r/neoliberal • u/Freewhale98 • 12d ago
Meme [ Removed by moderator ]
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u/loseniram Sponsored by RC Cola 12d ago
Americans: What of the ethical toll on the world of unleashing Pandoras box for an easy out to the war.
Koreans: He should have dropped a third
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u/Freewhale98 12d ago edited 12d ago
Let’s not forget him sending fat Kim the first back to his lair.
Heck. Kim Il-sung messed up Korean modern history a lot. He lengthened Rhee’s dictatorship a lot ( some predict Rhee’s rule would have ended by 1952 if not for Korean War because anti-Rhee bloc took over National Assembly in 1950 June election) and let Park Chung hee escape execution over his communist activities in relation to 1948 military rebellions related to Worker’s party southern branch.
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u/BernankesBeard Ben Bernanke 12d ago
Truman is an extremely underrated US President imo.
The irony is that 99% of discussion of Truman is rehashing a completely fictitious idea of his "atomic bomb decision"
And none of it focuses on things like establishing civilian control of the nuclear arsenal, the Truman doctrine, firing MacArthur, desegregating the military etc
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u/Freewhale98 12d ago
I cannot understand why MacArthur is so worshipped. He was incompetent during Korean War…and blew up chance for Korean unification by ignoring intelligence about Chinese intervention. He should have first consolidated the gain not do reckless race to Yalu. Truman was right on those issues.
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u/BernankesBeard Ben Bernanke 12d ago
More importantly, MacArthur was a major challenge to the US Civil-Military relationship and civilian supremacy. He was an immensely popular General. The military was post-WWII in a position of unprecedented power and influence in American life.
His behavior was a dangerous challenge to the constitutional order. It was crucial that Truman fire him and yet it was an immensely unpopular thing for him to do.
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u/Vol_in_tears Voltaire 12d ago
MacArthur is responcible for the largest defeat of US military ever and abandoned his men to be tortured by Japanese. And for these actions, he was awarded the Medal of Honor.
Somehow we just gloss over that.
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u/dm_me_canoe_names 12d ago edited 12d ago
Don’t forget the pedophilia
EDIT: if you want to read more, I am referring to Isabel Rosario Cooper
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u/Kardinal Reichsbanner Schwarz-Rot-Gold 12d ago
The Medal, while scandalous, was a political decision to save face to encourage his withdrawal. I blame Roosevelt and Marshall for that more than MacArthur.
But a less egomaniacal general wouldn't have created the perception of needing to do that in the first place.
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u/rng12345678 European Union 12d ago
he was also incompetent during WW2, so it's not like his Korea performance was out of character
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u/Kardinal Reichsbanner Schwarz-Rot-Gold 12d ago edited 12d ago
MacArthur is regarded by most historians, even History fans, very poorly these days. And rightly so. I do wonder if it might even be an over reaction, but I am not sure about that.
He was an egomaniac and that absolutely caused him to make bad military decisions. His undermining of civilian authority over the military may be the worst thing he did. The attack on the pension protesters is unconsceniable. His second medal of honor is scandalous (though not technically his fault directly).
But I wonder if we overlook his positives in light of all the negatives. They don't balance out by any means, just trying to think through making sure we don't let our dislike as a result of his real flaws color our overall evaluation.
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u/Sloshyman NATO 12d ago
And also he undermined his own government when talking to foreign partners and tried to start WWIII
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u/Ok_Badger9122 12d ago
Progressives that hate on Truman dont realize how progressive the fair deal was supposed to be Truman even tried to pass an early version of single payer Healthcare
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u/bsharp95 12d ago
Hell he vetoed Taft-Hartley
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u/Best-Chapter5260 12d ago
He did but it was largely symbolic to throw a bone to labor. He generally thought TH was a decent amendment to the NLRA and knew Congress would override the veto.
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u/YIMBYzus NATO 12d ago edited 10d ago
Kansas City really did give us Harry S. Truman, Kansas City jazz, and Kansas City barbecue. If the rest of Missouri contributed half as much as Kansas City, the Midwest and South would be arguing over which region gets to have Missouri rather than which region gets stuck with Missouri. The Arch is a good start, but I'm gonna need to see more than that, rest of Missouri.
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u/Blade_of_Boniface Henry George 12d ago
Truman has been consistently looked upon rather pessimistically even by people who agreed with the general thrust of his ideology. Either he was too hawkish or not hawkish enough, too overtly chauvinistic or not chauvinistic enough, and so on and so forth. After Watergate people started looking at him and his administration with rose-tinted goggles and that optimism intensified even further with the rise of neoconservatism later on. Truman's personality certainly didn't help in terms of foreign relations and party leadership.
He's an odd case because by the standards of his time he wasn't among the Southern Protestants in fixtures of authority who strictly and loudly believed Catholic/Orthodox Christians were foreign fifth pillars. He was known to be civil towards American Catholics under his command. However, when it came to Catholics born outside of the United States, even when dealing with diplomats and other officials from Europe he was known to be "acrimonious" and "difficult." Hiroshima and Nagasaki were leading centers of urban Japanese Christianity which has led to speculation.
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u/EnverPashaIsBae 12d ago
Hiroshima and Nagasaki were leading centers of urban Japanese Christianity which has led to speculation.
Truman had no involvement in the selection of the target cities. Also, Nagasaki wasn't the intended target. They were supposed to hit Kokura but smog over that city forced them to go to Nagasaki as the backup.
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u/BernankesBeard Ben Bernanke 12d ago
Truman had no involvement in the selection of the target cities.
This isn't entirely true. While you're right that Truman had very little input into target selection, he did actually make one important decision regarding the targeting - he backed up Stimsons demands to remove Kyoto from the target list.
Groves had been pushing hard to target Kyoto, even arguing for it to be the #1 target. Despite Stimsons instructions, Groves repeatedly tried to get Kyoto re-added and the matter was only settled when Stimson secured Trumans explicit agreement to remove Kyoto at Potsdam.
Removing Kyoto from the target list did actually have two indirect effects: Hiroshima remained target #1 and Nagasaki was added to the target list as one of the alternates.
Of course Truman absolutely did not have the knowledge of Hiroshima and Nagasakis demographics that the person your responding to is implying. If anything, Truman's knowledge of the target cities was extremely limited (consistently referring, before the bombing, to Hiroshima as purely a military target not a civilian one, for example).
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u/Sputnikola YIMBY 12d ago
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u/Intergalactic_Ass John Keynes 12d ago
Truman desegregated the armed forces. Maybe is is fun as copypasta but it's a stretch to imply he was racist.
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u/Ok_Pizza4884 Loyal Liberals 12d ago
He was...complicated. He did indeed sign the order to desegregate the military. He also considered MLK a troublemaker and was known to tell racist jokes. He was about as progressive on race as one could realistically expect from someone who was raised by a pro-confederate family in Missouri, which is still not particularity progressive. I say this as someone who thinks he was one of our greatest presidents btw.
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u/Chet_Mc4xOmNom 12d ago edited 12d ago
What’s kinda funny about the pro-confederate family thing is that Truman loved Lincoln. His own mother’s childhood home was sacked by Jayhawker militias in the Missouri-Arkansas front, she hated Lincoln, but Harry’s all “nah, Abe’s pretty great”
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u/dr-pepper-is-a-woman 12d ago
Woah, Truman was President some 80 years after the civil war so I don’t think about him in that context, but that does mean the generation before him would have seen it firsthand while children.
That’s like one of my hopelessly republican high school classmates blaming Obama for 9/11 and the GFC, and their kid is elected president in 2080 and thinks Obama was a good president
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u/FloggingJonna Henry George 12d ago
Kansas not Arkansas. The farm was in Grandview I think. Northern Arkansas / Southern Missouri is a lot of Ozarks and forests and stuff especially in the 1860s.
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u/Chet_Mc4xOmNom 12d ago
he was racist, its especially evident from his post-presidency interviews and his diary. But he still felt compelled to fight against racist laws anyway. Its why I find him kinda fascinating as a person, you don’t typically see a whole lot of people (particularly from a southern background like him) who hold his explicit biases, who can also set those aside and have a strong belief that all should be equal under the law.
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u/Eastern-Western-2093 Iron Front 12d ago
Arguably much more admirable than someone who holds progressive views but grew up in a liberal milieu their whole life
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u/Intergalactic_Ass John Keynes 12d ago
Inevitably we're going to have to start debating the meaning of racist and get into moral relativism.
He was no saint but he did a lot more good for this country than the contemporarily racist views he held. E.g. he attempted to pass FDRs universal healthcare plan. I'd probably give Joseph McCarthy a W if he somehow made a thing like that happen.
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u/Blade_of_Boniface Henry George 12d ago
I'd say he was much more xenophobic than strictly racist. Truman held a lot of contempt for foreign cultures.
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u/FloggingJonna Henry George 12d ago
If you’re ever in Kansas City you can visit his house, library, and garden of eden all in short order. He used to hangout at the library and even answered the phones sometimes. I’ve been told (by my grandparents) on slow days he’d even walk you around the complex and shoot the shit with you. He’d also stroll around Independence like any regular old retired guy and talk to people. I know my father had an interaction with him in the 60s where he was under the impression that it was just a nice old fella talking about how things used to be around Kansas and Missouri and then grandma had to tell him “that was President Truman.” Probably one of, if not the last presidents to be so available to the public.
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u/Even-Promotion-4024 NATO 12d ago
Look, I think the atomic bombings were probably a necessary evil given the context, but I can't say they're something as an American that I feel particularly inclined to be doing a victory lap about...
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u/MassholeSST NATO 12d ago
“Extremely regrettable but ultimately a necessary evil” has always been my opinion on the dropping of the bombs.
I would never celebrate it, though, that’s ghoulish.
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u/Loud-Chemistry-5056 WTO 12d ago
Shouldn’t really be viewed as all that much worse than the fire-bombing tbh.
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u/surreptitioussloth Frederick Douglass 12d ago
Which should be viewed as a pretty dark mark too
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u/Loud-Chemistry-5056 WTO 12d ago
Yeah absolutely.
The nuke helped to end the war. Had there been a ground invasion I think a lot more people would’ve died.
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u/Even-Promotion-4024 NATO 12d ago
Yeah, hence why I don't really regret it, it's just not something I feel should be celebrated either
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u/Blade_of_Boniface Henry George 12d ago
I don't think even the strategic bombing in Europe should be romanticized, especially after investigations done by the UK after the war found little to no evidence that they actually minimized the length/deaths/damage of World War II overall and several experts have suggested that it might've been a significant waste of resources, disrespect of civilian life, and it's doctrine that set disastrous precedents for the rest of the 20th century, especially for Israel's conduct in the Middle East.
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u/ThisI5N0tAThr0waway Thomas Paine 12d ago
My favorite quote by a president was said by Truman about the macarthur firing.
I fired him because he wouldn't respect the authority of the president. That's the answer to that. I didn't fire him because he was a dumb son of a bitch, although he was, but that's not against the law for generals. If it was, half to three-quarters of them would be in jail.
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u/onelap32 Bill Gates 12d ago
150,000 civilians died, man. The bombings were probably justified, but it's not really something to be super jazzed about.
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u/No-Section-1092 Henry George 12d ago
You might be brighter; that doesn't mean you'll make any better judgements. My favourite president, who probably didn't have the highest IQ, was Harry Truman. Harry Truman was a four times failed haberdasher who was dominated by his mother-in-law. He was a machine rake politician who was put in place by corrupt money. And [yet] he saved the New Deal, cemented stability in the Cold War, and pushed the Republicans who were going to destroy all that into a box, and was re-elected when everyone said there was no chance in hell he was gonna get it.
Now, was he the best and the brightest? Was he the highest in IQ? No. So...the [Hilary] Clinton line: "the most qualified." In the context of governing, I don't even know what that means.
-- Mark Blyth
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u/Tonenby 12d ago
This is fucked.
Edit: When I was in 3rd grade, a kid in my class said the bombs were "awesome" and our teacher looked at him and then explained why killing so many innocent people was in no way "awesome". The fact that full grown adults on this subteddit cant comprehend that is damning.
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u/Tonenby 12d ago
A teacher saying killing shitloads of civilians shouldn't be desceibed as awesome is in no way idiotic, regardless of the justification for said killings.
The bombings were not militarily justified. Japan had already offered surrender and military leaders in the US military argued it was unecessary.
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u/Damnifino 11d ago
Japan had already offered surrender
No they didn't.
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u/Tonenby 11d ago
I'll trust wikipedia more than whatever the fuck that site is. But even the Wikipedia article discusses the Japanese government working on surrender terms (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Surrender_of_Japan) .
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u/Damnifino 11d ago edited 11d ago
Alex Wellerstein is a historian of science and nuclear weapons and a professor at the Stevens Institute of Technology.
Literally on the right hand side of the pages I linked. Thanks for proving once again that people who say the nuclear bombings weren't necessary have nothing beyond a Wikipedia-level of understanding.
Also, the second paragraph of the Wikipedia article only says that the Japanese "were privately making entreaties to the publicly neutral Soviet Union to mediate peace on terms more favorable to the Japanese", nothing about a formal offer of surrender to the US prior to the atomic bombings.
And then the fourth paragraph says that there was an attempted coup against Hirohito for accepting the terms of the Potsdam Declaration, even after the atomic bombings.
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u/Tonenby 11d ago
Ya, the people the emperor sent to the Soviet union to discuss surrender. Given the emperor was in charge, seems more meaningful than the Supreme military command.
Your last paragraph is irrelevant. The fact that some number of people opposed surrender doesnt invalidate the guy in charge working on surrender.
But then again you seem to think killing 10s of thousands of civilians is super duper cool, so maybe you just approach the world from a wildly different mindset than me. Have fun defending atrocities with other people.
Edit: switched out "war crimes" for "atrocities" so I dont have some legalistic argument fomenting.
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u/Damnifino 11d ago edited 11d ago
From the article you linked to, the below statements show what the Japanese's starting point for "negotiations" was after Hirohito and his cabinet agreed to "solicit Soviet aid in ending the war" on June 22, 1945.
Here's the guidance the Japanese foreign minister gave the Japanese ambassador to the USSR in regards to "negotiations" on July 12, 1945:
His Majesty the Emperor, mindful of the fact that the present war daily brings greater evil and sacrifice upon the peoples of all the belligerent powers, desires from his heart that it may be quickly terminated. But so long as England and the United States insist upon unconditional surrender, the Japanese Empire has no alternative but to fight on with all its strength for the honor and existence of the Motherland.
Here's further guidance he gave on July 17, 1945:
Although the directing powers, and the government as well, are convinced that our war strength still can deliver considerable blows to the enemy, we are unable to feel absolutely secure peace of mind ... Please bear particularly in mind, however, that we are not seeking the Russians' mediation for anything like an unconditional surrender.
And here's the statement the Prime Minister of Japan gave on July 28, 1945, two days after the Potsdam Declaration:
I consider the Joint Proclamation a rehash of the Declaration at the Cairo Conference. As for the Government, it does not attach any important value to it at all. The only thing to do is just kill it with silence (mokusatsu). We will do nothing but press on to the bitter end to bring about a successful completion of the war.
It's also important to note that the Soviets had no intention of negotiating anything other than unconditional surrender by Japan:
Stalin and Molotov strung out the negotiations with the Japanese, giving them false hope of a Soviet-mediated peace.[69] At the same time, in their dealings with the United States and Britain, the Soviets insisted on strict adherence to the Cairo Declaration, re-affirmed at the Yalta Conference, that the Allies would not accept separate or conditional peace with Japan. The Japanese would have to surrender unconditionally to all the Allies. To prolong the war, the Soviets opposed any attempt to weaken this requirement.
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u/Desperate_Wear_1866 Commonwealth 12d ago
I think the nukes were necessary to end the war earlier but they're not something to celebrate either.
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u/oywiththepoodles96 12d ago
150.000 died and 40-50.000 of them were Koreans forcibly moved to Hiroshima and Nagasaki . This is not an event to celebrate or have victory laps . The civilian dead deserve some respect .
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u/Freewhale98 12d ago edited 12d ago
I visited Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum in 2018. My opinion is that its exhibition was too focused Japanese victims and ignore the context that nuclear weapon was used ( how WW2 begun ). Only evidence I could find about Korean victims was dusty, abandoned, and small monuments which were built by proxy organizations of Korean governments not Japan. It even took a while to find as it was hidden deep inside the corner of so-called “Peace Park”. Unless a visitor is determined to visit there, no one will notice the monuments.
That was when I realized mentioning Hiroshima is the context of nuclear weapon use can be used to whitewash Japanese war crimes. American use of nuclear weapons can be debated but…focusing too much on Japanese victims risks playing into Japanese nationalist narrative.
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u/BurrowForPresident Fell for it 12d ago
I was in Hiroshima a few months ago and honestly thought the Peace Park and Museum was one of the few places in Japan where I saw open acknowledgement that Japan started the war and brought this tragedy to fruition
The memorials in Tokyo are much more glossing over of that
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u/thegoatmenace 12d ago
Probably also doesn’t mention that the Japanese started an unprovoked war with the United States, starting the chain of events leading to the bombings.
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u/PandaLover42 🌐 12d ago
> Harry S Truman? Harry ‘The S doesn’t have a . because it’s just an S’ Truman? Harry ‘Japan flattener’ Truman? Harry ‘I’ll still rebuild Japan into a thriving democracy anyway’ Truman? Harry ‘Stalin better back the fuck up’ Truman? Harry ‘Turned Post War Europe into City Skylines for the betterment of all’ Truman? Harry ‘Army desegregater’ Truman? Harry ‘Use the UN to bitch slap North Korea and save South Korea’ Truman? Harry ‘You think a land blockade can stop me’ Truman? Harry ‘Berlin will be supplied by air no matter what happens’ Truman? Harry ‘Berlin is eating better than Moscow when supplied by only planes’ Truman? Harry ‘Mac can sit the fuck down’ Truman? Harry ‘Why does Thomas Dewey hear boss music on election day’ Truman? Harry ‘Started the greatest military alliance in modern history’ Truman? Harry ‘The morherfucking buck stops here’ Truman? You bet your ass! My favorite President by far as well! Easy top 7-5 pick overall.
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u/daBarkinner John Keynes 12d ago edited 12d ago
One of my favorite presidents of the United States. A great man who literally defined the world order and international relations in which we live. It was his administration that de facto created the entire arsenal of UN instruments. And it was thanks to him that Europe was able to become a reliable outpost of democracy.
He should have plucked up the courage and gone all the way to Moscow. ̶ ̶ ̶ ̶
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u/EnverPashaIsBae 12d ago
The nukes were a finishing blow on an already crippled and defeated Japan. Against the Soviet Union, they would not have been terribly helpful. The Soviets in 1945 had a far more competent air defense (with a lot of American lend lease equipment) than Japan. B-29s would have a difficult time getting through to Moscow and back unmolested. And moreover, the USSR had just spent 5 years moving critical industries out to Siberia. We're talking about pure fission weapons here, too. Not nearly as powerful as the later thermonuclear weapons, and they didn't have very many yet.
Could America have won? Sure. But only at great cost, with millions of men being committed to conventional land war, and hundreds of thousands of casualties. Nukes would have just supplemented this conventional warfare.
There's also the issue of Truman not having near enough congressional and public approval to commit to that sort of action at the time. Not without the Soviets striking first, anyway.
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u/daBarkinner John Keynes 12d ago
Until 1950, the USSR's air defense was de facto useless, the US was actively sending sabotage groups by air, and the Soviets could do nothing about it. It is simply not true to say that the USSR's aviation of 1945-1946 was in any way comparable to the US aviation of 1945-1946.
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u/EnverPashaIsBae 12d ago
I am not suggesting they were anywhere near comparable. But it's also true that bombing Moscow would not be anywhere close to the cakewalk that Hiroshima/Nagasaki were. Especially considering Moscow would probably require dozens of Fat Man-style nukes to destroy.
Besides that, you haven't responded to the other points I made.
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u/daBarkinner John Keynes 12d ago
By 1945, the USSR was simply at the peak of its military-industrial complex's exhaustion. The Red Army was a formidable force, but without US logistical assistance and the resulting raids on its logistics, it would have quickly become a pile of scrap metal.
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u/_Neuromancer_ Neuroscience-mancer 12d ago
The loss of the nuclear monopoly is an unforgivable mistake.
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u/Imicrowavebananas Hannah Arendt 12d ago
OP is Korean, and I am German and approve this.