Almost Famous

Conservative godfather of the internet "Instapundit almost linked to Nonviolence.org":http://www.instapundit.com/archives/011100.php the other day. He didn't like our take on the enola Gay exhibit, but instead of linking directly to us so his readers could see what we had to say, he linked to Bill Hobbs' critique. I guess Instapundit alter ego Glen Reynolds must not think his readership can handle dissenting voices. Instapundit readers who cut and pasted to get here: * Yes, the Japanese were secretly trying to surrender _before_ the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagaski. The U.S. thought incinerating 150,000-some people was a good negotiating tactic, and it worked: the Japanese government to instantly agree to unconditional surrender. * Yes, the U.S. takeover of Hawaii and the Philippines were aggressive acts to secure shipping routes in the South Pacific. In 1854, a U.S. warship under the command of Commodore Matthew Calbraith Perry sailed to Japan and forced it to sign treaties opening up its markets. The threat of Russian expansion from the West and U.S. expansion from the south and east was a large part of the reason Japan militarized in the first place. These are the kind of facts one should have when standing in the Smithsonian gazing up at _enola Gay_ and wondering how it ever came to be that the U.S. would drop two nuclear weapons over two heavily-populated cities.