Former United Nations Ambassador John Bolton says President Obama’s visit to Hiroshima, Japan, is the latest stop on his “shameful apology tour.”
“Even without an express apology, there will likely be moral equivalence like: Japan bombed Pearl Harbor and we bombed Hiroshima. We’re all guilty, but let’s put it behind us,” Bolton wrote in a New York Post op-ed published Thursday.
{mosads}“Undeniably, World War II is history, and further strengthening the U.S.-Japan alliance [is] profoundly important. But there is no moral equivalence here.”
Obama on Friday became the first sitting U.S. president to visit Hiroshima, the site of the world’s first atomic bombing.
The president called for a world without nuclear arms, but stopped short of apologizing for America’s past use of the weapons.
“Death fell from the sky and the world was changed,” he said in a somber speech at Hiroshima Peace Memorial Park.
“We may not eliminate mankind’s capacity for evil,” Obama added. “But among those nations like my own that hold nuclear stockpiles, we must have the courage to escape the logic of fear and pursue a world without them.”
Bolton wrote that even implying the U.S. is remorseful about using nuclear weapons is needless hand-wringing.
“[Former President Harry] Truman understood that not using the atomic bomb would have condemned millions of service members to death or debilitating injury,” he said.
“Japanese resistance grew significantly as U.S. forces neared Japan, and, expecting fanatical Japanese resistance, American military planners repeatedly increased projected U.S. casualties,” Bolton added.
“The calculus could not have been clearer. Before Obama casually trashes Truman’s courageous decision, he should reflect on what the alternative would have been.”
The U.S. dropped an atomic bomb on Hiroshima in August 1945, ultimately killing 140,000 people. A second bombing of Nagasaki three days later eventually reached a death toll of 80,000 more.