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[guillaumeb]

This message was self-deleted by its author (guillaumeb) on Mon Sep 25, 2017, 01:47 PM. When the original post in a discussion thread is self-deleted, the entire discussion thread is automatically locked so new replies cannot be posted.

[tonyt53]

1. No, Obama should not apologize.

May dad was in the first US Marine landing of WWII on Guadalcanal. He was wounded, recovered, and made two more landings, the final being on Iwo, where wounds ended his war effort. All he ever said about the Japanese was that they were without souls and that they would never have surrendered without dropping the bomb. It is estimated that thousands more Japanese would have died if we had invaded than from dropping the bombs. At least 100K Americans would have died also. It is easy to stand back now and condemn it.

[Gomez163]

3. Imagine if we didnt drop the bomb and invaded.

And lost hundreds of thousands of lives. And then a year later it was found out we had a bomb that could have ended the war w/o any more loss of American lives. Truman would have been impeached.

[Gomez163]

10. There's a difference between bombing and having civilians die as collateral damage and

singling out Jews and marching them off to death camps.

[Gomez163]

13. Hiroshima was a major army base

Hiroshima was chosen as the first target due to its military and industrial values. As a military target, Hiroshima was a major army base that housed the headquarters of the Japanese 5th Division and the 2nd Army Headquarters. It was also an important port in southern Japan and a communications center.

[Gomez163]

15. If they wanted to kill a lot of people, they could have dropped it on Tokyo.

[Gomez163]

19. No one brought charges. You can speculate all you want but no one brought charges.

Probably because we were busy rebuilding those countries.

[840high]

26. Agree.

[Gomez163]

2. There was no wrongdoing. It was war. A war the Japanese started.

[guillaumeb]

7. See #5

[TrappedInUtah]

4. No apologies

It was a war and the Japanese did a lot of HORRIFIC things themselves. All that can be done is for both sides to look back and say "never again".

[FLPanhandle]

6. There is no U.S. wrongdoing to apologize for.

At least no wrongdoing associated with the atomic bombs.

[guillaumeb]

8. See #5

[FLPanhandle]

11. Saw it and you are still wrong.

First, there were military installations at each location.

Second, there were military industry production dispersed through out each city.


Now, Dresden is more of a war crime than either Japanese city as it really didn't meet either of the two above criteria.

[Gomez163]

17. Dresden was a military target

A 1953 United States Air Force report defended the operation as the justified bombing of a military and industrial target, which they claimed was a major rail transport and communication centre, housing 110 factories and 50,000 workers in support of the German war effort

[SickOfTheOnePct]

21. Where was the military installation in NYC

targeted by al Qaeda.

I must have missed that - thanks in advance.

[The Straight Story]

18. Why? Will it make someone 'feel' good? Time to move on and keep working on today's world. (nt)

[Shandris]

20. For YEARS I believed that the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki were required...

...because of all the reasons so commonly trotted out.

Deep research shows just how evil this sacrifice -- and there is NO other word for the reality of it -- truly was. May the architects of this disaster earn their everlasting reward, and the spirits of those sacrificed return in peaceful times and places.

[struggle4progress]

22. We do not yet know what the President will say in Hiroshima next week; what we do know

is that he plans to go there -- and that when he does go, he will be the first US President to do so while still in office

President Carter visited in 1984 during Reagan's first term

The usual noise will attend the President's visit: the rightwing will criticize him for even going; others will demand he apologize -- and if he apologizes, there will be loud denunciations from all sides, some for the apology itself and others for the fact that the apology is inadequate to the suffering of the atomic victims

Like most of the world, the President was born in the shadow of the bomb. The President's mother wasn't yet three when WWII ended; his father had just turned nine; and it would be another fifteen years before they met. Over thirty years passed between the day WWII ended and the day our current President could vote for the first time. Perhaps more than any other development of the 20th century, the bomb brought home the reality that we ourselves could destroy not only civilization but all life on earth together with it. We cannot afford to forget that. Nice symbolic gestures have a role to play, but apologies are not nearly enough as response to the problems we still face

[branford]

25. As a practical matter, an Obama apology will be a gift to the Republicans this election season.

It will not be generally popular in the USA, particularly among moderates and independents in swing states.

Clinton will also be forced into the no win position of either criticizing and distancing herself from the president she served as Secretary of State or defending it on the campaign trail, all while Trump uses either choice against her to bolster his populist appeal.

I also fail to see what purpose an apology would serve, particularly in light of the egregious actions of the Japanese against not only American POW's, but the Chinese, Koreans and everyone else who suffered their depredations in the region. The USA and Japan are strong allies, and other than a small hard left fringe, there are no major popular movements demanding apologies.

Since I very much doubt Abe is about to acknowledge and take full responsibility for everything done by the Japanese in WWII, an action that would be very unpopular domestically for him, at most, I believe Obama might "take note of the suffering of all civilians during the war" and then advocate against nuclear proliferation as he has done many times before.

[cheapdate]

27. Well, he's not going to apologize. So there's that.

Just going there is symbolically very important. I'm sure he'll strike an appropriate tone.

[Oneironaut]

28. How about Japan?

Systematic rape, torture, and sexual slavery. Genocide. War crimes against POWs. Launching an unprovoked attack that murdered innocent Americans.

War sucks. Don't start one.

[Oneironaut]

31. We should apologize for those. Now, about Japan...

Are you saying that, because the U.S. Did these things, Japan doing them too was okay? It doesn't work like that.

When will Japan stop pretending they didn't force women into sexual slavery?

[Oneironaut]

35. The difference is, the U.S. doesnt deny that it ever committed war crimes.

Also, nobody is treating the U.S. like innocent victims in regards to the Vietnam War. Had North Vietnam nuked us, it would have been our fault for starting the war.

FYI - the only reason Japan didn't do the same thing to us is they didn't have the capacity to. Don't you think that, had they had a nuclear bomb, they would have used it? WWII Japan had no problem butchering civilians and giving innocent people horrific deaths.

[madville]

32. Saved more lives than it took

In net lives saved, both US and Japanese, at the time it was not a bad decision.