President Barack Obama became the first sitting president to visit Hiroshima today in a solemn wreath-laying ceremony alongside Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe.
The President delivered prepared remarks and called for the world to “escape the logic of fear” and do away with nuclear weapons:
“Amongst those nations like my own that own nuclear stockpiles, we must have the courage to escape the logic of fear and pursue a world without them.”
Obama also used his speech writers’ eloquence to wax poetic about the events of August 6, 1945: (Reuters)
“We come to ponder the terrible force unleashed in the not so distant past,” Obama said after laying a wreath at the peace memorial.
“We come to mourn the dead, including over 100,000 Japanese men, women and children, thousands of Koreans and a dozen Americans held prisoner. Their souls speak to us.”
Obama has made great pains to say he would not formally apologize to Japan for the Hiroshima bombing, but a person with any level of intelligence can certainly infer an apology from one passage of his remarks:
“Technological progress without an equivalent progress in human institutions can doom us. The scientific revolution that led to the splitting of an atom requires a moral revolution as well. That is why we come to this place.”
Let’s marinate on those words for a moment, shall we?
Let’s go backwards.
“That is why we come to this place.” – So, the statement preceding this declaration is meant to convey the purpose of the President’s historic visit to Hiroshima, right?
So, what is the purpose? What is the message of this very symbolic moment?
“The scientific revolution that led to the splitting of an atom requires a moral revolution as well.”
Wow. It’s pretty clear that by calling for a “moral revolution” connected to the splitting of the atom while standing at the Hiroshima memorial the President is implying that the bombing was an immoral act, right?
Otherwise, why would we need to “come to this place” to call for a “moral revolution” to coincide with the “scientific revolution that led to” the creation of the atomic bomb?
Frankly, that statement is worse than an apology. It’s a condemnation of America’s actions in 1945 as immoral and it’s a sanctimonious declaration that only our preening president has the moral perspective to start righting that wrong.
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