Hiroshima and the
Nuclear ‘Apology’
by John Hayward 12 Apr 2016
Secretary of State John
Kerry described his visit to
Hiroshima on Monday as “gut-wrenching.” After laying a wreath at the
Atomic Bomb Museum, he called it “a stark,
harsh, compelling reminder not only of our obligation to end the threat of
nuclear weapons, but to re-dedicate all our effort to avoid war itself.”
The Washington Post, which hilariously
describes Barack
Obama — the man who stuffed
billions into the pockets of terrorist Iran and put them on a ten-year glide
path to nuclear
weapons — as a “non-proliferation crusader,” says the president might visit
Hiroshima himself before he leaves office. Kerry is the highest-ranking
U.S. diplomat to visit the site; Obama would be the first president to do so.
“No sitting U.S. president has ever visited Hiroshima,
out of concern that such a trip might be interpreted as an apology,” the Post
explains. “The bombing killed 140,000 people but has been viewed by
many Americans as a necessary evil to end World War II and save the lives of
U.S. troops.”
“Today, however, there is growing sentiment inside the
White House that President Obama, who in his first year envisioned a world
without nuclear weapons, should cap his final year with a grand symbolic
gesture in service of a goal that remains well out of reach,” the Post continues.
Former U.S. ambassador to Japan John Roos, the first American
diplomat to participate in the annual Hiroshima memorial ceremony, hailed Obama
as “a person who bends over backwards to show respect to history, and does it
to advance his agenda.”
If Obama’s agenda is to raise nuclear tensions
around the world, he’s doing a bang-up job. Has the threat ever been worse than
it has grown under his disastrous presidency? The world is on fire, thanks in
large measure to the collapse of American prestige that begin with Obama’s
idiotic 2009 “apology tour” of the Middle East. He’d love to go on record
as the president who apologized to Japan for Fat Man and Little Boy. What
better way to cap off Obama’s vision of American sunset than a World Apology
Tour reprise in the Land of the Rising Sun?
Meanwhile, North Korea is
slipping China’s
leash, laughing at the “non-proliferation” deal worked out by the previous
Democratic president and his wildly overrated secretary of state and testing
missiles that could deliver a nuclear payload to Japan. Iran is sitting very
pretty thanks to Obama, its coffers surging with money that can be used for
terrorism and shadow wars across the world, and its nuclear ambitions all but
guaranteed to reach fulfillment in the very near future, now that the threat of
sanctions is gone forever. Saudi Arabia and
its Sunni allies will nuke-up to counter the Iranian threat. Emboldened
Russia is making moves in Eastern Europe that could eventually lead to a
nuclear confrontation.
“Non-proliferation” is a long, grinding process that
involves harsh measures — possibly including military confrontation — to force
bad actors like Iran away from the bomb. Effective non-proliferation
strategies have nothing to do with gauzy “no nukes” fantasies about a world
free of atomic weapons, the genie forever stuffed back into his bottle. The
human race does not forget such knowledge, absent the kind of devastating war
that blows us back into a Dark Age.
The dangerous daydream that everyone else will scuttle
their nuclear stockpiles if America disarms is closely related to the idiotic
notion that Islamist terrorists will stand down if we just show them how nice
we are, smothering them with our superior values until they grow embarrassed
of jihad.
Key to both mindsets is the sacred left-wing belief that
Western culture is responsible for all the evils of the world. If we just
apologize profusely for our past sins of war, imperialism, slavery, and
capitalism, and show the hostile forces of the world how progressive we’ve
become, they’ll stop reacting to our evils with their own. If we just get rid
of our nukes, that nice Mr. Putin will get rid of his, and then the mullahs of
Iran will stop trying to get theirs, and Kim Jong-un will realize how foolish
he’s been to bankrupt North Korea in a quest for weapons of mass destruction.
Japan is no longer one of those hostile forces, but once
upon a time they most certainly were, and there are modern
revisionists who attempt to portray Imperial Japan’s membership in the Axis as
an understandable reaction to Western imperialism. Today’s Japanese
leaders remain a bit reluctant to fully accept national responsibilities for
the horrors their nation perpetrated in World War II, and before. The leaders
of other Pacific nations are not eager to let bygones be bygones, especially
when slamming Japan is politically useful, as in China’s case.
The Washington Post article discusses this,
crediting Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe with making “a concentrated effort
to resolve lingering World War II-era disputes with Seoul and Beijing that had
complicated relations between the Asian powers.” However, we are told “some Abe
aides fear that an Obama appearance in Hiroshima would renew debate in the
United States over Japan’s imperial past and complicate the prime minister’s
security agenda in Asia by forcing him to respond to U.S. campaign trail
criticism and justify his policies.”
It would be utter folly to make some grandstanding
anti-nuclear statement in Hiroshima without making it clear why those
terrible weapons had to be unleashed. No one seriously disputes the staggering
casualties that would have resulted from a conventional invasion of the
Japanese home islands, on both sides. That includes civilian casualties,
and not just from civilians pressed into service as last-ditch suicide troops.
One need only look at the results of non-nuclear total war in contemporary
Europe, or for that matter the devastation from firebombings in Japan, to get
an idea of what the non-nuclear finale of World War II would have been like for
the Japanese people.
It makes the no-nukes fantasists very uncomfortable to
admit it, but it’s extremely difficult — let’s just go ahead and say impossible
— to argue that the bombing of Hiroshima did not save millions of lives and
incalculable damage to Japan’s national infrastructure. It makes many
Japanese politicians uncomfortable to admit the Empire of Japan, like Nazi
Germany, had to be violently and utterly defeated, by any means necessary.
Nazism and Japanese imperialism are burned, dead and buried, with peaceful and
productive U.S. allies flourishing atop their graves, because they were treated
the way communism was not, and the modern threat of Islamism probably won’t be.
We should also add the vast number of lives, and
livelihoods, saved by nuclear deterrence to the account. It’s more speculative
than counting up the dead from a conventional-warfare invasion of Japan, but
it’s highly likely that nuclear deterrence prevented at least one large-scale
land war, and probably more than one. This is partly due to the way
Hiroshima made it clear that authoritarian leaders would suffer from
war, not just their captive people.
A dash of cold water is thrown on non-proliferation
fantasies in the Washington Post article by an unnamed Tokyo academic,
an advisor to Prime Minister Abe: “No matter how allergic the Japanese have
been on the nuclear issue, let’s just face it: On the other side of the coin is
the continued commitment from the United States to provide protection to Japan
under its nuclear umbrella.”
This official added that China is “the only country
constantly investing in a nuclear arsenal,” with a growing number of warheads
in its inventory, and wondered if “President Obama and his advisers are fully
aware of this subtle but substantial difference between Europe and East Asia.”
Don’t bet on it, anonymous scholar from Tokyo. Obama is
aware of little beyond his own ego, and his desperate need for “legacy”
achievements. His ears are also burning a bit from the criticism he gets as the
man who won a Nobel Peace Prize for absolutely nothing, then proceeded to
launch or exacerbate wars around the world, while he signed off on secret
drone-strike kill lists.
The temptation for Obama to grandstand in Hiroshima will
be difficult to resist. “President Obama is well known for the message he
gave in Prague in 2009, saying he would like a world without nuclear weapons,”
gushed Kazumi Matsui, the mayor of Hiroshima, to the Washington Post. “He
was awarded the Nobel [Peace] Prize. If he truly understands our sentiments, [a
visit] would play an important role for his inner thoughts, and the role he can
play as a politician.”
An “important role for his inner thoughts?” Burnishing
his “role” in history? You’re definitely playing Barack Obama’s tune, Mayor
Matsui. The likelihood of Obama getting dragged into Japanese politics
will not dissuade him, because he remains serenely convinced in the magical
power of his voice to change the course of history for the better, despite
seven grim years of evidence to the contrary.
Obama’s mania for World Apology Tours is a manifestation
of his narcissism, shared by all on the Left. They love to flatter
themselves by ostentatiously apologizing for the “sins” of their fathers and
grandfathers, thereby presenting themselves as the next step in human moral
evolution — the most enlightened generation in history.
The only use of nuclear weapons — to date — is a soapbox
they would love to climb atop. As a few allusions in the Washington Post article
make clear, they’ve been held back largely by America’s memories of what Japan
did in World War II and what American fighting men had to suffer in order to
stop them. Has the passing of our Greatest Generation veterans, and the Left’s
effort to erase historical memory through its rotten education system, gotten
us to the point where Obama can wrap up his ego-trip presidency with a stop in
Hiroshima?
If so, the best thing for grown men and women, in both
American and Japan, would be to ignore him. Hiroshima happened, as did Bataan
and Nanking. We can learn from history without weeping over it, or using
it as clay for modern political sculptures. The darkness of murderous
totalitarianism is still out there, strong and hungry as ever. Americans,
Japanese, Germans, and Italians are called into battle against it, as brothers
in arms. Japan’s pacifist stance ended up with ISIS slaughtering Japanese
hostages, because their country dared to send humanitarian relief to the
Islamic State’s victims.
If the new forces of darkness obtain nuclear weapons,
they are highly likely to use them or open a nuclear umbrella to shield
terrorists who will bring endless misery to the people of the Western world,
secure in the knowledge that operations like Afghanistan and Iraq can never
again be conducted to deprive them of safe havens. Risibly saluting Barack
Obama as a champion of “non-proliferation” changes nothing about the danger his
successors will face and impresses the forces of darkness not at all.
Let the ghosts of Hiroshima lie in peace. We, the
living, have difficult work ahead of us.
North Korea
Kim Jong Un is the
leader of North Korea, and met with Dennis Rodman in 2013.
Note: Dennis Rodman met
with Kim Jong Un in 2013, and was a
player for the Chicago Bulls.
Henry
Crown and Company is an investor in the Chicago Bulls.
Lester
Crown is the chairman for Henry
Crown and Company, a member of the Commercial Club of Chicago, and
was a lifetime trustee at the Aspen Institute (think tank).
James S. Crown is
the president of Henry Crown and Company,
a member of the Commercial Club of Chicago, and the vice chairman for
the Aspen Institute (think tank).
Robert S.
Ingersoll was a lifetime trustee at the Aspen Institute (think tank),
and a U.S. ambassador for Japan.
Foundation
to Promote Open Society was a funder for the Aspen Institute (think
tank), the Carnegie Endowment for
International Peace (think tank), the Brookings Institution (think tank),
the NAACP Legal Defense &
Educational Fund, and the Center for
American Progress.
George Soros
was the chairman for the Foundation to Promote Open Society, a supporter
for the Center for American Progress,
is a friend of Michael Douglas, and
is a co-chair, national finance council for the Ready PAC (Ready For Hillary).
Michael Douglas
is a friend of George Soros, and a
director at the Nuclear Threat
Initiative (think tank).
Warren E. Buffett
is an adviser for the Nuclear Threat
Initiative (think tank), and was a director at the Washington Post Co.
Carnegie
Endowment for International Peace (think
tank) was a funder for the Nuclear
Threat Initiative (think tank).
Jon M. Huntsman
Jr. is a trustee at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace
(think tank), was a deputy trade representative at the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative, the China U.S. ambassador for the Barack
Obama administration.
Glen S. Fukushima
was a deputy assistant at
the Office of the U.S. Trade
Representative, is a senior fellow at the Center for American Progress, and a governor at the Japanese American National Museum.
Chas. W. Freeman
Jr. is a trustee at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace
(think tank), was the National Intelligence Council chairman nominee for
the Barack Obama administration, a U.S.
ambassador for Saudi Arabia, and the
president for the Middle East Policy
Council.
Jessica Tuchman Mathews is a director at the Nuclear Threat Initiative (think tank),
was the president of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace (think
tank), a director at the American Friends of Bilderberg (think
tank), an honorary trustee at the Brookings Institution (think tank),
and a 2008 Bilderberg conference participant (think tank).
Ed Griffin’s interview with Norman Dodd in 1982
(The investigation into the Carnegie Endowment for
International Peace uncovered the plans for population control by involving the
United States
in war)
Cameron F. Kerry
is a fellow at the Brookings Institution (think tank), and John F. Kerry’s brother.
John
F. Kerry is Cameron F. Kerry’s
brother, the secretary at the U.S.
Department of State for the Barack
Obama administration, married to Teresa
Heinz Kerry, and was the candidate for the 2004 John F. Kerry presidential campaign.
John V. Roos was
the Northern California finance chair for the 2004 John F. Kerry presidential campaign, and a U.S. ambassador for
Japan.
Teresa Heinz
Kerry is married John F. Kerry,
and an honorary trustee at the Brookings Institution (think tank).
Cyrus F.
Freidheim Jr. is an honorary trustee at the Brookings Institution (think tank), and a member of the Commercial Club of Chicago.
R. Eden Martin is
the president of the Commercial Club of
Chicago, and counsel at Sidley
Austin LLP.
Michelle Obama
was a lawyer at Sidley Austin LLP.
Barack
Obama was an intern at Sidley Austin
LLP, the candidate for the 2008
Barack Obama presidential campaign, and a parishioner at the Trinity United Church of Christ (Chicago).
African
American Religious Leadership Committee was an advisory group for the 2008 Barack Obama presidential campaign.
Jeremiah A.
Wright Jr. was a member of the African
American Religious Leadership Committee, and is the senior pastor at the Trinity United Church of Christ (Chicago).
Trumpeter
Newsmagazine is a publication for the Trinity
United Church of Christ (Chicago).
Louis Farrakhan
was awarded the 2007 Jeremiah Wright Jr. Trumpeter award from the Trumpeter Newsmagazine, and is the acting
head for the Nation of Islam.
Newton N. Minow
is a senior counsel at Sidley Austin LLP,
and a member of the Commercial Club of
Chicago.
Commercial Club of Chicago, Members Directory A-Z (Past Research)
Tuesday, December 17, 2013
Valerie B. Jarrett
is a member of the Commercial Club of
Chicago, the senior adviser for the Barack
Obama administration, and her great uncle is Vernon E. Jordan Jr.
Vernon E. Jordan
Jr. is Valerie B.
Jarrett’s great uncle, an honorary trustee at the Brookings Institution
(think tank), a
senior counsel for Akin, Gump, Strauss,
Hauer & Feld, LLP, a senior director at the NAACP Legal Defense & Educational Fund, a director at the American Friends of Bilderberg (think
tank), and a 2008 Bilderberg conference participant (think tank).
Michael H.
Armacost was the president of the Brookings
Institution (think tank), and a U.S. ambassador for Japan.
Thomas S. Foley was
a partner at Akin, Gump, Strauss, Hauer
& Feld, LLP, and a U.S. ambassador for Japan.
Akin,
Gump, Strauss, Hauer & Feld, LLP is the lobby firm for Japan.
Caroline B.
Kennedy was a director at the NAACP
Legal Defense & Educational Fund, and is the U.S. ambassador for Japan.
Raben Group is
the lobby firm for the NAACP Legal
Defense & Educational Fund.
Melody C. Barnes
was a principal at the Raben Group,
a domestic policy council, director or the Barack
Obama administration, an EVP for the Center
for American Progress, and is Barack
Obama’s golf partner.
Glen S. Fukushima
is a senior fellow at the Center for
American Progress, a governor at the Japanese
American National Museum, was a director at the U.S.-Japan Council, and a contributor for the Ready PAC (Ready For Hillary).
Ready
PAC (Ready For Hillary)
supported the 2016 Hillary Rodham
Clinton presidential campaign.
George Soros
is a co-chair, national finance council for the Ready PAC (Ready For Hillary), was a supporter for the Center for American Progress, is a
friend of Michael Douglas, and the
chairman for the Foundation to Promote Open Society.
Foundation
to Promote Open Society was a funder for the Aspen Institute (think
tank), the Carnegie Endowment for
International Peace (think tank), the Brookings Institution (think tank),
the NAACP Legal Defense &
Educational Fund, and the Center for
American Progress.
James S.
Crown is the vice chairman for the Aspen Institute (think tank), a
member of the Commercial Club of Chicago, and the president of Henry Crown and Company.
Lester Crown
was a lifetime trustee at the Aspen Institute (think tank), is a member
of the Commercial Club of Chicago, and the chairman for Henry Crown and Company.
Henry
Crown and Company is an investor in the Chicago Bulls.
Dennis Rodman was
a player for the Chicago Bulls, and
met with Kim Jong Un in 2013.
Kim Jong Un met
with Dennis Rodman in 2013, and is
the leader of North Korea.
William J. Clinton
led the team in the 2009 humanitarian
mission to North Korea, is an adviser for the 2016 Hillary Rodham Clinton presidential campaign, and an honorary
co-chair for the Commission on
Presidential Debates.
Ready
PAC (Ready For Hillary)
supported the 2016 Hillary Rodham
Clinton presidential campaign.
Howard G. Buffett
is a director at the Commission on
Presidential Debates, and Warren E.
Buffett’s son.
Warren E. Buffett
is Howard G. Buffett’s son, an
adviser for the Nuclear Threat Initiative
(think tank), and was a director at the Washington Post Co.
Michael Douglas
is a director at the Nuclear Threat
Initiative (think tank), and a friend of George Soros.
Carnegie
Endowment for International Peace (think
tank) was a funder for the Nuclear
Threat Initiative (think tank).
David A. Hamburg
is an adviser for the Nuclear Threat
Initiative (think tank), and the president emeritus for the Carnegie Corporation of New York.
Carnegie
Corporation of New York was a funder for the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace (think tank), the Nuclear Threat Initiative (think tank),
and the Brookings Institution (think tank).
Newton N. Minow
is an honorary trustee at the Carnegie
Corporation of New York, a director at the Commission on Presidential Debates, a member of the Commercial Club of Chicago, and a
senior counsel at Sidley Austin LLP.
Howard G. Buffett
is a director at the Commission on
Presidential Debates, and Warren E.
Buffett’s son.
R. Eden Martin is
the president of the Commercial Club of
Chicago, and counsel at Sidley
Austin LLP.
Michelle Obama
was a lawyer at Sidley Austin LLP.
Barack
Obama was an intern at Sidley Austin
LLP, the candidate for the 2008
Barack Obama presidential campaign, and a parishioner at the Trinity United Church of Christ (Chicago).
African
American Religious Leadership Committee was an advisory group for the 2008 Barack Obama presidential campaign.
Jeremiah A.
Wright Jr. was a member of the African
American Religious Leadership Committee, and is the senior pastor at the Trinity United Church of Christ (Chicago).
Trumpeter
Newsmagazine is a publication for the Trinity
United Church of Christ (Chicago).
Louis Farrakhan
was awarded the 2007 Jeremiah Wright Jr. Trumpeter award from the Trumpeter Newsmagazine, and is the acting
head for the Nation of Islam.
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