Mere Context

Britain's leading liberal newspaper has reported with its customary impartiality upon President Obama's visit to Hiroshima. The well-known drone-master and nuclear non-disarmer made some unctuous noises about moral rearmament and learning the lessons; the Chinese foreign ministry called attention to Japanese war crimes and parroted the line that the use of nuclear weapons on human beings was necessary to shorten the war. Some Japanese consider the bombings a war crime, and Britain's leading liberal newspaper faithfully reported this, while dutifully noting that "the consensus in the US" contradicts and thereby invalidates this proposition. The evidence of mere facts, as set forth in papers declassified thirty years ago and extensively written about since, is that the Truman administration deliberately prolonged the war, refusing Japanese offers of surrender until it had used its new toys. The purpose was to remind the USSR not to get any funny ideas about peaceful co-existence now that the Axis was gone. But this is mere context; and, since neither Barack Obama nor the Chinese foreign ministry had anything to say about it, any mention by Britain's leading liberal newspaper would doubtless have been inappropriate.