Obama and Rahm (if he were capable and didn’t think it laughable) ought to stop triangulating for a moment and reflect about that legacy.

Mr. Truman demonstrated true leadership, sometimes flawed, often forthright. He often fought against the grain of officialdom and what then passed for Beltway opinion. He was no naif in the woods; he knew bargaining, frailty, egos and power. He did the right thing because it was his job and he took it seriously, but he didn’t confuse it with who he was.

Truman also instituted a national food conservation effort to be able to provide more food for Europe.

It is simple and straightforward. It can be understood by all. Learn it–memorize it–keep it always in mind. Here it is:

One: Use no meat on Tuesdays.

Two: Use no poultry or eggs on Thursdays.

Three: Save a slice of bread every day.

Four: Public eating places will serve bread and butter only on request.

And he also didn’t like the speculators:

There is a place for legitimate trading in futures and for hedging transactions. But 90 percent of all accounts in a recent corn futures market were found to be speculative. Trading in wheat futures grew 75 percent in September compared with August. Normal trading in wheat at Chicago should amount to 3 or 4 million bushels a day. In this past September, however, trading averaged almost 30 million bushels a day. In a single month, on one exchange, almost half the year’s crop was traded–bought and sold-just plain gambling.

I am instructing the Commodity Exchange Commission, which consists of the Attorney General and the Secretaries of Agriculture and Commerce, to demand of the grain exchanges that they increase their margin requirements to at least 33 1/3 percent. If the grain exchanges refuse, the Government may find it necessary to limit the amount of trading.

I say this because the cost of living in this country must not be a football to be kicked about by gamblers in grain.

Well said.

Was he perfect? No. Were his instincts to move in the right direction? You bet.

Thanks Peterr.

“The Buck Stops Here”

No longer available in Washington, DC.

Hiroshima and Nagasaki were not important military targets.

“It wasn’t necessary to hit them with that awful thing.” – Eisenhower.

While in grammar school, I was fortunate enough to meet and shake President Truman’s hand twice at the Truman Library in Independence, Missouri. I’ve walked by his house many times. I’ve toured the Library and read his biographies. No man has ever represented our country with the personal strength, honor and integrity that Harry S. Truman did. He was a man of extraordinary tenacity who was compelled by his heartfelt responsibilities to make extraordinarily momentous decisions. The thing I admire most about him was that his innate need to do the RIGHT THING caused him to rise above his life’s limitations and reach heights of governmental accomplishment that very few presidents have aspired to or equaled. He did not suffer fools lightly. And if you did anything to screw with the rights of American citizens of any ethnicity, creed of socioeconomic level, the last person you’d want coming after you was Harry S. Truman. He made extremely unpopular political decisions because he believed that doing the RIGHT THING was what the people were paying him to do. Nearly every unpopular decision he made turned out to be the RIGHT ONE for America and Americans. The polar opposite of George W. Bush.

Because he did not pander to the people and because he fired Gen MacArthur, his poll rating when he left in 1952 were in the cheney area. It took about 40 years before people could look back and actually see what he had done. The result? Whether or not a prez is popular when he is the “decider” means nothing. It can take many years before the whole truth comes out. Now we see that firing Mac was really necessary, he was well over 80, and IMPO his decisions did more to extend the war against Japan than they did to actually win it. If not for the Navy, we would still be fighting Japan. People forget that the Gen was in charge in PI before Dec 7 and his actions after Dec 7 were more criminal that those of the Gen. who were in charge at Pearl Harbor and were later Court Martialed.
Now maybe in the US Truman is not celebrated, but go to the Republic of Korea, he is remembered and celebrated there.

This is not ment in any way as an endorsement of the “decider” shrub bush. He can wait until hell freezes over and the opinion of history will not change. He was one of the worst prez ever. He did more to destroy the constitution than nixon did. And congress, as a whole, is totally evading their responsibility by not investigating bush. I remember the Senate select panel on Watergate. I doubt that we have more than 1 or 2 senators who have the guts and integrity that those senators did then. And we the people learned about our govt and how it should operate. Now, nobody has any guts or spines. All they care about is getting reelected. Spin(lies) rule.

Bullshit! I’m a left leaning liberal Democrat. AFTER the bombs were dropped and Japan surrendered, moralists and Monday morning quarterbacks came crawling out of the woodwork to offer their conveniently self-serving opinions without having the burden of responsibility on their shoulders.

What would they have said if Truman had decided NOT to drop the bombs and Japan decided not to surrender resulting in our invasion of Japan and millions of American soldiers, Japanese soldiers and civilians being killed, while nearly everything in Japan was completely destroyed? And what about the billions of dollars the invasion would have cost and billions more dollars to rebuild Japan?

What were the Russians going to do in Europe while we were depleting the vast majority of our resources in an invasion, stabilization and occupation of Japan? All of Europe would have become part of the Soviet Bloc. Truman had innumerable moral and practical considerations to base his decision on, while the moralists and Monday morning quarterbacks could safely pose hypothetical alternatives without having to be responsible for the consequences of making decisions that could have led to DISASTROUS consequences for America, Europe and the entire free world.

moralists and Monday morning quarterbacks came crawling out of the woodwork

OK, who else would you like to dehumanize today? Language has power. Did you really mean to compare those whose moral conscience is seared by the reality of such mass violent death and suffering to insects?

War will never end as long as we humans make these cost/benefit analyses with human life. This has been addressed here at fdl several times in recent weeks, in criticizing the torture apologists.

More “Monday morning quarterbacking” from Kurt Vonnegut:

“The most racist, nastiest act by this country, after human slavery, was the bombing of Nagasaki. Not of Hiroshima, which might have had some military significance. But Nagasaki was purely blowing away yellow men, women, and children.”

http://www.progressive.org/mag_intv0603

One was too many. Two was absolutely vile.

Ike was against dropping the bomb, before and after. I understand the dynamic which made it inevitable that Truman would decide to. It would have taken a giant of a man and politician to go against the consensus and not use the nukes. Let us not pretend Truman was that.

All his mistakes, well most, arose from listening to the great grand strategic thinkers. Then again how could a man of his background resist? Truman was the most ‘common man’ president, perhaps ever.

Planning for invasions of Kyushu followed by Honshu was underway in the summer of ‘45, and Truman was getting estimates from the military that US KIA totals could be as high as 500K if resistance proved comparable to what was experienced on Iwo Jima and Okinawa earlier that year. Not to mention millions of Japanese. Furthermore it was recognized that it was strategically urgent to end the Pacific war decisively for the following, among other reasons:
- As Osage noted in #9 above, Soviet encroachment into Europe would almost certainly have gone further than it historically did if the US had been distracted by a war with Japan that dragged out into late 1946 or ‘47.
- As Truman was contemplating the A-bomb decision he was aware that the Soviets were transferring dozens of divisions from Europe to eastern Asia via the Trans-Siberian Railway, as per agreements made at Yalta, and were planning to begin operations in Manchuria in the fall. Those who chose to see (many in Washington didn’t) were becoming alarmed at the Soviet’s suppression of representative government in the eastern Europe countries they controlled, and were growing alarmed at the strategic implications of similar actions on their part should they have a significant enough part in the final defeat of Japan to demand extensive involvement in post-war settlements and affairs. As it was, they accelerated their schedule and hurriedly attacked Japanese controlled Manchuria a few days after Nagasaki. If the military coup that was attempted in an effort to overpower the emperor’s peace initiative had succeeded and the fighting dragged on even another few weeks, the Soviets would very likely would have been in a position to make significant demands.

There’s also a compelling political reason. It is unlikely that the secrecy lid could have been kept on the A-bomb much longer. This would have especially been the case if the Trinity test in New Mexico had been a success, as it was, and then Truman decided not to use the bomb as soon as possible thereafter. The invasion of Kyushu was scheduled for November 1, and the limited intelligence that was available about the defenses on that island was striking fears in the planners that the Operation Olympic would make Iwo Jima and Okinawa look like a day at the park. When the resultant thousands of new gold stars began appearing on the service flags in the windows of American homes and it became known that President Truman had decided against using weapon so shocking in power that it might have ended the war within days, he’s have been lucky to escape Washington with his life.

Yes I did. When confronted with a real life decision to kill two hundred thousand humans beings or kill two million human beings, are you seriously suggesting that he should have decided to save two hundred thousand lives at the cost of two million lives? Are you seriously suggesting that he should have allowed Russia to forcefully take ALL of Europe behind an Iron Curtain and kill hundreds of thousands if not millions more people in the process? I agree that war is about as stupid and destructive as man gets, but what is the benefit of being morally right at the cost of millions of more lives? America was attacked by Japan. Russia would have decimated Europe. The morality of war was irrelevant compared to saving of millions of lives.

Japan still refused to surrender after the Hiroshima bomb was dropped. We only had one more A-bomb at the time and that bomb had to break the will of the Japanese “government” to continue to fight. The Japanese “military establishment” wanted every Japanese citizen to fight to the death. If the Japanese Emperor hadn’t himself made the decision that he could no longer sacrifice the lives of his people, the military leaders would have fought to the last man, woman and child rather than surrender, which was exactly what Truman was trying to avoid.

The United States planned on continuing to drop nuclear bombs on Japan until they surrendered. There were at least 7 additional bombs planned for that purpose.

Considering that the magnitude of their indiscriminate destruction became known after just the first one. How exactly would you characterize the plan and position of pursuing perpetual nuclear bombings of Japan? Would eradicating all non-insect life from the Japanese mainland be thoroughly justified for their lack of surrender?

Prior to Hiroshima the civilian leadership of Japan were already attempting to compel the emperor to surrender. The fleets were destroyed, their resources horribly constrained, and their territorial strongholds were collapsing day-by-day. The hold outs to surrender were the military leadership, and they did so largely because the United States had made it crystal clear that the Imperial lineage would not be allowed to stand. It was a condition of every surrender.

Considering that the last hold-out position of the Japanese was to maintain their culture and tradition of Imperial lineage, and that we refused to give on that point, leading ultimately to the dropping of two atomic weapons. How do you characterize the fact that we ultimately allowed the seat of the Emperor to continue, as it was a useful political tool during the reconstruction?

I take it you place no value of the American lives that would have been lost if we invaded Japan or the lives that would have been lost if Russia had been able to enforce its will in Europe. You would have preferred that we invade Japan and give Russia free reign in Eurpoe instead?

And by the way, the Japanese had been brutal and merciless conquerors of all the countries they invaded. Also, the Japanese military leadership didn’t give two shits about their civilian population or Imperial lineage. They wanted to fight and take as many Americans as possible with them in the hope that Americans would lose their political will to continue to fight and would end the war on more favorable terms to Japan.

That’s a very nice caricature of the Japanese military leadership you’ve constructed. Much of which is warranted, and none of which answers any of my three questions.

I’m certainly not arguing that the Japanese military leadership was some bastion of humanitarian principle.

First let me say, I value all life, and am neither tribalistic nor nationalistic. I can say unequivocally that by any definition of terrorism (Truman’s stated intention was to incur so much devastation and fear amongst the population that they would have to capitulate to the Potsdam Declaration), the use of atomic weapons was without a doubt the most heinous terrorist attack in human history

The extreme estimates on American losses were predicated on Japan waging “total war.” A logistic impossibility for one, but a political improbability for another. The civilian leadership (on behalf of the shame of the citizenry) had already capitulated, and were pressing (with some success) the Emperor to surrender, of which truly the last hold out was a strong cultural and historical concern for the very center of their way of life, the Imperial lineage. This point utterly underscored by our top political scientists and scholars who sought to employ that tradition during reconstruction.

Will you answer my questions, or would you prefer to erect another strawman?

The United States planned on continuing to drop nuclear bombs on Japan until they surrendered. There were at least 7 additional bombs planned for that purpose.

Considering that the magnitude of their indiscriminate destruction became known after just the first one. How exactly would you characterize the plan and position of pursuing perpetual nuclear bombings of Japan? Would eradicating all non-insect life from the Japanese mainland be thoroughly justified for their lack of surrender?

Prior to Hiroshima the civilian leadership of Japan were already attempting to compel the emperor to surrender. The fleets were destroyed, their resources horribly constrained, and their territorial strongholds were collapsing day-by-day. The hold outs to surrender were the military leadership, and they did so largely because the United States had made it crystal clear that the Imperial lineage would not be allowed to stand. It was a condition of every surrender.

Considering that the last hold-out position of the Japanese was to maintain their culture and tradition of Imperial lineage, and that we refused to give on that point, leading ultimately to the dropping of two atomic weapons. How do you characterize the fact that we ultimately allowed the seat of the Emperor to continue, as it was a useful political tool during the reconstruction?

Benevolent reconstruction on our terms not theirs.