| Teeqoz said: I don't get the logic here. Japan commited warcrimes against civilians in Manchuria, the Phillippines etc. so that makes it okay for the US to commit warcrimes against civilians in Japan? I don't get how the Japanese governments own actions has *anything* to do with this, because it's not the fucking Japanese government asking for an apology. It's the civilian victims of the American government's actions. I strongly doubt they were responsible for the warcrimes Japanese troops commited in the Pacific theater, so why the hell do people bring them up? What the fuck does the actions of a nation's government have to do with what some civilians from that nation are asking for? And obviously people aren't saying that Obama should apologize on his personal behalf. If he apologizes, it would be on the behalf of the American government, which, while it does not at all consist of the same people now as it did them, can be seen as an entity, and that entity is responsible for those actions. So it's not like they are saying that the people currently sitting in the American government have inherited the blame, but rather that the entity of the American government itself has responsibility for those actions, and Obama merely represents that entity. I'm not even saying if he should apologize or not, but the reasons he shouldn't that many are using in this thread are stupid. |
Well there is a major difference: Japanese atrocities were performed upon occupied populations who had already surrendered. Millions died at their hands, most civilians or medical non-combatants. The deaths in the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, while a show of force, were colateral damage in the bombing of legitimate military targets, Hiroshima being the center for command of southern Japan and a sizable military base (40,000 toops stationed there) and Nagasaki a major cog in the industrial machine that produced warships, munitions, etc. Both cities would have been bombed severely in the course of a conventional invasion. Welcome to total war in a period without precision weaponry.
And the bigger issue is Japan has never fully accepted their past actions and elements within its government and civilian population have acted in a revisionist action, going back on admissions of crimes and even trying to deny or whitewash what happened. So the general sentiment I have is that if they are going to do that, what right does anyone from Japan have to demand appologies for Hiroshima and Nagasaki? Not that all people in Japan are this way, some have even tried to sue the Japanese government for stubbornly ignoring the Potsdam Declaration and trying to hide it from its people all so that they could shoot for an armistice that would have helped *no one* but the government leaders. But to appologize for the atomic bombings would only further encourage the frankly disgusting revisionist attitudes in Japan. I would just say nothing if I was Obama; apologizing, while a sentimental idea, is an unhealthy exercise.
