Why Obama is Wrong About Hiroshima
May 27, 2016
Obama's apologetic speech at Hiroshima decried war in the abstract. The US actions in WW2 were equated with those of Japan. The message was that all war is bad.
US attempts to pressure Japan into ending its brutal atrocities in Asia helped lead to Pearl Harbor.
Obama ignores the existence of a just war. Instead of offers a hollow pacifistic reading of history in which "It is not the fact of war that sets Hiroshima apart. Artifacts tell us that violent conflict appeared with the very first man. Our early ancestors, having learned to make blades from flint and spears from wood, used these tools not just for hunting, but against their own kind".
Cavemen killed each other. US Marines killed Japanese soldiers. It's all the same thing.
This reading is perversely wrong.
The US did not want this war. It did not declare it. Japan attacked the US. Nazi Germany declared war on the US. If fighting a war under those conditions cannot be justified, no war can be justified.
Obama gives a great deal of moral weight to Japan's grievances over Hiroshima. But he forgets that...
1. Japan helped innovate the terror bombing of civilian populations in China
2. Japan made Hiroshima into a target
3. The bombing of Hiroshima averted a horrifyingly costly invasion that would have cost far more American and Japanese lives. It was a highly moral action.
The Japanese fetishization of the bomb goes hand in hand with an utter refusal to admit their own crimes. Obama has played into that narrative, instead of challenging it. Neither the Japanese in Hiroshima nor the Germans in Dresden were innocent victims. Support among the civilian population was widespread. Dissent was light; And while Germany has disavowed the Nazis, Japan continues pretending that Hiroshima just suddenly happened for no reason. And Obama seems only too happy to feed into it with claims every nation in WW2 was the inheritor of some basic human evil.
The truth is that America defeated evil then. Only to see evil take it over now.
"Science allows us to communicate across the seas and fly above the clouds, to cure disease and understand the cosmos, but those same discoveries can be turned into ever-more efficient killing machines.In fact WW2 was a moral revolution. We made use of all that science and technology to stop genocide and prevent the killing of millions more and the triumph of evil. Obama throws in something about preventing wars through multilateral diplomacy, but that approach was tried before WW2 and not only did it fail, but it brought on the war.
The wars of the modern age teach us this truth. Hiroshima teaches this truth."
Technological progress without an equivalent progress in human institutions can doom us. The scientific revolution that led to the splitting of an atom requires a moral revolution as well."
US attempts to pressure Japan into ending its brutal atrocities in Asia helped lead to Pearl Harbor.
Obama ignores the existence of a just war. Instead of offers a hollow pacifistic reading of history in which "It is not the fact of war that sets Hiroshima apart. Artifacts tell us that violent conflict appeared with the very first man. Our early ancestors, having learned to make blades from flint and spears from wood, used these tools not just for hunting, but against their own kind".
Cavemen killed each other. US Marines killed Japanese soldiers. It's all the same thing.
This reading is perversely wrong.
The US did not want this war. It did not declare it. Japan attacked the US. Nazi Germany declared war on the US. If fighting a war under those conditions cannot be justified, no war can be justified.
Obama gives a great deal of moral weight to Japan's grievances over Hiroshima. But he forgets that...
1. Japan helped innovate the terror bombing of civilian populations in China
2. Japan made Hiroshima into a target
3. The bombing of Hiroshima averted a horrifyingly costly invasion that would have cost far more American and Japanese lives. It was a highly moral action.
The Japanese fetishization of the bomb goes hand in hand with an utter refusal to admit their own crimes. Obama has played into that narrative, instead of challenging it. Neither the Japanese in Hiroshima nor the Germans in Dresden were innocent victims. Support among the civilian population was widespread. Dissent was light; And while Germany has disavowed the Nazis, Japan continues pretending that Hiroshima just suddenly happened for no reason. And Obama seems only too happy to feed into it with claims every nation in WW2 was the inheritor of some basic human evil.
The truth is that America defeated evil then. Only to see evil take it over now.
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