The Other McCain

"One should either write ruthlessly what one believes to be the truth, or else shut up." — Arthur Koestler

On This Day In 1945…

Posted on | August 9, 2013 | 57 Comments

— Wombat-socho


…the United States Army Air Force dropped an atomic bomb on Nagasaki, and six days after that the Japanese agreed to an unconditional surrender. Ever since then, all manner of intellectualloids have been moaning about the inhumanity of it all, how it didn’t need to happen, and 31 other flavors of morally superior nonsense. Ace has a really excellent post which he admits is nothing more than an extended tease to get people reading Paul Fussell’s Thank God for the Atom Bomb and Other Essays, which he generously excerpts in the post.


I’m not going to rehash Fussell’s arguments, especially since I’ve seen them before in George MacDonald Fraser’s Quartered Safe Out Here; the TL;DR version is that some sorry whiners think Japanese lives were more important than the lives of American men in uniform*. Strange but true. I don’t have a lot of sympathy for that argument, and think that anyone holding that opinion ought to consider getting a brain implant. One look at how the landings would have gone is in Alfred Coppel’s The Burning Mountain; if you enjoy reading about bloodbaths and slaughterhouses, this will be right up your alley. Sweet dreams. I for one am grateful we had the bomb, because the alternative would have been a lot worse for all concerned.

*Also Australian, British, Chinese, Dutch, Filipino, French and Indian soldiers, sailors, and airmen, to say nothing of civilians in the war zones.


Category: Ace of Spades, History, Intellectuals

Comments

57 Responses to “On This Day In 1945…”

  1. Evi L. Bloggerlady
    August 11th, 2013 @ 7:41 am

    The bombs saved lives, for all concerned.

  2. Proof
    August 11th, 2013 @ 4:51 pm

    You rely on “facts” from books you don’t have, can’t remember the titles of, and you rely on your half century old memory of what they said and your interpretation of what you read?

    You clinging to the moral superiority of your own private and unverifiable set of facts, is the most amusing thing I’ve seen online in a long time.*

    *I’m quoting that from memory. I read it in 1958, on a schoolbus returning from a field trip to Cincinnati. The bus was #6 as I recall. It was yellow.

  3. Proof
    August 11th, 2013 @ 4:56 pm

    There’s an old ‘Willie & Ethel’ cartoon, where Willie laments the fact that he can never prove this one guy wrong, because he always starts his arguments with, “Back on my planet…”

  4. Quartermaster
    August 11th, 2013 @ 9:34 pm

    If you like making a clown of yourself, who am I to judge? If you want to swallow the propaganda you were fed in publick Skools, why should I care? Believe what you will.

    I did not enter this as an academic discussion, and neither did anyone else. Yet, when someone challenges the propaganda, they fly all over themselves, acting as though they wanted the war to go on indefinitely.

    My observation of such battles has been that they smoke out the phony conservatives. You, along with several others here that have acted so wounded are simply phonies. If you don’t like what I presented, I really don’t care. The questions of the propaganda were not original with me, nor with they from libtards, or phonies like you and several others here.

    You want to believe otherwise, feel free. I don’t care. I know what the facts are and I’ll live with them.

  5. Proof
    August 11th, 2013 @ 10:06 pm

    Your projection, lack of any real evidence to back up your dubious assertions, and pomposity are all duly noted.

  6. Quartermaster
    August 12th, 2013 @ 6:32 am

    Dubious? Perhaps to a man who is willing to swallow what he was told by his propagandists posing as teachers. Once more, I choose the facts i discovered in my own reading.

    Projection? Pot, meet kettle.

    Pompous? ROFL! Read your own garbage and the attitude it conveys. I’m not trying to force anything down anyone’s throat, or make them out as something they are not. Phony describes you quite well.

    Farewell Mr. “Proof.” I’ve made my last on this thread.

  7. Proof
    August 12th, 2013 @ 11:33 am

    Shorter Quartermaster: “Blah, blah, blah. I choose my own facts” Really? Choose any facts about the moon being made of green cheese?

    Some of us look to an objective reality, which is quantifiable. You, OTOH, are certifiable. The facts are there whether you “choose” them or not. You apparently, cannot find any, or your arse with both hands. And yet you seek to play the propagandist you accuse us all of having. Projection: it’s not just in movie theaters!

    Your projection and lack of any verifiable, objective truth to back up your flimsy argument and even flimsier thinking are duly noted. If the assumptions you’ve made about me are anything akin to the assumptions you made about any book you might have read, which you did not color first, then it is completely understandable why you get so many things wrong.

    ” I’ve made my last (steaming pile) on this thread.”

    There! Fixed it for you!

    Now, we wait for the overweening narcissist who is “done with this thread” to reappear in 3-2-1…