BG Paul W Tibbets, USAF, Ret: "That's their tough luck for being there."

The UK Guardian ^ | Tuesday August 6, 2002 | Studs Terkel

[SlickWillard]

He is talking about civilians, not the "recent spate of news stories concerning possible civilian deaths in Afghanistan," as you put it. He is dismissing civilian deaths as too bad, so sad, as "tough luck."

I concur with you on the "moral approach" to this issue. We should not be surprised when old birds of prey come home to roost.

One of the reasons we had to cut short the first gulf war was the saturation television coverage of the civilians who died in the bunker buster blast. Well, THEY DIED BECAUSE SADDAM HUSSEIN PUT THEM IN A MILITARY INSTALLATION!!!

In the case of the "Afghan Wedding Party" hoax, a group of Afghan people, which may or may not have included a bride, a groom, and a bridal party, chose, of its own free will, to encamp in a military installation that was targeting USAF fighter planes with anti-aircraft fire. TOUGH LUCK!!!

As far as the rules of war, the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, while a little cowardly, was a perfectly legitimate military act. For that matter, so was Al Qaeda's attack on the Pentagon. What was illegitimate was slashing the throats of civilian airline stewardesses, and murdering the entire civilian contingent on the airliner.

When our forefathers declared independence from England, they fought and died, as men, on the field of battle. John Wilkes Booth notwithstanding, hundreds of thousands of American warriors were slaughtered in an unsuccessful attempt to defend the federal constitution against Abraham Lincoln. When Hitler invaded Poland, the Poles faced the Panzers with horse-mounted cavalry, and mule-drawn artillery, and fought and died with as much courage, and as much valiantry, as any men in the annals of warfare.

Islam is more than welcome to wage war on the post-Christian West, but if, as the cowards they are, the men of Islam run and hide behind the skirts of women and children, well, that's their tough luck for being there.

[Redleg Duke]

There was a third bomb afterall.

[rond]

The slop that the Japanese were ready to surrender is a pile of steaming Bravo Sierra.

So, I guess Eisenhower is full of BS, and knew nothing about the war?

You say I must know nothing about the Japanese people. Odd, that. My mother was one of those allegedly "being organised into cadres which were to be armned (sic) with bamboo spears." She was 18 when the war ended. Like all of her peers, she was mightily sick of war, and not inclined to sharpen any bamboo.

As for your "dogs" comment, I believe you can read, and I believe the rules of posting insist you not engage in personal attacks. Calling someone an "ignorant, ungrateful dog" proves true one of the golden rules of debate: When you're losing points, resort to name-calling. I'm sorry you chose to go down that pitiful path.

[Gumlegs]

Yes. First I've seen that!

[rightwing2]

Do you also comdemn the bombing of Japenese and German cities with conventional bombs?

Absolutely, the firebombing of German and Japanese cities by the Brits and the US respectively were equally immoral.

Should we have foresworn any military action which might have endangered civilians?

No, but we should take reasonable precautions to ensure that civilian lives are not lost.

But the questions raised are as current as today's news headlines. Should the Israelis restrain themselves from bombing the terrorist masterminds in such a way that innocent civilians can't possibly be killed? Wouldn't such a policy simply give an insurmountable edge to the Islamo-fascists?

It is one thing when a nation launches a strike against a military target and civilians die by mistake and wholly unintentionally. It is wholly another for a country to purposely have as the objective of his attack the mass obliteration of innocent civilians or in this case of entire cities. That is always immoral as a matter of course whatever the justification or pretext. The ability to discern the difference is what discerns enlightened and civilized Christian man from the barbarians of the Dark Ages.

Smart bombs are good...I think America should always work to minimize civilian casualties whenever and wherever possible...but to restrain ourselves from going after our mortal enemies because the cowards hide themselves amongst the innocent would assure our defeat.

You and Sean Hannity get this one wrong. If a terrorist hides in an apartment building of 200 plus innocent people and the only way you have a 50% chance or better to kill him in the building is to kill everyone else in the building, do you kill 200 innocents just to kill one guilty. Sean Hannity says kill the innocent women and children to get to the terrorist, which is by definition committing a terrorist act or fighting terrorism with terrorism. So would Hitler, Stalin, Mao or Timothy McVeigh. What say you?

[DaughterOfAnIwoJimaVet]

Remember Bataan!

Indeed. When weak people start having feelings of guilt and remorse over how we had to end the war, that is the antidote.

[Gumlegs]

I've seen interviews with a Japanese survivor of Hiroshima, who was *ahem* getting free medical services in this country. She quite frankly admitted that as a school girl at the time, she was being trained to use sticks to attack American soldiers.

Maybe your mother-in-law was out sick that day, or was someplace where they weren't doing that, but it was being done. And she would have been doing it whether or not she was "so inclined."

[rightwing2]

Loss of lives in a military operation are acceptable under certain circumstances and completely in line with Just War theory.

If you seriously believe that, then you obviously know nothing about Just War Theory and are merely attempting to twist it to justify past atrocities committed by another former Democrap President (Truman). I don't think it is a coincidence that a liberal Democrap President committed the war crime of Hiroshima just as it was no coincidence that another liberal Democrap President sent our finest young men to die in Vietnam. I seriously doubt that a God fearing Republican President would not have employed the atomic bombs against innocent civilians--men, women and babes.

[RaceBannon]

My uncle was in the Phillipenes that day. He was getting ready to invade. Tell him your sob story. Let me count your teeth after...1, ...what happened to two?

[AmericanInTokyo]

The US military seized a lot of the Unit 731 information, data, notes, diagrams, photos and such, and also decided to go easy on the Japanese War Criminals in order to pick their brains to develop our own weapons of mass destruction program. It is kind of sick, us using experimentation notes for our own program, gained at the cost of live Chinese being vivisectioned. Oh yes, it is a historic fact we covered up for a lot of these guys who otherwise should have been sent to the gallows.

SCAP and GHQ even helped reinstitute some of the criminals to positions of power. Shunichi Suzuki, of Unit 731, even went on to leadership in the Liberal Democratic Party and on to several terms as the Governor of TOKYO! (I never would have believed these things, or would have thought of them as 'communist propaganda', had I not directly researched them in Japan in the Japanese language and changed my mind).

[rond]

I've seen interviews with a Japanese survivor of Hiroshima, who was *ahem* getting free medical services in this country. She quite frankly admitted that as a school girl at the time, she was being trained to use sticks to attack American soldiers. Maybe your mother-in-law was out sick that day, or was someplace where they weren't doing that, but it was being done. And she would have been doing it whether or not she was "so inclined."

Gumlegs: Oh, no doubt that the Japanese government wanted to make children attack American troops. My mother (not an in-law) and her peers decided, after years of listening to government lies about Japan "winning the war," that they would not participate in such wrongdoing. I didn't say it didn't happen; I simply said there were Japanese citizens who vehemently opposed the notion.

Would they have been arrested, detained, perhaps even killed by their government? Most certainly. Did they choose to make a principled stand against a policy they thought was wrong? Most certainly.

[Gunrunner2]

I think you need to read post 54 and 57.

(I am not entering the Hiroshima debate, as the subject of nukes in a war take the discussion beyond what I was replying to, namely, the erroneous assertion that cilvian casualities in ALL cases are ALWAYS morally wrong.)

[Publius6961]

Everyone is entitled to his opinion.
I respectfully disagree with yours.

The use of the bombs was both moral and reasonable.
Introducing religion into the mix may be comforting and PC, but totally irrelevant.
Turning the other cheek is a profoundly personal choice.
Institutionalizing it, or attempting to, is terminally offensive and presumptuous.

[Southack]

Actually, General Tibbets shows considerable humanitarianism.

His efforts forced the Japanese to surrender, something that they weren't capable of doing on their own.

That surrender ended our bombing attacks and brought relief supplies to their starving, diseased population.

It was the Japanese warlords who refused to surrender because they weren't getting "acceptable terms" of surrender who prolonged the agony and caused the deaths of so many of their own people.

They should have raised the white flag and stopped all attacks on all Americans.

They didn't. At least, they didn't until we made them stop.

In the mean time, their people suffered no matter what apologists like yourself try to make people believe.

[rightwing2]

That's their tough luck for being there.

Oh, I get it. Civilians at Hiroshima are to blame because they were dumb enough to live there. Too bad, so sad. People consider this acceptable?

I concur with rond. General Tibbits' statements that its "their tough luck for being there" is truly callous and barbaric. It is and something that Hitler might have said about the Jews living in Europe or Timothy McVeigh might have said about the little babies playing in the day care at the Oklahoma City federal building at the time of the bombing. It is typical of the mentality of the mind of a terrorist/mass murderer to say that. With all due respect to General Tibbits, I can honestly say that he is a disgrace to the proud uniform of the United States Army.

[AmericanInTokyo]

I wonder how Gen. Tibbet has had to deal with 100,000 deaths, including several children (you probably meant thousands of children as there were), and probably some American POWs.

This, in itself, is a fascinating topic. One human being, unless they were totally devoid of a moral framework and no guilt trait, would have to rationalize it somehow otherwise they would go absolutely nuts and probably commit suicide or become alcoholic (as some crew members did in fact do).

I have seen interview after interview of Tibbits. He is a crusty old man now, certainly courageous, and did his duty. You can also read his words very closely and see that he has fully compartmentalized it and rationalized it. For the sake of his own sanity. Some part of my tells me, though, that deep down old Paul knows the horrendous dimension, the human dimension, the civilian dimension, the moral dimension of what went on down there at 8:15 a.m. on August 6, 1945.

As I said, he is a man of courage. He would prove his courage to me even more so if he were to take one last trip to Japan (I suspect he has never been back) to go through the massive and rather detailed Hiroshima Museum at ground zero that I have had the chance to see. I think he would not be able to compose himself after walking through; or if he could, he has nerves of more steel and human capabilities to rationalize far beyond what I would imagine any man to have.

This, above, does not negate the historical fact of the War end being hastened by the bombings. It is just some musings about a man who would normally have a lot on his soul for the rest of his life.

At any rate, when we all cross over to the 'other side', and face our judgement for our various acts since our age of reasoning, it will be very interesting to see the Good Lord's take on all of this. If, Jesus would agree with some Freepers that more 'japs' should have been incinerated, or that two a- bombs were not enough, such as I have heard expressed here before.....

[Teacher317]

The Rape of Nanking

Seems like the Japanese were merely treated to a tiny sliver of the horror they inflicted on others. Totally justified, for that reason, as well as the other listed in this thread.

[AmericanInTokyo]

Precisely. The Imperial Japanese Army did all those things to non-combatants in the countries they occupied. What they did to Chinese in Manchuria in experimentation camps is unspeakable. Their treatment of women everywhere they went was also filthy and disgusting.