Pat Buchanan: Hiroshima Makes Torture Okay

Some things, you hear on the teevee, and right away, your heart sinks, because you know you'll never be able to unhear them. Like today! On Hardball! With Pat Buchanan. Yeesh.

Basically, host Chris Matthews was having a debate on the torture doctrine with Buchanan and Jonathan Turley, when Buchanan trotted out an idea that I hadn't ever heard before, probably because it's insane, maybe!

BUCHANAN: It is not a moral evil. You got a right to kill people. You got a right to kill people. Is waterboarding Sheikh Khalid Mohammed is a worse thing than dropping two atomic bombs on people and burning 120,000 people to death? Sending 40,000 more to death by radiation. To convince the Japanese cabinet to change its mind? What was worse?

To debate which of these incidents was "worse" is beside the point. I think that both, obviously, have a degree of awfulness to them. But there are important distinctions between the two, the important one being that the people who made the decision to drop the A-Bomb assumed the moral weight of their decision. They didn't follow up their decision with denials, or pretense. They didn't hide what they'd done in documents that came to light years later. There's no need to "investigate" what happened. No one had to have their hands forced, to explain what had been done. And no one has escaped the dread of atomic weapons being used again.

More to the point, I don't think that any of the people who made that decision to drop the bomb on Japan did so with the thought that one of the net benefits would be that the dimensions of acceptable atrocity would be expanded. If the A-bomb makes waterboarding a detainee okay, it surely makes waterboarding an American okay. It surely makes slaughtering hundreds of thousands of Tutsis, with machetes, okay. It surely makes taking 52 American diplomats hostage in Iran for 444 days okay.

[WATCH.]

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Comments

[rayy]

I think language is part of the problem here. When it was sanitized from "water torture" or "simulated drowning" to waterboarding. Do we really want to follow the example of the Spanish Inquisition? THe Khmer Rouge"

[Newsmonger]

No, we do not have the right to kill anyone. America do not have the right to kill anyone; America have the right to defend her self and we all have the right to defend ourselves.

Anything can happen when one exercise his/her defensive right either as an individual or as a nation but that is not the same as having the right to kill.

This is way way out of line.

It is really ironic that these same so called religious GOP right-wingers who reads the Bible and come out and tell us that marriage must be between a man and a woman; because that is how it traditionally and as practiced in the Bible; reads the same Bible about "Thou shalt not kill thy neighbor" and comes out and tell us that we have the right to kill.

[Freedomscap]

Guys, check out this piece:


www.huffingtonpost.com/kathleen-wells/congresswoman-diane-watso_b_191417.htmlnal

[Mrphd2b]

It does matter what President Obama do or say Joe Scarborough
Patrick Joseph "Pat" Buchanan and does not agree with
Him unless you challenge him,….. his current political analyst position US policymakers by evaluating the goals and his good judgment in disclosing your interest America ,….his political and decision making processes; the strengths and weaknesses of his strategies for achieving our goals; and the implications of all of the above for US interests,….

"Joe" Scarborough “ you and "Pat" Buchanan are two of the most self monitoring analysis with your self discovering of your life purpose in performance which is standards and implementation and Pat being your walking encyclopedia. Between the two of you guys know all things ,…Joe run for The President of the United States and take your side-kick Pat for Vice President of the United States, and Mika Emilie Leonia Brzezinska for your United States Secretary of State

[rabiddog6708]

Pat Buchanan says something stoopid and off.ensive? Alert the media.

[ladyvader]

Alert the media when he doesn't say something stupid.

[kandlefly]

I wonder if Mr.Buchanan would feel that way if it was an American being tortured in some other country for lets say, spying. I have come to realize that the Buchanans, Hannitys, Scarboroughs and people like them believe that there is one law for Americans and another law for the rest of the World, but you also have to understand that people like them also felt that America should have one law for Minorities and another for Whites.

Check this out Scarborough and Company sit there every morning disrespecting, mocking and making fun of other Countries and their Leaders, they carry on for hours about who is a lunatic, who is short, who is crazy and Joe would be laughing at the top of his voice, he would prolong some of these ridiculous conversations for the whole program, but just say President Bush is a Devil, well, get Buchanan, call O'Reilly, Beck, Hannity, Coulter and Lunatic Bachman, quick rounds up the posse, lets start a Movement, a Tea Party or something to call for the bombing and torture off who ever said that.

These Cold War era fossils just would not go away and let the New World take hold. These Throw Backs are still seeing Iron Curtains everywhere they turn and building them where there is none.

[CanUFeel2012]

I THINK THAT'S WHAT OBAMA MEANT TO SAY WHEN TALKING ABOUT THE ARROGANCE OF THE USA.... ...........I MEAN AFTER THESE 8 WASTED YEARS THE LEAST WE CAN DO IS SHOW SOME KIND RESPECT AND HUMILITY ....... PEACE

[egaeus]

People horrified by Buchanan's assertion that we have a right to kill people have failed to see that, judging by American values, he is correct. Americans LOVE war. The majority support it every time a leader lies them into a military conflict, then argue for and justify America's right to murder people overseas. Most would not have turned against the war with Iraq if it had not dragged on so long, and this despite the fact that 85% of the casualties have been women and children.

What is somewhat odd is that Pat took the issue of torture and turned it into an issue of killing people. Whereas the memos make clear that the lunatics drafting them were at least legally concerned about detainee safety, Pat escalates the debate over whether or not we should be able to murder them. Interesting how the right, the god-fearing side, always finds itself victimizing the helpless and defending cruelty and abuse.

[frappe]

If it wasn't for the "mourning joe" show on MSNBC, Buchanan would be a relic by now.

[CanUFeel2012]

THE ATTACKERS OF 9/11 HAD THE SAME PHILOSOPHY.... YOU GOT A RIGHT TO PEOPLE....
THERE IS SO MANY WAYS TO GO WITH THIS BUT I'LL LEAVE IT TO KARMA..........

[CanUFeel2012]

''YOU GOT A RIGHT TO KILL PEOPLE''. ARE YOU KIDDING ME. CAN YOU SAY SENIOR MOMENT.....DOES THIS GUY NOT REALIZE THAT OUR ENEMIES WILL HEAR THIS AND USE IT TO THEIR PSYCHOTIC ADVANTAGE..........

[JoeSchmuk]

''THEIR PSYCHOTIC ADVANTAGE....''

Just because someone is YOUR enemy does not necessarily make them psychotic, nor you right. And quit yelling.

[CanUFeel2012]

YOU THINK THE GUYS WHO STRAP BOMBS TO THEMSELVES, PREGNANT WOMEN, LITTLE KIDS, AND SEND THEM ON SUICIDE MISSIONS ARE SANE ??? THAT'S A PSYCHOTIC ADVANTAGE I WILL NEVER HAVE........EVER.

[Betrayed]

Pat Buchanan is a straight shooter, there's no b.s. in the guy. A very smart man with a terrific sense of humor. I don't always agree with his views, but I always have respect for him and his thoughts. I wish there were more like him.

[imsosure]

Pat is a very were informed historian but he fails to learn much from the mistakes they were and refuses to acknowledge that there were errors of judgment and how this effected so many people. Now let's assume that the soldiers who were convicted and jailed were made to believe they were simply following orders, then Obama ought to release and reinstate these solders without prejudice asap.

[NWBrunette]

It really is bad that God allowed for ethics and stupidity to be combined.

[dmwirth]

This is so unbelievable.

I used to teach fifth grade. The bombings in Hiroshima and Nagasaki were covered in our US History curriculum. I would never say to the children I taught, oh we had a right to kill.

How pathetic. How horrible and tragic.

An I am tired of all this BS about "we are all alive because of torture. Bill O and others throw that argument at people. "Well, your alive right, do you like being alive, well that's because of the information we got when we tortured the bad guys."

[ShinjiIkari]

I think we can safely call Mr. Buchanan's argument "the last act of a desperate man." Yes, the nuking of Hiroshima, greater than the death and destruction of 9/11 by forty times, is a major event in human history, moreso than the drunken frat boys and girls at Abu Ghraib. But neither makes us look particularly good in the eyes of history. Just as with our torture of Shiites, Sunnis, Kurds, Christians, or whoever the enemy du jour is, we try to rationalize both events, saying, "Well, this time it's different."

No it isn't, PB. Abu Ghraib, and Hiroshima, and Andersonville, and Wounded Knee, and other places remembered and forgotten where we ground into the dirt the words of Jesus--"Love your enemies"--show us at our revenge-loving worst. When will we go on record with the truth: we kicked somebody's dog at Abu Ghraib to get revenge for 9/11, just as we nuked Hiroshima--an unnecessary civilian target--to get revenge for Pearl Harbor?