Captain Theodore Van Kirk,last remaining crew member of the Enola Gay,dies at age 93
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/07/30/us/30vankirk.html?_r=1
Mr. Van Kirk joined his fellow crewmen in unwavering defense of the atomic raids.
“We were fighting an enemy that had a reputation for never surrendering, never accepting defeat,” he said. “It’s really hard to talk about morality and war in the same sentence.”
He continued: “Where was the morality in the bombing of Coventry, or the bombing of Dresden, or the Bataan Death March, or the Rape of Nanking, or the bombing of Pearl Harbor? I believe that when you’re in a war, a nation must have the courage to do what it must to win the war with a minimum loss of lives.”
From a time when men were men and leaders actually led.
R.I.P. Cap Van Kirk,
Like General Sherman said, “WAR IS HELL
”
…and because George W. Bush lacked the courage to level with the American People on the threat to their existence posed by Islam and not asking Congress for a declaration of war against Global Islamic Terrorism after 9/11 – Today, 14 year later, Global Islamic Terrorism is not only still alive, but growing every day.
Yes, we miss those old soldiers of the Greatest Generation, who knew when attacked by Japan at Pearl Harbor, the only proper response was a declaration of war that meant in those long gone days: TOTAL WAR of the type General Sherman and other Union generals unleashed on the Southern rebels who were crushed in a few short years.
I believe that sooner or later we will get leadership in Washington, D.C. that understand the concept of TOTAL WAR AND UNCONDITIONAL SURRENDER
“I believe that sooner or later we will get leadership in Washington, D.C. that understand the concept of TOTAL WAR AND UNCONDITIONAL SURRENDER.”
I *really* hope so.
You know what I’d *love* to see happen?
The armed forces of the US, UK and Europe rising up, staging coups in
those countries (against the treasonous governments) and *hunting down every last Muslim*.
I guess it’ll never happen but it’s nice to dream…..
“From a time when men were men and leaders actually led.”
Amen.
I guess this is another funeral the Golfer in Chief didn’t attend.
He sure as hell was too busy to go to this one.
I doubt that anybody there would have wanted him there anyway.He is a no account,good for nothing POS after all.
Why do you think Medusa called him a Half-breed Socialist Cunt? That woman certainly had a way with words.
She most certainly did
I understand the pilot of “Bock’s Car” the plane which dropped the bomb on Nagasaki began to doubt the need to nuke Japan later in life. Truman genuinely believed the bombs would curb the loss of US lives in a land based invasion and there is little question that this is true. However, a further spectre arose; the need to exhibit to the Soviets the magnitude of the weapon, and the US’s new found ability to police the globe. My understanding the Soviets continued ground battles in Manchuria with Japan for a week or so after the bombings. The Soviets certainly had the desire to pound down on the grapes of wrath with Japan given their brutal defeat in 1912 and had they continued their presence in the Pacific would have been significant.
“From a time when men were men ”
Some still are.
I know just where that intersection is too,been through there many times.
Meanwhile, in the Banana Republic of America, that is under the gifted and blessed leadership of The Magic Negro, the order has gone out from his Highness about a week ago to stir up anti-police/anti white race riots in Ferguson, Missouri that are still raging today and are headed toward confrontation with the heavily armed Missouri National Guard. Bloodbath? Could be.
This was done in order to get the Media attention off illegal immigration and the open southern border with Mexico, which is screwing up the usual Democommie lock on the Congressional election in November.
Of course, out-of-control race riots anywhere in the USA may lead to “copy cat” race riots in major cities, as happened in the 1960s, which may have been the Obama plan all along.
Hoping for the declamation of an ’emergency’ that let’s the fuckers seize even more power…
Declaration- damn autocorrect
A war can only be won by breaking the will of the enemy to resist. Even after the Germans had been destroyed on the field of battle, the German Werwolf continued the fight. In many instances the retaliation was brutal. But the will to resist was broken. In Japan, the Japanese civilian population was being prepared to fight. Girls were taught and expected to use bamboo spears to kill American soldiers. Boys were taught to act as suicide bombers to blow up American armor. Every Japanese citizen was expected to fight. How can you not engage them?
The intent of Japan was to kill as many Americans as possible. To wear down America’s will to win through the deaths of her sons. We warned Japan that we had a terrible new weapon. Twice we asked for their unconditional surrender or we would use it. This only emboldened Japan and they became more strident. After the destruction of Hiroshima, we asked for their surrender again. We received only silence. We destroyed Nagasaki. It was only then that Japan surrendered at the demand of the Emperor who survived a coup launched by the Army to depose him.
It took the prospect of annihilation as a people to bring the Japanese to heel. Even the total destruction of Hiroshima did not convince the Japanese to surrender, so strong was their will. By destroying two Japanese cities, we saved about two million American lives. From a moral perspective and from the perspective of war, it was a justified act. Granted, it is a difficult thing to have to live with, but it was never the less a necessary thing. Like so many other things, the hand wringers of the left have a problem with it.
But it is not bloodshed that they have a problem with, it is that someone other than they spilled the blood. Last I checked, the left has the blood of 150 million on their hands from the slaughters they initiated over the past 100 years. The atomic bomb is responsible for 200,000 deaths. The left has butchered 750 times as many. Even without nuclear weapons, the left has proven itself a more prolific taker of life, and that doesn’t include the figures from abortion.
In addition to the slaughter, the left has also operated concentration camps and gulags. They have arrested the innocent and tortured them. They have tortured their families, and they have worked their prisoners to death, just like they did to the Jews. Funny how you never hear a peep out of them about any of that. The left stood for and promoted eugenics and the evils that originated out of that morass of evil. They don’t speak about that either. So until the left deals with their own issues regarding unbridled violence, they don’t have a leg to stand on being critical of anyone else.
As a moral issue, would it be better to spare 200,000 if it means that 2,000,000 will die? That is a 10:1 ratio. For every life you save, you lose 10. You still kill men, women, and children and destroy buildings and infrastructure because that is what the Japanese government had decided to do to resist the American invasion. When you consider that Japan struck first with a sneak attack at Pearl Harbor, when you consider the rape of Nanking (and that was hell on Earth indeed), when you consider the utter cruelty of the Japanese soldier, how could that strategy possibly be better than the atomic bomb?
The leftist strategy certainly doesn’t make sense from a Utilitarian perspective. It also doesn’t’ make sense from Aristotle’s Nicomachean ethics either. Only a pacifist would employ that rationale, and pacifism is not the way of the left if past history is any indicator. If you have any idea what the fighting on the islands in the Pacific was like, you wouldn’t question the decision to drop the bomb. I have had the privilege of speaking to Marines who fought in the Pacific. The tales they told would open your eyes to the true nature of the Japanese soldier of the period. If he had the ability, he most certainly would have dropped the bomb on Los Angeles or Chicago or Washington D.C. or New York. And he would have done so until America had surrendered unconditionally. He would have continued in China and he would have conquered Australia and New Zealand. It is likely that he even would have turned on Russia and then Germany.
How fickle is the West that decades later, we question the morals and character of better men than ourselves. A very Post Modern thing to do, but it is easy to criticize in the safety that those men provided. Men like Dutch Van Kirk who had the balls necessary to make the hard choices and to do the hard things required by the times. A man that will likely end up in an unmarked grave like his friend Colonel Tibbets so that they can rest in peace and not have their graves desecrated by the ungrateful and obscene left.
Rest in peace, Dutch.
Correct on all counts
Amen, amen and amen.
Thanks for this it was a time we can barely imagine now. Was there any truth that Japan would’ve surrendered the week Hitler died on the understanding that the US would spare the Emperor from execution?
As I understand it, the Japanese were looking for a peace from which they could save face. They knew that the war was lost and they certainly knew that they could not win given the forces arrayed against them and the destruction of their offensive capability. What America did not understand was that the Emperor had always been opposed to the war, both with America and with China. But he was a weak man and gave his grudging approval to the military despite his apprehension. When he was advised of the totality of destruction of Hiroshima, he was astonished that such a destructive weapon was in the hands of Japan’s enemies. He immediately recognized that the very survival of Japan was at stake. Rather than to witness the destruction of his people, he demanded that the military surrender unconditionally. The army revolted and tried to capture the Emperor, but they failed.
I cannot say for certain, but I suspect that they would not have surrendered with only assurances from the U.S. that the Emperor would remain in power and unmolested. General Tojo believed that America could be forced to provide favorable terms if he could kill enough American soldiers. While the preservation of the Emperor would have been an important part of those conditions, it would not have been the only one. That much is clear given the certainty that Tojo had regarding his belief.
The heavy fighting in the Pacific had proved the deadly effectiveness of the Japanese solider, particularly when cornered. To the Japanese, surrender was a dishonor of the highest order. The influence of the Samurai past and the code of the Bushido still had a powerful hold on the Japanese mind in the 1940’s. Even today, the Japanese are bound by tradition and a rigid culture.
Everywhere in the world where TV has been introduced, the murder rate has doubled (if one counts it at the rate at which people are trying to kill one another). This is not true for Japan and that is because of the power of their culture. There are still primary sources for the discussions between the Japanese leaders who discussed the terms for surrender. So far as I am aware, that wasn’t a primary point of discussion.
Thanks again.
Everybody knows MacArthur and Eisenhower,but not too many know who Major General Leslie Groves was.He was tasked with birthing the Manhattan project and seeing it through to fruition.
He commanded 400,000 people,controlled 500,000 acres of land.Over saw the design and construction of places with names like Oak Ridge,Los Alamos and Hanford.
13,000,000 tons of concrete were poured 1,600,000 tons of steel were erected,the list of firsts and one-offs was a mile long with many aspects of the design not known even after the construction of a facility had begun.
Cost was no object,need copper wire,but there isn’t any to be had?No problem,borrow 17,000 tons of Silver from the Treasury and make what you need from that.A whole town in the way?No problem,buy them out,move them out,scrape the earth clean and build the city you need in a couple months.
We did the impossible,from scratch,in four years while fighting a war on two fronts and supplying war material for our forces,as well as our allies.We did it not only because we had to,but also because we were the only ones who could.
Today,it takes a Senate committee a month of arguing just to decide what’s for lunch
Documentary on the Manhattan Project,long video (46minutes),but worth it.
http://youtu.be/NZHt-GfIkn4
Groves was enigmatic. He was anti-semitic but endorsed Oppenheimer’s appointment to direct the Manhattan Project. Their relationship was testy much of the time but a gradual and defined mutual respect developed.Had the project not been handed to the military I question whether it would’ve met the temporal and scientific demands faced by the US. Groves was the man for the hour despite not having a background in physics to match the task.
I think from what I read about him that Groves was the text book example of duty first,country first,a rare quality even then.
I also don’t put too much weight in the anti-semitic claims,in the US around the turn of the century there were many Jewish intellectual immigrants from western Europe who had a taste for socialism which was an unwelcome arrival on our shores.Many of them found their way into American universities who were already leaning left even by then.Throw in the Jewish businessmen,industrialists and scientists that actively worked for the German war effort in WWI and some distaste arises.
Like Henry Ford,and for that matter my own grandfathers,Groves probably had nothing against the Jewish street vendor,or the owner of the local dry goods or haberdashery,but had a well founded dislike for the intellectual class and their socialist/communist leanings.The Los Alamos spy ring would later prove this distrust as being well founded.Till this day many of the hard core left in this country are “Jewish”,but not followers of Jehovah.So,like many things the anti-semitic claim just isn’t that simple IMHO.
“The Los Alamos spy-ring.” I understand that Klaus Fuchs was arrested for being a spy after working there, were there others?
Yes,several that we know of,probably many more that we don’t-
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atomic_spies
We did indeed. We did the same thing with our space program in the 1960’s. Kennedy challenged the nation to go to the moon, and in eight years we had accomplished that goal. Many times I have heard that as a nation, we are not any more exceptional than the next man. But tell me, who else could have accomplished those goals?
Today, I doubt that we could pull off either of those two things. Not because we are not smart enough or because we don’t have the money. But because we no longer believe in ourselves as we once did. We just don’t have the same confidence. We doubt, and that doubt is fatal to such undertakings. That is how I know that my country is ailing. One cannot be great if one doubts. It causes a paralysis of thought and of action. It prevents the certainty that one needs to face the future. It makes one afraid.
I’m not a huge fan of Neil Tyson,but on this subject he is correct,we quit dreaming-
http://youtu.be/CbIZU8cQWXc
Imagine if we had committed a trillion dollars to the space program instead of blowing it on unemployment or EBT cards?