Excellent post. I'd like to add, however, that the cause of WWII wasn't only appeasement of Hitler but also appeasemnt of Stalin and in much bigger way.

all his social faults, real and imagined, Jeff is basically correct. Americans have been duped by revolutionary rhetoric hijacked by the Constitution of the United States into thinking they fight for freedom and saving the world, but it's all devolved into George Bush and his oil war. Now we've got heroic stupidity: Is there oil in Afghanistan?

The fulmination of the American state should cause no distress save to those who still value it so even as it eats its own having run out of Indians, Filipinos, Japs, Chinks, Waps, and even Arab terrorists bats.

Just let it burn down. Move abroad and get a broad and enjoy life. So Israel nukes Iran! Who gives a damn!

--Brant
New Zealand, here I come!

Riggenbach, your social skills overwhelm. I simply note one of the more outrageous claims of your link and for that you label me an “idiot.”

And your flair for rational discussion is on par with your diplomacy as evidenced by this distortion, among many others:

"Better that anybody who looks anything like those people who attacked "us" and anybody who lives anywhere near those people be incinerated than lose even one of the thugs we hired to "defend" us by traveling halfway around the world to execute people who looked like our attackers and lived near them."

It is easy to claim that someone else is ignorant if you change their words as you have done here.

Honestly, though, it’s a bit like arguing with yourself.

There's nothing in there that changes my mind.

1) The allies demanded unconditional surrender. Nothing wrong with that. Why the hell should a nation who declares war (after it initiates war) deserve the slightest concession?

2) The Japanese could've surrendered when the allies were within striking distance of their mainland and the inevitable was obvious, but didn't. They could've surrendered after the fire bombings of their main cities but didn't. They could've surrendered after Hiroshima but didn't. They were a nation of fanatical mystics prepared to sacrifice their lives for their god-king. It's plausible that they would have surrendered when the Soviets entered the fray, but we don't know that for a fact. It's just as plausible that the allies would have had to do what every other army throughout the ages has had to do: take the enemy's capital in a bitter street fight.

3) The allies did the right thing and warned the civilians of their impending doom - an act of kindness rarely seen in warfare. The Japanese, on the other hand, could care less about innocent civilians, could they Riggenbach? Nanking, Singapore, Manila, Palawan, Bataan, Laha, Changliao, Wake Island... how many massacres do you need, to be reminded these people were barbaric blood-thirsty cunts who deserved everything they incited?

4) What about the kids? I'll say it again, the life of one innocent Marine outweighs the lot of them. The guilt of their unfortunate deaths rests with their fathers who dragged the allies into the war in the first place - not Truman.

5) "... people who take pleasure in the mass murder of women and children - people like *you*, Jameson..." Fuck you, cunt.

You disgust me, Riggenbach.

"The talentless comedian to whom you refer is, I assume, John Stewart . . ."

Nope. It's a guy named Jon Stewart.

"-- the twat who's agreeing with you, Riggenbach. Watch the video; learn something."

Nope. After being besieged for a few days by ignoramuses, "patriots," and people who take pleasure in the mass murder of women and children - people like *you*, Jameson - Stewart meekly agreed never to call a spade a spade ever again. Read the news; learn something.

"The allies gave all the 'innocent Bs' plenty of warning - told them to get the hell out of Dodge or die. They ignored the warnings. They died."

Translation into depoliticized English:

"The murderers gave their victims plenty of warning - told them to flee their homes and abandon their property or they would be exterminated. You see somebody who looked like them or lived near them had attacked the murderers, and the murderers were just exercising their right of self-defense."

"Hiroshima and Nagasaki were legitimate military targets."

Nope. Read Raico's essay; learn something.

"It took two bombs to convince the Japs to surrender when one should've been plenty. Had the allies tried it conventionally all those 'innocent Bs' would have become military combatants, right down to the kids who were being trained to throw themselves under allied tanks with bombs strapped to them."

You lend a lot of credence to wartime propaganda, even sixty years or so after the fact, don't you? Why not read Gar Alperovitz or Harry Elmer Barnes and explain how your absurd, farcical scenario squares with the fact that the Japanese were offering peace months ahead of the bombings, with the sole condition that the emperor be left in office and not be executed - the very condition the murderers wound up accepting after murdering two hundred thousand people for nothing?

"Better that the whole of fucking Japan went up in smoke than lose one more innocent Marine."

Translation into depoliticized English:

"Better that anybody who looks anything like those people who attacked "us" and anybody who lives anywhere near those people be incinerated than lose even one of the thugs we hired to "defend" us by traveling halfway around the world to execute people who looked like our attackers and lived near them."

"Get a grip, Riggenbach. Your revisionist history is treachery."

Get a grip, yourself, Jameson. Your fancifully mythologized mainstream "history" is an apologia for mass murder and nothing more.

JR

... is, I assume, John Stewart -- the twat who's agreeing with you, Riggenbach. Watch the video; learn something.

The allies gave all the "innocent Bs" plenty of warning - told them to get the hell out of Dodge or die. They ignored the warnings. They died.

Hiroshima and Nagasaki were legitimate military targets. It took two bombs to convince the Japs to surrender when one should've been plenty. Had the allies tried it conventionally all those "innocent Bs" would have become military combatants, right down to the kids who were being trained to throw themselves under allied tanks with bombs strapped to them.

Truman did them a favour.

But that's moot. Better that the whole of fucking Japan went up in smoke than lose one more innocent Marine.

Get a grip, Riggenbach. Your revisionist history is treachery.

Jeff:

You call your comment a “retort,” but I can find no reference in it to “a vessel, commonly a glass bulb, with a long neck bent downward, used for distilling or decomposing substances by heat.” What gives? (At first, I thought you meant the word “retort” in its other sense, as a synonym for “reply” or “response,” but since none of the links you posted had anything at all to say about Ralph Raico’s basic point – the fact that the people incinerated in Hiroshima and Nagasaki were not the people who “attacked America”; the fact that you can’t engage in “self defense” against A by attacking B – they didn’t really constitute a “reply” or “response” at all in any intelligible sense of those words. So I decided you must be talking about chemistry equipment.)

Jameson:

Thanks, but I avoid seeking expert advice about American history from talentless comedians.

Curt:

Thanks so much for labeling your comment “Ignorance,” but I don’t think it was really necessary. Anybody reading it could see what it was based on.

Ross:

A attacks you. You bomb B, and call that “self defense”? What a creative way you have with words!

What a bunch of idiots. If this is the best you can do in mounting your fervent defense of mass murder, I’ll look somewhere else for intellectual stimulation.

JR

But it won't matter to the deniers. They'll always retrench right back to Pearl Harbor, the attack upon which I have no doubt can be justified by American brutality having occurred previously somewhere else. And so on.

Be clear: to the individual, death by atomic vaporisation, death by conventional bombing or by a lone gunman is still death. If Hiroshima and Nagasaki are war crimes, then so was every killing act of that war. Either killing in self-defence is justified, or it's not.

The vid makes the point I always do: the Japanese authorities had an excellent warning for Nagasaki. It was the destruction of Hiroshima. And *that* is the ultimate argument against those who would use the stick and carrot approach even when it's manifest that it isn't working. If Hiroshima wasn't enough to drive home the point, then what hope negotiation and appeasement?

None, that's what.

Riggenbach's offering includes this nugget:

By early summer 1945, the Japanese fully realized that they were beaten. Why did they nonetheless fight on? As Anscombe wrote: "It was the insistence on unconditional surrender that was the root of all evil."

Of course. Now I understand.

From Riggenbach's link: "The destruction of Hiroshima and Nagasaki was a war crime worse than any that Japanese generals were executed for in Tokyo and Manila. If Harry Truman was not a war criminal, then no one ever was."

If they had saved the life of just one American Marine it would have been justifiable. They saved countless thousands.

Here's a 17-minute lesson to ameliorate your own abject ignorance, Jeff:

Jon Stewart, War Criminals & The True Story of the Atomic Bombs

[hat tip: Sam Pierson]

The full reply (to the argument that dropping the bombs was immoral) from Dr. John David Lewis is only available via subscription to The Objective Standard, but here are some references:

No Substitute for Victory
and
The Moral Lesson of Hiroshima
and
American Victory Over Japan.

Here. Read this. Maybe it will help to ameliorate the effects of your abject ignorance.

http://original.antiwar.com/Ra...

JR