Lyin Liberal's Alternative History Lesson Dishonors Americans

This just in: Disgraced NBC Anchor Brian Williams isn't just a liar, he's a dullard:

MSNBC’s Andrea Mitchell discussed President Obama’s speech at Hiroshima, where he said, “death fell from the sky,” and where he hoped for a nuclear-free world. It was the first time a sitting president had visited the city, which we decimated in one of two atomic bombings during World War II that ended with Japan surrendering to the United States, ending humanity’s most destructive war.

Mitchell referenced the work of former U.S. Senators Richard Lugar (R-IN) and Sam Nunn (D-GA) for their work in trying to curb the spread of nuclear material, where Brian Williams added that we used nuclear weapons against Japan “in anger” (via NewsBusters):

ANDREA MITCHELL: And Brian, just a word to two men that you knew very well, Dick Lugar and Sam Nunn, the fact that they had this nuclear threat initiative and that they controlled through a bipartisan act of Congress, controlled the spread of nuclear materials, non-state actors and materials even in this age of terror, all these decades after the end of the Cold War is just remarkable and I don't think they get enough credit for it.

BRIAN WILLIAMS: It is and that is still the threat that people worry about that this material will fall into the wrong hands. If people have found the U.S. to be preachy in the years since Hiroshima and Nagasaki about the use of weapons, it’s because we’re the only nation to have used them in anger. Sometimes, I am amazed that the world has been without these weapons all the years since, but it is a point of, a great pride by the people who have seen to it.

Williams assertion is that the U.S. used these weapons in anger. This is not only silly, but it implies a monopoly on rage in warfare that's never existed. War is by definition an angry enterprise. It's a horrible thing, and for most, a last resort. Prior to the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor the U.S. was reluctant to enter. When we did, we found ourselves matched against an enemy that used inhuman tactics. Writing at the Free Beacon, Sonny Bunch articulates this with some excerpts from "Unbroken." As the book notes:

Raymond “Hap” Halloran was a navigator who parachuted into Tokyo after his B-29 was shot down. Once on the ground, Halloran was beaten by a mob of civilians, then captured by Japanese authorities, who tortured him, locked him in a pig cage, and held him in a burning horse stall during the firebombings. They stripped him naked and put him on display at Tokyo’s Ueno Zoo, tied upright in an empty tiger cage so civilians could gawk at his filthy, sore-encrusted body. He was starved so severely that he lost one hundred pounds. …

The Japanese military surrounded the city of Nanking, stranding more than half a million civilians and 90,000 Chinese soldiers. The soldiers surrendered and, assured of their safety, submitted to being bound. Japanese officers then issued a written order: ALL PRISONERS OF WAR ARE TO BE EXECUTED. What followed was a six-week frenzy of killing that defies articulation. Masses of POWs were beheaded, machine-gunned, bayoneted, and burned alive. The Japanese turned on civilians, engaging in killing contests, raping tens of thousands of people, mutilating and crucifying them, and provoking dogs to maul them. Japanese soldiers took pictures of themselves posing alongside hacked-up bodies, severed heads, and women strapped down for rape. The Japanese press ran tallies of the killing contests as if they were baseball scores, praising the heroism of the contestants. Historians estimate that the Japanese military murdered between 200,000 and 430,000 Chinese, including the 90,000 POWs, in what became known as the Rape of Nanking. …

The decision to use the atomic bomb was not an "angry" decision, as Williams characterizes it. It was a hard decision made by serious men as a means to ending a war that had caused millions of deaths and untold destruction. By choosing to characterize it as "angry," Williams removes the context and implicitly suggests that the United States was a merciless aggressor. As history suggests, nothing could be further from the truth.

Source: AAN