Correspondence

...Iraqi self-government will succeed not because of military force, but because of the power of the emerging Iraqi government to persuade Iraqis that there is no more hopeful alternative future than freedom and self-government...

...They are one and the same...

...8), Matthew Continetti calls Judge Roberts a nerd...

...Kristol also mistakes determination for defeatism in Iraq...

...As Iraqi security forces stand up throughout the country, common Iraqis can see that their fathers, husbands, and sons are defending them in their own neighborhoods...

...The interview preceding Van der Post was with a Japanese doctor, a survivor of Hiroshima whose wife and children died in the blast...

...The tally is clearly on the side of the Iraqi people...

...On August 6, 25 years later, Van der Post appeared on a British television program, originally to talk about South Africa...

...By the insurgents' own acknowledgment, their failure to prevent those elections was a major setback...

...ANDREW R. MARCELLUS Burlington, VT RICHARD B. FRANK REPLIES: Mr...

...Over the years, on a number of occasions, I've spent time going over in my mind just what I thought about Truman's decision, and I always come to the conclusion that, all things considered, he did the right thing...

...Perhaps if I were a "liberal" or a "dufus" (same thing, no...

...Only through total victory were the Allies able to correct the failures of World War I, through unconditional surrender, regime change, and a permanent military presence...

...Everyone, more or less, knew that planning for the next "big one" (an invasion of the Japanese mainland) was underway...

...FDR advocated "unconditional surrender" precisely because of the "lesson of World War I." He was determined to leave the German people with no doubt whatsoever that they had been thoroughly defeated militarily from without, not by some "stab in the back" betrayal from within...

...The necessity of total victory meant either a full-scale mainland invasion of Japan—which, based on the casualties at Okinawa and the Japanese will to fight to the end, meant combined casualties over a million—or the use of the atomic bomb...

...He was captured by the Japanese and spent the next three years in prison under increasingly brutal conditions...

...It was not until after the second bomb was dropped that they agreed to an unconditional surrender...

...I had a special interest in the matter, because in August 1945 I was the navigator on the U.S...

...He briefly told the doctor his prison camp experiences and then said that he himself was alive today because of the doctor's family sacrifices at Hiroshima...

...It was built on weak commitments without credibility, overseen by a League of Nations with neither the adequate force nor the necessary will to defend those commitments...

...This "new mantra" is in fact an elementary principle of modern counter insurgency operations and certainly is the key to success in Iraq...

...Fortunately, Frank impressively upheld THE WEEKLY STANDARD'S reputation for integrity...

...It isn't to diminish the war effort, as Kristol suggests, but to strengthen it, that the president and the secretary of defense describe it as a broad effort against an extremist, "murderous ideology"—one that must involve all the elements of national power...

...Their absolute defeat eradicated this mythology root and branch...

...8) initially made me uneasy, because like millions of Americans, I have been bombarded for years by politically correct "critics" who hold that America was the bad guy vis-à-vis Hiroshima and Nagasaki...

...DAVID E. CONNOR Peoria, IL WHEN DISCUSSING Truman's decision to use the bomb, it is also important to remember the Allied war aims with particular focus on rectifying the failures of World War I based on the lessons drawn from the ineptness of the Treaty of Versailles...

...Kristol may think it is defeatist to show confidence in the growing capability of the Iraqi security forces, but the Iraqi people—according to most surveys— do not share that view...

...This is nonsense...

...When the prisoners heard on their clandestine radio of the dropping of the bomb, they were both exhilarated and quite worried...

...Versailles was a treaty simultaneously severe enough to anger the Germans but too weak to contain them...

...I might have a different view of his record of applying the Constitution rather than concocting new laws from the bench...

...Van der Post closed by saluting the doctor not as a survivor of Hiroshima, but as a savior of the New Japan and a victor over the "old Japanese order...

...They knew the Japanese were losing the war and that the bomb was a massive blow to the Japanese military position...

...Namely, we should remember the failure to achieve total victory...

...If one were to believe the underlying assumption, as did many statesmen and military commanders at the time, that a mainland invasion would be too costly to maintain continued domestic support for the war effort and that the Japanese would fight to the bitter end, use of the bomb was in accord with the Allied war aim of total victory and unconditional surrender, as well as morally superior to its alternatives...

...IN "John Roberts's Other Papers" (Aug...

...LAWRENCE DI RITA Pentagon Spokesman Washington, DC THE BOMB RICHARD B. FRANK'S "Why Truman Dropped the Bomb" (Aug...

...JUDGE DORK...

...Marcellus provides a shrewd assessment of the realities of 1945 with parallels to today...

...Both Germany and Japan were in the grip of myths of warrior supremacy, particularly over the supposedly soft, decadent, and materialist democracies...

...Recent polls show that sunnis are increasingly turning against the insurgency, with many sunni leaders acknowledging that the time has come to join the political process...

...DOUG HALL South Bend, IN...

...Having been a nerd since fourth grade and a dork for the last 10 to 15 years, I think I know the difference...

...Remember that even after the first bomb was dropped, the Japanese did not consider their chance of victory hopeless...

...But a nerd is generally a person who spends too much time on abstractions related to math and science...

...the failure, rooted in Wilsonian self-determination, to institute regime change...

...Thus, the consequences of the events of August 6 and 9 were received with relief...

...The new administration mantra," he writes, "is that the insurgency can be beaten only politically...

...I would call someone who reads way too many history books a "dork...

...This surely marks yet another setback for the insurgents, whose only program appears to be wanton murder in order to grab headlines...

...The whole concept of total defeat of Germany also plainly fitted with the gradual erosion of restraint of the use of aerial firepower against cities in Europe that formed the key backdrop for both the use of massed incendiary attacks against Japan and later the use of the atomic bombs...

...When Van der Post saw what was occurring, he persuaded the producer of the program to drop Africa from the agenda and to let him talk, on air, with the doctor...

...He was a colonel in the South African Army who organized anti-Japanese guerrilla units in Java in 1942...

...As the president recently suggested, the insurgents can kill innocents, but they cannot hope for victory...

...retreat into isolationism rather than maintaining a permanent military presence...

...The Iraqi people will defeat the insurgency when they starve it of what it needs most— domestic credibility...

...Considering how tough our victories in Iwo Jima and Okinawa had been, Operation Olympic would involve frightful casualties—Allies and Japanese—one of which might very well have been me...

...In that regard, I have always appreciated the comments of the South African Laurens Van der Post on the subject...

...Kristol seems to argue that a political process is not enough and points out that the insurgency survived the successful elections of January 30...

...The president constantly reminds us that this is a new kind of war...

...Kristol thinks that talking about a "struggle against violent extremism" is a step down from the "war on terror...

...Second, even if the Japanese were considering surrender, as "Magic" has revealed, it would not have been unconditional, nor would Japan have accepted regime change...

...and the failure of a u.s...

...use of the bomb also signaled to Japan, Germany, and the Soviets that the united states clearly and credibly was committed to using the necessary will to defend itself with adequate and overwhelming force...

...Navy advance-base oil tanker Caribou stationed in Guam...

...every political milestone on the road to self-government has been met...

...With the Japanese unconditional surrender, however, this issue became moot: Van der Post and tens of thousands of his fellow prisoners throughout Japanese-occupied territory were freed...

...To the hundreds of thousands of Allied prisoners, the sacrifice of the doctor's wife and family was not in vain, he said...

...Fortunately, Roberts's record as a dork is the "worst" flaw I can find in an otherwise excellent nominee...

...22), William Kristol thinks that he senses the "inescapable whiff of weakness and defeatism" in the leadership of the Pentagon...

...And they knew, given those facts, that the lives of the prisoners in Southeast Asia were in serious jeopardy...