President Obama hugging Hiuroshima survivor (courtesy nydailynews.com)

Mutually assured destruction (a.k.a., MAD). You attack us and we’ll annihilate you. We attack you and you”ll annihilate us. That’s why there hasn’t been a catastrophic world war since the last catastrophic world war: we got nukes, they got nukes.  (Arguably, the same reason Israel hasn’t been driven into the sea.) MAD works both on the national and the personal level. If a criminal knows he’ll be annihilated if he attacks an innocent person, he won’t attack. That said . . .

MAD doesn’t apply to jihadis and other people seeking our annihilation. Unfortunately, unlike our multi-platform nuclear defense, there’s no guarantee that an attacking criminal will be destroyed. On the personal level, it’s all about probabilities. But MAD still works well enough and one thing’s for sure: the President of the United States doesn’t get it. Like this [text of speech via nytimes.com]:

We may not be able to eliminate man’s capacity to do evil, so nations and the alliances that we form must possess the means to defend ourselves. But among those nations like my own that hold nuclear stockpiles, we must have the courage to escape the logic of fear and pursue a world without them.

We may not realize this goal in my lifetime, but persistent effort can roll back the possibility of catastrophe. We can chart a course that leads to the destruction of these stockpiles. We can stop the spread to new nations and secure deadly materials from fanatics.

And yet that is not enough. For we see around the world today how even the crudest rifles and barrel bombs can serve up violence on a terrible scale. We must change our mind-set about war itself. To prevent conflict through diplomacy and strive to end conflicts after they’ve begun. To see our growing interdependence as a cause for peaceful cooperation and not violent competition. To define our nations not by our capacity to destroy but by what we build. And perhaps, above all, we must reimagine our connection to one another as members of one human race . . .

That is why we come to Hiroshima. So that we might think of people we love. The first smile from our children in the morning. The gentle touch from a spouse over the kitchen table. The comforting embrace of a parent. We can think of those things and know that those same precious moments took place here, 71 years ago.

In short, the President journeyed to Hiroshima to advise the world to put down the nukes, join hands and sing Kumbaya. Unless  . . . President Obama is saying that we need to get rid of the nuclear “stockpiles” while letting responsible adults in the nuclear club keep just enough destructive force to keep everyone honest/peaceful.

Probably not.

Given that the President’s call for “common sense gun reform” is nothing more than poorly disguised incrementalism leading toward the goal of total civilian disarmament, I reckon he actually wants a reduction in nuclear capability to lead to total nuclear disarmament, as well.

Silly man. As we know, an armed society is a polite society, both inside and outside its borders. Well, a lot more polite than a disarmed society. Anyway, well done to the CinC for dissing those “crude” rifles. Once again, America’s greatest ever gun salesman shows us how he earned that title. AR’s all around! Nukes? Not to so much. But definitely some.

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170 COMMENTS

    • Is he a naive community organizer or is he a determined enemy of our country?
      I know the old saw about never assuming ill intent when common incompetence can adequately explain the facts at hand, but no common fool can be this perfectly wrong for 7 years straight.

    • There is no bottle big enough to put the nuclear genie back into, no matter what anyone wishes. The only way major countries would ever get rid of them is when they develop something bigger and badder. Then there will still be the smaller powers.
      You can wish all you want, not going to happen.

      • He doesn’t want to try to put the genie back in the bottle, he wants to be remembered for trying to. As long as Obama is remembered for trying to make the world a better place, Obama will be happy. It’s all a lie and everything he does makes things worse, but at least he’s trying to look like he’s trying.

  2. You can’t hug people with Nuclear Arms…

    I kid, seriously though, nukes are good. It’s a nice of way of reminding folks that we humans are not void from the possibility of extinction.

    • Nukes are great when in the hands of (semi) sane and rational adults. And then there’s Islam.

      People who regularly blow them selves up to punish the infidels, and to get to paradise. The routinely kill each other over who was to succeed The Pedo Muhammed, and who is to be ‘respected’.

      There’s a great many of these primitives who would happily nuke us all, because they really believe there is some ‘better place’ and this life is merely a stepping stone.

      Turkey is definitely a very scary place. Erdogan is crazy, and most of the “smart” part of the military was exorcised in the early oughts, so the needed military coup is unlikely this time. Thankfully, they only have about 70 warheads, so all they could do is start WWIII. Not finish it.

      • Israel is a scary place as well, see The Sampson Option. Tel Aviv is as much a sponsor of terrorism as any other capital.

        • Your statement made no sense. The “Sampson Option” (not Israel’s term) is nothing more than the acknowledgement that Israel might use nuclear weapons against a foreign power that has all but destroyed the national of Israel. It’s the idea that Israel might use nukes as a final option against obliteration. Which seems in line with every other country on earth, and with every weapon they’ve got. How on earth is that any kind of sponsor for terrorism?

        • The “Samson option”? As in the idea of taking out the nation that is about to end them? I fail to see how that’s terrorism. It’s MAD, no different than what the US and Soviet Union had during the Cold War.

          Israel does not sponsor terror, and they are not racist. There are Arabs in their military, in their government, and in their everyday citizenry. Can you say the same if any of their neighbors concerning tolerance for Jews?

          Also, their Capitol is not Tel Aviv. Nice try.

      • Yeah, that’s the thing about using Cold War paradigms in this era.

        MAD worked to maintain the balance of power because of the M, mutually, and the fact that both sides actually did care about the the consequences of not behaving, Destruction. It breaks down if either side is irrational or is willing to die to kill the other. Then MAD provides no deterrent effect at all.

        • Which is why MAD doesn’t work with jihadists, they revel in the thought of dying while killing us.

          And I don’t think it necessarily works against Islamists on a planetwide basis; if an act of extreme evil might lead to the destruction of all of Islam, they’d probably do it anyway, either not caring what happens to their fellow Muslims or believing that Allah will watch over them and prevent their destruction.

        • MAD works well enough with jihadis, too, providing that term includes their leadership and not just the suicidists and militants.

          The leadership of the jihadis rarely put themselves in immediate danger. After all, bin Laden didn’t fly a plane into any building, himself. Look at Arafat. He kept his wife and kids in Paris, where they enjoyed immense riches and privilege in a world class city, a million miles from the murder bombings he enlisted other people’s children to carry out.

          Those greybeard fanatical clerics in Iran, including Khamaeini himself, preach a good game about virgins and death to America, but they’re never personally in a rush to get to Heaven. That’s always the role of expendibles, often inserted into attacks at the latest possible stage of planning.

          Hold the ICBM of Damocles over their heads, with credible intent to use it, and they’ll fall into line.

        • MAD does not work with jihadis because there is no place that a nuclear strike would kill this hydra. And they cannot assure our destruction either. In short, unless we want to turn the MidEast into a wasteland, nukes are useless in the conflict. MAD doesn’t work with jihadis because they plan to die for their cause, unlike the Russians, French, British, Pakistanis, Indians or Israelis. Nukes are useful only against nation states.

          • Nukes are useless against jihadis? Not really; tactical nukes in the Tora Bora mountains would have either vaporized or entombed them. Seems like a good use.

      • Yes and you forget the screw ups the good old U.S. of Hey has done with nuclear bombs. There was the time a U.S. Bomber flying in the U.S. dropped a nuclear bomb and all of the safeties save just one, I repeat just one failed to work. We came that close to blowing our East Coast off the map. Or how about the time the radar operators thought the blip on their screens were a salvo of Russian Nuclear Missiles about to annihilate us and the order was given to Nuke Russia. It was only because some level headed ordinary military operators revolted and refused to push the doomsday button that saved the world from annihilation. It was just barely a long enough delay to make the higher ups realize it had all been an equipment malfunction. Yes the old adage applies here: Point the xenophobic finger at another race or religion and you have 3 fingers pointed right back at yourself.

  3. Ah yes… Because it would have been far better for the United States to launch a ground invasion of Japan, kill millions of people, and destroy their ability to support themselves than nuke two cities and demand surrender…

    Once again, the traitor-in-chief embarrasses our country and disgraces the sacrifices of our armed forces.

    • Ike was against using the nukes, along with a lot of top military brass. And perhaps negotiating a surrender instead of demanding a unilateral surrendered after destroying two cities and all inhabitants would have been a better choice.

        • It would have worked out much better if Wilson had kept his promises to keep us out of the war. But look to the French and English for what went wrong with the negotiations.

      • Too bad Ike wasn’t against using the ‘nuclear option’ when it came to dealing with our own veterans in the Bonus Army and their families.

        Setting them on fire in their tents as if they were a congregation of Seventh Day Adventists was a little extreme, if you ask me.

        • Weren’t MacArthur and Patton the ones who ran that shit-show? I recall reading that Eisenhower advised MacArthur (his boss at the time) against attacking the protesters.

        • The self-styled Bonus Expeditionary Force, labeled “Bonus Army” in the media of the day, were a mass of over 10,000 WWI veterans (yes, some women and children were among the mass of veterans, too), who demanded in 1932 a retroactive war bonus the government had authorized in 1924 to be paid in 1945. They illegally occupied D.C. for months and ignored Attorney General Mitchell’s order to vacate. So the D.C. police were sent in, leading to violence and a few deaths, but not removal of the Occupy Pennsylvania Avenue mob.

          President Hoover then deployed the military to expel them. That mission was commanded by Chief of Staff Douglas MacArthur. The actual cavalry was commanded by then-Major George S. Patton. Then-Major Eisenhower was only the liaison between the military and the D.C. police, not a commander giving attack orders.

          When Hoover authorized the expulsion, MacArthur obeyed and expelled the occupiers from the street and chased them back across the Anacostia to their main encampment. Hoover then ordered MacArthur to halt, but MacArthur disobeyed the President (foreshadowing alert….) and destroyed the camp; during which it was set ablaze and two babies killed in the process.

          Eisenhower wrote of the event that “The whole scene was pitiful. The veterans were ragged, ill-fed, and felt themselves badly abused. To suddenly see the whole encampment going up in flames just added to the pity.”

          We can pin this on Mac and Patton, but I’m not seeing Ike as the villain in this one.

        • OK, looks like of the three big names, Mac and Patton were the ones responsible for the attack.
          Eisenhower just helped whitewash it after he couldn’t talk them out of doing it, or maybe he just tried to talk MacAuthur out of admitting he was the one who ordered it. (it still shows that his loyalties lay with those in power, not with the American People)

          Believing it wrong for the Army’s highest-ranking officer to lead an action against fellow American war veterans, he strongly advised MacArthur against taking any public role: “I told that dumb son-of-a-bitch not to go down there,” he said later. “I told him it was no place for the Chief of Staff.”[18] Despite his misgivings, Eisenhower later wrote the Army’s official incident report which endorsed MacArthur’s conduct.[19]

          https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bonus_Army

          BTW, Jon – Houston, I take it you don’t think much of the 1A right to peacefully assemble to protest and petition your government, even in the District established for the operation of that government?

    • Except none of that needed to happen, for several reason.

      1) Japan had already made multiple surrender attempts prior to the bombs. Herbert Hoover documented that General Macarthur presented FDR with a report on 5 separate surrender/peace attempts shortly before the President’s death.

      2) The US had total air and sea superiority and could bomb Japan at will. There was no need to invade an island when we could have a naval and air blockade.

      3) Modern research has shown that based on intercepted communications and documents seized after the war that Japan ultimately surrendered because of the Soviets launching a ground war against them. It makes sense if you consider that we had already bombed most of their cities into ash with firebombings, so what difference did two more cities make?

      4) Many Allied commanders such as Eisenhower and Macarthur were completely against the bombings.

      5) The line that millions of US soldiers would have died is a complete myth. No war casualty estimate ever said that number. It was invented out of whole cloth by politicians after the war as a way to justify the bombings.

      • 1) The terms they demanded were unacceptable.

        2) Those would have killed far more Japanese people than the nukes.

        3) So why didn’t the Emperor order surrender after we reduced Tokyo to ash?

        4) [CITATION NEEDED] Opposition after the fact is irrelevant.

        5) STRAW MAN ALLERT. I didn’t say millions of US soldiers. I said millions of PEOPLE that includes the Japanese that would have died during a ground campaign. Go take a look at the campaign on Okinawa for some comparable statistics.

      • Pilotmkn says “Japan had already made multiple surrender attempts prior to the bombs. Herbert Hoover documented that General Macarthur presented FDR with a report on 5 separate surrender/peace attempts shortly before the President’s death.”

        Surrender and peace on Japan’s terms and that is why all attempts were rejected. One could argue saving a million men etc, when viewed through the lens and culture of democracy. Let’s not forget the militarization of Japan, a nation believing the emperor was a god, a military requiring actions to save face and honor. Against this backdrop and all coastal cities firebomb to ashes the US, having only two atomic bombs made the correct decision to use them in a measured calculation. The main benefit being giving the Japanese military, knowing the war could not be won, and not knowing atomic inventory we had, an excuse to end it.

      • Please provide references to your statements.

        1. “Multiple surrender attempts… presented by McArthur.” There were a number of “peace feelers” through the Soviet Union, which suppressed them. If there were direct Japanese gov. to US gov. surrender attempts prior to the dropping of the Bombs, please disclose this previously unknown information.

        2. Air and naval superiority cannot control a country. Any country. You need boots on the ground. Everybody has air superiority over ISIS – but, magically, they are still in control.

        3. The research shows that the surrender was a result of both the nukes and the Soviet attack. Not one or the other. Please don’t twist and mutilate the research.

        4. Please provide references that Eisenhower and MacArthur were “completely against the [nuclear] bombings.”

        5. At the time, no one said that “millions” of US soldiers would die in an invasion. It was, however, estimated that there would be hundreds of thousands of US casualties (typically, 10% casualties are deaths). It was also estimated that as many as a million Japanese would die. Given the fact that the Japanese gov was inciting the civilian population to resist the invasion with pitch forks and sticks, that estimate is quite realistic and the nukes should be considered as saving hundreds of thousands of Japanese lives.

        Prior to the US invasion, Japanese infant mortality was about one million babies per year, mostly due to abysmal hygiene. MacArthur improved hygiene conditions so much that the infant mortality rate declined ten-fold. Obama forgot to mention that…

        • ” Given the fact that the Japanese gov was inciting the civilian population to resist the invasion with pitch forks and sticks, that estimate is quite realistic and the nukes should be considered as saving hundreds of thousands of Japanese lives.”

          Dead on.

          My father was a Marine with the 2nd Marine Division. He was with the very first combat unit to land in Nagasaki after the bombing. Their job was to secure the area and disarm the civilian populace. He told me MANY stories of civilians armed with nothing but spears, etc….and they told him in no uncertain terms that if the Emperor hand’t told them to lay down their weapons they would have used them to try to kill any American they came upon. These weren’t just men who told him these stories..they were also woman, elderly, and children. The level of fanaticism of the Japanese during this time can’t be underestimated. My father also saw fighting on Okinawa, nearly was killed by a Kamikaze boarding his landing craft…and as a corpsman saw the brutality of the fighting as the war dragged on. There is no comparison between what was happening in Europe and what was happening in the Pacific. Quite simply the Japaneses were ferocious fighters who absolutely would not give up. The battles happening during the final months of the war were ungodly barbaric.

          My father(someone who LIVED through these times…experienced it firsthand unlike a lot of these so called experts who weren’t there and most times weren’t even alive at the time)told me the estimations of obscene levels of casualties on both sides was in no way an exaggeration. He saw how they fought to keep little rocks in the middle of the ocean…he couldn’t imagine what they’d do to protect their homeland. Very few in his unit expected to live through an invasion.

      • As part of one of the US Army’s many combat units staging in the Philippines (158th RCT) and waiting to invade Japan, my dad had already seen horrendous combat across northern New Guinea and the Philippines.

        The death and destruction were not theoretical. As in the case of their dogged and mindless defense of Manila, the Japanese had demonstrated a commitment to a bloody, last-ditch, and very expensive end game. They continued to play this end game and increase its costliness (see: Kamikaze) even though the ultimate end of the game was obvious.

        He never questioned the decision to nuke Japan. He believed that the decision saved his life. His perspective is worth remembering. His perspective is far more valuable than than the wishful thinking of today’s Imagine idealists.

      • pilotmkn Did exceedingly well in his studies of Revisionist Apologist History for Beta Male Millenials.

        Like the rest of the speshul snowflakes, he got an achievement award, and an “A”.

      • Sigh. This left-wing propaganda, again?

        OK, here’s some facts:

        1. The proposals and overtures the Japanese made were rejected because we were demanding an unconditional surrender. “Unconditional” means that the Japanese would dictate none of the terms of the aftermath. The Japanese sealed this fate upon themselves when they failed to make a formal declaration of war before bombing Pearl Harbor. If you review FDR’s speeches following Pearl Harbor, you can see that the goal was the unconditional surrender of Japan as the outcome of their attack on the US. There was no negotiating this issue away, it wasn’t set late in the war. It was a goal set in stone directly after Pearl Harbor.

        2. Yes, we had complete air superiority over Japan. Know what we were going to do with it? As late as July, 1945, Gen. LeMay had a planned immolation of the Japanese cities planned – every other day, a city would be targeted and burned in two waves of B-29’s: the first dropping napalm, the second dropping magnesium flares to set the mess alight.

        The firebombing raids killed more civilians than both atomic bombs combined. The death estimates that LeMay was putting forth for his firebombing missions over Japanese cities were over 1 million civilians that were expected to be killed from the firebombings alone.

        All the left wing idiots who continue to peddle the fiction that dropping the bombs was a “bad thing” and “unnecessary” are ignorant rubes. They honestly think that we would have just done nothing to soften up the Japanese homeland before wading ashore. Most of the people who have spread these venal lies are academics, people who are well known to be soft, supine cowards and physically lazy, inept people. The Marines on Okinawa had seen a foretaste of what invading the Japanese homeland would be like – women using babies in their arms as a way to hand over a grenade to Marines, women coming forward to the lines with grenades in their clothing, etc – to use the western ideals of “we don’t shoot women and kids” in battle. The projected casualties for US forces invading the Japanese main island were over 130,000 KIA and upwards of a million total casualties, and losses on the Japanese side of over a million KIA from firebombing, another 500K from direct ground battle, and countless more wounded, homeless, etc.

        People who think that the Japanese would have been easily defeated without the two atomic bombs are idiots, plain and simple. I’ve talked to Marines who were involved in the island campaign of the Pacific, and even among the Marines, the guys who had to deal with the fresh hell that was Okinawa had to carry the weight of a battle more savage than the rest of the islands combined. I’ve heard more than one veteran of Iwo Jima say “Yea, well, at least I wasn’t on Okinawa.”

        Okinawa was the only island we invaded up to that point that had a significant non-combatant population, and the Japanese impressed military age male civilians into their ranks, raped many of the women and in general, used the civilian population as human shields.

        After Okinawa, there was no doubt in any US military leader’s mind that an invasion of the mainland would be a horrific match to the death, with our men being forced to kill hundreds of thousands to possibly millions of non-combatants. The US military estimated over 100K civilians were killed on Okinawa – out of a pre-battle population of about 300,000 – ie, about a third. Compared to these numbers, the losses due to the atomic bombs were minimal and humane.

      • Wow. This a target rich environment of Hiroshima Revisionism, which has been attempted and discredited in repeated cycles since the 1960s.

        Looks like you guys have it under control, so I’ll sit this one out. It’s time for lunch, anyway. I’ll just be over here if you need me.

    • Look up the firebombing videos of Tokyo and Dresden. Nukes get the credit but the firebombing was equally horrific if not worse. It certainly killed more people during the war. We didn’t need to nuke them as we could have just done the same thing to other cities instead. That being said I do believe it likely saved American lives to do what they did.

      • I am well aware of those attacks. The point is that they didn’t have the desired result, unconditional surrender, nukes did.

        • Absolutely correct. My Japanese is not very bad. For a project, I translated a series of diaries of different people who were in Hiroshima when the bomb hit, and others immediately after, and then a series of the same from Japanese military officials.
          The atomic bomb was the excuse the Emperor and top military leaders needed. Something so out of this world, something new and unseen, something godlike, that they could use as a reason for quitting. Every single one of the civilian diaries I read, the ones that survived Hiroshima to hear of the surrender, did not blame the US, but were furious at their leaders for surrendering. But they weren’t embarrassed. The truly overwhelming catastrophe of the bomb allowed them, in a way, to save face.
          A blockade or the repeated fire bombing would have never accomplished that. We would have had to starve them to death or turn the entire country to ash.
          Which, save a few historical sites, is what I would have preferred.
          I love Japan. I love many of the Japanese people. But after the atrocities they committed against US POWs, I would have preferred we wipe those people from the face of the earth, save maybe Kyoto.

          • The atrocities that the Japanese committed against the US POW’s were mild compared to what they did to the Chinese – like making a family member skin another family member alive, or have the Japanese kill the rest of the family if the person did not comply. Certainly a behavior that the US president needs to apologize to the Japanese for…

        • What drove the point home was the disproportion of logistics necessary to effect the results.

          In both atomic bombings, we sent a three-plane group over the target. Just three B-29’s. That’s it. Three planes. One bomb! ie, two of the planes were there just to gawp at the results. We could have sent just one plane to do the job. One plane, one bomb, one city. That’s a calculus that is hard to overcome.

          The firebombings had veritable superhighways in the sky of B-29’s, fighters, etc. Hundreds upon hundreds of planes. The logistics necessary to effect those firebombing raids were huge – and the Japanese knew it. They’d had to haul in all their munitions, gasoline, spare parts for their own far-flung campaign in the Pacific. They knew that as long as there was a huge logistics chain to mount those raids, they had a glimmer of hope of being able to attack the supply lines and keep the US out of the mainland.

          Once they saw a group of only three planes and one single bomb could torch a city? All bets were off.

        • The 3 B-29s plus the nuke cost roughly the same in capital and human outlay as the entire B-29 program.

          Both programs cost somewhere around 3 Billion dollars each, the Manhattan Project and the ’29s., both programs had tens (If not hundreds) of thousands of contractors working on them…

      • Sometimes it’s not how many you kill, but how spectacularly you do it.

        Horrific though it may be, a firestorm burning a city is a part of war. People can run. they have some chance to escape. The bomb? That leaves a lasting impression.

        Especially when we told them we could rain down this devastation at will.

        • I went to church with a whole lot of Koreans as a kid. The older ones who survived occupation told us stories. We all cried. Some kids nearly pissed themselves with fright. After more than a decade under Tojo’s boot, Korea, China, etc thought our vaporizing 200,000 people and two cities was mercy. The current boo hoo attitude is just another symptom of the prog takeover of academia and its obsession with cultural masochism.

          • Agree in principle, but a technical correction – Hiroshima, less than 50,000 killed; Nagasaki, about 15,000 killed. The 200,000 body count is a revisionist propaganda; it is expected to reach 2,000,000 within a decade.

        • For those unaware, read ‘The Rape of Nanking’

          Here’s a primer:

          https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nanking_Massacre

          The Chinese have *every* reason to hate the Japanese for the atrocities they did in China.

          That’s why I don’t have a lot of sympathy for Japan in the south China Sea hub-bub going on. Vietnam and the Philippines, they have a valid grievance against China.

          I found Obama’s comments on nuclear weapons a bit amusing, considering that Japan has been extracting Plutonium from spent nuclear fuel since the 1960’s or so.

          Estimates have Japan holding at least 20 *tons* of Pu for whatever fun and games they might want to do with it.

          At 20kg per bomb, Japan can build 900 nukes if they wanted, from stocks on hand…

        • @Geoff

          I personally don’t have a problem with modern Japan turning into a nuclear state. They are one of our strongest allies on the planet and would provide an excellent counterbalance to the insanity that is the CCP. (If you have any doubt, just look at the force structure of the JMSDF, it’s basically the escort portion of a carrier strike group designed to support US operations in the area.)

          BTW. The CCP was responsible for far worse atrocities than Nanking.

          I don’t think it’s fair to hold the Japanese people responsible for something nobody currently alive was involved with. It’s no more rational than holding modern Germans responsible for Treblinka.

        • Holy PuPu! I just looked, and the Japanese now have essentially the same stockpile as the US and Russia.

          Knew they were hanging onto the stuff, but never did the math before. Fortunately the majority of Japanese are too into crazy zentai, hentai, and tentacle-oriented-adult entertainment to be quite as ferocious as they once were. That, and the sun has set on the whole Emperor-is-God thing.

        • @16V… You don’t know many Japanese people, do you? Judging their culture by the weird outliers in their entertainment industry is like judging the US by Tila Tequila or Germany by shit porn. I work extensively with a Japanese company and have traveled there quite a bit on business. (That’s after I spent some time down in Okinawa.)

          The Imperial Family is still a much bigger thing in Japan than the royal family is in the UK. They are just a lot more subtle about it.

          There are few more inherently rational countries on the planet than Japan. The only major problem I have with them these days is their rather insane anti-military stance given who their neighbors are.

        • Japan legitimately lost territory as a result of WW II.

          That’s all I was getting at with my comment.

          I have no problem with Japan having nukes, and the political winds there means I believe it eventually will happen, especially if China gets in their face.

          I have a much bigger problem with China’s claim of their ‘nine-dash line’, the ruling from the international court should come down in the next few months, and not in China’s favor.

          China has already said they will not recognize the court’s ruling against them.

          The Obama administration will use the court’s ruling to press their maritime and aviation patrols. Chinese radio traffic has been warning US warships and aircraft that they risk being fired upon.

          China is going to push a serious military confrontation on the current administration. A ship is going to get rammed or an aircraft ‘bumped’ like they did in 2001 in the ‘Hainan Island incident’, where a Navy EP-3E ARIES II signals intelligence aircraft was rammed and brought down in an emergency landing. The Chinese got to completely disassemble and examine our front-line intelligence aircraft.

          The Chinese are out to embarrass Obama. They will do it. They will prove to the world that they can play with the big dogs.

        • pwrserge, Sometimes my attempts at humor are too subtle. Or just not funny, as applicable.

          My point was while there are people who may believe in the monarchy (just like the UK) they aren’t going to give up their life quite so readily. And if you can assemble a platoon (under age 80) who think Akihito is a god, you have some mad skills.

          I don’t disagree that when it’s over, it’s over. Especially when the perps are long dead. My agreement was in historical context, the silly grudges carried now for such stuff are utterly useless. By that standard, I could carry a grudge against countries from every continent save Australia and the Antarctic. Somebody from everywhere in the last 400 years has shot at one of my relatives somewhere on the planet.

      • If the atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki were terrible, then let’s not mention “The Bataan Death March”, “The Rape of Nanking”, “The Burma Railroad”, the execution of wounded POWs in Singapore, or the unspeakable horrors committed by Unit 731 in China (mild examples are wide-scale germ warfare and live vivisection of prisoners during tests).

        To quote Winston Churchill, “they sowed the wind and reaped the whirlwind”.

        My favourite saying is: “Don’t start a war unless you can take the consequences.” “And don’t complain when you lose.”

    • It would have been far better to just sit back and watch the USSR replay Khalkhin Gol on a grander scale. Which is exactly what they were in the process of doing already when the bombs fell (and which people in the ruling circles of Japan have later said had at least as much of an effect on the decision to surrender as the bombs).

      But no, US couldn’t do this, because can’t let them dirty commies steal the thunder once again (first time was in Berlin). Japan was meant to be for Americans to pwn.

      Hence, the bombs.

      • I don’t think that your analysis is correct While Stalin was aware of American plans (perhaps even earlier than Yalta) and, based on that knowledge, accelerated his plans to attack Japan, the US and Britain did not know of Stalin’s massive and accelerated attack. In any case, there would have been no way for the Allies to.judge or predict the effectiveness of the Soviet attack.before it happened.

        • They did know about the attack, because it was agreed upon years in advance, in Tehran, and reaffirmed with more specific time frames in Yalta. Specifically, Stalin pledged to enter the war against Japan in three months after victory in Europe. That pledge was fulfilled in a very pedantic fashion – ground invasion of Japanese-occupied Manchuria began exactly three months later, with a precision of one minute, on August 8, 1945.

          In any case, by the time the decision to drop the second bomb was made, there was nothing to guess – Soviets have already had a million troops poured into Manchuria and another 100k in Sakhalin, and have decimated the Japanese Kwantung Army (which, given the past experience at Khalkhin Gol, and the relative strengths and resources of Japanese and Soviets at the time, was not exactly surprising to anyone). Japanese generals were in the state of utter panic at that point.

          So you could argue that the first bombing was carried out in case Soviets wouldn’t honor their agreement (although surely it was worth the 3-day wait to see?); but there’s no similar justification for the second one.

          The argument of which one of the two – the bombs or the Soviet invasion – prompted the surrender, has been going on pretty much since the day it happened. Pragmatically speaking, it’s obvious that both had to play a part, and the only real question is that of proportions. We do know (from their memoirs etc) that it was the Soviet invasion, rather than the first bomb alone, that triggered the Supreme Council meetings, in which several high-ranking officials plainly stated to the emperor that war is lost, and they have to start working out the surrender right there and now. The second bomb certainly accelerated matters, but even then, the Council was deadlocked. The final decision was made by the emperor, and he referenced both the invasion and the bombs when relaying it to the Council, without ranking those threats; so we’ll never really know which one weighed heavier on his mind when he did it.

          • The Soviet declaration of war was agreed to back in Tehran, but at Yalta and even latter the Allies could not have known neither the scope of the attack, nor its direction, or its effectiveness. The Soviets, as always, were not disclosing any details and there is no evidence that the Allies knew anything on this subject through any clandestine means. Not even the Japanese could expect such a.meteoric advance through the desert that was considered impassable.
            Given ongoing operations of the US Navy, the constant kamikaze attacks and everyday loss of American lives and ships, a decision to end the war by atomic bomb was made on completely logical and reasonable grounds. The issue of dropping two bombs was due to an anticipated reaction of the Japanese gov, who were familiar with nuclear fission process and were aware of the tremendous logistics involved, that they would discount a single bomb as one of a kind and not surrender. That estimate was in fact correct, as the initial reaction was as predicted – the gov refusing to believe that the US had the capacity to make more than one. In the end, it was the combination of the bombs and the Soviet success that tipped the scales. Now, sitting safe at home, it seems to be a popular past time to second guess whether one bomb.was required, or two, or perhaps they should have had dial-an-yield option… Considering how the Japanese conducted the war, the unspeakable atrocities that they committed against millions, they really.ought to be happy that megaton yields were not available back.then.

        • Besides that, an invasion of Japan would have been a totally opposite situation from Khalkhin Gol. In the latter, the Soviets had a significant advantage logistically; but in the former that advantage would have been on the side of the Japanese.

          • Sure, which means that Soviet casualties would have been much more significant. But that’s the thing about the Soviets in that time – they didn’t care about casualties. Heck, they wasted a lot of lives needlessly in Berlin just to take it a few days earlier, on the oft chance that Americans would get there and have some (even symbolic) part in it.

            In terms of their ability to take Japan, though, there was no doubt, just as there was no doubt about the Americans’ ability to do so. Japan already had its industry in shambles, its supplies dwindled, its manpower reserves depleted. USSR, in contrast, was on the rise, with plenty of manpower still (a lot of which were war-hardened veteran soldiers and officers straight from Europe), industry fully rebuilt to the levels above pre-war, and the ruling elites determined to grab as much territory as they could while the opportunity was ripe. It was only the matter of time and lives spent.

            You could make an argument that Japan under Soviet occupation would result in a greater overall loss of life than the bombs. I suspect that Japan would have actually surrendered to US before allowing Soviets to occupy it, though (though they might have lost Hokkaido in addition to the Kurils before learning their lesson).

            Either way, my point wasn’t that bombs weren’t justified, but rather that justification was different from the simplistic “either that, or US invasion of Japan with more casualties in the long run” argument that is usually made. As in Europe, it already had the shadow of the Cold War in the calculations, and it was as much, if not more, about denying the prize to the Soviets, as it was about defeating the Japanese.

    • They don’t count, we don’t like them and they’re brown…

      No Nuke for you!

    • This AGAIN?

      Iran does not have and never has had nuclear weapons. All 16 US intelligence agencies and the Israeli Mossad confirmed on multiple occasions that they had ZERO proof of an Iranian nuclear weapons program. All of Iran’s nuclear material has been under UN inspection for years and the International Atomic Energy Agency said they never detected a diversion of nuclear material away from their civilian reactors. Iran also had no nuclear material enriched enough for a nuclear weapon, which requires enrichment into the 95% range or higher. The small amount of Low Enriched Uranium they had was shipped off to Russia.

      Do just a bare modicum of research before believing this Iran nuke BS.

      • “Do just a bare modicum of research before believing this Iran nuke BS.”

        And then put down the Tehran Times and read something not solely suitable for wiping you ass with.

        Here’s a small collection, of everybody and their brother knowing Iran has a nuke program, they still have a nuke program, and that we know roughly when they’ll have a bomb.

        https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_program_of_Iran

        It’s interesting to know this website has the reach to bring out Revolutionary Guard propagandists. Either that, or this guy is just another Muslim idiot.

        • “Nuclear program” and a workable bomb are two very different things. An actual bomb requires people simultaneously both capable AND willing to put in the effort to build one. In addition to time and resources. For perhaps the initial 15 years post revolution, Iran may have had competent people with enough zeal. But lacked resources. Now, they don’t have the people. Too many expats, too much communication with the outside world to maintain “Great Satan” illusions.

          If you look at Iranian politics, the support base for the hardliners have moved from “born again” Islamists in the educated elite, towards the rural poor. The latter isn’t fertile ground for recruiting nuclear scientists.

          I know it’s unpopular on this site, and am nearly 100% certain Dimbulb-in-Chief has no more clue about what he is doing wrt Iran than about anything else; but denying the Mullahs a credible opportunity to cast “America” as a genuine existential threat to informed Iranians, is probably the safest thing the US could do, wrt Iran obtaining a bomb.

          Heck, the likelihood of the US ending up intervening to “save” Tehran from a Sunni bomb, may well be larger than Tehran being the first Middle Eastern Islamists with one.

          Regardless, as the less sensationalist Hiroshima and Nagasaki death tolls reported in comments above hints at, a bomb here and there isn’t literally the end of the world, either. Life will, for most, go on either way.

          • To remind, Iran cannot be the first Middle Eastern Islamic state with a bomb, because Pakistan has already claimed that honor, at at least parts of it are ME.

            And, frankly, they’re far more worrisome than Iran in that regard. Iran is a state with a strong sense of national identity. Islam plays a significant role in that identity, just as Christianity played a significant role in European identity historically, but does not override everything else to the extent Wahhabism/Salafism/Deobandism does. Thus, Iran has national interests, and its people are conscious of those interests. I think we can all agree that one of the prime national interests that any country can have is to prevent its complete physical destruction. Ayatollahs are powerful, but if they deviate from those interests too much, they can quickly lose that power, and they know it. So Iranian/Persian nationalism keeps religion there in check somewhat (and it helps that most Sunni states are Arab, and there’s considerable historical Arab-Persian enmity dating all the way back to the Islamic conquest of Persia).

            Pakistan, OTOH, is borderline failed state – and when it fails, it has a very high likelihood of rabid fanatics coming to power who care about nothing but Islam, in their extreme political take-over-the-world interpretation of it. Worse yet, those fanatics have already infiltrated both the military and the intelligence services in large numbers, so they have a power structure that can be instantly activated in a take-over, and which will have immediate access to those nukes. And in the meantime, they have Saudi backing…

            Quite frankly, it may well be in the interest of the West to give Iran a carte blanche in the region (sans Israel; but I’m sure a reasonable deal can be negotiated there, with some symbolic gestures by Israelis to give Iranian elites some way to present it favorably to their own populace), and let them be the dominant regional power and keep everyone else under control, even by direct military intervention if and when needed.

            • And how confident to you feel about Iran not making the nuke available to one of its proxies?

              • About as confident as I feel about US, Russia and China doing the same. Again, when a country has national interests, it is a wholly different mindset from fanatics. Iran might be propping up Shia in Iraq, Lebanon etc, but I don’t think they will ever share the bomb if/when they have it. Why would they? Having it in exclusive possession means that they remain the guys in charge, and that their client states would have to depend on them for protection. Why would any sane state, especially one with ambitions of being a regional empire, give that up?

              • A sane state here is the one that cares primarily about its tangible interests here and now, as opposed to preparing for the apocalypse and the world after. Basically, it’s a state with which you can strike meaningful deals, and expect them to stick to their part, so long as it is in their material interest.

                Iran is a sane state by that definition, or at least on the saner part of the spectrum. KSA is less so. Any Salafi-run state is insane.

              • i don’t know where exactly Iran happens to be on the insanity scale, but in my opinion they are off the sanity scale. They may not launch a nuke themselves, but may be very happy to have one transported by a proxy to Tel Aviv. After all, why shouldn’t I take them at their word?

              • For one thing, because that oft-quoted word was mistranslated (or misrepresented, depending on where you are on the tin foil hat scale).

                For another, because political leaders in authoritarian populist countries have to exhibit a certain degree of balls-out machismo to remain popular, and saber-rattling is the easiest and most conventional way to do so. I mean, just recently we’ve had Russia’s head propaganda honcho threaten US with nuclear weapons on air:

                https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OiZp3WFON2k

                Now, do you take it at face value? I don’t; it was simply pandering to his audience inside the country. Iran is not really dissimilar.

                For an example of the same closer to home, look at Trump.

                Another important point is to notice who is saying that. Contrary to popular opinion, Iranian elites are not monolithic, and there is a constant struggle for power there. The conservative, and more nutty, side is represented by the ayatollahs; but if you look at the power dynamics, they have been steadily losing power since the Islamic Revolution (they had occasional high moments, like Ahmadinejad’s presidency, but the overall trend is clear). On the other side you have the moderates and the reformers. And if you look at the political views on that scale, it basically goes from more Islamism to more nationalism (not necessarily more democracy, but that does not really matter to us when talking about their foreign policies).

                Now, if you look at who’s saying all that stuff about Israel and “Great Satan”, it’s mostly the ayatollahs and others in their camp. The reformer faction dabbles in this to some extent, because it is expected of them politically (just as a strong degree of support for Israel is expected in US politically), but for them it’s clearly much more rhetorical.

                Also, the reformer faction is the one that’s spearheading the diplomacy process with the West, so every win on that front (like the recent nuclear deal, and any future deals that might be made, esp. against our common enemies like KSA) tips the balance of power in their favor. I don’t think the transition will be entirely peaceful, but I do think that given where that balance is even today, the reformers are more likely to win in any kerfuffle – especially with our help (so long as it’s covert, otherwise they’ll be denounced as Western lackeys etc).

              • If someone were to do this type of saber-rattling in your face, or mine, and there was no cop around to arrest the xxxx, a jury would have considered it as a justified use of deadly force to stop the threat. Why do you think that a nation of 8 million has to quietly and calmly take this “saber-rattling”?

              • Who said anything about calmly and quietly? Rattle your saber back in response if you feel that is necessary.

                As far as cops and jury, well, there’s no such thing in international affairs, so rules are different there. I mean, you’re free to react as if they weren’t, but that would not be very pragmatic. If, OTOH, your goal is to get somewhere, then you have to learn to deal with such things – or end up in a war with half of the world over perceived slights and offenses.

              • Oh, I didn’t mean to sabre-rattle back. When someone is threatening to kill me, and they have the capability, the prudent response is to kill them first.

              • Then you have missed my point. In international affairs, saber-rattling, especially the one directed at one’s own populace, is not an indication that someone is threatening to kill you. If you were to treat it that way, we’d be waging war non-stop.

              • It wasn’t too long ago that a wacko guy called Adolf did his sabre rattling; the problem was, he meant it. Actually, I can think of several others who also meant it and kept no secret of it. And when that sabre is a nuke, I, for one, do not wish to find out just how good the detonator will be.

              • In general, you can tell one from the other. Adolf did way more than saber rattling – pretty much as soon as he was in power, he got busy actually doing all that, rather than just talking about it. OTOH, when you have some guy just talking and talking, and in very vague terms at that, it’s more likely to be all talk.

                If nukes specifically make you worried, can you tell what you think about that video that I’ve linked earlier? Or, for that matter, about Reagan’s famous “we start bombing in five minutes” joke?

              • Russia is becoming a theocratic rogue state, and the Terrorist in Chief is an enabler. No, I’m not blaming him for Russia’s problems, only that when the traditional world policeman is more interested in golf and undermining his own country (yes, a stretch here; his own country may be Kenya or Indonesia), all kinds of sh*t starts pooping up around the world.

    • Iran doesn’t want nuclear weapons. If they wanted them, they’d have them already. They wanted an independent source of energy so they could sell their oil for big cash.

      And before anyone starts attacking me for being naive, think about this: You don’t believe what the government says about their intentions on anything EXCEPT when it comes to bombing people, then the government is full of honest people and would never lie. I’m trying to be consistent in the thought that the government is never for me and always lies to me.

      • Nope, I don’t need to look at what the government is saying their intentions are. I just need to look at what they’re doing. You don’t bury your ‘peaceful energy program’ under tons of rock and deny access to international inspection if you have nothing to hide. To say Iran doesn’t want nukes is disingenuous. They don’t have them because of numerous setbacks, at least one of which was engineered by the Mossad (the computer virus hat disabled some of their equipment). More to the point, by your logic, Inshouldn’t believe the Obama admin because their intent is obviously the reverse of what they’re saying. Ie it’s the government that’s now claiming Iran is nuke free.

        • “You don’t bury your ‘peaceful energy program’ under tons of rock and deny access to international inspection if you have nothing to hide.”
          You do if you 1. don’t want Israel to bomb the shit out of it.
          2. Want the US to pay for it. They got everything they wanted from the US, and then some.

      • So I have a near limitless stock of oil I can pump out of a hole in the ground at $10/barrel (and and waste NG) burn either in cheap fairly nonpolluting boilers/turbines or gensets to produce cheap electricity.

        OR I can sell the oil at market price (now rather low) and then spend BILLIONS $ on producing Nuc fuel, Building multibillion $ Nuc power plants to make the same elecricity, and more $ for waste storage sights (or just drop the waste on Israeli).

        Yes you’re at a minimum naïve.

        I wonder why dear leader didn’t give the Iranians the wonders of Solar and Wind to produce electricity? Perhaps they want dependable source 24/7.
        .

      • Omer, Please, read the tons of independent sources that all conclude that Iran had a bomb program, they still have a bomb program, that stuxnet set them back, they will eventually get a bomb.

        If Iran just wanted power, they could just buy power plants from any number of vendors. The Shah did, except the revolution happened before they were completed. The only reason you have a nuclear program is to make a bomb.

        • Russians started them out in the early ’60s. Built them a reactor and everything.

          What was Carter’s role?

        • Me bad.

          It looks like I heard wrong. It apparently was Russian in origin, at least…

      • Of course Iran wants nuclear weapons. They would be insane not to, given that their two major enemies in the region, Israel and Saudi Arabia, either have them (Israel), or have means to procure them quickly (Saudi Arabia, via Pakistan).

        Then again, a three-way nuclear detente might actually stabilize the region, so I don’t see why it’s necessarily a bad thing.

  6. An Armed Society is not polite, its check mated. Russia is armed and took part of Ukraine for no other reason than to steal natural gas. Conversation between nations yeild nothing. China is armed and pumped sand onto coral reefs creating islands to control south China seas. We flew a plane over, island building continues. It’s the lack of moral courage to right a wrong, knowing when and where to apply violence to defeat evil.

    Nothing polite about a home invasion or attempted murder or a robbery. The difference between a nation state and our government is its systematically removing citizens ability to lawfully defend, for no other purpose than to pretend evil does not exist.

    • I suspect that symmetrically armed people are indeed more polite than asymmetrically armed people (the ones with the advantage being the less polite of course.) This is in general, there are exceptions.

    • You can always tell when someone is speaking Pashto vs. Dari, even if you speak neither language. Because it takes 3 times as long to say anything in Pashto. Why? Because you have to be extremely careful to be polite and make sure that at no point are you inferring a threat or disrespect. Because there will certainly be repercussions for such an implied insult.
      Why don’t you see anyone cutting people off on Hwy 1 in Southern Afghanistan? Because they will murder your entire family for it.
      It has been my experience that, in societies where everyone has access to weapons, and ordinary people are comfortable with violence, it is indeed a very polite society.
      And yes, home invasions can be polite. I’ve said please and thank you every single time I cleared a house. There’s no excuse for being rude.

      • “ordinary people are comfortable with violence, it is indeed a very polite society.”

        ?

    • None of the nuclear armed countries can win a nuclear war. Nuclear weapons are, as someone said above, a check mate option. Neither side can use them in a conflict without being destroyed in retaliation.

      • “Neither side can use them in a conflict without being destroyed in retaliation.”

        When one’s religion has the end of the world as it’s ideal, there’s a *problem*…

        (I.E., “The 12th Imam”)

        • Don’t be ridiculous. Just where are you going to drop those nuclear bombs? With nation-states, they have large military facilities, ports, important cities, airfields, missile fields, all kinds of hardened targets where there are large military concentrations. There are no such places where one can locate ISIS (as an example). As was once said about Oakland, “there is no ‘there’ there.” Fundamentalist Islam exists wherever there is a single radical, a hidden cell, a single brigade. Theirs is an ideological war that is not dependent upon occupying and controlling any particular geographical area, but rather in controlling the people through fear and intimidation. This is how the VC were successful, and the Taliban, and any other insurgent force (including, for those students of history, the American Revolutionary Army) that you can think of. Strategic weapons are useless in asymmetric warfare. You just end up slaughtering massive numbers of civilians who would rather that the war go somewhere else.

          • I think what he means isn’t that US needs nuclear weapons to deal with ISIS. It’s rather that when it comes to entities like ISIS, they can and will use them in conflict if they can get their hands on it, because they don’t fear retaliation – if Allah wills it, the bombs just won’t detonate; and if they do, well, time to party with the houris.

  8. But we created modern Japan Barry. Peace through strength. The country we have protected for 70 years. Anywho the duffus in chief should know that…btw 16V where do you get the Turkish nukes # from? They’d be a helluva’ lot more bellicose if that were true…a quick perusal in the interwebz reports none. Then again they are destroyed in the last battle…

        • They are =they’re(Turks)…Correct me if I’m wrong but we TRUST Turkish muslims with launch codes?!? I was aware of the insane NATO alliance too…destroyed in Armageddon along with the rest of the muslim alliance. Vividly described in the old and new testament…

        • That we trust the Turkish government at all is only of necessity. The military had always been a secular organization (as a former colony) and kept the religious nutters from taking over. Coups were sometimes needed. There’s an internal struggle throughout the government right now to see whether Turkey leans toward the West as it usually has done, or turns to a Muslim s-hole. The old line generals who would have been plotting a coup right now have been, removed a while ago, so I have no idea how this will play out.

          They don’t have missiles, just B61 dial-a-yield gravity bombs. Which series I do not know, but yield up to 340 kilotons. Probably the 10-170 kiloton models. Just guessing.

        • Oh I know awful countries like Pakistan have nukes. Fear of retaliation keeps ’em in check. Like Turkey. And Turkey used to be “sort of ” allies with Israel. If your goal is the Mahdi appearing out of a well-well… And Israel has between 100-500 but no one really knows. Good times in the last days…

  9. Paraphrasing the speech…

    “We, meaning the whole species, need to reengineer humans so all that uncomfortable violence stuff stops happening.

    Meanwhile, we, meaning the U S, can execute a plan to draw down our arms, as if people had become angels already, and it’ll all be fine.

    Also, war is terrible and people who did terrible, least awful things at the time are ours to second guess at our convenience, because their situation, and what they did in it in some ways sucked. Nevermind that they didn’t make the situation or their available options in it. We’re better now.”

    Did I get that about right?

    • No, not even close. There is not one word in his speech about unilateral disarmament, rather he talked about universal nuclear disarmament, a worthy goal given that nuclear weapons have no battlefield use and are solely an end-game solution–if we are destroyed, your destruction is assured as well. The fact is that Russia and the US have for the last decade or so (I can’t remember when it started) been mutually drawing down their arsenals and destroying both warheads and launch vehicles. And it is a fact that before this process started, the two of us had the power to kill all human life on the planet and poison it for a hundred years five times over. I think we are down to two or three times over at this point, and this number will continue to drop as warheads age and are withdrawn from service.

      • Mark, This “draw-down” has been going on since the ’70s (SALT/SALT II). START was next, in the 90s. Of course, it was kind of unilateral, the Soviet didn’t reduce warheads until the 90s.

        The fun part of these “reductions” is that they are mostly decorative. We’ve both sort of cut back on delivery platforms, but don’t you worry taxpayer – between the US and Russia we still each have about 8,000 warheads (that we both admit to anyway) plus the US has another 2K “reserve”, plus 3K “zombies” (re-assemble), plus another 1K of miscellaneous, plus another 4K waiting to be scrapped. We’ve disassembled around 15K, but most of the actual reductions, aren’t as “actual” as a cursory glance would indicate.

        We also have enough refined plutonium sitting around to quickly get us right back up to the 65,000 total that we had during the peak.

        • “We also have enough refined plutonium sitting around to quickly get us right back up to the 65,000 total that we had during the peak.”

          That begs a question – What (rationally) does one do with that many *tons* of Pu from Savannah River and Hanford?

          It’s super-futzy to use in reactors (As in molten Sodium reactors) for electricity generation, really, it’s only use is weaponry.

          About the only thing I can come up with is drill into a subduction zone on a continental plate and return it to the mantle or launch it into the sun.

          What the hell else can you do with it?

      • Well, Mark, that’s one wishful interpretation. However, when listening to President “You Can Keep Your Doctor” I am inclined to look for what other meanings can be driven through the words that come out. “Nobody is coming for your guns.” says the current administration which has sought, repeatedly, to reduce, restrict, and eliminate citizens’ access to guns in common use.

        “Nobody is coming for your guns…” meaning nobody has a concrete program, in operation now, kicking down doors, to do universal confiscation, that you can prove. BUT the laws that amount to “No guns for you.” just keep coming. And coming.

        This administration are masters of “Undulating Lies.” (Look it up.) Also of “Motte and Bailey Arguments” (Look that up.), which are often the means of an Undulating Lie.

        I would be delighted if this President or someone authoritative in his administration would say what you understood, as plainly and publicly as you did. I didn’t hear that.

        You could ask them to say what you did, and see if they go for it. I am not hopeful.

        • Get real, Jim. Obama terms out in 8 months. He couldn’t BEGIN to dismantle the nuclear stockpile we have in that time frame. (Unless he uses it, and that is a fairly unlikely scenario). Last report I know of is we have app. 7000 warheads, many of which are at sea and abroad. Russia has even more. Eliminating nuclear weapons is a reasonable goal, but it is not likely to occur in our lifetimes, least ways not unless there is universal disarmament (or a big war where it won’t matter anymore who has any left). I can assure you that at this point in history, neither Russia nor China will be eliminating their stockpiles, which assures that neither will we. To this point Krauthammer’s editorial in today’s paper suggests that, despite good intentions, history is not an arrow, but a repeating cycle of geopolitical maneuver and control. Until the human animal changes–and that is highly unlikely without thousands years more of evolution–the cycle will continue to repeat.

        • Get real, Jim. Obama terms out in 8 months. He couldn’t BEGIN…

          I’m sorry. I thought we were talking about what President Obama said in his Hiroshima speech. On review, yes, yes we were. (Inconvenient, those facts, I know.) Reviewing the text of the speech, it’s all right there: a bunch of high-sounding, non-specific rhetoric, lawyerly language crafted to be interpreted one way, then at convenience the other. The most concrete parts were about how we need to change the nature of people, and until everyone grows up, disarm because kids shouldn’t be playing with atomic matches.

          That speech is of a piece with remarks from the Rose Garden in which the *specific* event is never called “terrorism”, “a terrorist attack”, “the work of terrorists”, “performed by people associated with AQ”, or etc. etc. Yet, several paragraphs later, after alluding to the attack in NYC on 9/11, words about terrorism is never acceptable / will never be tolerated are also said. This EULA politic.

          The Hiroshima speech counts as “disarm unilaterally”, except he never quite said that, when that’ interpretation is convenient, in exactly the same way as the Rose Garden remarks both do and do not identify the events remarked upon as terrorism. And you can keep your doctor. Too bad you were too dumb to understand what that really meant. You probably don’t even know what the meaning of “is”, is. (Hint – depends on what’s convenient at the moment.)

          Look up “Undulating Lies”, “Motte and Bailey Arguments” or any of the persuasion techniques inventoried by Cialdini in his book (Prof at U-Arizona, heavily footnoted to peer-review literature, referring to well-designed experiments – I’m just preemptively dealing with the “He’s a hack.” ad homenim. )

          /On Point about The New Subject: President Obama’s ability to Disarm over the Next 8 Months

          President “I have a pen and a phone” is well aware of the impact of positioning, proclamations of policy, pageantry (like, say, Greek columns behind a nomination acceptance speech in an amphitheater.) He is particularly aware of and adept at using the power of the Presidency as Head of State (vs. Head of Government) to establish norms, and influence developments. This is why a President gives speeches in foreign capitols, at the UN, and similar.

          It’s an action, it does things, and it is intentional.

          Your presentation of the newly-introduced side-issue (Oh, shiny!) is a lovely example of a Motte and Bailey Argument, so perhaps you don’t need to look that up. For those who don’t get it, “See, he isn’t doing anything, because he can’t disarm all 7,000 warheads in his remaining 8 months (The Motte)… therefore influencing policy, conducting foreign relations, articulating norms, and etc. doesn’t count (The Bailey).”

          BTW, “Get real.” is both ad homenim, and an attempt to personalize and instigate anger, so clearly, you’ve also read your Alinsky.

          You wanna have a conversation about what might sensibly be done, I’m game. You wanna keep playing games, I’m bored. You’re not very good.

  11. When considering the nuking the have given their own economy, they may soon pine for the real deal.

  12. Wow — O’Bama is channeling Ronald Reagan!

    Well, until he mentions rifles, anyway.

  13. POTUS has kissed a lot of ass in his 7+ years in office. Japanese ass, Chinese ass, BLM ass, Iranian ass, Saudi ass, Feminazi ass, you name it.

    You know, I’m beginning to suspect that he likes it.

  14. Is he out of his f**king mind???? Does he not remember why we had to drop bombs on Hiroshima?

    Al Qaeda isn’t afraid of getting nuked (with 72 pieces of pussy waiting for them on the other side), but North Korea and China are both afraid of total annihilation.

    Everyone wrote your senators and reps.

  15. Ah, atom bombs, the pipe bomb of mass destruction.

    Both the physics and the technology for a gun-style atom bomb are pretty straightforward. Sure, using boosters and going to thermonuclears gives you a more compact device, but that mostly matters when you want to carry a number of them at once on a missile or plane.

    The destructive power also goes as the cube root of the yield, so in terms of sheer destructiveness, yield matters less than placement.

    So sure, go nuke free, but realize that a terrorist who can get his hands on XX kilos of fissile material, and isn’t too worried about the long-term health effects from working with heavy metals, is more of a threat than a nation like Russia or China.

    Once again seeing the wrong problem and working towards a solution that wouldn’t help anyway.

    • It seems to me that a terrorist building a nuclear device is not a problem that will be deterred or eliminated with the use, or the threat of use, of nuclear weapons. The only deterrent to a terrorist is death. You don’t drop a nuke on a bomb making facility, especially since a nonnuclear device will more than suffice. Nuclear weapons are a deterrent only as against nation states.

  16. The nuclear bombing at hiroshima and nagasaki was an war crime that is fact and truman is an war criminal.

    Mass killing in the art of flatrate of civil persons is an crime and not an war right !!

    • There is a translation issue with whatever it is you wrote. In any event, in war no one talks about rights, More importantly, until the late 20th Century , killings of civilians, even the intentional killings of civilians, was a normal consequence, even a desired result. When Rome crushed Carthage, it starved the population into submission. Buy the time the Romans actually invaded the city, most of the population had died of starvation and disease. The 50,000 that were left were slaughtered or sold into slavery. The fields were salted to assure that “nothing would grow for a hundred years.” For the times, this was not unusual, and there was a long history of the same tactics used by other civilizations before it, including the Greeks (although the Romans were probably the most adept at it). Throughout the Middle Ages in Europe, subjugation of walled cities was accomplished by siege, and the intentional catapulting of rotting animals into the city to spread pestilence and disease. In China, the wars of the various empires killed millions of soldiers and peasants alike. We all know, I assume, what happened in Europe during WWI and WWII, which of course included the bombing of cities and the killing of civilians, including but not limited to the German bombing of London, and of course the US bombing of Dresden. The casualties among civilians, not just including the Jews, were in the tens of millions; and no one knows how many Stalin slaughtered after the war. US soldiers in Korea, unable to halt the flood of refugees, and unable to distinguish between refugees and the communist combatants often c=secreted in their midst, killed hundreds of people. The Viet Cong were infamous for taking the war to the people–their people–with killings to spread terror, to punish collaborators, and to ensure a shadow government that operated at night, much as the Taliban operate in Afghanistan today. The main reason we have not fully succeeded in our current wars has much to do with OUR rules of engagement that allows us to attack only people who are actually shooting at us. So give me a break and go back to your opium pipe. Humans are a particularly nasty animal.

    • So in your mind, condemning well over a million people to death by slow, conventional warfare is somehow preferable to vaporizing +/-75,000 and ceasing hostilities outright. Nice try, thanks for playing, stop reading history books written by progressive hacks.

      • I guess they can’t do the math, or just can’t stomach making hard choices.

        What part of more people would have died is a problem for you guys? More. And far more painful and slow deaths of torture and agony had we invaded. Not to mention our losses, for a war, that, once again, we didn’t start.

  17. If it could somehow be arranged that every single nuclear weapon in the world could be dismantled, and that no one would ever build another, then sure, I’d favor American nuclear disarmament. But that is pure fantasy. Even if every nuclear power agreed to dismantle their nuclear arsenals, nothing could stop a crazy rouge nation (e.g., North Korea), from developing some kind of atom bomb. And if Kim Jong Il is the only world leader with a nuclear arsenal, even a crude one, the world would be a much more horrible a place than it is now.

  20. The nuclear non-proliferation treaty requires the recognized nuclear weapons states (i.e. the five permanent members of of the UN Security Council) to negotiate nuclear disarmament “in good faith”. Not just Obama but any American president would say something similar, if only to indicate that we take our treaty obligations seriously.

    It’s empty rhetoric, particularly considering Obama has proposed spending a trillion dollars over the next generation improving and modernizing our nuclear weapons stockpile.

  21. The hilarity of people comparing nukes (the ultimate expression of indiscriminate government insanity) to small arms (the tool of individual self-defense against government insanity).

  22. I just wish people would read Hell To Pay, Operation DOWNFALL and the Invasion of Japan, 1945-1947. by D.M. Giangreco.
    Dad was scheduled to invade Kyushu on 11-1-1945.
    Estimates were 1 million American and 10-20 million Japanese casualties.
    Dad was involved in heavy fighting in Luzon during the Summer of 1945.
    Japan was not peaceful.

  23. At least Obama doesn’t speak for me, I’m a Kiwi. God, you Americans must be embarrassed. At least until Trump offers his pearls of wisdom in his inauguration speech.
    My father was scheduled to go onto a troop ship for J-Force, to prepare for the invasion of Japan. Luckily the bombs were dropped and he was pulled out of that duty. We found our much later that my aunt (who worked in Army personnel) finagled a major into releasing Dad, who never knew this. Without nukes, I may never have been born.

    Japan still denies its war crimes, and no mention of WWII is made in their school history books. Shame is one thing, denying who you are is another. They still celebrate their “glorious” war dead. They have benefited from American reconstruction, and limit their warfare to the economic and industrial kind.

    My country went a bit crazy in the 1980s, after the French bombed the Rainbow Warrior. We banned US Navy ships from visiting, and set up a “no nukes” policy that is as effective as the “no guns” rules that many of your businesses and institutions have. Helen Clark was virulently antiAmerican from her student days, and is our embarrassment. John Key is an American in all but accent, but is just another rich prick who is running the country for the rich. You’ll find out with Trump what that feels like.

    I think Obama, having not been able to achieve anything worthwhile, is spending the remainder of his term poisoning the well for the next incumbent. Lot of damage to fix.

    • Good info I do want to say, though., that Obama did accomplish much of what he intended to do – purposely caused more damage to the US than bin Laden. He clearly describes in his book.his hatred for America and his conviction that most of the world’s problems are because of the White man.

    • Japanese certainly do have WW2 in their textbooks. But yes, they gloss over many of their war crimes, or at least reduce them in scope, and make it sounds more like it was “excesses” on the ground, not a consistent policy.

      As far as celebrating the war dead, everyone does it – Germans do as well, as do Finns etc. What makes Japanese celebration obnoxious is that they specifically, by name, honor the spirits of war criminals.

      • Admittedly, my knowledge on this is based on press reports, but if they could be trusted, the Japanese textbooks go much further than glossing over their war crimes. One may think that Mother Teresa was Japanese.

    • I’d love to see NZ one day.

      Decent gun laws, and home distillation (and consumption!) of hard alcohol is legal.

      Were I still drinking, it would be heaven…

      *sob*

      • Also fully legalized prostitution. They need to figure something out with weed, and they’ll be the Las Vegas of the world.

        OTOH, I think that a lot of people here would scoff at some other things. Like, say, NZ parliament having a quota system for the natives (Maori).

  24. At the time the bombs were dropped on Japan we were at war with Japan. I would not give you a nickle for a pol or a ranking officer that put concern for the enemy above concern for our side.

    The japanese citizens had a .gov that thought nothing of putting it’s people in harms way. The real war crime would have been an American leader putting American lives at risk to protect Japanese lives.

    • Germans used the same justification to burn down several hundred villages in Belarus and Ukraine, in reprisal for partisan attacks.

      • I know. In the socialists/leftist play book it’s important to point out how America is as evil as nazi germany and all those other fascist countries.

        Wow. I wish you guys would get some original material.

        • I didn’t say anything about America. I merely pointed out that your “well we were at war, so anything goes” justification was exactly the kind of thing that Germans used. I don’t think that American leadership actually made decisions based on that. If they did, the Japanese civilian casualties would be way higher in areas liberated or occupied by American troops. Thankfully, they were much more nuanced than that – definitely more so than the Axis, or for that matter than Soviets, and I would also say more so than Brits (who had a tendency to go for revenge for the sake of revenge on more than one occasion).

          For some reason, it’s depressingly common for American right-wingers today to cite such justifications retrospectively. I remember a guy from USMC who went on a rant about Gitmo back in Bush days, which basically boiled down to the same thing – “whatever it takes to defeat the enemy” – and also said that he was a soldier and he wouldn’t question orders from a lawfully elected president (funnily enough, he didn’t seem to have the same mind about Obama later, but I digress). I asked him if he could say “my honor is loyalty”, and he said it would be a fine motto that he’d be proud to sign up to. I then told him to google it… what an epic meltdown that was. ~

        • I never said anything goes. I said I wouldn’t give 5 cents for a pol or a ranking officer that gave more concern for the enemy than his own side.

          You’re a socialist. I believe I’ve read enough of your comments to know this. And like a good socialist you’ve programmed yourself to find any moment to compare America to the worst of the world.

          • It’s kinda amusing that you’re so obsessed with this whole American exceptionalism thing that you sincerely believe that everyone who disagrees with you is equally obsessed with “bashing America” or some such.

            As far as comparisons go, that’s how you study objects of interest – by comparing their properties. Pretty basic stuff.

            • Actually, America was exceptional. The US Constitution is unique in the world in specifically allowing the government only certain enumerated rights, while the people have all the rights and freedoms outside of those. All other constitutions or parliamentary systems or monarchies allow specific rights and freedoms to the citizens, granted by the government. The US is 180 degrees opposite. That is the basis for the phenomenal growth in every endeavor that was achieved by the US. As you know, there is a concerted effort by the liberal elites, with the Terrorist in Chief openly stating so, that American exceptionalism must be destroyed. His world tours to apologize for everything that America had done right is one example of it, with the trip to Japan specifically so.

              • >> Actually, America was exceptional.

                It is, but it’s not exceptional about everything.

                >> The US Constitution is unique in the world in specifically allowing the government only certain enumerated rights, while the people have all the rights and freedoms outside of those. All other constitutions or parliamentary systems or monarchies allow specific rights and freedoms to the citizens, granted by the government.

                That is actually not true. US was the first, and as such, a model for many constitutions around the world. Most of them grant more powers to the state, but the general principle of such grants is not unique.

                >> As you know, there is a concerted effort by the liberal elites, with the Terrorist in Chief openly stating so, that American exceptionalism must be destroyed. His world tours to apologize for everything that America had done right is one example of it, with the trip to Japan specifically so.

                You cannot destroy exceptionalism – either something is exceptional, or it isn’t.

                And Obama didn’t apologize for anything in Japan – in fact, if you read his speech, it is clearly worded very carefully specifically to dodge the whole apology thing – so…

              • American “exceptionalism” does not mean exceptional in everything, of course. America is not Mars. But the US system did create an exceptional basis for exceptional freedoms and exceptional achievements. That always was a source of envy and hate, from people that for whichever reason were incapable of partaking in these benefits. That is the main reason for the “Great Satan.” What is amazing is the American socialist culture that hates their country, rejects the opportunities and marches toward the GULAG.

                As to other countries having a very similar constitution – which ones? Oh, I know that Stalin’s constitution was very similar, but I doubt that it helped anyone during their arrest/torture/trial/execution.

              • Constitution of Switzerland, for example. They even have a 10A equivalent:

                “The Cantons are sovereign insofar as their sovereignty is not limited by the Federal Constitution; they shall exercise all rights which are not transferred to the Confederation.”

              • Not being an expert on international law, I will go on a limb here, but will say that although the Swiss constitution was influenced by the US, it still considers the State as supreme; it is the State that grants citizens their rights, not the citizens that leave limited, enumerated powers to the state. However, due to a fair amount of freedom in Switzerland, it is one of the most sane and prosperous countries.

              • The U.S. Constitution is based to a large extent on research done by Thomas Jefferson into pre-Norman forms of government in the British Isles, going back to pre-Saxon times. The unwritten constitutions of those peoples, including the Scots in the north, vested authority in the (weapon-bearing) people of a tribe and later of a kingdom, so in a sense the U.S. Constitution is not the first to set authority in the people. It is, however, the first to specifically rest that authority of the people on the fact that rights inhere in individuals, a concept that arose from the Enlightenment.

  25. So, maybe I missed it, but did he actually apologize or no? I don’t see it anywhere in any of the speech text.
    And I don’t see anything about whether we should or should not have dropped the bombs.

    • No, he did not apologize or in any way criticize that decision. It was all about “let’s make sure that this never happens in the future”, which can be read differently depending on where you’re coming from.

  26. You all remember when Reagan made a legitimate offer to Gorbechev to totally disarm the US of nukes if the USSR did the same? No? Reagan was serious about it. Obama is just blowing smoke here.

  27. Man, I was right after all, anyone who hates Barack Obama is a racist, bigoted, black-hating scumbag cunt, and YOU ARE a racist, bigoted, black-hating scumbag cunt. No doubt about that. Yes, another day, Another living proof that I was right. Anyone who hates Barack Obama IS, in fact, a racist, bigoted, black-hating scumbag! No doubt about that. It sucks that today’s racists, bigots, black-hating extremists falsely call themselves “Patriots” when they are anything but!

    It’s because of cunts like you I believe hatred of this President comes from racism and bigotry, because it does. President Obama said it was an”Evil” deed that was done, he did not call American’s evil, he called the deed “Evil” and we should mourn the fallen and move forward. He wanted to put away the violence of our past and rid us of the “Evil” it spawned.

    Can you not actually read? Or hear? He said the War, the World War rose out of humanity’s basest instincts, nationalist fervor, the need for domination. That was a reference to Japan starting the War. The War that ended in Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Geez.

    Yes, Japanese started the war, but they didn’t bomb civilian populations. Re. the surrender, the discussions were already at the tail end and it was only a matter of time before that happened. Dropping the bomb was indeed a terrible instinct, driven by the ego to show off its power to the world. Secondly who cared about the yellow people? If German was in Japan’s place, in no way US would have nuked Germany.

    It’s obvious, it’s racism and bigotry, pure and simple!

    Have the rest of you forgotten what Bush and his buddies did to America, how many young men were killed and injured, not to speak of the economical disaster. Is your memory that short. Well i will forgive you for your ignorance this once, but please get your heads out of the sand. You must really hate Eisenhower for calling the Military Industrial Establishment the greatest threat to America, and he was a War Hero, and a Republican..You must also hate Reagan who dedicated his Presidency to abolishing Nukes from the face of the earth…..Wait, why do I keep forgetting, they were white Americans, so it was okay, but when a black American President does it, he’s a traitor?

    It’s obvious, it’s racism and bigotry, pure and simple! Your father would have been ashamed of you for lying about the current President of the United States. There was no apology, and THERE NEVER WAS! that’s why you don’t quote anything from the speech. Evidently, honor and honesty were traits not passed on to you.

    Some educated types may want examples of treason and impeachable offenses, but you aren’t educated types. . Also if you look at his track record compared to other Presidents, then you can see that Obama is actual not the worst President we ever had. I believe Andrew Jackson and GW Bush Jr. Take the two worst President slots.

    Obama isn’t a Muslim and doesn’t have any idea of his own. He’s a bought politician doing others work by proxy. He’s probably a Christian, although him being an atheist wouldn’t surprise me.

    I hope you drop dead, Mr./Mrs. Sanctimonious, holier than thou, author of this comment. If you want to see something truly repulsive, take a look in the mirror. I think you can’t stand the fact that a BLACK MAN was ELECTED PRESIDENT of the UNITED STATES and has more brains in his left pinky than you will ever have, while you have to scrub toilets and write hateful drivel like this. You should be ashamed of yourself.

    Calling the POTUS a POS and a fraud seems to the usual calling call for you right-wing racists and bigots like you!

    What an historic moment. Intelligent, educated people understand what our President is really doing for this country. Making the world respect us, again. To the inevitable, ignorant, racists calling him a traitor and worst president ever, aren’t you tired of being on the wrong side of history, always? I bet you’re all really disappointed that he didn’t apologize, like you hoped..

    • If you want to write an epic rant, at least fact-check it properly.

      >> Japanese started the war, but they didn’t bomb civilian populations.

      There was no side in WW2 that did not bomb civilian populations at some point. That’s what “total war” means. Here’s an example of Japanese not only bombing civilians, but doing so deliberately for terror effect.

      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bombing_of_Chongqing

      >> If German was in Japan’s place, in no way US would have nuked Germany.

      There’s no evidence supporting that hypothesis. Indeed, the bombing to which US (and UK) did subject Germany was actually far worse than nuclear bombs that were dropped on Japan, in terms of overall casualty count. 25k civilians died in Dresden alone. In fact, if you look at the total count of civilians who died from Allied bombs in both Germany and Japan, the number of Germany is higher.

      Furthermore, according to Leslie Groves himself, FDR had explicitly instructed him to drop the bomb on Germany if Allies were not victorious already by the time they produced one.

      • Int19h, don’t waste your time on that epic rant. That’s just an example of the public uneducation system – racism, Bigotry, Racism, bigotry, Racism, Bigotry, RACISM, BIGOTRY…

  28. The dropping of the Atomic Bomb actually cost American lives as it prolonged the war by 3 additional months while America raced to complete the construction of the bomb even though the U.S. Government knew and admitted they knew the Japanese wanted to surrender unconditionally. They only requested that their emperor not be killed and the U.S. Government knew that killing the Emperor was totally off the table as Douglas MacArthur had warned them a guerrilla war would go on for decades if the Emperor was killed.

    Truman dropped the Bomb because he did not want the Russians to invade and occupy Japan as that would have cost the American Businessman billions in profits during the coming years. The U.S. has had a long sorry history of mass murder in Asia in their attempts to rape economically all of the Asian countries starting with Commodore Perry in the mid 1800’s when he invaded Japan. The invasion of China in the late 1800’s which resulted in the Boxer rebellion which took well over 1/2 million Chinese soldiers lives and even worse before that war was even over the invasion of the Philippian islands were 1/4 million women and children were slaughtered for the greed of U.S. Businessmen eager to rape the Philippian economy. Every U.S. intellectual condemned the Pilipino war. This was Truman’s major reason for the slaughter of two Japanese cities that were not military targets.

    Truman also had to justify the expense of developing the bomb so that he could be re-elected and he knew that he could also claim to be the avenger of Pearl Harbor even though the attack came as retaliation because of General Chennault and his mercenaries that had previously been attacking the Japanese Air Force and Army fighting in China. And before anyone claims the Flying Tigers were not there until after Pearl Harbor this is not correct as Chennault was training mercenaries and even piloting older aircraft himself long before Pearl Harbor and the arrival later after Pearl Harbor of the advanced P40 aircraft and American Pilots to fly them.

    Truman was also a rabid racist and one of his close contributors also urged him to annihilate every Asian possible. Truman even hated the White East Europeans and as a Congressmen along with his close friends in the racist Klu Klux Klan, he helped to pass a law cutting off immigration from Europe pre-WWII when at the time the Steel and Auto industries actually needed more immigrants.

    General Eisenhower as well as General Douglas MacArthur were both against dropping the Bomb as well as other military and civilian advisors to Truman.

    For a complete detailed sickening blow by blown account of what actually took place here is link that describes it in horrific cold blooded detail.

    http://www.ihr.org/jhr/v16/v16n3p-4_Weber.html

    • Its also worthy of note that Both the U.S. and Britain have locked up for 100 years under the lame excuse of national security much of the real truth of what happened in WWII as not to embarrass and in previous years prosecute any living Government Officials or their families.

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