Quote Originally Posted by Lyle View Post
CFH, I'm sorry if the "nationalistic" comments offended you, however, to call the guy who effectively ended World War II a war criminal should offensive to everyone and HELL YES calling Trumana war criminal is controversial!!! I'm sorry, but I have no use for this revisionist history where America is turned into the villain it's bogus, nationalism may have something to do with it and the fact that America is a wonderful place to live and I am thankful for the opportunity to live here, or perhaps it's because the TRUTH is Truman did what was right to end the war, and thankfully he's the only US President/World Leader to ever use nuclear weapons and sure if he knew about the after effects he may have given Japan extra warnings other than the ones he actually issued but he would have still chose to end the war. When someone attacks America unfairly as just happened I do tend to get a little irritated, I'm not sure if someone missed that memo...but that's the case and in this case an unfounded (and unsupported) attack on what America/an American leader did was made and perhaps I reacted a little bit emotionally but I wanted to set the record straight and do it quickly because the type of ignorance that says "Truman is a war criminal" is shocking...do you kids not ask questions in class I hope to God this type of bullshit isn't being taught in American schools.

To be totally honest as an American I am really fucking tired of people painting America as the bad guy and the only reason we catch shit is because unlike Russia and China we try to do the right thing. I don't feel bad about being an American, and I probably never will.
I'm in a hurry so I have to respond pretty much in point form:

Your "nationalistic" comments don't bother me per se, however when you debase someones opinion based on their nationality and then ridicule them about it because they're not from America (as if that makes someone's opinions less valid), it aggravates me (and nearly everyone else) and it is insulting. It also leads to the degeneration of discussion, as is taking place in this thread.

Calling Truman a war criminal is somewhat controversial, but CGM did no such thing. He merely attempted to present a view by which some people would classify Truman, and many other military leaders, as war criminals for killing hundreds of thousands of civilians. In fact, from what I've seen, CGM's views on these matters are pretty close to the center.

No one "attacked" America, Van started a thread about the Daily Show's Truman comment and asked people to respond. If you can't handle those responses, then stay out of the thread.

You don't want people to question anything, you want them to agree with you. People do question things, that's why there are so many different opinions on these matters. In fact, your perspective is directly inline with what is commonly thought/believed, so it could be inferred that you are not questioning anything. I can't speak for everyone else, but where I attend school we are evaluated on our independent research and our critical thinking, which many times involves questioning what we are taught; if that doesn't encourage questioning, what does?

No one is painting America as the "bad guy" in this thread, we're merely discussing a polarizing figure who happens to be American. You just can't handle anyone saying anything remotely bad about the States, which is absurd.

In sum, if you can't respond like and adult and have a mature conversation, then don't respond.