From Green Party presidential candidate Jill Stein’s Facebook page, May 27th, 2016 (via American Third Party Report):
Jill Stein, who is seeking the Green Party nomination for President, said that President Obama should apologize during his trip to Hiroshima for the use of nuclear weapons against Japan by pledging nuclear disarmament.
Dr. Stein also urged Obama to listen to the testimony of the survivors of the nuclear attack, who have dedicated their lives to the elimination of nuclear weapons so that no one else should ever experience the hell on earth they survived.
“The existence of nuclear weapons threatens the survival of humanity. I pledge to eliminate all such weapons as an urgent priority,” stated Stein.
Despite his pledge 7 years ago in Prague that the US will “seek the peace and security of a world without nuclear weapons,” Obama has supported spending $1 trillion over the next 3 decades to modernize the U.S. nuclear arsenal. Stein said she would cancel this program and instead dedicate those funds to meeting human needs and preventing catastrophic climate change.
Stein said that as President she would forego new missile bases in Japan and the Asia pivot, ask Japan to uphold their peace constitution (article 9), and would take Russia up on its previous offer to reduce nuclear weapons to 1000 each, followed by comprehensive talks for all nuclear nations to abolish all nuclear weapons..
The U.S nuclear bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945 indiscriminately incinerated tens of thousands of non-combatant children, women and men. By the end of the year more than 210,000 people – mainly civilians, were dead.
Today there are more than 15,000 nuclear weapons, most far more powerful than the bombs dropped on Japan. 94% are held by the U.S. and Russia, Last year The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists moved the hands of its Doomsday Clock to three minutes to midnight citing the “extraordinary and undeniable threats to the continued existence of humanity” posed by “unchecked climate change, global nuclear weapons modernizations, and outsized nuclear arsenals.”
“Have the Japanese ever apologized for Pearl Harbor or how they treated our POW’s?”
The US murdered at least a dozen American POWs in the Hiroshima terrorist attack.
Deran: as far as the Green Party. Their test will be to improve on Stein’s ’12 vote. Otherwise the GP is trash heap material.
Nonsense. The LP’s vote totals over the decades have risen and fallen, risen and fallen, etc. Yet the LP is still here. There’s no reason the GP’s vote totals can’t similarly fluctuate for decades without the GP imploding.
People don’t join third parties to win elections. Many of the rank & file workers join for personal reasons — because they’re true believers, or to socialize with like-minded people, or to seek validation.
I’ve attended LP meetings and conventions, on and off, since the 1980s. Many of the same people keep showing up for decades, simply because that’s what they do. The LP has become a part of their lifestyle.
Like it or not, a third party is a social club. It might also be a political party, but it’s also a social club. And the people who join for that reason won’t disappear just because their candidates have lost.
Now, here’s where some libertarians will shout, “Exactly! And that’s exactly what needs to change! And we’ve begun to change it with Johnson/Weld!”
Yeah, I’ve heard those cries since the 1990s. The same old complaints about how it’s time for the LP to “grow up” and “start winning elections” … followed by the inevitable “Here’s how we’re going to do it…” which always means a compromise in principles, but which never actually leads to the promised major party status.
Jack Hunter @ Rare.us has a column on Conservatives who criticzed the bombging of Hiroshima http://rare.us/story/conservatives-used-to-criticize-the-hiroshima-bombing-far-worse-than-obama-did/
Worth a look.
A couple more points.
However much we condemn dropping the atomic bombs on the civilian populations of two Japanese cities, the government of Japan owes the people of Japan an apology for starting the war that lead to the destruction of their homeland.
Japanese governments deny any guilt for the aggression that the Japanese military undertook in China and Korea, let alone the bombing of Pearl Harbor. In Germany books denouncing the Third Reich are published regularly; In 1983 I imported a variety of anti-Nazi books published to mark the 50th anniversary of the Nazi seizure of power. The issue of German war guilt is taught in German schools and universities.
I have one book (in English translation) on Japan’s war crimes written by a Japanese university professor. After his book was published, his employment by his university was terminated.
Japanese textbooks whitewash their government’s actions during the war, and the governments of Red China, Taiwan and South Korea have all protested Japanese text books.
But at least, as Dr Stein notes, Japan has a Peace Constitution. They are right now working to amend the protections for peace in their constitution. With encouragement from earlier U.S. administrations, leading Japanese politicians are trying to remove the constitutional prohibition on sending military forces outside the borders of Japan.
To begin, Dr. Stein’s points about the current situation with Nukes, including her criticism of Nobel Peace Prize winner Barack Obama’s support for spending a trillion dollars to modernize the US nuclear arsenal are well stated and right on. That is a lot of money for weapons of mass destruction.
The bombing of Hiroshima & Nagasaki were great human tragedies – August 5 was, as Japanese peace activists say, The Day Man Lost. I can’t say that I support the dropping of the bomb, but I have the comfort of living now. I have had World War II vets in my book shop and they almost all are convinced that Japan would never surrender without either an invasion or the bomb. And they are convinced that an invasion would cost a million American lives because the Japanese would fight door to door and engage in kamikaze (suicide) attacks.
So I do not think a President or candidate for President should apologize for something so far removed from our own experience. And a candidate who takes the stand Dr Stein has will lose some audience among people who lived through the war.
Issues of war crimes and atrocities are best dealt with by intellectuals debating the issues in books, many of which are available at my book shop.
Better that our President and our candidates pledge to not use nuclear weapons from now forward.
imo it’s really a matter of what sort of surrender was being sought. Before the Potsdam Conference the Japanese approached the Soviets abt the USSR being intermediaries in exchange for lthe rest of the Sakhalins and Inner Mongolia, plus the Japanese withdrawing from China and the Soviets staying out of China proper (and Japan keeping Manchuria and Taiwan), but the Soviets wanted more. And the US was pushing for unconditional capitulation by Japan. The Brits demanded the same from Germany, and the US was still pissed the Japanese had attacked Hawaii, which had been recognized as independent by Britain and Japan until the US stole/seized Hawaii.
It seems likely the atomic bombs were tested on Japan to induce capitulation, but also to show Stalin that the US would be the new world power after the war.
But, as far as the Green Party. Their test will be to improve on Stein’s ’12 vote. Otherwise the GP is trash heap material.
It was a WAR. It was declared by Congress as is required under our Constitution.
So what? Congress (and the Constitution) once authorized slavery. Was that OK with you? Congress has authorized the Drug War, the Patriot Act, the TSA, Obamacare, and literally millions of other tyrannical actions, and the Supreme Court has ruled that the Constitution allows for all of them. Are all those things OK with you?
They started it and we finished it.
They “started it” by attacking a military base and killing approximately 2,000 people, almost all of whom were military personnel. We “finished it” by using WMD on two major population centers, killing over 100,000 people, most of whom were civilians. Based on your logic, I suppose you think if you get in an argument with a man at a bar, and he “starts it” by punching you in the nose, that gives you the right to “finish it” by burning down his house, with his wife and children inside?
You normally seem like a reasonable, logical person. But on this, you couldn’t possibly be more wrong.
Where did I hear it? It’s knowledge I’ve had for a while.
Tonight I’ll see if I can track down the source.
Jill,
Where did you hear that?
I’m surprised you all believe the country’s propaganda about the bombs. Japan had already agreed to surrender, some say before the first bomb, others after the first bomb but before the second. It was a transgression against humanity to drop those bombs.
So much for this country being “exceptional”.
President Truman’s actions saved from 500,000 to one million allied soldiers lives. Young children and women from Japan were getting ready to die in an attempt to save Japan from invasion. The bombs ended the war.
Also, the emperor of Japan was a war criminal and he should have been tried for war crimes.
The bombs saved more lives than given credit. A campaign of invasion would have been more costly – & a divided Japan could have appeared with the Soviets entering the war (something we saw in Korea & Germany for those who are keeping track).
I like Jill Stein, but she is wrong on this one.
Sorry purists this is where I part company. It was a WAR. It was declared by Congress as is required under our Constitution. They started it and we finished it. If that offends you… tough!
Stein is absolutely right on this one.
The Green party should be wary of this cult of personality that they are developing for Jill Stein. IF the Greens become too dependent on Stein they could implode like the Reform Party did without Perot.
We SHOULD apologize for dropping the bombs in Japan. I understand why Obama didn’t do it. Maybe we should get a genuine person, someone with compassion, in the White House.
Johnson’s answers about the war questions at the debate really sucked. Too bad Dr. Stein is so wondy about economic and “save the earth” matters.
Gosh, I wish everyone would stop apologizing for their past atrocities. Except the Japanese, they should apologize more. Like they did last year.
http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/world/2015/04/29/japan-shinzo-abe-joint-session-of-congress-speech/26566135/
Stein should have joined Obama’s apology tour. This is exactly what’s going to get Trump elected. The majority are fed up with over political correctness and constant apologizing for everything. Have the Japanese ever apologized for Pearl Harbor or how they treated our POW’s?