Don't Cry for Me, Hiroshima

President Obama has just visited Hiroshima, something no other U.S. president has done.…memorializing the 1945 A-bomb events on the part of the “sanguinary” U.S… sort of a caterwauling apology in behalf of the “sensitive” few (like him?)…the never-ending discussion of the two things that set the tone for history post-WWII – Hiroshima and Nagasaki. He began his speech by reminding that “death fell from the sky” seventy-one years ago. This is the president who precipitated “death from the sky” five years ago onto Libya, one of the weakest nations militarily in the world...and for no reason since Libya was a threat to no nation.

Flash back to August 1945 to a six-week period from December 1937 to February 1938. The place: Nanking, China. The Japanese Army took the city and within a six-week period without the use of bombs, artillery, or anything much more lethal than bayonets and rifles managed to kill about 300,000 people (half the population), mostly civilians and POWs, the greatest atrocity of the WWII-era. How does an army stab to death or otherwise polish off 7,200 people per day without even a roadside bomb or a battalion of suicide bombers, while committing 20,000 reported rapes (maybe one reported for every ten unreported?) and getting the bodies out of the way?

It must have been mostly over by 17 January 1938 when then-Japanese Foreign Minister Hirota Koki confirmed in a message to the Japanese embassy in Washington that 300,000 had been killed in Nanjing (National Archives, Washington, D.C. – released September 1994). Koki probably didn’t mention it, but two Japanese officers held a competition to see who could bring about the most beheadings. The two officers were finally executed in 1947. Apparently, hara-kiri, the honorable way out, was not honorable enough for them, so they stuck around until somebody else did the deed for them.

Concerning the ladies, the euphemism for their wretched status was Comfort Women. These were the 200,000 women/girls, mostly Korean, who were shipped like so many pack mules to the various fronts where Japanese soldiers were fighting in order to allegedly protect the precious “freedom fighters” from STDs, ergo, foreclose their absence from the war, account of VD. The notion that this stopped the rape of whoever just happened to “be there” is too ridiculous to even contemplate. The Japanese were equal opportunity rapists, and their victims – at least in Muslim theology – represented paradise, albeit in the midst of massacres by the boatload.

But what does all this gory stuff have to do with Hiroshima and Nagasaki? For those dumb enough to ask that question, the answer, via other questions, is simple: Would it have been better to bypass Japan in 1945 and thus give that cruel regime the opportunity to continue its bloodthirsty campaigns until it threatened the entire world, including this nation? Is it better to kill the enemy on his soil rather than kill the enemy on one’s own soil? In choosing weaponry, is it better to use the most powerful at a distance…or, is it better to go to the trenches and “fight fair,” eyeball-to-eyeball right at home…sort of like the English/French/Germans in 1914-18?

To rational people, the answers are simple enough. President Truman knew them in August 1945. Americans had been dying at about the 320-per-day rate (counting all war-induced deaths) for some three-and-a-half years. Why should more of them die just because a cruel regime had decided to conquer and enslave Asia, for starters, and the rest of the world, in time? He decided there was no reason for that and could hardly have faced the relatives of the American dead, or the survivors, tens of thousands of whom had been wounded, if he had failed to take all possible actions to end the conflagration started by the Japanese.

At 8:15 a.m. on 06 August 1945, the first atomic bomb, nicknamed “Little Boy,” was dropped from a B-29 known as the “Enola Gay” and piloted by Army Air Corps Colonel Paul Tibbets. It detonated at 2,000 feet altitude and obliterated 4.7 square miles of the city. Some 70,000 people died or went missing instantly and another 70,000 were injured, with perhaps 140,000 dead altogether by the end of the year. Compare that to Nanking. Rational leaders would have seen the handwriting on the wall, but Japan was not blessed on that day with rational leaders…only bloodthirsty and ambitious monsters.

President Truman waited for an offer of surrender, being a rational leader himself and thus expecting, in the face of such a threat of eventual utter destruction, that common sense would prevail among the Japanese leaders. Enigmatically, nothing happened; therefore, at 11:02 a.m. on 09 August 1945, a full three days having passed for allowing reasonable leaders to act, the second atomic bomb, nicknamed “Fat Man,” was dropped from another American plane on Nagasaki, destroying one-third of the city, or about 1.8 square miles. Some 40,000 people were killed or went missing and another 40,000 were injured, with perhaps 70,000 dead altogether by the end of the year. This finally grabbed the attention of Japanese leaders, and the rest is history.

So…was it better for Hiroshima and Nagasaki to happen than for the expected millions, including Japanese women and children, to die in the unavoidable invasion of Japan necessary to end the war? The answer is obvious. Had the Japanese not been defeated, as well as the Nazi Germans a few months before (after having brought about the deaths of millions), American women today would be in the “Comfort Brigades” shipped all over the world, and there would not be a single Jew still alive. When the “sensitivity” cadres look at things in this light, perhaps they will see the light, although one wonders, in light of the mushy-mindedness of those who rail against this country because they are too dumb to see the connection between Nanking 1937 and New York/Washington/Pennsylvania 11 September 2001.

President H.S. Truman drew a line in the sand in August 1945. President G.H.W. Bush drew a line in the sand in 1991. President G.W. Bush drew a line in the sand in 2001 and again in 2003. Though the sands constantly shift, one hopes for reasonable leaders who will always draw the line. Obama's “memorializing” in Hiroshima disgraced this country, which lost 405,000 dead in WWII.

And so it goes.
Jim Clark.

U.S. as BULLY

AG Lets Transgenders & Homosexuals BULLY the Masses

Two social problems are currently intersecting, causing consternation and conflict as well as calling for another interpretation of the Constitution. One has to do with laws in many locations having to do with bullying. The other deals with transgenders (or those claiming that status) using public bathrooms of choice, no matter their biological gender.

Attorney-General Lynch, in hammering the North Carolina legislature and governor for enacting laws preventing this absurdity, has predictably posited this matter in terms of racism hearkening back to the 1960s civil-rights era, although race is not a factor, just bathroom privacy for everyone. Strangely, one wonders why those who claim to be bisexual are not a part of the conversation. Should they also occupy the facility of choice?

How is a transgender or bisexual identified. There's no clinical test to determine transgender-sex. A transgender or bisexual is self-identified, no matter how he/she is dressed or undressed. Apparently, it's all in the mind, which cannot be deciphered. There's no genetic or chromosomal anomaly involved, as is the case with homosexuality.

Anyone can claim to be transgender to frequent bathrooms of choice, no questions asked. A 250-pound male, who may be a child molester or other type of pervert, can enter a restroom occupied solely by a mostly undressed twelve-year-old girl. The potential danger is obvious.

CNN's Jake Tapper, showing considerable angst on 11 May arguing with North Carolina Governor McCrory, stupidly asked if there had been a problem to date. There had been no complaints because the issue has just presented itself in the rabid political correctness craze. Transgenders, with no harm, had simply gone to the proper restrooms. The plot will thicken when that drunken 250-pound "transgender" (on his own say-so) assaults and perhaps kills that twelve-year-old girl, thus giving Tapper his answer.

This is where bullying intersects the bathrooms. Business people have been bankrupted by a handful of homosexuals account, for religious reasons, not accommodating their marriage activities. They can now be bankrupted for refusing the transgenders opposite-sex bathrooms if for no other reason simply guarding against lawsuits for what happens in those bathrooms. Bullying!

The actual bully, however, is the government, the only power the transgenders or homosexuals have for pushing this social engineering agenda. The 99.99% of straight Americans are being bullied by their own government depriving them of their right to privacy without harming another soul. Plain common sense.

A father does not want his daughter subject to exposure or worse. His son should not be forced to hear ribald conversation and even advances by silly women in the men's restroom. High-school boys, prone to pulling pranks and enduring raging hormones, can claim to be transgender to enter girls' restrooms, locker-rooms and showers (already happened in Ky.), then laugh later in their own bathrooms, perhaps joined by some girls for a great orgy all around.

This violation of privacy for the masses will affect business, manufacturing, education and all other entities if allowed to happen. SCOTUS has ruled that a right to privacy exists. Transgenders and everyone else will have that right if the government decides not to be a BULLY!

And so it goes.
Jim Clark

Columnist Peel Censures Jackson

There's no argument with Barry Peel's castigation of Andrew Jackson (H-L 02 May) though making it a case for "updating" currency to political correctness mode trivializes his point of reference, the mistreatment of "Native Americans," a mistaken appellation since Peel likely has no idea who inhabited North America (native-native Americans) before the Indians dislodged them and became the current Native Americans.

A long article in the current Weekly Standard took on Jackson, too, though it had to do more with his political shenanigans, like forestalling a banking system. He was ruthless but no more so than current politicians and hardly more coarse.

Peel might wonder how it is that he is what he is where he is in light of history. The Indians were as treacherous and genocide-prone as any people group, such as the Africans, who in the 1600-1800s, after winning tribal wars, either ate, enslaved, tortured or sold the losers or their families to slave-traders for a handful of trinkets.

In other words, history is if anything an account of the survival of the fittest. The primitives have always been at the mercy of those who are inclined toward inventing or grabbing things that make them able to overcome either their enemies or just folks who had something they wanted. Current example: ISIS, the grabbers, who predicate their success on committing terrorism, using implements of destruction taken from their owners.

The Persians (Iran ancestors) comprised an advanced culture/civilization before the time of Mohammad, an illiterate cutthroat who established a religion in Egypt after being the caravan-plundering edition of Jesse James. That "faith" made its way to Persia and throughout the Middle East and all the way to Spain before being stopped there in Europe in the 1400s. The sorry situation worldwide today because of Islamic terrorism is obvious.

A culture either advances or stagnates and then begins a gradual dissolution. The result is that the more fit will take it over. This is what happened with Jackson and the "Trail of Tears," guns against bows and arrows, and is largely the reason Peel is writing columns in Kentucky instead of hiding from a scalper.

As far as the current situation is concerned, Peel would likely prefer the Lexington of today over that of Daniel Boone's era - education, sanitation, law and order, representative government instead of tribal face-offs. He might prefer driving 70 mph in an air-conditioned car over the care, feeding, and general upkeep of a horse.

If Jackson hadn't dealt harshly with the Indians, some other person-of-power would have, perhaps the most graphic and easily proven lesson of history. If the colonists had not booted the British (French, too), either of those worthies would have done-in the Indians and worried about it a lot less than Jackson.

Lesson: If the U.S. continues on its obvious descent morally, militarily and otherwise, it will be fair game for the people-group that will ultimately become strong enough to dislodge this nation. In fact, the North Koreans and Chinese governments could wipe out much of this weakening self-worshiping nation in a heartbeat now while citizens clamor for all genders to use whatever and wherever bathrooms they desire, something really important.

As for the currency, it should include imprints or engravings (if perceived as necessary in the case of pictures) of U.S. officials only. The currency should not comprise a museum of sorts for individuals who have been important in affecting government but not effecting government. Jackson, like Washington, Lincoln, Jefferson, Roosevelt (both), was a president and trying to means-test him off the currency is both mean-spirited and shallow. Re-writing history is beneath contempt.

And so it goes.
Jim Clark