There was a time when U.S. Presidents were expected to go overseas and promote the country as a champion of values and ideals. But President Barack Obama has taken mea culpa self-flagellation to new heights with his slight against the Greatest Generation, however inadvertent. Here’s an excerpt from a column by Bret Stephens:
“As the only nuclear power to have used a nuclear weapon,” said the president, “the United States has a moral responsibility to act.”
Now there’s a line to linger over. Implicitly, it suggests that the nuclear challenges we now face from North Korea and Iran all stem from America’s original sin of using atomic bombs to bring World War II to the swiftest possible conclusion. Never mind the estimated one million American and Japanese lives saved as result, or the peace kept and the prosperity built for six decades thereafter under the U.S. nuclear umbrella.
But what should we expect? President Obama is simply mimicking, albeit in a far more subtle way, his Reverend Wright, who said, “We bombed Hiroshima, we bombed Nagasaki,” and “never batted an eye” over it.
Bret Stephens’ notion that we would have lost a million lives without using nuclear weapons isn’t hyperbole either. Indeed, the most dreadful fighting of the Second World War occurred after the fall of Berlin, even when it was obvious that the Japanese were doomed.
The U.S. had 58,000 casualties at Okinawa, just two months before Hiroshima. It had 26,000 casualties at Iwo Jima three months before that, for 84,000 total in the last two battles before the end of the Second World War. There were 1.1 million total U.S. casualties (dead and wounded) in the entire war, which means those last two battles accounted for 7.6% of all U.S. casualties. Of all those battles the U.S. fought in, in two different theaters, just two battles with the Japanese, the last two, accounted for so much. It was a staggering cost, and underscored the Japanese will to fight. One million total casualties for a proposed Operation Downfall? Indeed, that may have been a conservative estimate, and fortunately we didn’t have to find it out.
U.S. presidents shouldn’t apologize for Hiroshima and Nagasaki. They should educate the world, and celebrate the decision that saved so many more Japanese and American lives.