[Rhodes22-list] History - Another Great One Gone West

[Brad Haslett]

John,

Fred Bock was flying "Bockscar" but it was Charles Sweeney who was actually
in command of the mission.

In more recent news, alJeezera is accusing the US of dropping a nuke on the
Syrian target that Israel took out in September. Er, are they making excuses
for when radioactive contamination is found at the site? That whole raid
hasn't gotten much press and both the IDF and the Syrians aren't saying much
if anything about what happened.  It sure smells like a nuclear facility and
the speculation is that a North Korean warhead had just been delivered a few
days prior.

We survived 50 years of the Cold War because while the Russian leaders may
have been aggressive and brutal, they didn't have a death wish.  I don't
think MAD and other lines of rational thinking apply to this new bunch of
"leaders".

Brad

On 11/4/07, john Belanger <jhnblngr at yahoo.com> wrote:
>
> i seem to recall the reasoning was that having seen a willingness to
> commit forces to suicidal missions and refusals to surrender to american
> troops on guadalcanal, truman did not want any more unnecessary casualties.
> but i also heard that hiroshima and nagasaki were not bombed at all prior to
> the a-bomb so that the effects could be judged accurately. tibbets is well
> known, but who commanded the nagasaki bomber?
>
> Brad Haslett <flybrad at gmail.com> wrote:  No doubt, everyone read the news
> this week that Paul Tibbets died. I have
> an acquaintance from Illinois, recently retired as an engineer from
> Caterpillar, who lost siblings in Hiroshima. Not directly from the bomb
> but
> from the mudslides as a result of the hillsides being denuded and the
> subsequent rains from the condensation nuclei. Ike was against it but he
> wasn't asked. I don't second guess Harry on the decision. MacArthur wanted
> to use them against China but was overruled. I am convinced that any
> leader
> who refuses to acknowledge the Holocaust doesn't need possession of one.
> Anyway, here's the view from Mr. Tibbets.
>
> Brad
>
> ----------------------------
>
> chicagotribune.com Editorial Paul Tibbets and the bomb
>
> November 4, 2007
> * *
>
>
> For many Americans, J. Robert Oppenheimer was the genius who created the
> atomic bomb and later agonized about it. By contrast, Lt. Col. Paul
> Tibbets
> Jr. was the pilot who dropped the bomb and famously said he never lost a
> night's sleep over it.
>
> Tibbets, who died Thursday at his home in Columbus, Ohio, was no
> gunslinger.
> He was a plain-spoken Midwesterner who, before launching the most
> cataclysmic military attack in human history, named his B-29 bomber after
> his mom.
>
> Tibbets had no clear idea of what to expect as he flew over Hiroshima on
> August 6, 1945. He said of the blast that killed tens of thousands
> instantly: "If Dante had been with us on the plane, he would have been
> terrified. The city we had seen so clearly in the sunlight a few minutes
> before was now an ugly smudge. It had completely disappeared under this
> awful blanket of smoke and fire."
>
> Those are not the words of a man who relished destruction. They are the
> words of a man who did his duty.
>
> Over the years, a few critics have questioned the decision to bomb Japan,
> speculating about whether Japan would have surrendered without suffering
> such a horrendous attack. There were critics even in 1945. After the
> mission, Tibbets and other senior officers met with President Harry
> Truman,
> who pounded his fist on the desk, and said "If anyone gives you a hard
> time
> about that decision, you refer them to me. Because I'm the one who sent
> you.'"
>
> But Tibbets wouldn't pass the buck. He never apologized for that mission
> and
> never had reason to. To him, and millions of Americans, the world's first
> nuclear attack cut short World War II. Countless Americans didn't die in
> an
> invasion of Japan because of that decision.
>
> "Just hang a sign on the nose of the plane," Tibbets said in 2001. "Have
> the
> sign say: `We did what we were supposed to do.'"
>
> In that sense, Tibbets did much more than drop the first atomic bomb. He
> came to personify America's postwar struggle -- and, ultimately, reluctant
> comfort -- with the decision to obliterate much of Hiroshima.
>
> That bombing and the subsequent attack on Nagasaki exposed the horrors of
> nuclear war. America and its allies have spent decades trying to slow the
> spread of nuclear weapons and ensure that they will never be used again.
>
> What those bombings didn't produce, partly because of a tough, resolute
> pilot from Columbus, were decades of second-guessing and guilt for most
> Americans.
>
> Tibbets helped end a brutal war. He moved on, and so did they.
>
> Copyright (c) 2007, Chicago Tribune
> __________________________________________________
> Use Rhodes22-list at rhodes22.org, Help? www.rhodes22.org/list
>
>
> __________________________________________________
> Do You Yahoo!?
> Tired of spam?  Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around
> http://mail.yahoo.com
> __________________________________________________
> Use Rhodes22-list at rhodes22.org, Help? www.rhodes22.org/list
>