34 Replies to “August 6th”

  1. Excellent, Bill Whittle devastates with logic and facts,another historical revisionist.

  2. I like most of what Bill Whittle does, but this was far and away the very best of anything he’s ever done. His disgust is plainly evident, but tactfully restrained (God knows how)–it the fuels severity of his facts without undermining them. Each comment is used to devastating effect and achieves total obliteration of Stewart’s insipid talking points. Pity this won’t be seen by the majority of them that need to see it.

  3. I am not convinced that Stewart is all that bright. On one show he said that Nixon directed the Watergate break-in. No-one else has ever accused him of that. I suspect that it is hard for younger people to believe that Nixon’s only crime was not ratting on his friends. Made no sense then; makes no sense now but the news media’s hate of Nixon is not current.

  4. He should expand the same logic & angst to today’s warnings to IRAN… It is Iran who should learn consequence based logic.
    John Kerry made this statement Re:Iran “You can’t unlearn Nuclear physics” … it is also true you can’t unlearn Stupid….Kerry
    is an idiot & Iran needs to WFU
    Jon Stewart is a clinger who speaks to the clinger nation.

  6. I vaguely remember an occasionally funny show with Jon Stewart about ten years ago. Haven’t watched it since. Is it still on?

  7. Mises Daily
    The Hiroshima Myth
    Every year during the first two weeks of August the mass news media and many politicians at the national level trot out the “patriotic” political myth that the dropping of the two atomic bombs on Japan in August of 1945 caused them to surrender, and thereby saved the lives of anywhere from five hundred thousand to one million American soldiers, who did not have to invade the islands. Opinion polls over the last fifty years show that American citizens overwhelmingly (between 80 and 90%) believe this false history which, of course, makes them feel better about killing hundreds of thousands of Japanese civilians (mostly women and children) and saving American lives to accomplish the ending of the war.
    The best book, in my opinion, to explode this myth is The Decision to Use the Bomb by Gar Alperovitz, because it not only explains the real reasons the bombs were dropped, but also gives a detailed history of how and why the myth was created that this slaughter of innocent civilians was justified, and therefore morally acceptable. The essential problem starts with President Franklin Roosevelt’s policy of unconditional surrender, which was reluctantly adopted by Churchill and Stalin, and which President Truman decided to adopt when he succeeded Roosevelt in April of 1945. …
    The stark fact is that the Japanese leaders, both military and civilian, including the Emperor, were willing to surrender in May of 1945 if the Emperor could remain in place and not be subjected to a war crimes trial after the war. This fact became known to President Truman as early as May of 1945. The Japanese monarchy was one of the oldest in all of history dating back to 660 B.C. The Japanese religion added the belief that all the Emperors were the direct descendants of the sun goddess, Amaterasu. The reigning Emperor Hirohito was the 124th in the direct line of descent. After the bombs were dropped on August 6 and 9 of 1945, and their surrender soon thereafter, the Japanese were allowed to keep their Emperor on the throne and he was not subjected to any war crimes trial. The Emperor, Hirohito, came on the throne in 1926 and continued in his position until his death in 1989. Since President Truman, in effect, accepted the conditional surrender offered by the Japanese as early as May of 1945, the question is posed, “Why then were the bombs dropped?”
    The author Alperovitz gives us the answer in great detail which can only be summarized here, but he states, “We have noted a series of Japanese peace feelers in Switzerland which OSS Chief William Donovan reported to Truman in May and June [1945]. These suggested, even at this point, that the U.S. demand for unconditional surrender might well be the only serious obstacle to peace. At the center of the explorations, as we also saw, was Allen Dulles, chief of OSS operations in Switzerland (and subsequently Director of the CIA). In his 1966 book The Secret Surrender, Dulles recalled that ‘On July 20, 1945, under instructions from Washington, I went to the Potsdam Conference and reported there to Secretary [of War] Stimson on what I had learned from Tokyo — they desired to surrender if they could retain the Emperor and their constitution as a basis for maintaining discipline and order in Japan after the devastating news of surrender became known to the Japanese people.’
    https://mises.org/library/hiroshima-myth

  9. Japan’s conditions for surrender were:
    1. The Emperor must not be killed.
    2. The Emperor must not be tried as a war criminal.
    3. The Emperor must continue as Head of State.
    The Japanese terms were met.

  10. Well that’s debatable – the other viewpoint was that that was all that the Americans left them as it was in American interests to do so.
    The same was the case in Germany where the largely nazi local police forces were left intact.

  11. Oh, I see someone here who has escaped the loony bin and is
    definitely off his meds! The Japanese were NEVER going to
    surrender. The military hard-liners actually attempted a
    a coup against the emperor. This old canard has been
    disproved for decades.
    That quote by the Japanese pilot says it all. He understood
    the fanaticism that would have taken MILLIONS of Japanese lives
    had these two events not taken place. What is more, if this
    asinine assertion that the Japanese were ready to surrender,
    would not the near complete destruction of their industrial
    sector be enough? Or would not the first A-bomb have given
    them a face saving way out?
    Over that week before they surrendered, the hard-liners attacked
    the Emperors palace in an attempt to seize a record platter of
    the Emperor’s surrender speech. Even the Emperor HIMSELF said
    it would go down the last man woman and child in Japan not
    long before the A-bombs.

  12. “The stark fact is that the Japanese leaders, both military and civilian, including the Emperor, were willing to surrender in May of 1945 if the Emperor could remain in place and not be subjected to a war crimes trial after the war.”
    This is the big revisionist historical lie. Some Japanese leaders like Konoye indeed were of this view. They had nothing to do with and no power in the government run by the Army faction under Hideki Tojo. Moreover, even if it had so wished, the Japanese military government had no real control over the Kwantung Army which controlled Manchukuo and much of the army in occupied China. It would have to be smashed regardless of what the government in Tokyo decided, which is precisely what happened with the Soviet invasion of Manchuria.

  14. Yes, cgh, my reading suggests that this “willingness to surrender” was pretty theoretical. There’s no doubt that the Japanese leadership generally, and the Emperor in particular, were concerned about the prospects ahead and looking for options, but they were resolved to keep fighting as long as they were secure in China. The decision to yield followed not just the bomb, but Stalin’s entry into the war, which completely undercut Japan’s position.
    I think the most you can say is that Japan would have taken generous terms, if anyone had been generous enough to offer them. That’s pretty much the basis on which Japan went right through the war, waiting for the favourable offer that would justify bailing out. By that point, nobody was in the mood to be generous. Of course, this is made out to be a moral failing on the part of the Americans. Nobody criticizes the Japanese for using Stalin as a conduit for negotiations, still less Stalin for impeding them.

  15. Japan’s surrender was followed by Communist takeover of North Korea (’45), China (’49), N. Vietnam (’54) and the rest of Indo-China (’75).
    One hundred thousand US troops died in pursuit of the Containment of Communism in the Far East.
    “I have a troubled sense of the futility that marked our experience. What an inane outcome! Look at what happened: We destroyed one set of tyrants only to build up others that were even more virulent, vicious, & pernicious!”
    General A. C. Wedemeyer, former commander of allied forces in China, discussing the outcome of World War II

  16. It is fun to argue about history, especially the “ifs” and “should haves” and the “might have beens” of history. For example, if Hitler hadn’t been delayed by events in Greece he would have attacked the Soviet Union earlier, etc, etc.
    I like history myself. Especially biographies of famous people…. especially military people. General W.T. Sherman of U.S. Civil war fame is an interesting study. Here are two of his quotes which I especially like:
    1. “War is cruelty. There is no use trying to reform it. The crueler it is, the sooner it will be over.”
    2. “If I had my choice I would kill every reporter in the world, but I am sure we would be getting reports from Hell before breakfast.”
    I think both quotes are applicable to the current discussion. And that second one has a bit of subtlety which I like.
    Regarding John Leibowitz (aka Stewart), he can be funny but he actually is rather shallow. Some one should ask his perspective on the bombing of Dresden …. I mean that being a German city and he being a Jew and all that implies and because it was only 4 months later that Germany surrendered and all that implies.
    Gee, this is fun.

  18. It’s time to analyze the ways Iran will use nuclear armed ICBMs to extort surrender to Iran’s terrorism by proxy.
    This will happen throughout the Middle-East, Africa, Europe and the Americas.
    How large would be the refugee crisis when there is a (Iran) Shia versus Sunni war, one to see who leads the attacks against the infidels.
    NATO will be drawn in, while at the same time trying to fend off Islamist Jihadi attacks on the home front. All the while measuring how contaminated the food supply can be to and still consumed.
    Obama’s “treaty” with Iran delays the inevitable only to raise the human cost.

  19. Stewart is a connected establishment insider whose job it was to spread the disinfo narrative his masters primed him with – these clones are a dime a dozen, there is another one in the wings – just watch.

  20. Stewart is soooo predictable. He really is not concerned with facts. All he is concerned with is his own image in his own mind. By being virulently anti-American and anti-conservative, he imagines himself to be a “critical thinker”. Simply criticizing with no facts, knowledge, or experience (much like any other SJW wannabe) is not being a critical thinker. What it truly IS will not get past the filters on this site. Stewart’s stock in trade has always been snide humour, spewed in a futile attempt to feel superior to those who actually DO something. I have spoken with several people who admire his show immensely; their motives and mindsets appear similar to his. Sad, really.

  21. True, Jon Leibowitz (Stewart) can be engaging in a funny way, with one line zingers. They are meant to make you laugh, not be a grounded historical account.
    Jon is no historian, like say a Max Hastings or Victor Davis Hanson because unlike comedians historians are very well read; and hence can write lengthy footnoted tomes which limits the people you can chat with authoritatively on the cocktail circuit.
    He’ll have to do some catching up with Will and Ariel Durant…
    http://www.britannica.com/biography/Will-Durant-and-Ariel-Durant
    Cheers
    Hans Rupprecht, Commander in Chief
    1st Saint Nicolaas Army
    Army Group ‘True North’

  22. It was less that theoretical. The Japanese leadership had no interest whatsoever in surrendering on August 5 1945. They had drafted more than 500,000 civilians as suicide bombers to supplement the army. Children were expected to dive under tanks with bombs. The army and navy airforces had more than 10,000 kamikaze aircraft ready to go, five times the number at Okinawa.
    These are NOT the actions of a government looking for a way out. You are right about generous terms. To the Japanese leadership, this meant keeping as much as possible of their Asian empire, particularly Manchukuo.

  23. @first timer: “Stewart’s stock in trade has always been snide humour, spewed in a futile attempt to feel superior to those who actually DO something.” I like the way you think. That says it all….. except maybe the “futile” part. I think he’s pretty successful in feeling superior, so not futile.

  24. Bill Whittle presents his case well, and it is a strong case. And yet there is nothing in what he says that wasn’t known 20 years ago. This Stewart fellow did no work whatsoever, just bloviated in the most ignorant way possible. Will the liberal lies and distortions ever END?

  25. Sir Arthur “Bomber” Harris was even more brutal than Sherman. For instance he said at one point [I can’t find the exact quote] that the principal objective of the bombing campaign against Germany was not the destruction of German factories, though such destruction was desirable. Rather, the principal objective was to kill German workers. The second objective was to destroy their homes and to render their families homeless, and thus a large burden on the government.
    No “surgical strikes” there!!!

  27. Is there any chance that Stewart is actually aware of what took place at Guadalcanal? Iwo Jima? Okinawa? Does he have any idea of the ferocity with which the Japanese defended these islands or the magnitude of suicidal desperation that they would display in defending the Japanese mainland?
    I would be quite oonfident in the prediction that Stewart couldn’t even find these places on a map. In fact, I would be surprised if he could even spell them correctly.

  30. So Obamas sycopnantic court jester is calling it quits.Don’t let the door hit your a$$ on the way out.With Letterman gone 2 of the biggest lefty loons are gone although Letterman was cutting edge and good in early years.

  31. The Kwantung Army in China was a formidable force….so much so that the Soviet transfer from Europe, of battle hardened troops, armour, artillery….the very best the Red Army had…in overwhelming numbers took months…..despite the Tran Siberian Railway.
    Yeah well, the systematic destruction of the B29 raids, nor 2 atomic bombings nor the lightning Soviet invasion of Manchuria ended the war….
    It was the quantum of these events.

  32. Before these self rightcoius liberals start trashing america r dropping the A-Bomb on Hiroshima they should look up about the Rape of Nanking and The Bataan Death March(A late resident in our town was in it)and then theres a little thing called Pearl Harbor and the USS Arizona so before they start wagging their fingers in americas face perhapes they should think(if they can)about these little events

  33. Stewart doesn’t understand the difference between deficit and debt. In the pay to view online debate he and O’Rielly had a few years back (the one where Stewart had the lift he could operate to make up for the fact he’s a foot shorter than O’Rielly) he made this evident and it nearly stunned O’Rielly silent.

  34. Very good point. I remember the old This Week With David Brinkley show.
    Back in the early 90’s George Will was talking up the flat tax on the
    panel when Sam Donaldson objected on the grounds that such a tax was
    unfair because the rich needed to pay more than the poor. This was
    so much fun to watch, it was delicious! Will tried to explain that
    15 percent of $1,000,000 was a hell of a lot more than 15 percent of
    $10,000. It was like talking to a brick wall. He was stammering and
    saying “Where is the progressivity?” Even Cokie Roberts tried to
    explain it to him, but the concept was way over his head!
    The segment ended with Donaldson promising to “Research the issue.”
    It is important for people to understand that it is people like these
    who are the brain-trust of liberalism. These are our betters, only
    in their own minds.

Proudly powered by WordPress & Skyrocket Themes

MENU

Navigation