The Punning Pundit

... and nearly ending a civilization.

If you are referring to Japan, then I'd say probably saving a civilization. We can't be sure that Japan would have continued to fight without the nuclear attacks, but it is likely. If they had, the destruction in Japan would have been vastly worse.

Conventional bombing killed more Japanese than the nuclear bombs, and was only going to get worse. And an invasion, if it had turned out anything like Okinawa, would have killed tens of millions. Plus our naval blockade would have starved millions, and there were a couple million Japanese troops on the mainland that would have likely fought to the death.

And of course it also saved large numbers of Allied troops, and also large numbers of Asian people suffering under brutal Japanese occupation.

Mush-brained liberals have spread the meme that our use of the Bomb was some monstrous evil, but that's just an excuse for anti-Americanism, and for smearing and discrediting our liberating much of the world and spreading freedom and capitalism. It was in fact a great mercy to the Japanese, delivered them from a hellish war and a fascistic government, and inaugurated 50 years of unbroken peace and prosperity for them.

One could make a principled argument that the second bomb was unnecessary. But that is hindsight, and assumes selfish malice and simple bloodthirstiness on America's part.

There is a standing accusation that America's leftists are inherently unpatriotic. It is their willingness to believe that America regularly works evil, and their tendency to not ask themselves if they aren't accepting an unfair assessment of American actions, that gets them this reputation.

It's not their willingness to believe that sometimes America works evil. It's their tendency to jump to that conclusion that does it.

Mind you, it's not that the American right doesn't also have its negative traits, for it surely does. Nevertheless that twitch, that "America was likely the bad guy" impulse, that gets them in trouble.

Dean - I treat everything that way!

Not just about America, I am just a very cynical, glass-half-empty, assume-the-worst-intentions kind of guy.

Your "Left = Unpatriotic" argument, however shocking, is reminiscent of Carter v. Reagan. Carter told the truth, ("Energy's in trouble," the sweaters... etc.) whereas Reagan defeated him by being told what they wanted to hear rather than the harsh reality.

Perhaps this is why the right-wing accuses leftists of acting pessimisticaly (sp?) - the left is in reality being REAlistic ?

Dean, in several past commenting sprees I've noted that you accept very little criticism toward the government (Not that this is partisan, you've pledged to do the same for Kerry if he should be elected). I personally take more of a "pro-dissent" view one could say ...

Might I even go so far as to mention that your standard for American discussion could be a bit jingoistic? "Don't diss America, man"

-Quinn

And to John- are you not aware of all the radioactive poisioning and lingering affects that the A-bomb caused? I agree that it was better in the long run, but the innocent Japanese weren't as happy at the time as you make them out to be - too busy having birth defects for generations, I imagine.

I'm aware of the damage caused by the bombs,and I didn't say the Japanese were happy about it, but that it was a mercy. If there were some way that humans could "see" the alternate history where the bomb wasn't dropped, then I suspect that enormous numbers of people would be happy, because they would be dead in that alternate history...

One of the ironies of Hiroshima was that the various government departments that would normally report on bombing damage were obliterated. So it took many days for Tokyo to even realize what had happened. The second bomb may not have been necessary. The Japanese government appeared to be stonewalling, but that may partly have been sheer bewilderment.

I will probably be considered cold-hearted for thinking this way, but I think the Bomb came at the perfect moment in history. If it had come earlier WWII could have been a nuclear war. If it had come a bit later, the world would not have had that sobering example of Hiroshima to teach us caution, and therefore the great powers might have been much more likely to resort to nuclear weapons at a time when they had a lot of them.