When he's right ...

[Greybird]

We bombed Hiroshima, we bombed Nagasaki, and we nuked far more than the thousands in New York and the Pentagon, and we never batted an eye. We have supported state terrorism against the Palestinians and black South Africans, and now we are indignant because the stuff we have done overseas is now brought right back to our own front yards. America's chickens are coming home to roost.

— Rev. Jeremiah Wright, now-retired pastor of Barack Obama's Chicago church, 16 September 2001

Not one word of this is contrary to established historical fact. The phenomenon of "blowback" in imperial politics and machinations, put more colloquially and less academically here, is the subject of many books and analyses that have finally entered vigorous debate.

Yet because it "offends" the widespread ignorance of American imperial history among the howlers in the "mainstream media," and because it's actually purveyed to churchgoers who might not watch CNN or MSNBC .... Obama is called to the electronic tribunal and made to denounce an associate of two decades.

This is what the political-media combine throws up — both transitive and intransitive verbs! — onto the stage for our consideration. I don't know which is more repulsive: the media's hypocrisy or Obama's craven cowardice. I know that I'm getting tired of both.

[Barbara Branden]

It amazes me, Steve, that you appear to believe that if you say something is a fact, that makes it a fact. Do you really think that no one else knows anything about history? To say of Wright's hysterical diatribes that "not one word of this is contrary to established historical fact" is to rob the words "established," "historical," and "fact" of all meaning.

But I do not intend to argue with you about this. I am well aware of how futile it would be.

[Selene]

Steve:

You have a problem with us bombing these two cities of our declared enemy by a Constitutionally proper war?

"We bombed Hiroshima, we bombed Nagasaki..."

Adam

[Mike11]

I don't know whether we never "batted an eye" for for the Japanese civilians we killed but "Blowback" has a lot of truth to it. You can't explain 9/11 exclusively by it but it does have a large amount of explanatory value. A value many Americans (and Canadians and Brits etc) don't like to admit.

As for the Pastor, no American candidate whose close associate said "America's chickens are coming home to roost" is getting within 100 miles of the Presidency (unless the Christian Coalition said it). His being removed from the campaign was political necessity.

[sjw]

Being self-centered is a natural tendency for immature human beings. Nationalism/imperialism is a political manifestation of this.

When going to war, whether it be war against a single individual or a country, the reasons for going should be absolutely clear, with a clear reference to valid principles of government. Whenever our government sets foot outside of our nation, it's running the risk of provoking the wrath of other individuals and nations. Whether those others are "bad people" is beside the point unless they are acting directly against the United States as it exists constrained in its own borders, or in normal trade routes. As a rule governments should stay put within their narrow geographic regions--their use of force strictly used within their own borders for purposes of protecting the innocent there.

If a foreign enemy acts against the US, either by attacking us on our own soil or attacking us in places we absolutely must be in order to effect trade, then the response should be swift and absolute and purely destructive--like a rattlesnake. After the enemy is destroyed, then we leave. If American charities want to help in rebuilding, then that's a private affair. Our military should be solely concerned with destruction of the enemy, with as surgical precision as is reasonable. Some Objectivists like to recommend nukes in all scenarios where that gives the least short-term risk to our voluntary soldiers, but they like the self-centered child do not comprehend that if we do not take reasonable care for the innocent, those innocent will justly strike back at our unjust disregard for them.

When it comes to pursuing our enemy into foreign territory, diplomacy is required, but it should be understood that any prevention of our finding and destroying the enemy will be viewed as an act of war and will also be acted upon unambiguously. On our part, we should treat foreign civilians with the same respect as we treat our own civilians. If terrorists infiltrated our own country, then we would not nuke our own citiziens (except in an extremely bizarre scenario). Likewise we should not be so self-centered as not to apply the same dilligence and care with foreign citizens as we would with our own, unless of course those citizens were part of a country that we were at war with, and in that case we should still do something to prevent innocents from being killed, although the standard of care for them would be lower than for our own civilians.

The above ideas are principles of a moral, limited government. Most Objectivists seem opposed to a moral, limited government. Instead they want a self-centered government that nukes innocents if that's the easiest way to eliminate an enemy. They seem to have no problem with nation-building. Or with government-backed pseudo-capitalists escapades into dangerous foreign lands in search of resources. I don't know that Ayn Rand was behind any of this imperialist/nationalist nonsense that both Peikoff and Bidinotto/TAS promote. All I know is that it makes Objectivist politics a farce in the field of limited government. Objectivism buys into the status quo foreign policy. What's next, are they going to side with Algore on Global Warming?

[Greybird]

[...] To say of Wright's hysterical diatribes that "not one word of this is contrary to established historical fact" is to rob the words "established," "historical," and "fact" of all meaning.

It amazes me, Barbara, that you so blithely put words in someone else's mouth. I was not talking about "Wright's hysterical diatribes," plural. I was talking about this statement. Not about others.

This particular one — which, if you had seen Keith Olbermann taking Obama to the metaphorical woodshed on Friday night, seems to most offend the incestuous media-political combine. That someone dares to point out how two atomic bombs, the real start of the current Empire of State Terror, slaughtered far more innocents than we lost seven years ago. Well, they did.

I'll restate what I was saying above: The media types want to forget history in nationalistic outrage. Obama wants to toss both his minister and the truth overboard to save his political arse. And it's a close tie, for me, as to which spectacle is more nauseating.

[Selene]

Greybird:

" That someone dares to point out how two atomic bombs, the real start of the current Empire of State Terror, slaughtered far more innocents than we lost seven years ago. Well, they did."

I'm sorry was the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki not mentioned for the last 63 years?

The british bombings non-nuclear bombings of Dresden killed more than Hiroshma and Nagasaki together. Fact.

The conservative estimates of taking the four main islands of Japan were 500,000 thousand American dead or wounded and millions of Japanese killed or wounded. Fact.

These bombings did not occur in a vacuum and had nothing to do with the folks who bombed my city in 2001. Fact.

What are you attempting to state that makes sense?

Please edify me.

Adam

[syrakusos]

The conservative estimates of taking the four main islands of Japan were 500,000 thousand American dead or wounded and millions of Japanese killed or wounded. Fact.

The estimate is a "fact." It is factually true that the estimate existed. It is not factually true that those deaths were the only alternative to the atomic bombs. As an island nation without a navy, Japan would have been isolated, surrounded and embargoed.

From about 1943 forward, Japan attempted a negotiated surrender, but the USA was adamant that there could be no peace as long as the emperor ruled. In the end that seemed not so important, somehow...

Through the 1920s and 1930s American popular media portrayed CHINA as the "Yellow Peril" -- Sax Rohmer's Fu Manchu, for instance -- and Japan as a potential ally in the East. After all, Japan had been given the Mariannas and Carolinas from Germany by the League of Nations. China did not get them, that's for sure... But, over the course of a decade, in part for internal reasons on both sides, in part by the machinations of the THE SOONG DYNASTY, the USA chose to side with China in the East Asian War. This had nothing to do with morality and everything to do with the realpolitik of the global chessboard.

Realize that Chiang Kai-shek had been getting help from Hitler and Mussolini. When that proved ineffective, Madame Chiang (Soong Mei-ling) came to America where she had been educated and hired pilots to train her air force and also to establish ties to other power centers, such as Henry Luce. Her sister Soong Ai-Ling was married to H. H. Kung, the richest man in China. Her other sister Soong Ching-ling was Madame Sun Yat-sen. Hitler and Mussolini then threw in with Japan against China as a potential threat to the USSR, though that never materialized.

Again, it is important to see World War II for what it was: collectivist looter states, some worse, some not so worse, in a global carnage with allies and sides changing by expediency. I will freely grant that the USA was the least worst, but that does not make every decision by every politician moral.

[syrakusos]

These bombings ... had nothing to do with the folks who bombed my city in 2001. Fact.

Granted.

What would Rev. Jeremiah Wrgiht be doing today had Germany won World War II?

It is easy to criticize the United States (see above), but the fact is that we can criticize the USA. That luxury is a little harder to find in Africa, except, of course in .... wait for it... South Africa. It was always a hard place not to be white in ... In fact, it could be a tough place to be not Dutch in... but it was always much better than most of the other places nearby... even if you were not White. And it changed. Overnight. Nelson Mandela became president. Wow... how does that happen? Now: how do we make that same magic in the rest of Africa? So, let's go easy on condemnations specifically because they are so easy.