Obama Votes Present Twice On Hiroshima And Nagasaki

Via Breitbart TV. Asked whether or not the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki were the appropriate decision, Obama initially ignored the question. Then in an exchange immediately after when reminded of his failure to answer the question, he simply moved on. Evidently that one's above his pay grade. He did say he would be honored to visit the sites.

Comments

[Rich K]

I think its safe for Websters to change the definitions of LOSER now.

[Phen]

But...I thought Obama was the guy who was going to always speak his mind. Eloquently, persuasively. He sounds like your basic politician, here. Hot air, hot air, just words, just words. When he has no answer, he uses many words that all sound good, but it's all sound and fury, signifying nothing. He talks until everyone stops listening.

[Elmo]

Alferd E Newman ...

http://weblogsky.com/wp/wp-content/uploads/2008/11/meworry.png

Me, could only go fifty seconds on the vid. I tried (and you can neither pay me, nor make me).

Bbbut Obie did manage to do da same teeng he did to the Saudi King ... kiss both cheeks (while the King was tying his shoes).

Obama ... nauseous offal to be puked upon.

Errand boy for the Muslim Brotherhood.

[Xerocky]

What happened right after we dropped the fat man and the little boy?
We achieved victory. Plain and simple. So obviously Obama thinks that that's bad. Why even bother asking?

[Hussein]

I'd be honored to visit Nagasaki and Hiroshima someday. Busy today ... but be honored to do it. Tomorrow? Sorry, date night with Mich' El. Tuesday? I have to get my fro Geri curled. But after that I could check my calendar. Someday.

[Huey]

Correct answer: "And, if you attack us again, we'll drop three. Next question?"

[Joe]

So he did not prep for that question before going to Japan? When in doubt projectile vomit. It worked for George H.W. Bush.

[Joe]

Some excellent comment on proper bow technique:

Foreigners are not expected to bow, as they lack the requisite knowledge of the elaborate etiquette governing this for at least 1000 years.

This BHO bow, because of its degree of declination and the shamefully rounded back, is in Japanese eyes the bow of a crippled toilet attendant to his supreme master.
Posted by: Takuan Seiyo at November 14, 2009 12:19 PM

[Fred Beloit]

#48
Obama says, "I can bow lower than any other leader in the world...watch me now. Hey!
I can kiss me own arxx."
http://hotairpundit.blogspot.com/2009/11/president-obama-vs-rest-of-world.html

[Lala]

How many other heads of state bow?

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2386588/posts

[mark l.]

as far as the hiroshima/nagasaki bombing...

he's not sure if he should take credit for the actions of the "white men" who were in control at the time.

[Fred Beloit]

Yes, Mark. The Dems knew how to make war in those days. All out win with the fewest casualties, at least that was Truman's policy. FDR, not so much, but one out of two helped get the job done..

[mark l.]

there is an upside to having the first black president...

african american history now must include a chapter on responsiblity.

the messiah has been indoctrinated in the reality that this country has never been 'controlled' by any black man, and therefore any real action of consequence has been soley up to white men.

nevermind that 99.999999% of white men have held no more control over the decisions of this country than any african american...

the moral of the story?
if the decisions, good and bad, of our past leaders can be seen in the context of 'white man's decisions' then maybe we can judge african americans by the success of obama.

sounds absurd? it is the logic by which bambi lives by. is it the end of indentity politics? just the beginning of volume II (extra credit? read mitchell obama's thesis)

still trying to imagine hitler explaining to the us that the jews were responsible for everything and needed to be exterminated...barack would have cut a deal, where the US sent germany firewood.

[david r]

He'd probably like to issue an apology to everyone concerned. Like his European apology tour.

[td]

Imagine. Not standing before a crowd of Japanese and telling them he's happy we incinerated two of their cities. Where does the man get the gall? It is well beyond time for many of you to stop living in your childish jingostic fantasies and embrace reality. I wont be holding my breath.

[Zackwoodson]

Good lord, what would you have him do, shout "Absolutely, yeehaw!" and fire six-shooters into the air? Think about it for a moment and you'll see that the only wise answer was to ignore the question. Saying yes would be insulting to our hosts and would cause a controversy that would completely detract from the visit, and saying no would just be untrue.

[John Egan]

What a bunch of morons! The man is a guest of a country that we consider to be our most valuable ally in the Pacific - a rather remarkable thing in and of itself considering the war we fought against them just 65-70 years ago. And in the interest of - what exactly? - you want him to tell "the Japs" that, yeah, he's glad we A-bombed them back in 1945. It was the right thing to do, and they had it coming. Maybe he should have volunteered something about the Bataan Death March while he was at it. Or ended his press conference with, "Remember Pearl Harbor." Dimwits and nimrods - every single one of you. Are there any adults at all left in the Republican Party?

[forked tongue]

Well, answering either yes or no would have been entirely counterproductive, but you libs don't get the point. He should have said "Yeah, it wasn't only the right option, it was the FUN option" and then turned around and mooned everybody. Because the first principle of our foreign policy should be to be an offensive, swaggering asshole at every opportunity.

[John]

I wonder sometimes whether you are completely mad Riehl. He's on visit to Japan and the far east and he's supposed to boast we incinerated two Japanese cities? Japan is one of our leading allies, the third largest economy in the world, and he's supposed to spit in their faces. Have you ever taken one of those Dale Carnegie courses?....perhaps you should. Quite apart from the general hilarity of these comments what they prove once again is that the right has no idea how to govern.

[North Dallas Thirty]

Short answer: "Yes, it was the appropriate decision at the time."

And if asked why, "Because it avoided an invasion and continued bombing that, according to most estimates, would have cost the lives of ten times as many Japanese civilians."

Do you liberals really justify the Japanese fascist military government that controlled the country in World War II and what they did to their own populations? The Japanese certainly don't. Indeed, the reason they HAVE been one of our staunchest and most supportive allies is because they recognize the necessity of what the United States did -- and how we have, for the past sixty-plus years, helped rebuild their government, their industries, their defenses, and their country.

Why are liberals so convinced that everything the United States has ever done was wrong?

[celticdragon]

"What a bunch of morons! The man is a guest of a country that we consider to be our most valuable ally in the Pacific - a rather remarkable thing in and of itself considering the war we fought against them just 65-70 years ago. And in the interest of - what exactly? - you want him to tell "the Japs" that, yeah, he's glad we A-bombed them back in 1945. It was the right thing to do, and they had it coming. Maybe he should have volunteered something about the Bataan Death March while he was at it. Or ended his press conference with, "Remember Pearl Harbor." Dimwits and nimrods - every single one of you. Are there any adults at all left in the Republican Party?"

*****************************************************************

I think it would be fantastic to go to Japan and say that it was a great thing we incinerated entire cities with napalm and atomic weapons, while turning men, women and children into faint shadows on demolished walls and semi-glazed sidewalks. I would love to see the look on some woman's face as I gloat over her grandmothers keloid scars and lingering death from radiation. I think it would be a blast to mock the aged survivors with hideous deformities and nightmarish burn marks.

Yeah.

For the record, I do think is was likely necessary to use the bomb, given that we expected something near one million casualties in Operations Olympic/Coronet (the Invasion of Japan).

That doesn't mean we need to gloat over an absolutely horrific serious of events that killed untold innocent Japanese civilians.

Did Japan have it coming, in an abstract sense? Maybe so, after the Rape of Nanking, thousands of women forced into prostitution (the "comfort women"), Bataan, chemical warfare tests on POW's, mass executions etc etc. The Rape of Nanking was unprecedented for a modern nation, and is still widely denied in Japan. Read the book by Iris Chang for a good set of nightmares.

Does that mean that the tens of thousands of dead men, women and children who had nothing to do with any of this had it coming too?

NO, they did not not. They deserved better then to die in the most hideous and agonizing ways imaginable as we dumped napalm on the cities. They did not deserve that bright flash of light that turned them into human candles and photo negative images on ruined buildings.

I think we had to do it...but that doesn't mean I have to like it or celebrate it. If any of you have the stones to tell some woman in Japan that her mother had it coming and we shouldn't be sorry for what happened to her, than your humanity is as depraved as the Japanese soldiers in Nanking who had beheading contests on prisoners.

[Scott]

To quote Conor Friedersdorf
****************
" How dismaying that a loud subset of the right so consistently demands that President Obama privilege their childish desire for self-righteous rhetoric above the actual demands of statesmanship. What good would it possibly do to tell the Japanese, “Yes, I think it was right to incinerate your cities”? It wouldn’t do any good. On the other side of the ledger, it would antagonize an allied nation, put its leadership in a difficult spot that might impede its ability to help the United States.

President Obama is also endeavoring to slow nuclear proliferation, so it would hardly due to have headlines in Iranian newspapers pointing out that even as he demands that other nations give up nuclear weapons, he is saying that their only actual use in history was justified.

Asked whether the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki were justified, President Obama correctly calculated that answering either yes or no would harm American interests, so he gave neither answer, the wisest course available to him, even if it didn’t satisfy the jingoistic vanity of certain critics."
****************

North Dallas Thirty - I wrote a thirty page paper in college on the atomic allergy in Japan so you are factually incorrect when you say that Japan recognizes "the necessity of what the United States did". That is absolutely and decidedly false. You will be hard-pressed to meet one Japanese person who will say what we did was ok. They liken it to pulling out a gun in a knife fight. Personally I agree with the view that it was a strategically wise decision. I think the most questionable decision we made during the war was the fire-bombing of Dresden. But as Conor states above, to state while being hosted by Japanese dignitaries that incinerating your cities was A-OK would be moronic.

[Zackwoodson]

North Dallas Thirty, why don't you actually address the argument in support of Obama, instead of the one you made up in your head about how liberals "justify the Japanese fascist military government?"

Heck, just in case you need it stated more simply, here it is again: Obama was right to refuse to answer the question, because to answer the question "yes" would have insulted the Japanese, the majority of whom still resent the bombing, and the story over the answer would have overshadowed and distracted from the diplomatic purpose of the visit. To answer it "no" would have been incorrect, and it also would have created a huge firestorm in the U.S., especially among conservatives.

Here's some guidelines for your answer: it should NOT involve defending the decision to bomb Nagasaki and Hiroshima, or attacking the evil of the Japanese Empire, because those are not disputed issues! It should ONLY involve whether Obama was right to refuse to answer the question. See how this works?

It's like arguing with third graders with you guys.

[North Dallas Thirty]

I find it interesting that, while everyone here agrees with me, you have to resort to ridiculous hyperbole about how I'm "gloating" over the death of Japanese civilians, which is nowhere stated or implied in my answer, to explain why your Barack Obama can't answer a simple question.

The Japanese are not children, and are well aware of the facts. You don't have to treat them like you do the infantile minority groups of the left. Inded, I think it betrays the inherent racism of Obama and his defenders that they don't think the Japanese people can handle a simple statement of the facts as they existed, and instead have to actually fake statements, as did the liar Conor Friedersdorf, to defame conservatives and defend their Obama's treating the Japanese people like morons and idiots.

[forked tongue]

Why don't you:

1. Point out the lies in the Friedersdorf quote posted above rather than make an ad hominem attack;

2. Answer his question "What good would it possibly do to tell the Japanese, 'Yes, I think it was right to incinerate your cities'?" rather than bluster about how Obama is a racist for observing basic rules of tact and diplomacy and, indeed, acting conscientiously in view of American interests;

(By the way, he was asked that question by a reporter. Did you believe that George W. Bush was obliged to answer every question put to him by reporters?)

3. Just admit that you are a congenital dick?

[North Dallas Thirty]

"Point out the lies in the Friedersdorf quote posted above rather than make an ad hominem attack"

That's easy. Riehl never said that Obama should say, "Yes, I think it was right to incinerate your cities”; however, Friedersdorf screamed and whined that Riehl said exactly that.

Again, this is no surprise; Friedersdorf supported and repeated the fake "quotes" used to attack Rush Limbaugh as well, and then, when he was cornered on that lie, screamed and whined that it was Rush Limbaugh's fault that liberals lied about what Rush said.

"Answer his question "What good would it possibly do to tell the Japanese, 'Yes, I think it was right to incinerate your cities'?""

With pleasure; that's not what I said. What I said Obama should say was:

"Short answer: "Yes, it was the appropriate decision at the time."

And if asked why, "Because it avoided an invasion and continued bombing that, according to most estimates, would have cost the lives of ten times as many Japanese civilians.""

Friedersdorf created an answer that no one was giving and that clearly would have been tactless for a simple reason; he was trying to create an easy strawman. However, he was foolish enough to state that Riehl had said such a thing, which is patently untrue, and is thus exposed as a liar.

Now, answer my question: why do you support liars like Friedersdorf who make up fake quotations and use them to attack conservatives? Is it because your liberal belief is that telling a lie is OK as long as it smears a conservative?

"Did you believe that George W. Bush was obliged to answer every question put to him by reporters?"

No. But again, we're following Obama Party rules here, which state that any time you don't answer a question, it's because you're a) ignorant or b) lying.

Simply state that you held Bush to a different standard than you do Obama, and you'll be fine. But do enlighten us as to why -- his skin color, which makes you a racist, or the fact that he belongs to the Obama Party, which makes you an ideology-blinded partisan.

[forked tongue]

Christ, what an oaf.

"Riehl never said that Obama should say, "Yes, I think it was right to incinerate your cities”; however, Friedersdorf screamed and whined that Riehl said exactly that."

No he didn't. That isn't presented as a quote from Dan Riehl. It's presented as a distillation of what "a loud subset of the right" is, in effect if not literally, demanding of Obama. The worst that can be said of it is that it's a casual lapse into straw-man argument, certainly not that it's a lie.

"we're following Obama Party rules here, which state that any time you don't answer a question, it's because you're a) ignorant or b) lying."

Huh? This makes no sense. Every person from "the Obama Party" that has posted here has said quite explicitly that there are times when it's appropriate for a president not to answer a question.

"Simply state that you held Bush to a different standard than you do Obama"

I don't. I think the POTUS should think carefully, speak intelligently, have some notion of diplomacy, and not be needlessly offensive to our allies. Obama meets that standard and Bush didn't. See? Same standard.

You're a douche, I'm done here.