66 years ago after some of the bloodiest fighting ever United States of America forces were contemplating the invasion of Japan. 4 years earlier Japan started the war we were fighting with a sneak attack on our forces at Pearl Harbor. The best estimates by military and intelligence agencies put the loss of life in such an invasion of Japan as high as a million plus lives. Instead the US dropped atomic bombs on Nagasaki and Hiroshima killing approximately 240,000 people which was approximately one fourth the projected death toll of an invasion. The two bombs also had the psychological effect of defeating the Japanese after the second bomb was dropped.
Obama wanted to apologize for Democrat President Harry S. Truman not only winning the war against the US, but also for lessening the death toll.
These apologies were to be part of Obama's worldwide apology tour.
One stop on his tour was Prague in August 2009. There he spoke of “America’s commitment to seek the peace and security of a world without nuclear weapons,” ignoring that before 1945 we lived in such a world and it was neither peaceful nor secure.
Another stop on the tour was in Japan, where Obama in November 2009 bowed to the emperor, something no American president had ever done. It could have been worse if plans to visit Nagasaki and Hiroshima to apologize for winning the war with the atom bombs had come to pass.
A heretofore secret cable dated Sept. 3, 2009, was recently released by WikiLeaks. Sent to Secretary of State Clinton, it reported Japan’s Vice Foreign Minister Mitoji Yabunaka telling U.S. Ambassador John Roos that “the idea of President Obama visiting Hiroshima to apologize for the atomic bombing during World War II is a ‘nonstarter.’”
The Japanese feared the apology would be exploited by anti-nuclear groups and those opposed to the defensive alliance between Japan and the U.S.
The rank amateurism of the Obama administration is personified in this story. First, the US has nothing to apologize for. We didn't start the war nor did we force the Japanese to ally with the Nazis of Germany in a war against the United States. Second, the Obama administration so misread the Japanese as they gleefully pursued an agenda of putting America in its place in a way that no foreign power would or could. Third, the Obama administration completely misunderstood the American people, especially the millions who had relatives who had family members that fought and died in the attack on the United States. Lose. Lose. Lose.
The Japanese are well aware of who started WWII. They may not want to discuss it, but they are aware. The Japanese are also a proud and self sufficient people who do not want our apologies. As with the more recent Tsunami the Japanese didn't want the sympathy as they could and did lift themselves up. The Japanese find such a gesture that Obama and his minions thought so brilliant in its "kindness" embarrassing and a sign of weakness. So do most Americans. Not Obama. Apologizing to Japan for the atomic bombs ending a war Japan started and lost would, for Obama, show America's contriteness for winning.
If America wants to show contriteness it should apologize to the world by defeating the embarrassment of having elected Obama in the first place.
