Truman Lied, Hundreds of Thousands Died (Republicans, America, generations, government)

[djacques]

Originally Posted by DrummerBoy

Uhhh....don't count on it.

Eh..destroying property and killing livestock and anything else Sherman did, are not quite in the same classification as an intentional mass murder of noncombatants (he could've achieved that, if he'd so desired, it just would've taken a little longer than it did Truman.)

[DiogenesofJackson]

Originally Posted by Moth

The Japanese did not sign the Geneva Convention (1929).

They did sign the Hague Conventions, but certainly did not abide by them as they never saw a War Crime they did not want to commit.

As for Truman and Racism as well as Eugenics, can you produce an Executive Order, official memo, document, comminique, etc where it is explicitly stated that the bombs will be used for racist intentions i.e. they will be nuked because they are Japanese or for the purposes of Eugenics?

I doubt you can.

You are just making this up as you go along.

Eugenics has informed American racist geopolitics for more than the past 150 years--maybe even longer than that--that's why Eugenics is relevant to Truman's decision (and Americans' acceptance of it). No, there is no document that I can point to--but I can point to a collection of primary source data that will show that Truman was a part of his culture--American culture--and he was just as racist as the average American of his generation. The best evidence of Truman's racism is the pejorative "***" in his own writings--some of which I posted links to--and which I can tell you have ignored.

I'm not making anything up in any of my posts on this thread--rather I'm paraphrasing many authors' points--authors whose works comprise the historiography of both WWII and nuclear weapons. I made a post about this. Perhaps you care to get a library card and check some of them out?

It's neither here nor there that the Japanese did not sign the Geneva Conventions. Yet the U.S. did--and then dismissed its rules of conduct in order to win the war. Why agree to something and then not follow what it says? In other words, the U.S. acted as did any other belligerent nation. The U.S. used propaganda to inculcate near 100% participation from its citizens (oftentimes not making that goal), it targeted civilians of enemy nations, and used terror tactics to affect the enemy's will to fight.

This is important, this idea of jus in bello (just conduct in war), because the U.S., like any other belligerent, made the war a moral question. And this is at the heart of any armed conflict. Humans oftentimes wage a just war (jus ad bellum) and WWII was certainly a just war--yet like humans do--the U.S. waged the war unjustly--that is, the U.S. prosecuted the war in a way that was contrary to "American principles" and contrary to the international agreements that the nation was a party to.

So the American prosecution of WWII sheds light on these are important facets of humanity. Human beings will always duke it out against their fellow humans for myriad political reasons or for the basic competition for resources. But at the heart of every war there is this question about whether or not a nation or group of people are right--or are on the side of righteousness. Most belligerents in any war will claim they are on the side of righteousness, justice, good-will, etc (how many governments tell its people "hey, lets go do evil?"--not many). And the U.S. was no different--it told its people and the world that they were fighting a just war with just conduct in war, i.e. following the agreed-upon rules and abiding by American principles. But when you actually read the evidence--the documents, the photographs, the first-hand accounts, you'll find that the U.S. prosecuted the war as did any other belligerent. It prosecuted the war with a will to win at any cost--morality be damned.

And this is the point I've been making all along, which you just cannot get, the U.S. government should have either not been a part of the agreed-upon rules of war, or should have lived up to its principles and its agreements in its prosecution of the war. The U.S. didn't and thousands upon thousands of human beings died for no reason other than for the U.S. to set itself up in an advantageous position to dominate post-war geopolitics.

So instead of telling me I'm full of crap, why don't you address what I'm arguing? Can you do that?

[Moth]

Eugenics has informed American racist geopolitics for more than the past 150 years--maybe even longer than that--that's why Eugenics is relevant to Truman's decision (and Americans' acceptance of it).

So we were fighting Japan over Eugenics? Oaaakkkkaaaayyyyy......

No, there is no document that I can point to

Of course not as you are just letting your imagination run wild.

--but I can point to a collection of primary source data that will show that Truman was a part of his culture--American culture--and he was just as racist as the average American of his generation. The best evidence of Truman's racism is the pejorative "***" in his own writings--some of which I posted links to--and which I can tell you have ignored.

I cannot believe it matters. What Truman thought of non-whites had nothing to do with WWII. Indeed WWII had been raging for quite some time before Truman was even in the White House.

WWII originated because three countries embarked on campaigns of expansion and agression. All reasonable people from schoolchildren to surviving vets know that.

You are a very confused and angry little man. Like others before you, you have an agenda and smearing your country's record in WWII is the ultimate prize.

You are not going to get it.

So instead of telling me I'm full of crap, why don't you address what I'm arguing? Can you do that?

I have already. Your entire deranged premise is easily debunked by the elementary fact that it was Japan who started the war in the Pacific. But you have an agenda. No amount of evidence, no matter how basic, is going to convince you otherwise. You will simply continue to foam at the mouth and lash out as most crazys tend to do when cornered.

[hornet67]

Originally Posted by Moth

So we were fighting Japan over Eugenics? Oaaakkkkaaaayyyyy......





Of course not as you are just letting your imagination run wild.



I cannot believe it matters. What Truman thought of non-whites had nothing to do with WWII. Indeed WWII had been raging for quite some time before Truman was even in the White House.

WWII originated because three countries embarked on campaigns of expansion and agression. All reasonable people from schoolchildren to surviving vets know that.

You are a very confused and angry little man. Like others before you, you have an agenda and smearing your country's record in WWII is the ultimate prize.

You are not going to get it.




I have already. Your entire deranged premise is easily debunked by the elementary fact that it was Japan who started the war in the Pacific. But you have an agenda. No amount of evidence, no matter how basic, is going to convince you otherwise. You will simply continue to foam at the mouth and lash out as most crazys tend to do when cornered.

Moth, You have to give it up.......the two clueless bozos that keep regurgitating this insane drivel won't shut up. They have some type of bizarre axe to grind against their own country, and believe that they alone know what constitutes the moral high ground. Lenin had a phrase for those stupid non-Russians who advocated the "blessings" of Communism; " useful idiots."
It applies here as well.

[Moth]

Originally Posted by hornet67

Moth, You have to give it up.......the two clueless bozos that keep regurgitating this insane drivel won't shut up. They have some type of bizarre axe to grind against their own country, and believe that they alone know what constitutes the moral high ground. Lenin had a phrase for those stupid non-Russians who advocated the "blessings" of Communism; " useful idiots."
It applies here as well.

I regard it as charity work.

[DiogenesofJackson]

Originally Posted by Moth

So we were fighting Japan over Eugenics? Oaaakkkkaaaayyyyy......





Of course not as you are just letting your imagination run wild.



I cannot believe it matters. What Truman thought of non-whites had nothing to do with WWII. Indeed WWII had been raging for quite some time before Truman was even in the White House.

WWII originated because three countries embarked on campaigns of expansion and agression. All reasonable people from schoolchildren to surviving vets know that.

You are a very confused and angry little man. Like others before you, you have an agenda and smearing your country's record in WWII is the ultimate prize.

You are not going to get it.




I have already. Your entire deranged premise is easily debunked by the elementary fact that it was Japan who started the war in the Pacific. But you have an agenda. No amount of evidence, no matter how basic, is going to convince you otherwise. You will simply continue to foam at the mouth and lash out as most crazys tend to do when cornered.

You haven't provided any evidence to support your claims. You just repeat the official government line circa 1945.

I didn't say WWII was over Eugenics. Go back to the post and read carefully. I merely stated that Eugenics science informed Truman's decision to commit mass murder against the Japanese, because after all, Truman was a part of American culture as was Eugenics at that time.

So I guess from your latest enlightening post that you disagree that U.S. propaganda during the war depicted the Japanese as brutish "insects" that needed to be exterminated? You've never seen some of the ephemera from the era?

Here's a site you should look at, but I guess you'll ignore it like all the other stuff I've tried to direct you toward. This site shows some of the U.S. propaganda posters of the Japanese--and if you analyze these racist depictions of the Japanese, you should arrive at some "no-brainer" type conclusions. First, these posters depict the Japanese as subhuman, and so by implication, Americans are protecting humanity by eradicating the Japanese. Second, some of the posters call for avenging Pearl Harbor, and again I think this informed Truman's decision to use not just one but two nuclear weapons against Japan. Third, these posters point to the higher moral calling evident in any society during wartime. War is a moral affair and every government in the war will tell its people that they have the high moral ground for waging the fight.

Posters from World War II (http://bss.sfsu.edu/internment/posters.html - broken link)

I don't have any agendas. And there's nothing in my posts that imply that I do. You claim I have an agenda because you resort to name-calling when you experience a contrary opinion. This is called an ad hominem fallacy of logic. You attack me personally rather than getting at the arguments that I make (most of which are mere representations of many books I've read on the subject). To summarize your poor and weak argumentation, you skim over my posts and tell yourself "Diogenes doesn't believe Y, which I believe wholeheartedly, and so therefore Diogenes is an X (whatever X is in your lazy, uncritical brain). But when you pick apart your weak argumentation, you can see that there is no causal link between what I write on this forum and whatever you claim that I am. This is evidence of how poor of a historian you are because you cannot effectively use reason and logic.


Speaking of, what are "fake" history books? What are "real" history books? Can you list any titles? I'd like to know what these are.

[DiogenesofJackson]

Originally Posted by hornet67

Moth, You have to give it up.......the two clueless bozos that keep regurgitating this insane drivel won't shut up. They have some type of bizarre axe to grind against their own country, and believe that they alone know what constitutes the moral high ground. Lenin had a phrase for those stupid non-Russians who advocated the "blessings" of Communism; " useful idiots."
It applies here as well.

Name-calling is not an effective way to be convincing. By calling me and Jacques names is not advancing your position at all. In fact, I don't even know what it is? I don't know what your contention is about the topic at hand. Do you have one?

So what is your position on Truman's decision to use two atomic bombs on Japan? Why don't you try to formulate an argument about the topic rather than posting insults toward people?

[hornet67]

Originally Posted by DiogenesofJackson

Name-calling is not an effective way to be convincing. By calling me and Jacques names is not advancing your position at all. In fact, I don't even know what it is? I don't know what your contention is about the topic at hand. Do you have one?

So what is your position on Truman's decision to use two atomic bombs on Japan? Why don't you try to formulate an argument about the topic rather than posting insults toward people?

First of all, I don't have some type of wacky agenda, as you and your partner in alternative history obviously do. I fully support Truman's decision to use the bomb in 1945, and this absurd twaddle 66 years post-facto, questioning the decision, which had to be made THEN, not with 66 years to navel gaze and post self-righteous,utopian blatherings, is totally useless, IMHO.
BTW, perhaps not yourself, but Mr.DJ has spouted out quite a few insults during the course of this thread. HE obviously has quite an elevated view of himself; I can assure you that I do not share it!

[Moth]

You haven't provided any evidence to support your claims.

I do not need to as they are not claims. The most basic facts of the incidents, disputed by no one, are more than enough to expose your views as the madness they are.

What need I prove? That Japan started the war? That Japan used diplomatic deception and a sneak attack to draw us into the war? That Japan was run by a fascist junta? That the nukes ended the war?

Who in their right mind needs any evidence of that? If they do, a quick visit to the library or a newspaper archive should more than suffice.

The only thing that I have not substantiated is that you have an agenda. And I need not prove that either as your pretzel logic more than suffices to do so.

[rbohm]

Originally Posted by hornet67

First of all, I don't have some type of wacky agenda, as you and your partner in alternative history obviously do. I fully support Truman's decision to use the bomb in 1945, and this absurd twaddle 66 years post-facto, questioning the decision, which had to be made THEN, not with 66 years to navel gaze and post self-righteous,utopian blatherings, is totally useless, IMHO.
BTW, perhaps not yourself, but Mr.DJ has spouted out quite a few insults during the course of this thread. HE obviously has quite an elevated view of himself; I can assure you that I do not share it!

well said hornet. as i have said before we cannot look back on history with the eyes and morals of today. we have to look at it from the times in which the decisions were made. unfortunately our two misinformed friends do not understand this, and only accept the line that those who wish to rewrite history put down.