People are as happy as they make up their minds to be.

I can not agree with you in 100% regarding some thoughts, but you got good point of view

I can not agree with you in 100% regarding some thoughts, but you got good point of view

I can not agree with you in 100% regarding some thoughts, but you got good point of view

I can not agree with you in 100% regarding some thoughts, but you got good point of view

I can not agree with you in 100% regarding some thoughts, but you got good point of view

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I can not agree with you in 100% regarding some thoughts, but you got good point of view

I can not agree with you in 100% regarding some thoughts, but you got good point of view

Man i love reading your blog, interesting posts !

Please keep these excellent posts coming.

Thanks for the nice read, keep up the interesting posts..

Hmmm, with that one? Standards, Bingo. :)

On August 6, 1945 the American Air Force incinerated Hiroshima, Japan with an atomic bomb. On August 9 Nagasaki was obliterated. The fireballs killed some 175,000 people. They followed months of horror, when American airplanes firebombed civilians and reduced cities to rubble. Facing extermination, the Japanese surrendered unconditionally. The invasion of Japan was cancelled, and countless American lives were saved. The Japanese accepted military occupation, embraced a constitutional government, and renounced war permanently. The effects were so beneficent, so wide-ranging and so long-term, that the bombings must be ranked among the most moral acts ever committed.

The bombings have been called many things-but moral? The purpose of morality, wrote Ayn Rand, is not to suffer and die, but to prosper and live.

How can death on such a scale be considered moral?

The answer begins with Japanese culture. World War II in the Pacific was launched by a nation that esteemed everything hostile to human life.

Japan’s religious-political philosophy held the emperor as a god, subordinated the individual to the state, elevated ritual over rational thought, and adopted suicide as a path to honor. This was truly a Morality of Death. It had gripped Japanese society for three generations. Japan’s war with Russia had ended in 1905 with a negotiated treaty, which left Japan’s militaristic culture intact. The motivations for war were emboldened, and the next generation broke the treaty by attacking Manchuria in 1931 (which was not caused by the oil embargo of 1941).

It was after Japan attacked America that America waged war against Japan-a proper moral response to the violence Japan had initiated. Despite three and a half years of slaughter, surrender was not at hand in mid-1945. Over six million Japanese were still in Asia. Some 12,000 Americans had died on Okinawa alone. Many Japanese leaders hoped to kill enough Americans during an invasion to convince them that the cost was too high. A relentless “Die for the Emperor” propaganda campaign had motivated many Japanese civilians to fight to the death. Volunteers lined up for kamikaze “Divine Wind” suicide missions. Hope of victory kept the Japanese cause alive, until hopeless prostration before American air attacks made the abject renunciation of all war the only alternative to suicide. The Japanese had to choose between the morality of death, and the morality of life.

The bombings marked America’s total victory over a militaristic culture that had murdered millions. To return an entire nation to morality, the Japanese had to be shown the literal meaning of the war they had waged against others. The abstraction “war,” the propaganda of their leaders, their twisted samurai “honor,” their desire to die for the emperor-all of it had to be given concrete form, and thrown in their faces. This is what firebombing Japanese cities accomplished. It showed the Japanese that “this”-point to burning buildings, screaming children scarred unmercifully, piles of corpses, the promise of starvation-”this is what you have done to others. Now it has come for you. Give it up, or die.” This was the only way to show them the true nature of their philosophy, and to beat the truth of the defeat into them.

Yes, Japan was beaten in July of 1945-but had not surrendered. A defeat is a fact; an aggressor’s ability to fight effectively is destroyed.

Surrender is a decision, by the political leadership and the dominant voices in the culture, to recognize the fact of defeat. Surrender is an admission of impotence, the collapse of all hope for victory, and the permanent renunciation of aggression. Such recognition of reality is the first step towards a return to morality. Under the shock of defeat, a stunned silence results. Military officers no longer plan for victory; women no longer bear children for the Reich; young boys no longer play samurai and dream of dying for the emperor-children no longer memorize sword verses from the Koran and pledge themselves to jihad.

To achieve this, the victor must be intransigent. He does not accept terms; he demands prostrate surrender, or death, for everyone if necessary.

Had the United States negotiated in 1945, Japanese troops would have returned to a homeland free of foreign control, met by civilians who had not confronted defeat, under the same leaders who had taken them to war. A negotiated peace would have failed to discredit the ideology of war, and would have left the motivations for the next war intact. We might have fought the Japanese Empire again, twenty years later. Fortunately, the Americans were in no mind to compromise.

President Truman demonstrated his willingness to bomb the Japanese out of existence if they did not surrender. The Potsdam Declaration of July 26, 1945 is stark: “The result of the futile and senseless German resistance to the might of the aroused free peoples of the world stands forth in awful clarity as an example to the people of Japan . . . Following are our terms.

We will not deviate from them. There are no alternatives. We shall brook no delay . . . We call upon the government of Japan to proclaim now the unconditional surrender of all Japanese armed forces . . . The alternative for Japan is prompt and utter destruction.”

The approach worked brilliantly. After the bombs, the Japanese chose wisely.

The method was brutally violent, as it had to be-because the war unleashed by Japan was brutally violent, and only a brutal action could demonstrate its nature. To have shielded Japanese citizens from the meaning of their own actions-the Rape of Nanking and the Bataan Death March-would have been a massive act of dishonesty. It would have left the Japanese unable to reject military aggression the next time it was offered as an elixir of glory.

After the war, many returning Japanese troops were welcomed by their countrymen not as heroes, but with derision. The imperial cause was recognized as bankrupt, and the actions of its soldiers worthy of contempt.

Forced to confront the reality of what they had done, a sense of morality had returned to Japan.

There can be no higher moral action by a nation than to destroy an aggressive dictatorship, to permanently discredit the enemy’s ideology, to stand guard while a replacement is crafted, and then to greet new friends on proper terms. Let those who today march for peace in Germany and Japan admit that their grandparents once marched as passionately for war, and that only total defeat could force them to re-think their place in the world and offer their children something better. Let them thank heaven-the United States-for the bomb.

Some did just that. Hisatsune Sakomizu, chief cabinet secretary of Japan, said after the war: “The atomic bomb was a golden opportunity given by Heaven for Japan to end the war.” He wanted to look like a peaceful man-which became a sensible position only after the Americans had won.

Okura Kimmochi, president of the Technological Research Mobilization Office, wrote before the surrender: “I think it is better for our country to suffer a total defeat than to win total victory . . . in the case of Japan’s total defeat, the armed forces would be abolished, but the Japanese people will rise to the occasion during the next several decades to reform themselves into a truly splendid people . . . the great humiliation [the bomb] is nothing but an admonition administered by Heaven to our country.” But let him thank the American people-not heaven-for it was they who made the choice between the morality of life and the morality of death inescapable.

Americans should be immensely proud of the bomb. It ended a war that had enslaved a continent to a religious-military ideology of slavery and death.

There is no room on earth for this system, its ideas and its advocates.

It took a country that values this world to bomb this system into extinction.

For the Americans to do so while refusing to sacrifice their own troops to save the lives of enemy civilians was a sublimely moral action. This destroyed the foundations of the war, and allowed the Japanese to rebuild their culture along with their cities, as prosperous inhabitants of the earth. Were it true that total victory today creates new attackers tomorrow, we would now be fighting Japanese suicide bombers, while North Korea-where the American army did not impose its will-would be peaceful and prosperous. The facts are otherwise. The need for total victory over the morality of death has never been clearer.

1. This letter is not an “attack” as some speculated, not “hate-filled” as others incriminated and not a proof of “Conspiracy Theory” as many panicked.

This letter is motivated by my respect to Judd, his professional qualities and trust in his judgment. Otherwise, I would not have wasted his time reading it (hopefully) and my time writing it.

This letter also serves as an example of unbiased search for truth and how to argue in a free-speech fashion in a democratic society that we (the people of USA) are. We all have a different intellectual background and different life experiences, so I have shared mine with Judd. It is up to him to recognize the value.

I do not have agenda. If you just be patient and exercise attention you might notice I am not very happy with extreme right politics either. In fact, one using enough attention while reading my comments, may have already noticed that, since this subject was touched in my discussions with fellow ThinkProgress members of audience.

I was irritated at times in my comments. But I never did ridicule anyone except in response to offense. Offense in discussions comes in variety of forms and shapes. If this subject (offense in discussions) found worthwhile – I will elaborate. One thing for sure – since I was on the site the level of explicit and offensive profanity on the site has decreased. Do I have anything to do with it? I think not. It is merely an observation.

2. The truly original and authentic message has been posted only at:

http://thinkprogress.org/2006/07/27/armitage-mideast/#comments

http://thinkprogress.org/2006/07/28/us-lebanon/#comments

http://thinkprogress.org/2006/07/26/new-nie/#comments

http://thinkprogress.org/2006/07/28/manage-calm/#comments

http://thinkprogress.org/2006/07/28/blair-advice/#comments

followed by my challenge to james riser (who admitted to the usage of other blog names) to continue the argument she/he put forward.

These 5 URLs are the only places on the Internet or any other media where authentic message was posted.

I know for many from the audience (for whatever reason) it would be hard to believe that one may actually be ethical enough not to use variety of names, not to place post on different web-sites and use one’s own thoughts and observations.

I am simply being ethical. That is one of my virtues and I intend to hold-on to it despite all the provocations. Believe me – I did have much harder challenges in my life. Being simply ethical is easy for me.

If it turns out my open letter to Judd makes its’ way to other web sites – I am not doing it; it is out of my control; it simply means someone liked them and found it worthwhile to distribute. For what I am being grateful not because of my deficient self-esteem but rather for my time spent did not go down in vain.

3. I also said that I am a professional software engineer (sorry, leftisnuts, but I am about to substantiate this).

My current project is to reverse-engineer and re-write Microsoft Windows transport communications core, so Windows clients can perform IP based communications in transport neutral fashion as UNIX and LINUX allow to.

Greatly appreciate everyone’s time spent on reading my posts. Thank you.

Comment by Arthur_Schopenhauer”

Thank you very much Arthur_Schopenhauer.

Very timely reminder. Greatly appreciate it.