What Obama Should Have Said about Atomic Bombs
Mark Finkelstein over at NewsBusters has it right:
Defending the decision of the United States to drop nuclear weapons on Hiroshima and Nagasaki during WWII is not a comfortable thing to do when you're in Japan. But if you're President of the United States, you must do it. Diplomatically, yes. With sympathy for the civilian victims, yes. But you must do it.
...
JAPANESE REPORTER: What is your understanding of the historical meaning of the A-bombing in Hiroshima and Nagasaki? Do you think it was the right decision?
Obama took a deep breath, paused... and punted.
PBO gave a halting response that utterly failed to answer the question. The closest he came was to observe that Japan "has a unique perspective on the issue of nuclear weapons as a consequence of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and I'm sure it helps to motivate the Prime Minister's deep interest in this issue."
The reporter tried again: "do you believe the US dropping of nuclear weapons on --"
Obama cut him off, choosing to answer an unrelated question on the situation in North Korea.
I'm not President of this country, but I know that if I'm going to visit Japan, someone is going to ask me about Hiroshima and Nagasaki, so I better have a better answer than, "Uhh - nuclear weapons no good - mmm... uhh - non-proliferation - ummm... Japan has unique perspective... deep interest - uhhhh. Hey, What about North Korea..."
Here's what Obama could have said:
I believe that question can best be answered by the results: millions of Japanese lives saved because we were not forced to invade your country. But I would like to quote God's Samurai, one of your own heroes, the pilot who led the attack on Pearl Harbor - Mitsuo Fuchida, who actually missed being in Hiroshima by one day. After the war he told Paul Tibbetts, the pilot of the Enola Gay, he told him, 'You did the right thing. You know the Japanese attitude of that time, how fanatic they were. They'd die for the Emperor.... Every man, woman, and child would have resisted the invasion with sticks and stones, if necessary...'
If such a hero, who coordinated the entire aerial attack that started the war and who was present at the end of the war, if he believes we did the right thing, who am I, who was not there, to argue with him?
That's what he could have said.
A tip of the turban 
to Atlas Shrugs.
Caption for photo at top of article:
Frontal view of an atomic bomb casing on display at Trinity Site. Notice the 4 sensor mounts on the front of the bomb. That is where the sensors that would detonate the bomb at the proper altitude were mounted.
