Daily Show calls Truman a war criminal

[CFH]

All I did was answer CGM's claim that Truman was a war criminal...and that's what I figured your main point of contention was and so I tried to support my side of the argument is all.

Historians that believe Truman is a war criminal should probably look at the death tolls from the Island Hopping the Marines were doing I already posted the American casualties but the Japanese casualties were even worse: 21,703 (KIA) Iwo Jima; 31,000 (KIA) Guadalcanal; 94,000-130,000+ (KIA) Okinawa (also an estimated 42,000-150,000 civilians were killed in Okinawa too)....so have some historian tell me the 2 bombs didn't save a number of American AND Japanese lives!

CFH, I'm sorry, I don't know much about Canada, I shouldn't have tried to make that point. I do think World Super Powers look at things differently than other countries, but that's just my opinion. Sorry about that though...and you're right I never really got around to learning anything about Canada....you call your Indians "First Nations people", I had no clue...learn something new everyday.

I didn't mean for my other post to be condescending...I just meant to explain the way I look at things and why it may differ from someone else is all. But I can see that all I've done recently by trying to explain things has just stoked your anger at me....so I would appologize but I didn't intend to be condescending so I'll just welcome the chance that'll you might re-read that post in a different tone because condescending wasn't the tone I was shooting for.

Sure you can use today's information when you look at history! I never meant to imply that at all. You learn a lot of different things as you go along that you didn't pick up on before and when you apply those findings to history it may change or alter your views on the intentions of historical figures, why and how events happened and so on. All I was saying is that we can't assume historical figures knew the things we do now and we cannot judge a historical figure on modern moral values and social norms, and I think that is very relevant to the whole idea of even considering Truman as a war criminal as he did not know a lot of things about the bomb, like the fallout and how badly the survivors (or the people who lived for a little while after the bomb was dropped) would suffer, but he knew it could end the war and it could save lives and that I think should clear his name from any of this war criminal stuff because anyway you can look at it Truman saved lives.

The bolded part is the only thing I can address at the moment because I am rushed, but I've never heard any historian describe Truman as a war criminal, only that the surrender of Japan was not the only reason for the dropping of the atomic bomb and that it was not necessary in the eyes of some. I didn't realize I hadn't been clear about that.