Posted on 04/30/2009 1:13:32 PM PDT by mojito
It comes at about the 5:50 mark. Cliff May asks Stewart whether Truman's use of the atomic bomb was a war crime, Stewart ruminates and then responds with an unequivocal "yes." He's certainly not the only American who would take that view, but it's a useful reminder that the most vocal and popular criticism of the Bush administration's war on terror policies comes from people who, if they were being as honest as Stewart, would also judge Lincoln (suspension of habeas), FDR (internment), and Truman (use of nuclear weapons) as war criminals or tyrants or worse.
Stewart repeats the charge again later in the interview, but you have to wonder whether this was one of the rare times that he just got outmaneuvered on his own show. Serious people have debated Truman's decision for 60 years, but even those who disagree with that decision rarely describe it as "criminal." And if it was criminal, whatever crimes the left alleges of President Bush seem pretty trivial in comparison.
If the bomb had not been dropped, I simply wouldn’t be here. My parents never would have met and maybe my father wouldn’t have come home alive. Probably the same for a lot of folks who had a parent or grandparent fighting in the PTO.
Hey Jon! I spent almost ten years and over 700 days on Alert in the missile capsules.
There are men sitting underground right now doing what I did, protecting us as we write.
What do you call us?
You, Jon, are a putz!
Liberal Guilt 101
`I shouted out,
Who killed the kennedys?
When after all
It was you and me’
John, Mick,
I was on the playground, Wilshire Elementary,
San Antonio, playing tetherball—honest Injun!
TD
I seem to recall the US Army predicted the conquest of the Japanese homeland would cost 1 million US casualties and 10 million Japanese casualties.
Horrible as the atom bomb was, it saved far more lives than it cost. Liberals don’t understand that some wars are justified. The only way to fight a war is to fight hard and fight to win. Going half-assed will just drag it out and cost more lives on both sides.
Japan started the fight, and we finished it.
Wow. That is the best description of his show I have ever read. You nailed it. (PS I'm stealing it for use in bar room conversations. Don't worry; I'll attribute it to some dead guy.)
The A-bombs taught the Japanese (they were then universally known as Japs) a lesson they have not forgotten to this day.
If the bomb had not gone off my dad would have parachuted into Japan. He survived a lot in the Europeon theater but I don’t think he would have survived the Japanese invasion.
Also I think a lot more Japanese would have died in a land invasion.
I have recently wondered if the liberalization, sissification, whatever you want to call it, of our country, cannot be directly related to the fact that was lost so many men of the caliber of your father, who were willing to sacrifice themselves for their family, their country.
Add to your father’s generation, those who died in Vietnam, WWI, the Civil War, etc. These were men who believed in right and wrong. They believed in taking action against wrong, and putting everything on the line for the sake of a better future. Too many of those men were killed. We are left without their offspring in many cases. How many millions of Americans were never born because these men were killed in war? Makes me wonder what the US would be like if we could have the influence of their legacies.
That doesn't matter. That the US was the first (and thus far only) nation to use nukes in war, to the Left, places us in an especially odious category.
MacArthur was a war criminal for being such an arrogant asshat and getting his troops killed.
Sonce when does this little jerks opinion deserve any attention?
The Japanese sowed the wind with their little fire balloon stunt trying to light California on fire. They reaped the FIRESTORM a couple years later.
If you live in rice paper houses, don't throw firebombs.
Tokyo went up like a MATCH. Waves of flames looked like the surface of the Sun. Far more died in that than in Atomic fire. But nobody cares, it is the morality of using the ultimate weapon that weighs on their conscience, not how many lives were lost or how many were saved.
Not only that, but the Soviets would have gotten in the fight, and we would have been talking about a divided Japan, just like Korea.
Going half-assed will just drag it out and cost more lives on both sides.
Liberals, and our Islamic enemies, also think we don't fight fair when we use superior weapons and firepower that spare the lives of our troops.
I only watch that worthless piece of sh!t Jon Lebowitz or whatever his name is so I can change the channel the instant he starts spewing Obamama’s talking points. So that ends up being about 3 seconds in...
I can’t even describe how much I hate that guy.
Hey Jonnie, why don’t you take a stroll down main street in Iran!
No, Stewart is a shill. You have to actually be funny to be considered a comedian and he stopped doing that years ago. I wish to God that the guys at South Park would take some shots at his childish antics.
France and Britain lost millions in WWI/II combined. I wonder if that’s what happened to them, as well?
“My late father’s life, and millions of others, were spared because President Truman had the stones to do the right thing.”
....my Dad too....he went through the Okinawa campaign.... after that fanatical/suicidal Jap resistance everybody knew the invasion of the home islands would be hell.
Less than five hours after the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor, U.S. naval leaders reluctantly chose to pursue a form of warfare they despised - targeting not only Japanese military assets but also civilian-operated fishing trawlers, freighters, and tankers. The move to unrestricted submarine warfare represented a major change in the longstanding American adherence to the classic doctrine of ‘freedom of the seas,’ under which commercial vessels were held to have the right to navigate the oceans without threat of attack. This dramatic about-face in naval policy, potentially as controversial as the decision to use the atomic bomb, has never been seriously challenged and, until now, closely examined. Holwitt combed archival sources from the National Archives, the Naval Historical Center, the Naval War College, Yale University, and the Franklin D. Roosevelt Presidential Library in order to reconstruct the development of both the U.S. submarine fleet and the policies for its use during World War II. As he shows in this meticulously researched book, the U.S. move to launch unrestricted air and submarine warfare against Japan was illegal. “Execute Against Japan” offers a new understanding of U.S. military policy during World War II. This thoughtful analysis will be a vital resource for military and maritime historians and professionals, as well as students of World War II.
http://www.amazon.com/Execute-Against-Japan-Unrestricted-Williams-Ford/dp/1603440836/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1241127824&sr=1-1
Are these people insane or what?
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