Vincent J. Curtis
10 Aug 21
RE: Forgetting the horror of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. By Henry A. Giroux. Op-ed published in the Hamilton Spectator 10 Aug 21
Henry A. Giroux may be many things, but he is evidently addled; his brain has been eaten as if by acid. He is of an age when he should know some basic historical facts, but the haze of smoke and time seems to have confused him.
For example, “The bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki forecasted a new industrially enabled kind of violence and warfare in which the indiscriminate bombing of civilians was normalized.”
Let’s set aside for the moment that the war which ended with the atomic bombings was highly industrialized, as was World War I before it; and therefore the bombings could not have ‘forecasted’ what already existed.
As a matter of history, the aerial bombing of civilians began with the Zeppelin and Gotha bomber raids on London in 1917-18. The mass bombing of civilians began in WWII in 1939 with the destruction of Warsaw, and continued throughout the war. The hearts of most of Japan’s cities were burnt out by firebombing raids that began in March, 1945. The aerial bombing of civilians was normalized well before August, 1945, which is why the atomic bombing of cities could even be contemplated.
Then there’s “Gangster capitalism has become a metaphor for the recurring atomic blast…” What recurring blast? And the Manhattan Project was a U.S. government affair from start to finish, under Democrats Franklin Roosevelt and Harry Truman. Capitalists and Republicans had nothing to do with it.
When these are your premises, your conclusion is false. There is no need to pollute young minds with Giroux’s delusions of intellectual grandeur.
By the way, I’m grateful for the atomic
bombings. My father would have been in
the invasion force of the Japanese mainland – Operation Downfall. Luckily, the Japanese surrendered before
invasion was necessary.
-30-
Giroux would be working in a Nazi University, a Stalin University or a Mao University if the world followed his recipe of Marxist remedies involving the kneecapping of of western military power and the implementation of Communism.
ReplyDeleteThere is not a totalitarian state that Giroux would not take sides with in his battle against western democracies.
He is a fool living the good life on high 6 figure salary for eons from McMaster University and an open invitation by The Hamilton Spectator and its owner, TorStar, to spout his garbage.
It is sad that students have to be exposed to his ideological insanity.