POSTED RESPONSE TO A COLUMN BY EDALAT AND SHAHABI IN THE GUARDIAN
The savage and truly ignorant comments are piling up on this topic. It is no surprise they come from people too timid to use their own names.
First, America's atomic attack on Japan was completely unnecessary. Every serious student of history knows this.
The Japanese, well before the atrocities, had put out serious feelers telling the Allies that they were ready to surrender, the only proviso being that they be allowed to keep the Emperor.
America summarily ignored these. It insisted on complete, abject, unqualified surrender. It was the epitome of pointless arrogance, a characteristic we so often still see.
In effect, America used two nuclear weapons on civilians over the issue of unqualified surrender versus surrender and keeping the Emperor.
Ironically, the Japanese then were allowed to keep the Emperor.
The U.S. had a second motive for the atomic bombing, one it kept secret. It wanted to prove to Stalin that it was mad enough to actually use the bombs Stalin knew they had.
And so they did, achieving at least two interesting results.
One, Stalin, of course, redoubled his efforts at getting the bomb and he succeeded, undoubtedly benefiting by the guilt of American and British elites. The full story has still not been told, and I think it likely that just as Russia's former master spy, Sudoplatov, claimed, that Oppenheimer himself was involved.
Many highly intelligent people felt it was a moral imperative to not allow America to use its monopoly against the rest of the world. The rise of savage McCarthyism scared many abroad and in the United States, especially in light of America's willingness to annihilate cities.
And they were right to be afraid. In the 1950s, the United States had definite plans to launch a pre-emptive attack on Russia. Madmen like General Lemay were influencing policy.
The British Cambridge spies were partly motivated by their horror at America's behavior. And this horror was shared by a good deal of the British establishment, something which helps explain the luck and success of this circle of spies.
Of course, the effort to demonstrate to Stalin that America was mad enough to use the bomb had echoes decades later during America's holocaust in Vietnam.
Nixon not only seriously considered using nuclear weapons, but he developed the 'madman' theory that resulted in America's horrific mass murder of civilians with carpet bombing.
Nixon wanted to demonstrate to the Vietnamese that he was mad enough to do mad things to frighten them into settling on his terms. If this wasn't state terror and blackmail, nothing ever was.
These are just some of the disastrous results of America's insane decision to use the atomic bomb. It was an utter mistake in every respect.
Any Japanese official who said otherwise is like any official anywhere who says something factually wrong, and of course, there is a faction in Japan which constantly seeks to serve America in the same way Blair has.
