Let us have truth: Hiroshima and George W. Bush

August 6th is a date that sticks in my throat each year because it brings Pacifists, fools, liars, and fantasists — the dependable base of the Democratic Party — slithering out of their holes to attack commonsense from every possible angle. And this August 6th is no exception. The intelligence of Americans is again being assaulted by this gang of ill-educated and effete miscreants, a gang whose members are always eager to damn America.

Hiroshima: First we have the teary-eyed fools who still believe there was no reason to drop nuclear bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. It is almost impossible to believe that sixty-five years after those blessed bombs were dropped on Japan and ended the war there are still Americans who believe the action was not necessary. This of course speaks directly to the manner in which American history is taught and distorted at all levels of our educational system. The core of any school lesson on Hiroshima and Nagasaki can only be that if ever a country deserved being the target of a nuclear attack, that country was Imperial Japan.

From 1931 until 1945, Emperor Hirohito and his government — with what appears to be the support of most Japanese — invaded, tortured, raped, mutilated, and otherwise destroyed countries and people from China to the northern coast of Australia. That emperor, that regime, and that people waged a premeditated, offensive war that was at least as unconscionable as the war waged by Nazi Germany.

After Pearl Harbor, it fell to the lot of the United States Navy and Marine Corps and their allies to erase Hirohito’s regime from the earth’s face. And they did the task admirably, but not before the Bataan Death March, Guadalcanal, Iwo Jima, Okinawa, and dozens of other bloody campaigns in which the Japanese enemy proved himself brave, durable, and utterly barbaric. And while these battles were fought, Japanese occupation forces in China, the Philippines, Indo-China, and elsewhere continued at their leisure to torture, rape, and mass murder civilians and prisoners of war, despite the courageous efforts of anti-Japanese resistance units.

And so after fourteen years of inhuman Japanese barbarity across Asia and the Pacific, U.S. leaders were faced with a decision: stage an amphibious invasion of Japan’s home islands and face an estimated million or more U.S. and allied casualties, or try to end the war with nuclear weapons. Talk about a no-brainer; it would have been an impeachable offense if President Truman had refused to use nuclear weapons and instead sent U.S. Marines and soldiers to their death needlessly. The claim that the Japanese were ready to surrender before the bombs were dropped — which is always flogged by August 6th’s ignorant weepers — has been proven to be absolutely incorrect by Richard B. Frank (Downfall. The End of the Imperial Japanese Empire. New York: Random House, 1999) and D.M. Gianfranco (Hell to Pay. Operation Downfall and the Invasion of Japan, 1945-1947. Annapolis, MD: Naval University Press, 2009)

As regards Hiroshima, there should surely be commemorative events in the United States each August 6th. Those events ought to honor and applaud the fact one brave man named Harry Truman had the moral courage, commonsense, and patriotism to protect the lives, futures, and families of another one million brave men and to rid the earth of the inhuman scourge known as Imperial Japan.

That President Barack Obama and Secretary of State Clinton ordered a U.S. diplomat in Japan to attend the anti-U.S. ceremonies in Hiroshima on this August 6th can only be seen as them siding with their fellow Democrats in believing that the bombings were morally reprehensible, and that a million or more U.S. casualties would have been a small price to pay to avoid contemporary Japanese not liking us very much on August 6th each year.

George W. Bush: Readers of this site will know that I carry no brief for George W. Bush and his administration. But the annual August-6th attacks on President Bush for the CIA’s PDB memo saying that “Osama bin Laden intends to attack in the United States” is really more than commonsense can tolerate. Was there such a memo? Yes, of course. And there had been numerous nearly identical memos presented to President Clinton between 1996 and the end of his term.

Now, why is Mr. Bush annually attacked and Mr. Clinton is given a free pass? The answer is obvious: In the fight against the bin Laden-led Islamists, Mr. Clinton is responsible for all the American deaths at home and abroad since 1996, and a frank admission of that reality is unacceptable to the Democrats, the media, and the bulk of the academy that loves them both and sucks off the government’s money tit when the Democrats are in power.

But, you might ask, how can you blame Clinton and not Bush? Well, I do blame Bush for not paying any attention to bin Laden and his ilk during his first year in office. But the truth is that on 6 August 2001 the CIA and the U.S. Intelligence Community did not know where bin Laden was located, and without such data Mr. Bush had nothing to attack. This was not the case during Mr. Clinton’s tenure.

Between 1 May 1998 and 31 May 1999, President Clinton had ten documented chances — see the 9/11 Commission Report and its archive (NB: Why do you think those documents have not been released? I’ll bet I know) — to try to kill Osama bin Laden. Indeed, in the third week of May, 1999, President Clinton and his advisers knew on five consecutive nights in precisely which house in Kandahar City Osama bin Laden was staying. Ten chances but not even one try by Mr. Clinton to do his duty to protect Americans by killing bin Laden. And one must remember that Mr. Clinton’s failure came after bin Laden had twice attacked U.S. facilities in Saudi Arabia, destroyed two U.S. embassies in East Africa, and publicly pledged to try to acquire a nuclear device and use it in the United States.

So next August 6th Americans should use the annual attack on Mr. Bush to trigger their memories and recall that 9/11, the ongoing humiliation of Americans at airports, the casus belli used by Bush for the idiot Iraq war, all the dead Americans since 1996, and the trillions of dollars spent on war since then can all be laid at the door step of Mr. Clinton and his advisers, men and women who did not have the moral courage to risk the media and European disdain that would have met their efforts to try to protect Americans.

Also next August 6th, those few Marines, soldiers, and sailors still living because no invasion of Japan was needed, as well as what now must be their many millions of descendants, can thank God that on 6 August 1945 the president of the United States was named Harry S. Truman and not William Jefferson Clinton.

Author: Michael F. Scheuer

Michael F. Scheuer worked at the CIA as an intelligence officer for 22 years. He was the first chief of its Osama bin Laden unit, and helped create its rendition program, which he ran for 40 months. He is an American blogger, historian, foreign policy critic, and political analyst.