Jack Hunter: Liberal and Conservative Uses of the Term "Terrorism" in History
[The "Southern Avenger" Jack Hunter is a conservative commentator on WTMA 1250 AM talk radio and columnist for the Charleston City Paper in South Carolina.]
In a recent commentary, I called alleged 19th-century slave insurrectionist Denmark Vesey a “terrorist,” defining that term as the intentional targeting of civilians to advance an objective or agenda. Vesey, who planned to murder every white person in Charleston, South Carolina in 1822, certainly fit this description, and so did President Harry Truman’s dropping of atomic bombs on Japan in 1945, a comparison I readily made. Liberals cursed my portrayal of Vesey, while thanking me for bringing up Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Conservatives cursed my portrayal of Truman, yet thanked me for my recent portrayal of Vesey....
Modern, white guilt-driven liberals who would never think of sacrificing their own small children for any progressive cause—including abolishing slavery—still champion Vesey’s plans to slaughter every pale-faced child in Charleston. When defending Vesey, liberals aren’t imagining murdered kids, only black liberation–some even making the class- and race-based case that slave masters’ entire families were equally as guilty as the slave masters. Similarly, when it came to Lenin and Stalin’s Russia, mid 20th-century liberals weren’t imagining famine and genocide, only “workers of the world” uniting. In the name of saving “humanity,” the Left is always prepared to sacrifice plenty of actual humans.
And unfortunately, so are many of today’s conservatives. The most common defense of Truman committing what conservative columnist Pat Buchanan calls “terrorism on a colossal scale,” is that it was done to “save American lives.” But was it?
Wrote Admiral William Leahy, chief of staff to both Franklin Roosevelt and Truman, “It is my opinion that the use of this barbarous weapon at Hiroshima and Nagasaki was of no material assistance in our war against Japan. The Japanese were already defeated and ready to surrender…” Douglas MacArthur’s consultant Norman Cousins wrote, “When I asked General MacArthur about the decision to drop the bomb, I was surprised to learn he had not even been consulted. What, I asked, would his advice have been? He replied that he saw no military justification for the dropping of the bomb.” Dwight Eisenhower told Newsweek in 1963, “the Japanese were ready to surrender and it wasn’t necessary to hit them with that awful thing.” Predicted Leahy, “The lethal possibilities of atomic warfare in the future are frightening. My own feeling was that in being the first to use it, we had adopted an ethical standard common to the barbarians of the Dark Ages. I was not taught to make war in that fashion, and wars cannot be won by destroying women and children.”
Barbarians? Dark ages? Destroying women and children as a method of waging war? These descriptions could easily apply to Al-Qaeda. Unfortunately, Leahy is describing the United States government....
Read entire article at American Conservative
In a recent commentary, I called alleged 19th-century slave insurrectionist Denmark Vesey a “terrorist,” defining that term as the intentional targeting of civilians to advance an objective or agenda. Vesey, who planned to murder every white person in Charleston, South Carolina in 1822, certainly fit this description, and so did President Harry Truman’s dropping of atomic bombs on Japan in 1945, a comparison I readily made. Liberals cursed my portrayal of Vesey, while thanking me for bringing up Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Conservatives cursed my portrayal of Truman, yet thanked me for my recent portrayal of Vesey....
Modern, white guilt-driven liberals who would never think of sacrificing their own small children for any progressive cause—including abolishing slavery—still champion Vesey’s plans to slaughter every pale-faced child in Charleston. When defending Vesey, liberals aren’t imagining murdered kids, only black liberation–some even making the class- and race-based case that slave masters’ entire families were equally as guilty as the slave masters. Similarly, when it came to Lenin and Stalin’s Russia, mid 20th-century liberals weren’t imagining famine and genocide, only “workers of the world” uniting. In the name of saving “humanity,” the Left is always prepared to sacrifice plenty of actual humans.
And unfortunately, so are many of today’s conservatives. The most common defense of Truman committing what conservative columnist Pat Buchanan calls “terrorism on a colossal scale,” is that it was done to “save American lives.” But was it?
Wrote Admiral William Leahy, chief of staff to both Franklin Roosevelt and Truman, “It is my opinion that the use of this barbarous weapon at Hiroshima and Nagasaki was of no material assistance in our war against Japan. The Japanese were already defeated and ready to surrender…” Douglas MacArthur’s consultant Norman Cousins wrote, “When I asked General MacArthur about the decision to drop the bomb, I was surprised to learn he had not even been consulted. What, I asked, would his advice have been? He replied that he saw no military justification for the dropping of the bomb.” Dwight Eisenhower told Newsweek in 1963, “the Japanese were ready to surrender and it wasn’t necessary to hit them with that awful thing.” Predicted Leahy, “The lethal possibilities of atomic warfare in the future are frightening. My own feeling was that in being the first to use it, we had adopted an ethical standard common to the barbarians of the Dark Ages. I was not taught to make war in that fashion, and wars cannot be won by destroying women and children.”
Barbarians? Dark ages? Destroying women and children as a method of waging war? These descriptions could easily apply to Al-Qaeda. Unfortunately, Leahy is describing the United States government....