Bill Whittle rips John Stewart for claiming that President Truman was a war criminal for nuking Japan to end the war.
Stewart has apologized, seriously, on a later show, for making that claim:
| The Daily Show With Jon Stewart | M – Th 11p / 10c | |||
| Harry Truman Was Not a War Criminal | ||||
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“It was, in my estimation, a stupid thing to say.”
I’m linking here because this is the best summary of the argument for Truman’s actions I’ve seen.
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Tags: atomic bomb, Bill Whittle, Hiroshima, John Stewart, Nagasaki, Truman
I think the term “war criminal” gets tossed around a lot these days; look at any antiwar protest and you’ll probably see the old standbys like “Indict Bush” or “Bushitler.” It’s a coarse cheapening of a very serious offense. After all, in order for conduct during a shooting war to be deemed “criminal,” it has to be pretty wanton.
The seriousness is reflected in the penalty, or at least it used to be. The Allies didn’t even bother to imprison most of the folks convicted at Nuremberg – they just let them hang. Even the “enlightened” French wanted firing squads.
Did Jon Stewart really think Truman’s conduct was serious enough to warrant execution or even life imprisonment? Probably not. My guess is that Mr. Stewart just doesn’t know much about international criminal law. Fair enough – he owned up and apologized, at least.
No, I don’t think Stewart thinks Truman deserved execution.
I’ve met folks who do, though, and the attitude that ending the war was not adequate justification for using nuclear arms against Japan is common enough that Stewart felt comfortable in saying what he did.
He does get credit for apologizing, and I believe he was sincere as far as he goes. I doubt, however, that he believes that nuking Japan was the right thing to do — he’s just acknowledging that, immoral as it was by modern liberal standards, it was understandable at the time.
Your point about his ignorance of history is well taken, but I think he, and much of the left, is ignorant precisely because history would prove them wrong in so many ways. They are deliberately ignorant, and occasionally, as here, it leads them to say things they know are not just factually incorrect, but morally wrong.