The president doesn’t have time to help the Germans celebrate the anniversary of their freedom, but he wants to go to Hiroshima and Nagasaki. I predict that on the sevensixty-fifth anniversary, next August, he will go there and apologize for the barbarism of the US in dropping the bombs.
He probably would have liked to apologize to the east Germans for losing their worker’s paradise, too, except he wouldn’t want to give the credit to Reagan.
If Downfall would have been executed two things would now be true:
1. D-Day (as we know it) would be a minor footnote in history
2. The world would be a much more horrible place than it is now (and it ain’t no rosebud garden as it is)
Also, it is not obvious to me that Olympic would have succeeded the first go, if at all. Then we would have ended up using the atomic bomb anyway.
Eh, let him. First of all, by now everyone knows an Obama apology doesn’t mean squat. He’s not personallly apologizing, after all, and feels no particular attachment to the Amerikkka — now thankfully banished to the ash heap of history by His Election — on whose behalf he is aploogizing. He’s not apologizing for any idea or person that is, was, or might be part of His mission here on Earth, or who represent sthe New And Improved United States (now with More Flavor Crystals and Free Health Care), of which His lovely and talented wife is finally proud.
Obama is merely going to apologize for the evil bastards in America, his enemies. In the same spirit I might apologize to the Hutus for the Tutsis, or to all of you for Jim, or flat tires, or H1N1. I’m so sorry! See? Totally easy.
And secondly, he is going to be in the Land of the Insincere Apology anyway. Japanese culture, admirable as it may be in many respects, sees no logical disconnect between nuking someone and apologizing to them, or to their shades, if the nuking for scheduling convenience must precede rather than follow the apology. So Obama’s little metaphorical seppuku will fit right in. I believe the Japanese will calibrate his sincerity quite nicely and understand his nonmessage precisely.
“First of all, by now everyone knows an Obama apology doesn’t mean squat.”
Everyone knows?
That likewise is not obvious to me, although your assessment of Japan is dead on.
Everyone knows?
He was obviously exaggerating. He probably meant everyone who has been paying attention, and with an IQ above room temperature knows.
2010 – 1945 = 65
And that completes my picking of nits for today.
Hey, I had it within an order of magnitude.
The one constant that has always been clear from Obama is that he will always tell his audience what they want to hear (doesn’t matter what he really plans to do)
It is guaranteed that if he visits Hiroshima, he will apologize. But it is also guaranteed that he will try to figure out a way to not quite apologize in English, for the benefit of the US audience (especially the seniors who remember things like Pearl Harbor, Bataan Death March, Rape of Nanking, Unit 431), yet make sure the Japanese translation ends up a 100% apology begging forgiveness.
The Japanese media has Obamania full-on, and has even less hard journalism than CNN/MSNBC, they’ll help him out.
He still thinks he can fool all the people all the time.
Though I hope he does visit the A-Bomb (“Peace”) Museum AND READS THE EXHIBITS, which clearly explain in detail why Hiroshima was a legitimate military target. I was surprised at the candor when I read them myself.
Not gonna happen. Doesn’t fit Obama’s view of America as the big baddie of all history.
Well, I’ll be sure to explain to everyone I know here in Japan and on the Net EXACTLY what he says in his “apology” translated with full context, and the Japanese media’s polished J translation of it. After all, the majority of Americans (teachers, translators, journos, liberal elites and such) in Japan are hard-core leftisits. Don’t expect them to reveal any subtleties in the Japanese version of his apology which would hurt The One back home.
The History (I believe) Channel should play its excellent, though difficult to watch, documentary on the Bataan Death March over and over again while Obama does his thing. Knowing what they did to our men instantly transforms anguished, handwringing wails of “How could we have done such a thing as dropping the bomb?” into angry, bewildered demands to know why we stopped dropping them.
level3, a likely approach is to give the speech on a weekend. It’s a bit challenging since Japan is almost a full day ahead of us. So he probably will end up giving the speech Saturday morning. That gives the apologists plenty of time to spin it (“What he really meant was…”) for the US audience before Monday morning.
I’m surprised to see everyone discussing the contents of Obama’s yet-to-be-made speech as though it’s a foregone conclusion. Judging by his past statements on nuclear nonproliferation, I have a feeling he’ll talk about the horrors experienced by the people of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and use that as a jumping-off point to discuss the future goal of a nuclear arms-free world. What would be the point of apologizing for the bombings now? It was a decision made sixty-five years ago by a man who is long dead. People will debate forever whether or not it was the right decision, or a necessary one. We shouldn’t expect Obama to apologize to the Japanese any more than we should expect the Japanese Prime Minister to apologize to the US and China.