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Posts Tagged ‘Isolationism’

The Historical revionism of Justin Raimondo

by Phantom Ace ( 170 Comments › )
Filed under History, Media, Republican Party, World War II at August 30th, 2011 - 8:30 am


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Ron Paul’s isolationist views didn’t come out of a vacuum. He’s just espousing a foreign policy view echoed by radical Libertarians. Justin Raimondo is an radical Libertarian Isolationist. He is against any military action overseas, even if they’re in our clear interest. His website Anti-War.com has vile writers and revisionist articles.

The most vile article ever written by Justin Raimondo was written on August 8th 2001.  It was 56th anniversary of the dropping of the atomic bombs on Japan. It was  one month before 9/11, which he has blamed on the Mossad and the CIA. Justin Raimondo claims that the US was the villain in the Pacific theater during WWII. He envisions that a Japanese victory would have been a great thing.

The idea that America is, in any sense, a civilized country is easily dispelled by the orgy of self-congratulation and rationalization that accompanies the dual anniversaries of Harry Truman’s decision to atom bomb the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Want your gorge to rise? Check out the New York Post editorial “The Bomb That Saved Millions,” (August 6) which justifies the bombings as a “military necessity.” The editorial opines that “few at the time questioned President Harry S. Truman’s wisdom in using the devastating new weapon, but revisionist historians and political activists maintain now – more than a half-century later – that the atomic bombing of Japan was militarily unnecessary and morally unacceptable.” The Post is New York City’s most popular newspaper – a place where the official standard of morality is closer to the Code of Lek than the Ten Commandants. So why are we not surprised that the Post finds all this appalling?

[…]

One of the job qualifications for being a New York Post editorial writer is a complete ignorance of history, as well as an amorality that might be called Murdochian, as this little screed makes all too clear. For the myth of “military necessity” as a justification for the incineration of two cities has been convincingly debunked by the so-called revisionists, who have shown that the decision to drop the bomb was opposed by an impressive list of Truman’s top commanders, General Douglas MacArthur among them. In The Decision to Use the Atomic Bomb, historian Gar Alperovitz reveals that Truman’s chief of staff, Admiral William Leahy, chief of Naval Operations Admiral Ernest J. King, Fleet Admiral Chester W. Nimitz, Admiral William “Bull” Halsey, Rear Admiral Lewis L. Strauss, commanding general of the U.S. Army Air Forces Henry H. “Hap” Arnold, General Claire Chennault of the Flying Tigers, Army Strategic Air Forces Commander Carl Spatz, and Army Air Force General Curtis “Bombs Away” Lemay, all challenged the military necessity argument. Among Truman’s top advisors, Secretary of State Stimson, Assistant Secretary of War John McCloy, former Ambassador to Japan Joseph Grew, Navy Under Secretary Ralph Bard, and the Joint Chiefs of Staff, all took issue with the decision in one way or another. In 1963, Dwight Eisenhower told Newsweek that “it wasn’t necessary to hit them with that awful thing.”

[…]

The great horror is that this heinous deed was committed against Japan, a civilization as far removed from our own as the streets of New York are from the African savannas. It’s at times like these that I tend to believe the wrong side won the war in the Pacific. Just think: if we all woke up one day living in some alternate history, as in Phillip K. Dick’s The Man in the High Castle, our cultural malaise would disappear overnight. Instead of listening to the latest loutish lyrics of Eminem, American teenagers would be contemplating the subtle beauty of the Japanese tea ceremony. If contemporary Japan is any clue, the crime rate would be cut by 95 percent, and the literacy rate would skyrocket. Certainly everyone’s manners would improve. All in all, life would be far more civilized, imbued with a gentility that would make the New York Post an impossibility

Read the rest: HIROSHIMA MON AMOUR Why Americans are barbarians

It’s been 10 years since Justin Raimondo wrote this lunacy. His views haven’t changed. Just this week over at Anti-War.com, there’s an article claiming the US dropping the bombs on Japan, was kicking a them when they were down.

As I recall, the three main speakers on the earlier panel were historians, and each offered a different reason why the United States dropped atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki:

Gar Alperovitz argued that the U.S. wanted to assert its military superiority in the upcoming Cold War, that is, to intimidate the Soviet Union.

Barton Bernstein posited that the U.S. dropped the bombs for domestic reasons. President Harry Truman feared that the American taxpayers would revolt if, with the war ended, they discovered he had not used the products of the horribly expensive government R&D venture, the Manhattan Project. It had cost $2 billion, today’s $20 billion.

Ronald Takaki said the U.S. motive was largely racist.

[…]

Most likely, before the U.S. planned the invasion of Japan on Nov. 1, the USSBS concluded, “Japan would have surrendered even if the atomic bombs had not been dropped.” Many U.S. military commanders had expected the same.

Yet Gen. Henry Arnold assembled the largest air armada ever of 1,014 aircraft to bomb Tokyo after Japan accepted the surrender terms. The motive was purely “vindictive” and “gratuitous,” Dower notes.

Justin Raimondo is not an isolationist, he’s anti-American. He claims to be a Tea Party supporter, but in the Paulian context. Mr. Raimondo has written at vile websites like VDARE and the nasty Greek businessman Taki’s, American Conservative.

Justin Raimondo is a nasty person who deserves no credibility and is to be rightfully vilified.

Here is Justin Raimondo posing as some cool hip tough guy.

Just Raimondo poses some scary Mob figure.

Justin Raimondo is a deranged self delusional man.



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John McCain uses the Isolationist Straw Man

by Phantom Ace ( 61 Comments › )
Filed under Progressives, Republican Party, Special Report, Tranzis at June 19th, 2011 - 1:37 pm

Wilsonianism is ingrained in both parties. Whenever someone from the Left or the Right, question our wars without end policy, they get smeared. Isolationist is the term used to silence critics of Wilsonianism. Rather than debate the merits of Spreading Democracy in the Islamic world and continuing letting other nations leech off us, debate is shut down.

Well things are different now. Most Americans, even Conservatives are now against interventionism. We have seen the waste the Iraq war was, where Americans died while France and China got the oil. Where despite 10 years of war, the Afghan people rather have sharia law than democracy. Now the war in Libya, where we are helping Al-Qaeda affiliated fighters, so Britain and France can get oil and arm,s contract. What has America gained from these wars? Absolutely nothing! Our economy is in shambles, 5,000 brave Americans dead and 10,000s wounded. This don’t matter to John McCain. He uses the isolationist tag in an attempt to silence critics.

Former Republican presidential nominee Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) took aim at his party for what he called its growing movement towards isolationism, chastising the current GOP presidential field for not supporting U.S. military intervention in Libya and calling for speedy troop withdrawals from Afghanistan.

“This is isolationism. There’s always been an isolation strain in the Republican party, that Pat Buchanan wing of our party,” McCain told “This Week” anchor Christiane Amanpour. “But now it seems to have moved more center stage.”

[….]

“I wonder what Ronald Reagan would be saying today?” questioned McCain, saying the isolationism is a stark departure from traditional Republican foreign policy positions. “That is not the Republican party that has been willing to stand up for freedom for people for all over the world.”

John, Reagan never believed in spreading Democracy at the point of a gun. Also, no one is talking about isolationism, but to end the Afghan War. Afghanistan is a tribal society where Pedophilia is accepted. They will never have the same value system as us. The Karzai regime is corrupt and not worth our blood. With our economic and fiscal crisis, we can no longer afford these conflicts.

The fact that even Liberal Republican Mitt Romney is rejecting Wilsonianism speaks volumes. The United States is not the world’s policeman. It’s time for us to define our interests, arm regional allies like Israel or Colombia to the teeth and let them be our enforcers. When we go to war, we should seek  economic benefits and not some naive democracy spreading project. John McCain is living in the past and doesn’t realize the world has changed.

Wilsonianism is a failed ideology and I’m glad the GOP is rejecting it. America needs to take care of home first before we go seeking demons overseas. Isolationism is not the answer, but Interventionism is not either. A middle path based on national interest and economic benefits is what should be used in whether we go to war. If there’s nothing in it for America’s gain, no thanks. I don’t care about the “freedoms” of people I don’t know. If people like John McCain and Ms. Lindsey want to fight for freedom in the Islamic world, let them start a private army.