In this video from The Real News, Gore Vidal makes the suggestion I’ve heard a number of times that the USA knew Japan was defeated and had surrendered BEFORE they dropped the atom bombs on them. But they went ahead and did it anyway.
http://therealnews.com/permalinkedembed/mediaplayer.swf
I’ve been reading lately about “NSC 68” or “National Security Council paper 68” which was drafted in 1950. That’s pretty much where many of the world’s current problems started and signaled the the beginning of America as a global bully and the corresponding decline of their moral authority. Read about it here and here.
From Wikipeda:
“NSC-68 would make the case for a US military buildup to confront what it called an enemy “unlike previous aspirants to hegemony. .. animated by a new fanatic faith, antithetical to our own.” The Soviet Union and the United States existed in a bi-polar world, in which the Soviets wished to “impose its absolute authority over the rest of the world.” This would be a war of ideas in which “the idea of freedom under a government of laws, and the idea of slavery under the grim oligarchy of the “Kremlin” were pitted against each other. Therefore, the US as “the center of power in the free world,” should build an international community in which American society would “survive and flourish” and pursue a policy of containment.”
I listened carefully to what Gore vidal said. Hyperbole is certainly one of his treademarks.
He made a few factual errors in his attempts to belittle President Truman.
– ” (Truman) was only Vice-President for a few weeks.” Hardly. More like 12 weeks.
– ” (Truman) never read a book except for simple books about American history.” Does anyone really believe what Vidal says here? In fact reading was one of Truman’s hobbies.
Read here:
http://www.trumanlibrary.org/whistlestop/trumanfile/hobbies.htm
I think he’s quite unfair to General Leslie R. Groves, the military chief of the Manhattan Project. Sure, as vidal says, Groves would not have achived anything without the scientists, but many of the scientists later wrote in their memoirs that a successful and timely conclusion to the project could not have happened without Groves either.
Otherwise I don’t have much to add to my comment on a similar topic 2 years ago:
http://reilly.typepad.com/cameronreilly/2005/08/hiroshima_nagas.html#comments
Cam, it’s fascinating what inspires your readers to comment.
Sunglasses and trolls: yeah. World peace: Nah.