Happy 123rd Birthday Harry S Truman!

[emad]

Wreath Laying Ceremony
Tuesday, May 8, 2007
The annual American Legion Pilgrimage Wreath Laying observes Harry S. Truman's 123rd birthday by laying wreaths at his gravesite. Representatives of more than 50 American Legion posts will participate in ceremonies beginning at 9:30 a.m. that include a color guard procession and a memorial address. Museum visitors may observe from the Courtyard or the Legacy Gallery. The wreath laying ceremony is free with admission.
Free Birthday Cake will be served to patrons by Museum volunteers beginning at 1:30 p.m.

http://www.trumanlibrary.org/programs.htm


From you many great fans in London.
xxx

[Matsubara]

1. I'd prefer to memorialize the tens of thousands of civilians he incinerated.

The man who vaporized 150 thousand civilians in Hiroshima, 90 thousand in Nagasaki, and laid waste to Dresden for no strategic reason whatsoever, is not deserving of any honors, nor was he worthy of the mantle of Franklin Roosevelt.

If only Roosevelt hadn't let Henry Wallace go, the United States might have been able to wrap up the war (which ROOSEVELT won) in a humane and ethical fashion.

I will not be replying to any of the replies this post may generate.

[iamahaingttta]

2. Truman was also the guy...

...who turned this country into a national security state.
We might have been better off without him...

[Odin2005]

6. As opposed to the MILLIONS that would of died in an invasion of Japan?

Sometimes one has to go with the lesser of the two evils.

[wicket]

9. "I will not be replying to any of the replies this post may generate."

How convenient :eyes:

[Matsubara]

10. I'll break my vow to tell you why.

Because just about everyone agrees that using nuclear weapons to kill cities full of civilians is unequivocally wrong, but Truman's apologists make an exception, just for him, just at that one moment in history.

They're incapable of acknowledging the victims of Hiroshima and Nagasaki as anything other than stats on paper or representatives of their government (as though they had a say in how it was run).

They throw up Pearl Harbor ( a stategic military attack) and Nanking (an atrocity, but it was not committed by the civilian A-bomb victims) as justifications.

They bring up THEORETICAL casualty projections and act as though the only two choices open to Truman at the time were immediate, full-scale invasion, or murdering a bunch of civilians with a terrorist attack to cow the government into complying. Obviously, anyone with even a little imagination could have thought of other alternatives to spare the lives of those people and still end the war, and many of Truman's advisors were very hesitant to use the bomb. But he didn't have the kind of imagination it took to seek alternatives (or the awareness that yellow people have lives and families and hopes and dreams too).

How many of them would have been willing to use a nuke on Baghdad in 2003 to "save countless American lives"? I'd wager it's very few. If it's wrong now, it was wrong then.



But the main reason I don't care to discuss it is that it is insulting to the hibakusha, living and deceased, to bandy about these tacky little rationalizations for an abhorrent terrorist attack, when in my mind the matter is as settled as is the holocaust. It happened, it was a hideous atrocity, and to deny it is to spit on the graves of innocents.

I've been through looonnggg threads with people about this on other boards, and I will not go through it again. Sorry if you think I'm trying to pull something here, but I will not spend post after post debating the obvious anymore than I would do so with a holocaust denier. Such people should be dismissed offhand, IMO, and the fact that Truman was nominally a "democrat" doesn't let him off the hook.

[trotsky]

11. Very well done.

De-humanizing and savaging those who disagree with you, and throwing in plenty of second-guessing to season it up. Bonus points for trying to make an analogy with Baghdad 2003 as if it were even remotely the same situation, and the icing on the cake is comparing your opponents to holocaust deniers. Well done all around!

[Name removed]

12. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[trotsky]

13. The trifecta!

Graphic pictures to further bash your opponent.

Classy all the way! So are you gonna honor your pledge or keep posting?

[roguevalley]

15. I loved Harry Truman. He was a great president and would EAT

Bush and his family for breakfast if he were still here.

[emad]

20. Eat: My parents worked in the diplomatic service and I met President

Truman when I was seven at the wake for Sir Winston Churchill held at the US Ambassador's residence in Regent's Park, London.
I was given a seat next to him during the post-funeral eulogies and he gave me a toffee: "Here, have a toffee," he said. Couldn't argue with that one, even if there was a no sweets before dinner rule, I knew I could say "but President Trumkan said I could!"

[trotsky]

23. That's a cool story.

Lucky you!

[Matsubara]

24. Denying and rationalizing one atrocity is the same as denying and rationalizing another.

The only people who were dehumanized and savaged were the innocent civilian victims of World War Two.
"Second-guessing" - isn't that what the illegal Iraq Invasion's supporters said we shouldn't do the the present occupant of the White House, because he "had more of the facts" than we did?
Teddy Roosevelt said that we have d duty to second-guess the president when he's wrong.

Holocaust deniers and atomic murder apologists may have different motivations, the former is usually anti-semitism, the latter is a desire to preserve the legacy and rose-colored memory of a brutal leader who happened to have a "D" after his name.

But the act of denying an atrocity is the same, regardless of the motivation.

[Xenotime]

21. Truman was a Democrat

Did you know that?

[dsc]

25. Dresden happened while FDR was President

[Matsubara]

26. You are correct. My mistake and too late to edit.

It was still a reprehensible bombing, as was much of the firebombing of Japanese cities, much of which were little more than wooden shantytowns at the time.

And we haven't improve much since then:



"civilian casualties kept to a minimum"


Ah, what a comfort that must be to a widow standing over her wrecked house and the corpses of her husband and children! Kept to a minimum, but completely unnecessary to begin with...

[KharmaTrain]

3. America Needs You...Harry Truman...

America needs you
Harry truman
Harry could you please come home
Things are looking bad
I know you would be mad
To see your favorite men
Prevail upon the land you love

Americas wondering
How we got here
Harry all we get is lies
Were gettin safer cars
Rocket ships to mars
From men whod sell us out
To get themselves a piece of power

Wed love to hear you speak your mind
In plain and simple ways
Call a spade a spade
Like you did back in the days
You would play piano
Each morning walk a mile
Speak of what was going down
With honesty and style

Americas calling
Harry truman
Harry you know what to do
The world is turnin round and losin lots of ground
Oh harry is there something we can do to save the land we love
Oh woah woah woah

Americas calling
Harry truman
Harry you know what to do
The world is turnin round
And losin lots of ground
Harry is there something we can do to save the land we love
Oh
Harry is there something we can do to save the land we love
Harry
Harry is there something we can do to save the land we love

(c) 1975 - Chicago

Here's to the last President who didn't graduate from college.

:toast:

[Joe Fields]

4. I, for one will wish President Truman a happy birthday.

Some people here at DU seem to have a case of revisionist history. Would they have preferred one hundred thousand more dead American troops?

[Odin2005]

5. Happy birthday Mr. Truman.

:toast:

"The buck stops here" -Harry Truman

[trotsky]

7. "Give 'em hell, Harry"

You made some difficult decisions for which some folks will always second-guess you. It was a different time and I'm not going to pretend that I could presume to make better decisions given the conditions. Thank you for pushing integration of our armed forces. Thank you for your work in securing the peace in Europe and Japan after WWII.

[emad]

8. I remember when I first came to Washington...................

"I remember when I first came to Washington. For the first six months you wonder how the hell you ever got here. For the next six months you wonder how the hell the rest of them ever got here."
Harry S. Truman


and my fav:

"Nixon is one of the few in the history of this country to run for high office talking out of both sides of his mouth at the same time and lying out of both sides."

&

"Richard Nixon is a no good, lying bastard. He can lie out of both sides of his mouth at the same time, and if he ever caught himself telling the truth, he'd lie just to keep his hand in."

[rockymountaindem]

14. Happy birthday Mr. Truman n/t

[RubyDuby in GA]

16. Today is my father's birthday too. He was born not too far from Independence, MO

and my grandfather wanted to name him Harry S. Truman _____. My grandmother put her foot down. I still think it's funny and would have been cool to have him named after the guy who said:

"Suppose you were an idiot. And suppose you were a Republican. But I repeat myself." -

[wicket]

18. Happy birthday to RubyDuby's daddy!!!

:D :hi:

[indypaul]

17. Happy Birthday HST

He knew how to make a decision and accept the
responsibility for it. Wouldn't this be a better
world if someone like that was occupying that
position today?

[IronLionZion]

19. Easily my favorite president Happy Birthday Harry!

I wish the buck still stopped at the president's desk.

It's pretty damn easy to monday-morning quarterback the bombing some 62 years after the fact. None of us had to make that decision.

I applaud his decision to desegregate our armed forces, rebuild Europe, found the UN and NATO, contain the Soviets, and I believe he was the first to call for universal healthcare. He sent this country towards civil rights and was the first sitting president to address the NAACP. He also proved that doing the right thing is still politically viable as he held off opposition from Strom Thurmond's Dixiecrats on the right and Henry Wallace's Progressive Party on the left to somehow defeat Dewey and the Republicans. His national train campaign must have been a hell of thing. It showed how ridiculous it was to go by telephone polls when many Democrats did not own telephones.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harry_Truman

[sniffa]

22. kaboom!

if he were aLive today, he'd be reaLLy oLd.