Op-Ed: Obama's Nuclear Gaffes in Japan UPDATE: Obama Bows Low

On his first day in Japan, Obama declared himself "America's first Pacific President," dodged the subject of the Hiroshima bombing but said he would be honored to visit there, and praised Chinese exceptionalism as strongly as he has downplayed ours.

UPDATE: From the Los Angeles Times via the top header on Drudge: President Obama has now stepped on two Presidential protocols in Japan. First, he bowed very low to Emperor Akihito as he shook hands. Having lived in Japan for two years, I can tell you that is wrong in two ways. First, you do not bow while shaking hands. Second, from a national leader such a bow is not even required, and should only be slight if offered. The LA Times piece also features photos of Dick Cheney shaking hands with Akihito while standing. This may earn Obama points with the Japanese, but at our expense. Does it always have to be so with this President? Original report as follows. It's been quite a day for President Obama in Japan. First, he declined if not outright refused to defend the nuclear bombings of Japan as necessary evils during World War II that, however tragic, forced a quick end to that bloody conflict and spared perhaps millions of Allied and Japanese lives that would have otherwise been lost in a protracted conflict on the mainland. Though declining twice to answer that question by a persistent Japanese reporter before deflecting to the subject of North Korea, the President further stated at his press conference that he would be honored to visit Hiroshima and Nagasaki at some time in the future. Honored? Why? If he will not even answer the question of whether the nuclear bombings were justified one way or the other, why would Obama be honored to go? Is he planning a Nagasaki and Hiroshima Apology Tour in the future, which it would be his honor to preside over? What other reason could there be? Certainly not to say that America was honored to rain nuclear Apocalypse down on both cities to end a bloody war? Regardless of any reasons for the President to visit Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the term honor doesn't seem to fit the profile given events on those fateful days of August 6-10, 1945. I visited Nagasaki in 1983. Got the full aerial tour flying out of the city. Honor wasn't a word that came to mind. Solemn, perhaps. But there was no honor in the nuclear attacks there. Only death and suffering for the Japanese in the Ground Zeroes, and great regret by President Truman that the fanatical Imperial Japanese left only the options of a hundred thousand or millions dead. How does honor figure into that? The only conclusion I can come to is that is one question that will never be asked of him by our mainstream media, though it desperately needs answering for the American people to understand exactly what he meant. Inquiring Minds Want To Know. This is a very personal subject for me. My late father was a veteran of the Normandy invasion. He told me about the bodies stacked like cordwood on the beaches. He also told me about the orders he received in May 1945 to ship out for the planned invasion of Japan, the human cost of which would have been far more apocalyptic than even those of Fat Man and Little Boy. In fact, more people were killed during the Battle of Okinawa than in the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombings combined. The speculation in Washington at the time for Allied casualties in Operation Downfall, the proposed D-Day plan for Japan, ran into the millions. The estimates were even higher for Japanese soldiers and civilians. Do not forget that Japanese soldiers and Kamikazes were every bit as suicidal as the radical Islamist extremists we fight today, if not more so. In short, had it not been for those nuclear bombings my father might have survived D-Day only to die on the beaches or in the jungles of Japan, and I would not be here to tell you his tale. Or any others. Personal enough for ya? In the end, which is preferable in a war against as fanatical and powerful an enemy as Imperial Japan was at the time? To battle for every inch of ground on Honshu, with millions fighting and dying on both sides? Or dropping two nuclear bombs and putting an end to it all with far fewer casualties? Such was our Sophie's Choice of that war, a concept our current president doesn't seem to understand. Like our victory over Japan, say. Or even in Afghanistan. Seems to find the concept of victory "troubling." But the real topper came during Obama's speech on foreign policy in Tokyo, where first he declared himself "America's first Pacific President" based on his boyhood in Indonesia and travels in Asia as a youth. Our first Pacific President then made the following statement regarding China, the growing power and influence of which is causing some concerns in the region given China's totalitarian regime and growing militarism:

I know there are many who question how the United States perceives China's emergence. But as I have said, in an interconnected world, power does not need to be a zero-sum game, and nations need not fear the success of another.

Need not fear the success of another? Now I'm totally confused. Since taking office the President has gone out of his way not only to downplay and even denigrate American power and influence, but to apologize for it both here and abroad. Does anyone remember the answer the President gave when asked a question about American exceptionalism? Which I fully believe in given America's great freedoms, political institutions, ingenuity, innovation, Marshall Plan-scale generosity and tremendous sacrifices to help rescue both Europe and Asia from the grips of the Japanese Imperialist and Nazi devils that held those nations and peoples by the throats, and where their massacres and genocide ruled the days? Allow me to remind you:

"I believe in American exceptionalism, just as I imagine that Greeks believe in Greek exceptionalism and the British believe in British exceptionalism."

Not what I'd consider a stellar defense of America and all she has achieved these past 230 years since we became an independent nation. Yet contained within those words is the subtext that America is no better than any other nation, really. Isn't that what he's been saying all along? So if speaking of Communist China the President can say that we need not fear the success of another, why can't he say the same of his own most successful and democratic country? Where would China be today without American markets to sell and invest in? Where would their formidable nuclear and missile programs be without our stolen secrets? Despite its financial success, China remains a staunch and ruthless Communist dictatorship. Not having our pesky unions or minimum wage laws in labor camps for political prisoners helps their profit margins and competitive edge greatly. China's growing military power, fueled by its laogai-driven economy, is also raising fears and eyebrows in the region. How would you feel if you were a Taiwanese watching all this transpire a mere 81 miles away at the Taiwan Strait's narrowest point? Would you feel no need to fear China's "growing successes"? Again, given the nature of the regime in Beijing and the contentious history between the two nations? So for China, power is not a zero sum game as it is for America. And we need not fear China's many successes, no matter how foreboding some may be. The only thing we need to fear is fear ourselves. Lastly, if President Obama at some time in the future visits Hiroshima and Nagasaki to commiserate with the Japanese people the evil of the world's first and only nuclear attacks by the United States, he and the Democratic Party are finished politically. There is a reason no sitting American president has ever visited those former nuclear wastelands. They are as radioactive as could be, both literally and politically. It would not be an opportunity for "the healing of old wounds." It would be a national shaming and disgrace. Yet I would expect nothing less from the man who worries about the word 'victory' in the context of Afghanistan and the surrender by Emperor Hirohito aboard the USS Missouri (who was never actually there, by the way), even as that magnificent symbol of victory is about to be completely refurbished for future generations of Americans to visit and remember its triumphal history, in a war the Axis powers started and we finished. All that appears to be President Obama's alternate-universe worldview in a nutshell, and in his own words. He would be honored to visit Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Yet unless he is politically compelled to, I foresee no future Presidential visits to the refurbished USS Missouri, given the President's apparent mindset that our last battleship's history of being the symbol of total Allied victory over the fascist Imperial Japanese is "troubling." Unlike, say, Communist China's many great successes regardless of the human and political costs to its citizens and the region which, curiously, remain unspoken by our zero-sum President. And to think this is only the first full day on the first stop on his four-nation trip. I don't even want to see the rest.