Ahira's Hangar

So, in the last few days there was the sixty-fifty anniversary of the only use of nuclear weapons during wartime, the bombings of Japanese cities HIroshima and Nagasaki. The use of these weapons ATT were controversial, from scientist's worry about developing weapons under a veil of complete and total secrecy with no knowledge that ones enemy is working on the same thing and will use without any compunction. In other words, the Manhattan project scientist and engineers knew with 100% certainity that German scientist were working on the same thing they were and knew with the same certainity that German leaders would use it, of course that certainity was due to some of their participation in German research prior to their coming to the US. Turning London into the wasteland that one sees in photos of the Japanese cities, and given the size of London at the time the lose of human life as the result of atomic bombing of London would have numbered in the hundreds of thousands.

Regarding this year's anniversary, Nagasaki and Hiroshima had their annual memorials for the victims of the bombing. For the first time an official from the US embassy officially attended these events. The Right wing gas bags, most visibly Glenn Beck but Hannity and O'Reilly have had their $0.02 about it, are enflamed and enraged since the official attendance is an US apology to Japan.

Anyone else.

I do not think you can get around the fact that these bombs were weapons of mass destruction unleashed on civilian populations in order to create horror and terror.

I think historians will debate until the end of time if their use was justified or not, as the aim in their use was to stop the war, and prevent the invasion of the Japanese homeland, which may well have led to many many more deaths (including both American AND Japanese deaths) than the two bombs. And I really do not want to get into that, as this does not seem the place...

But nonetheless, I have no problem with any sort of apology (implied or direct) from the US government for the use of these bombs - especially if directed towards the poor people who managed to somehow survive them.

The Allies did some pretty terrible things in World War II. No death camps or rapes of Nanking, but you have the bombings of civilian areas, the needless destruction of the historical abbey at Monte Casino while it was stuffed with hundreds of refugees, the concentration camps for Japanese-Americans, the atomic bombs, and your usual random war crimes like gang rapes and shootings of random civilians by soldiers. And you know what - it does not matter that the enemy was doing infinitely worse things - they were still atrocities.

We should have nuked Berlin and sent out a warning to Japan to lay down arms. Still, not nice, but war on that scale is hell any way you look at it. I wouldn't be alive today if we hadn't dropped at least 1 bomb, my Dad was slated to die in the invasion of Japan. Nevertheless I hate the bomb and I hate war. An apology is fine or not-it doesn't really matter. Limbaugh, Beck and Hannity are insane, treasonous bastards that need to be in jail (with Cheney and Rove) or in an institution.

WW2 was hell. Something like fifty million people - many of them civilians - died. Entire nations in Asia and Europe were enslaved. The aftermath led to the splitting of the world into two camps, and the Cold War and its little hot spots like the Korean and Vietnamese wars led to many hundreds of thousands of more deaths and untold destruction in the affected areas. As I said, atrocities happened on both sides. I do not mind my country apologizing for their part of them.

And yeah, some of the nuttier far right wing talk show hosts are truly crazy. (I think the same thing of the far left ones, too, though they seem to get a lot less media attention. We have a far left one on Detroit radio on Sunday nights. He is a fruitcake.)