{"id":12556,"date":"2020-08-07T16:56:43","date_gmt":"2020-08-07T23:56:43","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/?p=12556"},"modified":"2020-08-07T16:58:02","modified_gmt":"2020-08-07T23:58:02","slug":"our-annual-august-debate-over-the-bombs","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/our-annual-august-debate-over-the-bombs\/","title":{"rendered":"Our Annual August Debate over the Bombs"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>Victor Davis Hanson \/\/ National Review<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>This&nbsp;month marks the 75th anniversary of the dropping of two atomic bombs on Japan, at Hiroshima on August 6, and Nagasaki on August 9.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Each year, Americans argue about our supposed moral shortcomings for being the only nation to have used an atomic weapon in war.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Given the current cultural revolution that topples statues, renames institutions, cancels out the supposedly politically incorrect, and wages war on America\u2019s past, we will hear numerous attacks on the decision of Democratic president Harry Truman to use the two terrible weapons.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>But what were the alternatives that Truman faced had he not dropped the bombs that precipitated Japan\u2019s agreement to surrender less than a week after the bombing of Nagasaki and formally on September 2?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.nationalreview.com\/2020\/08\/our-annual-august-debate-over-the-bombs\/\">Read the full article here<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Victor Davis Hanson \/\/ National Review This&nbsp;month marks the 75th anniversary of the dropping of two atomic bombs on Japan, at Hiroshima on August 6, and Nagasaki on August 9. Each year, Americans argue about our supposed moral shortcomings for being the only nation to have used an atomic weapon in war. Given the current [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p466Sb-3gw","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":11361,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/the-bombs-of-august\/","url_meta":{"origin":12556,"position":0},"title":"The Bombs of August","author":"victorhanson","date":"August 23, 2018","format":false,"excerpt":"Victor Davis Hanson \/\/ National Review On Aug. 6, 1945, the United States dropped a uranium-fueled atomic bomb on Hiroshima, Japan. Three days later, another U.S. Army Air Forces B-29 repeated the attack on Nagasaki, Japan, with an even more powerful plutonium bomb. Less than a month after the second\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;Japan&quot;","block_context":{"text":"Japan","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/japan\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":9265,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/the-horrors-of-hiroshima-in-context\/","url_meta":{"origin":12556,"position":1},"title":"The Horrors of Hiroshima in Context","author":"victorhanson","date":"April 25, 2016","format":false,"excerpt":"\u00a0 By Victor Davis Hanson \/\/ National Review Online The dropping of two atomic bombs on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August 1945 remains the only wartime use of nuclear weapons in history. No one knows exactly how many Japanese citizens were killed by the two American\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;Europe&quot;","block_context":{"text":"Europe","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/the-world\/europe\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":4308,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/60-years-later-considering-hiroshima\/","url_meta":{"origin":12556,"position":2},"title":"60 Years Later: Considering Hiroshima","author":"victorhanson","date":"August 5, 2005","format":false,"excerpt":"by Victor Davis Hanson National Review Online For 60 years the United States has agonized over its unleashing of the world\u2019s first nuclear weapon on Hiroshima on August 6, 1945. President Harry Truman\u2019s decision to explode an atomic bomb over an ostensible military target \u2014 the headquarters of the crack\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;August 2005&quot;","block_context":{"text":"August 2005","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/archives\/2005\/august-2005\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":2180,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/truman-and-the-principles-of-u-s-foreign-policy\/","url_meta":{"origin":12556,"position":3},"title":"Truman and the Principles of U.S. Foreign Policy","author":"victorhanson","date":"October 31, 2009","format":false,"excerpt":"by Victor Davis Hanson Wall Street Journal Jimmy Carter rejected the postwar consensus. President Obama appears to be following a similar path. Upon entering office, Barack Obama knew little about foreign policy. But then neither did Vice President Harry S. Truman when Franklin Delano Roosevelt died suddenly on April 12,\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;October 2009&quot;","block_context":{"text":"October 2009","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/archives\/2009\/october-2009\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":13440,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/historians-corner-the-firebombing-of-japan-3\/","url_meta":{"origin":12556,"position":4},"title":"Historian&#8217;s Corner: The Firebombing of Japan","author":"victorhanson","date":"May 22, 2021","format":false,"excerpt":"Victor Davis Hanson \/\/ Private Papers Part Three. The Nihilist Logic of Death Once the sick dogs of war are unleashed, legalized murder has a Satanic logic of its own. In the US case, the agenda from December 8 onward was how to end the war as quickly as possible\u2026","rel":"","context":"With 10 comments","block_context":{"text":"With 10 comments","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/historians-corner-the-firebombing-of-japan-3\/#comments"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":10854,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/the-bigmouth-tradition-of-american-leadership\/","url_meta":{"origin":12556,"position":5},"title":"The Bigmouth Tradition of American Leadership","author":"victorhanson","date":"December 27, 2017","format":false,"excerpt":"by Victor Davis Hanson \/\/ National Review \u00a0 To everything, there is a season. \u00a0 America has always enjoyed two antithetical traditions in its political and military heroes. \u00a0 The preferred style is the reticent, sober, and competent executive planner as president or general, from Herbert Hoover to Gerald Ford\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;Civil War&quot;","block_context":{"text":"Civil War","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/civil-war\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12556"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12556"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12556\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":12557,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12556\/revisions\/12557"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12556"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12556"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12556"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}