Daily Show calls Truman a war criminal

[VictorCharlie]

Not sure how old this is, but is there really a large contingent of people who believe Truman is a war criminal? I don't t usually take Jon's forays into the political arena too seriously but got to say I lost some respect for him on this one.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tF4pV27_7PI

[Dark Lord Al]

I think thats harsh , i mean lets face it the guy just had a reality show about him , which i thought Jim Carey played well

[Gandalf]

He was a war criminal and was not the only US President I would label a war criminal either. There are a lot of war criminals roaming free in the world and they only seem to be tried arbitrarily. If you are seen to be very powerful and influential then you can get away with commiting war crimes.

[VictorCharlie]

Miles can you please explain how Truman is a war criminal? Please include what you would have done in his position to defeat Imperial Japan.

[VictorCharlie]

by the way. Daily apologized the next day

[CFH]

I've heard many respectable historians make a similar assertion. Not that he was a war criminal, but that the dropping of the atomic bombs was unnecessary and that it had more to do with demonstrating American might to the Russians than it did with ending the war with Japan.

[OumaFan]

Sure it had something to do with intimidating the Russians but an invasion of Japan would have been brutal and there would have been huge amounts of casualties on both sides, just look at Okinawa. Kamikaze pilots attacking the fleet, huge amounts of civilian and troop deaths. The controversy at the time was not this, it was the did FDR know about Pearl Harbor thing, people just wanted it to be over and understandably so.

The funny thing about this (there's nothing haha funny about it obviously) is that the firebombings of Dresden and Tokyo were absolutely brutal, especially Tokyo but for some reason conventional weapons get less attention.

[CFH]

Sure it had something to do with intimidating the Russians but an invasion of Japan would have been brutal and there would have been huge amounts of casualties on both sides. The controversy at the time was not this, it was the did FDR know about Pearl Harbor thing.

The funny thing about this (there's nothing haha funny about it obviously) is that the firebombings of Dresden and Tokyo were absolutely brutal, especially Tokyo but for some reason conventional weapons get less attention.

From what I've heard and read, the crux of the argument is that the U.S. wouldn't have had to invade Japan as the government was ready to fall/surrender through other means. I'm trying to find a couple of articles on it at the moment, but I'm busy so *if* I find some it might not be for a while

[OumaFan]

I actually read a few books about this for a seminar, there's a revisionist argument that the Japanese could have been induced to surrender before but that's gone out of style a bit, newer books that have done research in Japanese archives don't agree with that, the Japanese thought they could actually successfully repel an invasion and the Americans weren't extraordinarily confident, that and the Japanese didn't agree to peace terms that would have let them keep the Emperor.

Granted I haven't read everything, its not my field.

But the newer revisionist argument (that I've read) refutes that Japan would have surrendered but argues that Truman would have wanted to use the nukes anyway, and do it quickly before the Soviets entered the war so they could get what they were promised to enter the war, the Sakhalin Islands, the Kurile Islands, I don't know if that's the right spelling, keep them out of Mongolia, etc.

[OumaFan]

for fucks sake, I just wrote the worst essay about the interwar period in Europe.

Fuck.

I had to put in like a two page conclusion just to try to get the professor to understand what I was talking about.

I don't even know why I'm talking about history, I'm sick of history.

Fuck it, I'm turning it in anyway.

Alcohol, fuck yeah.

[Youngblood]

I loved the truman show. I even cried a little.

Jon Stewart is a Bastard.

[CFH]

for fucks sake, I just wrote the worst essay about the interwar period in Europe.

Fuck.

I had to put in like a two page conclusion just to try to get the professor to understand what I was talking about.

I don't even know why I'm talking about history, I'm sick of history.

Fuck it, I'm turning it in anyway.

Alcohol, fuck yeah.

Are you specializing in European history?

[Andre]

Why two bombs?
Why not one with the threat of "the next one is on the way" if you dont surrender."

There's a crime against one whole city of innocent people right there.

Pay backs a bitch, Sink our ships in Hawaii /we flatten your assess once and for all.

To be fair though : Nagasaki got unlucky,
they wernt an original target the real target was cloud covered and the delivery men took it into their own hands to drop on a town they could see on the way out.

[Gandalf]

This is a link that articulates a few of the main greviances with Truman. He seems to have been an unpleasant, corrupt individual. There was no need to use the nuclear bomb like he did.

http://www.geocities.com/Pentagon/6315/truman.html

[Gandalf]

by the way. Daily apologized the next day

He had no reason to apologize. He was correct in his assertion.