>> The similarity – all the killings resulted from fundamentalist nutjobs trying to impose their wills on others.
Confused, its actually an interesting topic you raise. While George Bush undoubtedly *is* a religious nutjob, Im not sure you can equate him directly with the nutjob's of the overtly "lets kill as many as we can" variety, since if he was really that bad, he would have nuked Tehran a long time ago and would be shipping missionaries to the rubble. No, Bush prefers his destruction slow and conventional. Doesn't make it right, though, just less bad.
>> This may or may not be relevant. But was the President who ordered the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki a religious nutjob as well?
Truman was undoubtedly religious, but the interesting thing is that we have him to thank for the current "no-use" taboo. According to private papers and memoirs published after the war, it is clear that Truman became increasingly reluctant to even consider the use of nuclear weapons after having learned of the destruction in Japan. One has to remember that, at that time, nobody beyond a small group of scientists had really considered how destructive these things were.
Anyway, once the first two were dropped, Truman became increasingly disturbed -- there were actually *three* bombs readied for Japan, but Truman took the third away from the military after the first two were detonated. When you ask the question, wasn't it (President X) who dropped the bomb, instead of some general, it was Truman who set that precedent. Anyway, despite his later public denials that he was concerned with the bombings, it is pretty clear that he was bothered, which can be seen from subsequent events.
In the Korean war, many elements in the military wanted to begin using nuclear weapons after Chinese regulars entered the fighting, but it was again Truman who prevented them (the ultimate deal was that they would be used to strike bases in mainland China if the latter pulled out of peace negotiations, but that never happened). In fact, one of the reasons MacArthur was removed from command was apparently for not agreeing to Truman's policy in this area. Interestingly, another religious man with "blood on his hands" who was rabidly anti-nuclear was Robert Macnamara, who flatly prohibited talk of their use in Vietnam, under the theory that it was "un-American" (and also racist -- I kid you not -- to be seen as only dropping nuclear bombs on Asians).
http://www.courier-journal.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20051112/NEWS01/511120398
The real nuclear warmonger was apparently Eisenhower, who wanted to blur the distinction between strategic (big bang) nuclear weapons and their tactical (small bang) cousins, advocating use of the latter in small conflicts in the third world, which, obviously, would have been a disaster, since the soviets would have done likewise and the genie would have been let out of the bottle.
Anyway, if someone is interested and wants citations for this stuff, I can go dig it up.
[This message has been edited by Potemkin Cruise (edited 10-03-2006).]
