Incineration and Incarceration of Innocents

totally different from what the Nazis did. shut up, that's why.

Why is it that any time I read something by a wingnut, the first thing I have to do is consult a dictionary? It's not like they're using words I'm unfamiliar with, it's that they're using them in exceedingly peculiar ways.





tragedy: a disastrous event





just so we're clear,





disastrous: attended by or causing suffering





I didn't need that reminder of what "tragedy" and "disastrous" mean, but apparently, Alan Fraser at American Thinker does.

Here is a newspaper headline: "The
Economic Cost of the Mumbai Tragedy." The article was referring to the
November 2008 massacre in Bombay by jihadists. Remember that one? To those who
write headlines and give speeches for a living, Mumbai was just another in a
growing list of sad "tragedies." In this particular "tragedy," Islamists
slaughtered 173 and wounded 300.

Here is a short and incomplete list of national figures who view September
11, 2001 as a "tragedy":

So, what part of either the Mumbai attack or September 11 wasn't tragic? What part of either of those events did not involve suffering? Can anyone think of anything? Bueller?





Mr. Fraser can: neither the Mumbai attack nor September 11 led to internment camps or nuclear reprisals. I. Am. Not. Making. This. Up.

Let's think back for a moment. Nearly seventy years ago, a distant Pacific
island, a U.S. territory, was attacked, and over 2,000 U.S. military personnel
were killed. Was that event ever called a "tragedy"? By anyone? In the words of
our president, the Japanese had orchestrated an "unprovoked and dastardly
attack." The choice of those precise words helped mobilize a nation and launch a
war to thoroughly defeat the enemy that had attacked us.

In fact, so angry, energized and, dedicated were we to defeating that
enemy that one of our nation's first acts was to round-up 200,000 loyal Japanese
Americans and throw them into internment camps for the duration of the war. And
what was our final response to that unprovoked and dastardly attack? It was to
drop atomic bombs on two of our enemy's cities, thereby incinerating over
200,000 civilians in order to make that enemy surrender. It worked. We were
committed to that cause because we never surrendered to the "tragedy" and
"trauma" of December 7th.

For those not versed in American history, Mr. Fraser is referring to the attack on Pearl Harbor, which ushered in American involvement in WWII. That event also ushered in one of the most shameful events in American history- placing Japanese Americans that had done absolutely nothing wrong in internment camps simply for being of Japanese descent.





This is not something to be proud of.





You know what else we shouldn't be terribly proud of? Incinerating hundreds of thousands of noncombatants by dropping nuclear bombs on civilian centers. Yes, I know, it ended the war and saved us all from . . . something, but I still don't think slaughtering civilians wholesale is something to be proud of.





The rest of Mr. Fraser's post is a complaint that using the word "tragedy" just doesn't inspire action in people. Yes, he spends paragraphs complaining that after September 11 we did not open internment camps or drop nuclear weapons. Apparently, starting two wars, spending billions and killing hundreds of thousands of Iraqis and Afghanis just isn't enough for some people, not when we could have children dying in internment camps and nuclear winter.





Ah, the good old days.