated Happy Hiroshima and Nagasaki Day!

[elfman2]

"Thousands of U.S. soldiers and hundreds of thousands of Japanese who would have perished in an invasion of Japan survived, as did Allied POWs who might have been executed on the orders of Japanese commanders when we landed."

I don’t believe Buckhannon’s unaware that estimates of US casualties were above a million, not "thousands", and the Japanese were estimated to suffer multi-millions of dead.

I don’t believe Buckhannon thinks Japanese fanaticism could be surrounded into submission.

I don’t believe that a Buckhannon can’t differentiate between targeting civilians and responding to the total war in kind but in a scale to end it.

This is just more noise from a tragic fool trying to get himself noticed and find a new base. This is part of the common foundation between the far left communists and KOOK right protectionists alliance that Rush spoke of 6 months ago.

[Manic_Episode]

This is the first Buchanan column I have ever read in it's entirety, and also my last.
You stink, Pat.
One-upsmanship in the force continuum in self defense is absolutely justifiable.
They used bombs, we used bigger bombs.
They were prepared to fight to the last man.
We were obligated to demonstrate we were prepared to kill to the last man.
Pat has now joined the ranks of the hate America first crowd, far as I'm concerned.
What an ass.

[hershey]

Pat stirring the pot, as always. Intellectual arguments are all very well -- if we'd isolated the main island of Japan, she'd have withered on the vine eventually -- but don't most pundits agree that in the long run, blockades don't work? And what about the atom bomb Japan was developing, herself? They'd have used it against us in a nanno-second.

[topher]

I will give Buchanan credit for mentioning Dresden.

If we are to condemn the atomic bombing of these two towns, then we must also condemn the bombings of Hamburg, Dresden, and Tokyo (B-29 raid raid on Tokyo with incendiary bombs for paper houses).

The Doolittle raid on Tokyo (with little impact except for morale) resulted in over 200,000 Chinese being killed in retaliation for that raid by the Japanese in 1942.

There was an article I read last week that the US intended to use at least 9 atomic bombs as part of an invasion. Three bombs for each invasion area, with one bomb to "soften" the landing area, one bomb dropped behind the landing area, and a third bomb to nuke reinforcements.

Buchanan is flat wrong that Japan could not defend itself -- there were about 10,000 Kamikaze planes ready for the invasion, and Japan was constantly building more.

US Navy losses off Okinawa were horrific in World War II. The invasion of Japan would have made the losses to the US Navy at Okinawa pale by comparison

I guess if we only lost 5 battleship, 20 aircraft carriers, 30 cruisers, and a 100 destroyers in the invasion of Japan, then maybe Buchanan would see a different light. (These figures are extreme, but well within ball park figures of what could have happend.)

And in case you don't realize it, today we don't have 20 aircraft carriers to lose in a single battle.

The figures that the Truman administration estimated were 500,000 Allied soldiers killed and over 2 million Japanese soldiers if Japan was invaded. There was also fighting going on in the Philippines, and people dying in Japanese death camps.

Finally, even when the Japanese War Council met to discuss surrender after the atomic bombings, the War Council was deadlocked -- it was the Emperor's vote that broke the deadlock. In the next 24 hours, there were several military attempts on the Emperor's life. Japan's warlords were not that willing to surrender even after getting NUKED a couple of times.

So Buchanan is off in the weeds with some of his analysis and commentary.

[Aliska]

But were the means used -- the destruction in seconds of two cities, inflicting instant death on 120,000 men, women and children, and an agonizing death from burns and radiation on scores of thousands more -- moral?

Probably not. I see it as the lesser of two evils. Christians are supposed to line up and march through the gates to their symbolic ovens like the Jews did for centuries until they wised up and decided they weren't going to take it any more and started fighting back.

The guy writing this piece probably wouldn't be writing this stuff if we had lost. First he would have had to learn Japanese or German, and would only be able to write nice things about their conquerors who ruled over them.

I've said on other threads like this, I got my father back about three years before expected. My youngest years were fatherless. I'm grateful that mine came back and turned out to be a wonderful father.

How my heart goes out to people in our society who don't have anything but sperm donors for fathers, some of whom are family members. They don't know any better, but it has to affect them.

[Dumb_Ox]

Sad how many are eager to apologize for terror, so long as it is their side doing the terrorizing. Here Buchanan at least has his head screwed on right.

People who would normally be suspicious of government decisions will justify anything it does during wartime. War is the Health of the State.

[TheDon]

A late "Happy Nagasaki Day!" to everyone I missed yesterday!

[razoroccam]

Not being an expert on Christianity, can anyone tell me if Buchanan's statement below is true? Does not the Book of Kings in the Bible argue against Buchanan's arguments?

Whatever the mindset of Japan's warlords in August 1945, the moral question remains. In a just war against an evil enemy, is the deliberate slaughter of his women and children in the thousands justified to break his will to fight? Traditionally, the Christian's answer has been no.

[HiTech RedNeck]

And if Truman considered Hiroshima and Nagasaki military targets, why, in the Cabinet meeting of Aug. 10, as historian Ralph Raico relates, did he explain his reluctance to drop a third bomb thus: "The thought of wiping out another 100,000 people was too horrible," he said. He didn't like the idea of killing "all those kids."

Japan surrendered before the third bomb could be readied.

Note also that both Hiroshima and Nagasaki had been warned well in advance via leaflets about bombs. That sort of changes the moral calculus because they could have gotten everybody out of there except those involved in the war industries, had they wanted to.

[hgro]

The only threat to Buchanans' life was drinking too much scotch.

This guy is a loser who thinks he won when he crossed the finish line. Problem was, the race was over an hour before.

[Les_Miserables]

I wonder how many bleeding hearts are aware that Japan had their own Nuclear Programs underway and are reported to have exploded a test weapon of the coast of North Korea days before Hiroshima? Had they or Germany won the race to develop the A-bomb we can be sure they would have used that weapon on us. The discussion of "atomic morality" is irrelevant. As it turns out it was a matter of survival. Ours.