Jon Stewart admits that he said something stupid.
Noel Sheppard, NewsBusters, has the transcript of Stewart apologizing for calling Harry Truman a war criminal. JON STEWART:
The other night we had on Cliff May. He was on, we were discussing torture, back and forth, very spirited discussion, very enjoyable. And I may have mentioned during the discussion we were having that Harry Truman was a war criminal. And right after saying it, I thought to myself that was dumb. And it was dumb. Stupid in fact. So I shouldn't have said that, and I did. So I say right now, no, I don't believe that to be the case. The atomic bomb, a very complicated decision in the context of a horrific war, and I walk that back because it was in my estimation a stupid thing to say. Which, by the way, as it was coming out of your mouth, you ever do that, where you're saying something, and as it's coming out you're like, "What the f**k, nyah?" And it just sat in there for a couple of days, just sitting going, "No, no, he wasn't, and you should really say that out loud on the show." So I am, right now, and, man, ew. Sorry. And, Warren G. Harding was a [bleeped, unintelligible].
| The Daily Show With Jon Stewart | M - Th 11p / 10c | |||
| Harry Truman Was Not a War Criminal | ||||
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I wonder what really motivated Stewart to apologize for his disgraceful remark.
Was it conscience, as he claims?
Sincere regret?
Maybe he apologized because of blowback from fellow libs. Stewart shouldn't be calling a Democrat a war criminal.
So Stewart does NOT consider Truman's order to drop two atomic bombs on Japan to be a war crime, wiping out two cities and devastating their civilian populations.
OK.
7 comments:
I also wondered what the motivation was. I respect his opinion if he actually thinks Truman was a war criminal, but the backpedaling just seemed forced somehow.
What do I think? The 1940's were a very different time; what constitutes a war criminal today might not be grounds for that status then.
There were only two options to get the Japanese to surrender: drop a couple of bombs or a suicidal amphibious assault and brutal ground war. No matter the means the result would have still been the same. Either kill a crapload of people in the blink of an eye and obliterate to cities or drop thousands of conventional munitions throughout the entire country. The same amount of people would still have died eventually and cities would still lie in ruin. At least the decision to drop the bombs spared one nation of further hardships.
Rick, the response to that is exactly what Stewart said on the show when he made the original comment: you could have dropped that bomb 15 miles off the coast...or maybe in an unpopulated area of Japan...and they probably would have surrendered. All you had to do was show what we were capable of. Drop the bomb right off Japan's coast and then say "Surrender, or else the next one is landing in your backyard."
Then, after seeing that example, if they were stupid enough not to surrender, then do what you have to do.
But to skip the threat-stage (which probably would have worked) and not even try that before dropping that bomb on a city populated by civillians...women, children, elderly...is downright criminal. And to drop another one on them, before they even have time to assess the damage from the first one, is even moreso.
The threat of the atomic bomb is almost as good as actually using it. Truman never bothered to take that approach. He just went straight for the killing.
I don't know what caused Stewart to back-pedal his position on that...somebody chewed his ass, I'm sure...but I wish he hadn't because he was right the first time.
About the theory that the Japanese would have surrendered if they had understood the destructive force of an atomic bomb --
There was the Potsdam Declaration. Granted, it was vague, not specifically mentioning the bomb. But the U.S. did warn Japan to expect complete and utter destruction if it did not surrender.
I wouldn't expect Japan to have surrendered at that point.
But you have to remember that AFTER the bombing of Hiroshima, when the Japanese knew the force of the bomb, they were told to surrender or expect more ruin and devastation.
Even AFTER the Japanese saw what happened in Hiroshima, they would not surrender.
For three days, Japan did not respond.
It wasn't until AFTER the bombing of Nagasaki that the Japanese surrendered.
Clearly, the threat stage was not skipped.
Clearly, even the bombing of Hiroshima wasn't enough to get the Japanese to surrender.
Clearly, dropping a warning bomb off the coast would never have been enough if destroying Hiroshima didn't get the Japanese to surrender immediately.
Look at how events played out. Warnings didn't work. Your theory is nothing more than wishful thinking.
I'm not saying that the bombings were the right thing to do. Just laying out the facts.
The Japanese were trying to surrender - months before the bombs were dropped-on one condition. That they would retain their Emperor. We knew this at the time because we had decoded their diplomatic transmissions months/years earlier. Still, (supposedly) since Potsdam called for an unconditional surrendered, Truman rejected their offers at peace and dropped the bombs on so called virgin targets so the bomb blasts could be studied. Sad but true. And still - even after two bombs and Russia's entrance into the war, they refused to surrender unconditionally, insisting again on retaining their Emperor. This time, however, Truman accepted Japan's conditional surrender, ending WWII. Of course, the same outcome could have been reached months earlier WITHOUT a bombing hundreds of thousands of innocent people. But what good is the bomb if you don't use it? Anyway, read the US Strategic Bombing Survey; it's all there. Just laying out the factual facts...
You need to flesh out your "factual facts."
You make it sound like there was agreement among the Japanese.
You make it sound as if they were desperately trying to surrender and achieve peace with just one little condition, but Truman was itching to drop the bombs.
Your spin on the Emperor is far too simplistic.
After victory in Europe, the fighting in the Pacific raged. Thousands were dying.
It's ridiculous to suggest that the virtually unconditional surrender could have been reached MONTHS earlier.
That's just not the case.
Regarding Japan not surrendering after Hiroshima:
They would have. We didn't give them time to assess the damage. They destroyed an entire city and killed 80,000 people instantly, and 3 days later, did it again.
To put that in perspective, think back to Hurricane Katrina...we had advance warning, that storm only killed 1,800 people and still, in the year 2006, with all our modern technology, it took our government 5 days just to even start getting mobilized and really figure out what kind of damage it caused.
So in the 1940s, you expect a lesser country with their 1940's technology, to be able to assess the damage of an atomic bomb and figure out what they're going to do about it in 3 days? We couldn't even do half that with a pre-warned disaster of a much smaller scale in 2006.
Remember the panic here in America after 9/11? It took us a full day or so to finally start getting our news stories straight and stop all the false alarms and realize the attack was over.
All I'm saying is think of the panic during those 2 fairly recent disasters, and think of how long, even here in the year 2000 and beyond, it took us to get mobilized and start making decisions.
And then go back to 1945 and tell me 3 days is enough time to make ANY informed decision.
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