Mindless Maher

Jeff Jarvis:

So Maher says, "Let me do it for you... There was the bringing over of the slaves... Then we're talking about the Indians in America, your people, you're part Indian..." Churchill nods. And they add up numbers. Maher continues: "So we have a lot of blood on our hands... So then you talk about the first Iraq war. How many died there?.... And then the sanctions... I know we don't want to hear this but the country of America has blood on its hands.... Not to mention in Germany and Japan when we were close to winning the war we obliterated Dresden...."

[Emphasis mine]

Close to winning the war? Winston Churchill knew that the Allies had won the war after he heard news of Pearl Harbor. The Allies were supposed to start the liberation of France in early 1943, then late 1943, then early 1944, then May 1944, then June 5, 1944. The war was supposed to be won before Christmas of 1944. Also in 1944, the US Navy is engaged in 'Turkey Shoots' with Japanese planes.

In 1944, the Red Army was marching from the East and the American led Allies were marching from the West to Germany. Remember the Nazi Ardennes Offensive? That resulted in the mass surrender of tens of thousands of Americans. Close to winning the war?

Germany had bombed Britain in 1940 and 1941. Now in 1945, the Allies had the ability to hit German cities on a massive scale. Unlike Maher who would only hit back after being struck dead, the Allies paid back Germany ten-fold. In February of 1945, the Allies bombed Dresden killing 40,000 civilians. Close to winning the war?

Japan had been raping the surrounding countries for years. The Japanese had over two hundred thousand sex slaves. They had adopted the Western tools of warfare. They used these tools to kill over 10 million Chinese. In March of 1945, the US sent over 300 B-29s to bomb Tokyo which inflicted 80,000 deaths. Also in March, the US was fighting for a big piece of rock, known as Iwo Jima. The US lost 7,000 men to gain this tiny island. Close to winning the war?

The Red Army was ready for its assault on Berlin in April 1945. No surrender was offered. The assault began and by the end of April, Mussolini was hung and Hitler committed suicide. The Russians lost over 250,000 men. War in the pacific still raged.

Before dropping the first nuke in August 1945, the US had killed over 800,000 Japanese civilians by conventional bombing. Now, note this carefully: Japan did not surrender after the first nuke was dropped on August 6, 1945. The US had to haul in a second nuke for Japan to surrender.

Close to winning the war, my ass. Of course, people knew that eventually the Allies would win but nobody knew when. This mindless repeating of that "we were close to winning" after the fact is quite easy. But how the bloody hell were the Allies to know that they were close to winning? The US military thought in mid 1945 that the war in the Pacific would go on till 1946.

Another thing: why should the Allies not have bombed Axis cities? The Axis powers had no qualms about bombing Allied cities. It was the Axis powers that started the horrid practice. Maher also makes it seem like the Allies simply bombed Dresden and nuked Japan out of the blue. You know, German kids playing soccer and Japanese kids flying kites and then cruel destruction. It was a war, you jackass. War is cruelty, you cannot refine it.

You want to talk about blood, just look at the number of deaths inflicted by the Germans, the Russians and the Japanese in WWII. It was mainly the US that finally stopped the bloodshed.

Maher deserves the bitch slapping he's getting.

Comments

[Eric]

Sorry about the double trackback...I'm not sure why MT does that sometimes when a post is updated or corrected.

[Isaac Schrödinger]

No sweat, Mr. Sigmeund.