Tag Archives: FDR

International news

Did we make a ‘mistake’ in Hiroshima?

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I am drawn by a particular passage from remarks President Obama made while visiting Hiroshima.

“We’re not bound by genetic codes to repeat the mistakes of the past. We can learn. We can choose. We can tell our children a different story,” Obama said in remarks at the memorial that commemorates the dropping of the atomic bomb on the Japanese city on Aug. 6, 1945.

To be sure, the president did not deliver an apology for the decision one of his predecessors, Harry Truman, made in seeking an end to the bloodiest war in human history.

Nor should he.

But the statement seems to imply that the decision was a “mistake.”

I beg to differ, Mr. President. I think many of your fellow Americans beg to differ as well, particularly those of us who are descended from those who were participating in that theater of operations at the end of the war.

The president’s speech was far-reaching and it spoke to a “moral awakening” that the event brought to the world. Indeed, it did, and for that awakening we should be grateful. The world saw first hand in 1945 just destructive these weapons can be.

http://www.politico.com/story/2016/05/obama-hiroshima-visit-223645

President Truman, who took office upon the death of Franklin D. Roosevelt, felt at that moment he had to make a decision that would (a) end the war quickly and (b) change the world forever.

It did both. President Truman said late in his life that he never regretted the decision to drop the bomb on Hiroshima and, three days later, on Nagasaki.

For me personally, he might have saved my own father’s life. Dad was in the Philippines serving in the Navy and well could have taken part in the campaign against the Japanese homeland. The bombs prevented that campaign from occurring.

Those of us who have this connection with what happened that at the end of World War II perhaps see the event with a different form of clarity than others.

I’m glad President Obama has spoken out about the need to remain alert to the tragedy of these terrible weapons.

Was its use in Japan a “mistake”?

No. It was not.

 

International news, military news

Now … about dropping that nuclear bomb

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It’s been called the “elephant in the room.”

Barack Obama is about to become the first sitting U.S. president to visit Hiroshima, Japan. The question of the day: Will he apologize for a decision one of his predecessors made to order the dropping of a nuclear bomb on the Japanese city? A corollary question: Should he apologize?

The late-May visit so far doesn’t include remarks from the president that amount to an apology.

Here’s some unsolicited advice, Mr. President: Don’t do it. There is no compelling need to apologize for a decision that President Truman made as a way to end the bloodiest conflict in human history.

http://www.cnn.com/2016/05/10/politics/obama-hiroshima-visit-japan/index.html

The president said early in his time in office that he wanted to visit Hiroshima, which was targeted on Aug. 6, 1945 as the place where the United States would drop this then-secret weapon.

Many thousands of civilians died in that horrific blast. Are there regrets today for what happened then? Yes.

Let’s set this in some context.

Nazi Germany had surrendered in May 1945 to advancing Soviet, American, British and Allied troops. The war in the Pacific Theater was still raging, although Japan had retreated from all the territory it had claimed. The U.S.-led onslaught had brought the war to Japan’s homeland.

President Roosevelt died in April 1945 and the new president, Harry Truman, was briefed immediately about a project of which he knew next to nothing during the brief period he served as vice president.

He made the decision to use the weapon to persuade Japan that its continuing the fight would be futile.

Knowing what he knew at the moment, President Truman made the correct call.

My hope is that the current president, 71 years later, will recognize that his predecessor did what he believed at the time he had to do, which was to use the weaponry at his disposal to end the world’s bloodiest conflict.

Let me be clear about one more point …

I have a direct interest in President Truman’s decision. My father, who saw intense combat while serving in the Navy in the Mediterranean theater of operations from 1942 through 1944, had arrived in The Philippines in early 1945 and quite likely would have taken part in the effort to invade and conquer Japan.

I cannot prove this, but there’s a decent probability that the president’s decision to drop The Bomb on Hiroshima and later, on Nagasaki, might have saved my dad’s life.

For that reason, I say: God bless President Truman.

 

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‘Democratic socialist’ sounding more, um, socialist

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The  more I hear from U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders, the more convinced I become that it’s time to end the qualifier when describing his economic philosophy.

The presidential candidate calls himself a “democratic socialist.”

I believe I understand the message he’s trying to convey, which is that his brand of socialism isn’t dependent entirely on the government taking care of every American’s needs.

Sanders has been using the democratic socialist label — again, in my view — to take some of the sting out of the s-word that conservatives are fond of using to describe policies such as, oh, the Affordable Care Act.

Then on Thursday night, near the end of the Democratic presidential candidate debate with Hillary Rodham Clinton, Sanders launched into a lengthy riff about the two political leaders he most admired.

He ended with Winston Churchill, but only after he described Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s tenure as president.

He told us how FDR took office in 1933 while 25 percent of Americans were out of work. We were in the throes of the Great Depression.

How did FDR get us moving again? By energizing government to create jobs. The WPA and CCC were government-financed employment programs. The money to pay for them didn’t just materialize. Americans paid for them with taxes.

Social Security became law in 1935.

Gradually, the nation began to work its way out of the Great Depression.

Then came Pearl Harbor in December 1941. Everything changed after that.

But as I listened Thursday night to Sen. Sanders go on and on about FDR’s leadership, I was struck by the belief that he was talking about socialism. Not just a form of it, but the unvarnished version of it.

I happen to share Sanders’ view that 80-plus years ago, President Roosevelt faced a terrible, miserable set of circumstances when he took his seat behind the big desk in the Oval Office. He felt he had to do something dramatic to get the country going.

Sanders also said something else at the end of the debate that I found a bit curious. He seems to believe the nation is ready for another “revolution,” that the income inequality gap of today sets up a need to create some kind of massive government infusion of money to bolster working families who are suffering while the “top 1 percent of Americans” are doing fabulously.

He wants free college education. Sanders vows to bring universal health care to every American. He intends to push for a dramatic increase in the federal minimum wage.

How does he intend to pay for it? He wants to raise taxes on all Americans.

How, then, is he going to do that with Republicans retaining control of the House of Representatives, where all tax legislation must originate?

He sounds like a socialist.

Not a democratic socialist.

He sounds like the real thing.

I believe I heard someone who is overreaching as he pulls the lever on the economic alarm bell.

FDR faced a grave economic crisis the likes of which will not confront the next president.

 

national news, political news

‘Failed presidency’? Hardly

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Ed Rogers’s bias is crystal clear.

The Republican operative, writing in the Washington Post, calls Barack Obama a “failed president.” The president’s alleged “failures,” Rogers asserted, has led to the rise of Donald J. Trump and the crippling of Hillary Rodham Clinton.

Read the essay here.

I am acutely aware that there are those who side with Rogers’s assessment of Barack Obama’s two terms in the White House. I also am aware that others disagree with him, who believe that the president’s tenure has been anything but a failure.

I happen to one of the latter.

I’m enjoying, however, listening to the field of Republican presidential candidates harp on the same thing. They decry American “weakness.” They blame the president for it. They say we’re weak militarily, economically, diplomatically, morally . . . have I left anything out?

I shake my head in wonderment at those assertions. Then I realize that they’re all politicians — yes, even Donald J. Trump, Carly Fiorina and Ben Carson — seeking to score points.

That’s what politicians do, even those who say they aren’t politicians.

Democrats do it as well as Republicans.

However, I am going to let history be the judge about whether this presidency has failed.

So far, I’d say “no.”

The economy is stronger than it was when Barack Obama took office; we’ve continued to wage war against terrorists; our military remains the most powerful in the world; we’ve scored diplomatic victories, such as securing a deal that prevents Iran from obtaining nuclear weapons — irrespective of what the critics allege; we’ve kept our adversaries in check; we’ve avoided a second major terrorist attack on U.S. soil.

Has this been a perfect seven years? No. Has any presidency skated to completion with a perfect score? Again, no. Not Ronald Reagan, FDR or Ike. All the great men who’ve held the office have endured missteps and tragedy.

However, this “failed presidency” talk comes in the heat of a most unconventional election year.

I will continue to keep that in mind as the rhetoric gets even hotter as the year progresses.

 

national news, political news

Executive orders go with the job

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Presidents serve as the nation’s “chief executive” and, therefore, have the constitutional authority that goes with the title.

An interesting graph came across my radar this afternoon. It comes with a year-old story, but it’s still rather fascinating.

Republicans have been pummeling President Obama by alleging that he’s too quick to issue executive orders, that he circumvents Congress too willingly.

The graph tells a fascinating tale of just how the 44th president has under-utilized the executive authority granted to him by the U.S. Constitution.

Take a look at the graph. You’ll see a number of interesting things.

One is an obvious point. President Franklin Roosevelt is the all-time champ at issuing presidential executive orders. No surprise there: He served three full terms and was elected to a fourth term before dying in office in April 1945.

It’s interesting, though, to look at who’s No. 2 in the executive authority rating. It’s FDR’s immediate predecessor, President Hoover, who served just one term.

A Democrat is No. 1, a Republican is No. 2, while Democratic President Woodrow Wilson is a close third.

That power-hungry and allegedly “lawless” 44th president, Barack H. Obama? He’s issued the fewest executive orders since President Grover Cleveland. (I’ll add here that the numbers of presidential executive orders are as of Oct. 20, 2014.)

So, I guess my question is this: What’s the beef with the current president’s use of the executive authority?

International news, military news

Pearl Harbor: Infamy will live forever

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Seventy-four years ago today, airplanes swooped in over Honolulu and bombed the U.S. Navy base at Pearl Harbor.

Battleship Row was decimated. The pilots in those planes then took aim at Hickam Field, where the U.S. Army had a substantial air base. More destruction followed.

Japan had committed an act of war against the United States.

The next day, President Roosevelt stood before the Congress and asked for a declaration of war. He got it by the end of the day.

War was a simpler endeavor back then.

One nation attacked another. The victim of that attack then declared war; the nation that did the attacking declared war right back. Both nations mobilized and sent young service personnel to the battlefield to fight it out.

Yes, we remember Pearl Harbor today as a “date which will live in infamy,” as FDR told us.

The young men we sent off to war — or what’s left of them — are old now. They’re in their 90s.

All told, the United States put 16 million men and women into uniform during that terrible period. Last I heard, there were around 2 million of them left.

We owe them everything. Our freedom. Our way of life.

Today, war looks different. We aren’t fighting nations. We are fighting ideologies. We are fighting a cunning and ruthless enemy.

Is a declaration of war possible now, in this era when we’re waging a conflict with an elusive force that stops at nothing to kill innocent victims — in the name of what they call “religion”?

I believe it is. The current president, Barack Obama, has asked Congress for what amounts to a war declaration. He wants a vote to “authorize” continued warfare against an enemy that has committed acts against us that are — in FDR’s words — every bit as “dastardly” as the attack on Pearl Harbor.

War, though, isn’t as simple now as it was then. Politics has gummed up our national resolve.

Still, we ought to keep those brave warriors — the living and those who have passed from the scene — who answered their nation’s call to arms more than seven decades ago in our thoughts today.

Their nation rallied behind them and crushed the tyrants who sought to bring so much harm to the world.

 

International news, military news, national news, political news

Here’s a novel idea: Ask Congress to declare war

President Franklin D. Rossevelt signing the declaration of war against Japan, December 8, 1941. (National Park Service) NARA FILE #: 079-AR-82 WAR & CONFLICT BOOK #: 743

Former Florida governor — and Republican presidential candidate — Jeb Bush wants the United States to declare war on the Islamic State.

I am going to make a leap here and presume for a moment that he means the real thing. You know, actually make a formal declaration of war. It’s kind of an old-fashioned idea that hasn’t been carried out since, oh, Dec. 8, 1941. President Roosevelt stood before a joint session of Congress and asked lawmakers to make that declaration … which is how the U.S. Constitution prescribes it.

Well, why not do it the old-fashioned way?

I am increasingly of the opinion that war is what we’ve got on our hands. The Islamic State seems to want it. They committed an act of war Friday in France, bombing and shooting its way further into infamy, killing more than 100 innocent victims.

France has called it a wartime act. French President Francois Hollande has vowed zero mercy in seeking revenge for the killings. The Islamic State already has demonstrated unfathomable barbarism with its video-recorded beheadings of foreign captives, including Americans.

ISIL has killed tens of thousands of Muslims on its reign of terror — supposedly in the name of Islam. It is a murderous cult that must be wiped out.

This war, though, is being fought on terms with which the world is not yet familiar. There used to be a time when we defined war simply as nations taking up arms against each other. This war is vastly different.

It is an ideological war being fought with guns, knives and bombs.

Is it possible then to declare war the way this country used to declare war? I think it can be done.

The question now is this: Does the president have the will to ask for a declaration and does Congress have the courage to make that declaration?

Your thoughts? Is a war declaration possible?

 

International news

Truman faced a monumental choice … and never looked back

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Seven decades ago, President Harry Truman — newly sworn into office upon President Franklin Roosevelt’s death — faced a choice no commander in chief should have to face.

Does he deploy a bomb he knows will kill tens of thousands of civilians but possibly spare the cost of many more tens of thousands of soldiers and sailors — on both sides — in a costly ground war?

The president chose to drop The Bomb. It was a nuclear weapon that exploded over Hiroshima on Aug. 6, 1945.

It ushered in the nuclear age. A second bomb would detonate over Nagasaki three days later.

And about a week after that, the Japanese Empire waved the white flag of surrender. World War II came to an end.

Knowing what we know now about The Bomb, would the president have done it all over again? Truman said he would. He never wavered in his belief that he made the right call.

I happen to agree with him.

My late father, who was among the forces garrisoned in the Philippines when the bombs fell, could have been among those who died in the effort to subdue Japan using conventional means. Do I know that to be true? Of course not. He was a sailor who’d seen his share of combat in the European theater before being reassigned to the Pacific.

It never came to that, of course. Dad came home, got married and produced his family.

Because I am here today, I say without reservation: God bless President Truman.

political news

“Four more years!” for Obama?

There can be no doubt about this: Barack Obama’s critics went ballistic when the president said he could win a third term in the White House if he had the chance to seek it.

He reminded his hosts in Ethiopia today that the U.S. Constitution prohibits him from seeking another term. But then he said he’s been a “good president” and well might win in 2016.

http://www.cnn.com/2015/07/28/politics/obama-third-term-win-ethiopia/

Ah, yes. And he’d say anything about it if he thought he’d lose? Hardly.

The 22nd Amendment was enacted in 1947, spearheaded by a Republican congressional majority that was alarmed by the four elections won by Democratic President Franklin Delano Roosevelt. They feared an “imperial presidency.” An earlier Democrat, Grover Cleveland, sought the office over the course of three consecutive elections, but lost his bid for re-election to a second consecutive term in 1888; he would come back four years later and be elected to a second term.

I am not at all thrilled about the term-limits provision for presidents, although I understand that the stress of the office has persuaded almost all the men who’ve held the office to bow out after a second term.

Still, Barack Obama isn’t the only recent president to look wistfully at the possibility of a third term.

Republican President Ronald Reagan said as much as his second term came to an end in January 1989. Twelve years after that, Democratic President Bill Clinton also mused aloud over whether he could win a third term.

I don’t recall President George W. Bush ever broaching the subject in public, given that the economy was collapsing when he left office in January 2009.

Whatever the motive for bringing it up this time, President Obama well might have been talking way past his audience in Africa and sticking it in the ear of his foes back home.

I’m quite sure they heard him … loud and clear.

military news, national news, political news

Mr. President, you see … we have this bomb

I posted earlier today a blog item about how Franklin Roosevelt’s death changed the vice presidency for the better.

Vice President Harry Truman became president upon FDR’s death in April 1945. He took office, asked his Cabinet to pray for him and then set about finishing off the Axis Powers as World War II came to an end. Nazi Germany surrendered just about three weeks after FDR’s death. The Pacific combat remained to be fought.

But he knew next to nothing about the secrets that FDR took with him to the grave. One of them involved the Manhattan Project. Imagine the conversation taking place between Secretary of War Henry Stimson and the president of the United States.

Stimson: Uh, Mr. President? I’ve got something to discuss with you.

Truman: Sure, Henry. What is it?

Stimson: Well, sir, we’re developing this bomb out in New Mexico. We’ve been working with really smart fellow: Bob Oppenheimer, Enrico Fermi, Albert Einstein, to name just three.

Truman: Bomb? We’ve got all kinds of bombs. We dropped them by the thousands every day in Europe and we’re still doing so in the Pacific.

Stimson: But Mr. President, this bomb is a big one. Really, really big. It’s an atomic bomb. I mean, when it explodes, it registers enough firepower to equal several thousand pounds of dynamite.

Truman: Holy s***, Henry. One bomb equals all that power?

Stimson: Yes sir. We’re going to detonate one of them in July out in Alamogordo. It’ll be the first one. If it works, we’re going to propose something quite dramatic.

Truman: And that is … ?

Stimson: We think we ought to use it on Japan. Send them a message that if they keep fighting we’ll use it again and again. Mr. President, we don’t think the Japanese will have the stomach for many of these.

Truman: OK, Henry, we’ll wait to see how the test blast goes and then we’ll make that call.

***

The test went off successfully. Less than a month later, President Truman issued the order to bomb Hiroshima. The Enola Gay took off on Aug. 6. Three days later, Nagasaki was demolished by the second A-bomb — and the rest is history.

God bless President Truman.