I hope our nation’s leaders read about Tojo and learn from him.
Diary shows Japan’s wartime leader Hideki Tojo resisted surrender till end
August 12, 2008 By: Mari Yamaguchi, THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
TOKYO – Japanese Second World War leader Hideki Tojo wanted to keep fighting even after U.S. atomic bombs destroyed Hiroshima and Nagasaki, accusing surrender proponents of being “frightened,” a newly released diary reveals.Excerpts from the approximately 20 pages written by Tojo in the final days of the war and held by the National Archives of Japan were published for the first time in several newspapers Tuesday.
“The notes show Tojo kept his died-in-the-wool militarist mentality until the very end,” said Kazufumi Takayama, the archives curator, who confirmed the accuracy of the published excerpts. “They are extremely valuable.”
Tojo, executed in 1948 after being convicted of war crimes by the Allies, was prime minister during much of the war. The notes buttress other evidence that Tojo was fiercely opposed to surrender despite the hopelessness of Japan’s war effort.
Can you imagine Barack Obama flying to Imperial Japan to “dialog” with Prime Minister Hideki Tojo? Can you imagine Obama convincing Tojo to get in line with American policy when a pair of nuclear bombs couldn’t?
I mean, understand something. This Barack Obama who says that as President he would talk with rogue leaders such as Iranian leader Mahmoud Ahmadinejab “without preconditions,” yet is somehow so afraid to talk with any conservative hosts (such as Bill O’Reilly or Sean Hannity) – or any real conservative media at all – that you’ve got to wonder how effective even Obama thinks he’d be.
But all that aside, why on earth would anybody but a genuine fool think that a leader like a Saddam Hussein, a Kim Jung Il, a Mahmoud Ahmadinejab, a Osama bin Laden, a Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah, etc. etc. – who would let millions of their people starve, who would send out thousands of suicide bombers to murder women and children, who would inflict hell on earth if given half a chance – would turn from their evil ways if only Barack Obama talked with them? And if he really has the kind of persuasive powers he thinks he does, then why doesn’t he go on Hannity’s America and turn Sean into an abortion-loving liberal to prove it to the rest of us?
And yet this utterly stupid idea of “Barack Obama will talk to our enemies!” somehow holds sway over so many liberals.
You could paint string yellow and sell it to these people as gold.
Many tyrants respect only power, and fear only leaders who are willing to use it. But increasingly, there are more and more leaders arising in the world today who – like Tojo – won’t even restrain their evil in the face of catastrophic death and defeat. The only option, save bearing your throat to their knives, is to kill such people before they do more far more damage.
Had British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain recognized that Adolf Hitler was such a man, rather than trying to “talk” with him, millions who died would likely have been saved.
The reason Chamberlain (who was actually ruthless in domestic politics) is considered one of the greatest weaklings and appeasers in history is because he continued to try talking when he should have been fighting.
It was with that thought in mind that Robert Heinlein wrote:
“Anyone who clings to the historically untrue — and thoroughly immoral — doctrine that violence never solves anything I would advise to conjure up the ghosts of Napoleon Bonaparte and the Duke of Wellington and let them debate it. The ghost of Hitler would referee. Violence, naked force, has settled more issues in history than has any other factor; and the contrary opinion is wishful thinking at its worst. Breeds that forget this basic truth have always paid for it with their lives and their freedoms.”
Furthermore, there is a strange ignorance among liberals regarding the fact that the United States government under President Bush, like every President before him, is in constant communication with both friends and enemies alike. President Bush doesn’t personally give Mahmoud Whatanutjob the time of day, but the State Department, the CIA, and the U.S. military are in contact with intermediaries who are in contact with Iran. The same is true with every other rogue regime.
Another thing to consider is the size, power, wealth, and influence of the United States relative to other countries. In terms of size, if you overlay the United States over Europe, the U.S. literally either covers or overlaps Spain, France, Germany, Poland, Czech Republic, Italy, Greece, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Belarus, Czech Republic, Slovakia, Austria, Hungary, Slovenia, Croatia, Bosnia Herze-govina, Serbia and Montenegro, Ukraine, Romania, Moldova, Bulgaria, Macedonia, Albania, Turkey, Russia, Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, Libya, Sweden, Libya, Egypt, Israel, Jordan, and Syria. To say that we should allow France or Germany to tell us what we should do in a given crisis is akin to letting Oklahoma run our nation’s affairs.
And given Obama’s documented penchant for arrogance as a mere presidential nominee, it’s frankly very hard to imagine that he would be any better or more humble of a listener than George Bush would he to win the office of President and become the leader of the most powerful nation on the face of the earth.
If that isn’t enough, then let me say one last thing: Obama really isn’t all that good of a talker. If he isn’t reading it off a teleprompter, chances are he isn’t making much sense:
I mean, yeah, maybe Ahmadinejab would say, “All right! Enough! Whatever you want! We’ll give up our nuclear weapons program! Anything! Just get this clown away from me before I lose my mind!” But you have to figure Ahmadinejab is tougher than that, and Obama’s ramblings would barely faze him.
However you want to slice it, the thinking that Barack Obama is somehow going to solve all the world’s problems by talking to the rogue leaders of the world is beyond irrational.
Tags: Ahmadinejab, arrogance, atomic bombs, Barack Obama, bin Laden, Hannity, Hideki Tojo, Hiroshima, Hitler, nuclear, O'Reilly, talk
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