Random Musings on the Date Which Lives in Infamy
December 7, 2009 by Bob Livingston
Sixty-eight years ago today, at about 7:55 a.m. local time, Japanese bombs began falling on the United States military installations Wheeler Field and Hickam Field in Hawaii, signifying the beginning of the attacks on Pearl Harbor.
That attack—which killed 2,390 sailors, airmen, soldiers and civilians—officially drew America into World War II. Until Sept. 11, 2001, that attack was the deadliest on American soil (2,976 died that day). As war was declared on Japan the next day, President Franklin D. Roosevelt called it, “a date which will live in infamy…”
On Aug. 15, 1945, President Harry S. Truman accepted the surrender of the Japanese. One of the terms of the surrender was that Emperor Hirohito would be allowed to remain on the throne.
Gen. Douglas MacArthur first met Hirohito on Sept. 27, 1945. In a black and white image preserved from that meeting, a casually dressed MacArthur towers over the diminutive, formally attired Hirohito. As historian Carol Gluck told the Public Broadcast System (PBS) in a documentary on World War II, “What does it say? It says, I’m MacArthur, supreme commander of the Allied Powers, and I’m in charge.”
The Bow Seen Round the World
Last month, President Barack Obama met Japan’s current emperor, Akihito, who happens to be the son of Hirohito. A color image of that meeting shows Obama bowing at an almost 45 degree angle to the son of the man who presided over a country that dropped bombs on our countrymen.
What does that image say? As an unnamed expert on the Japanese empire told ABC’s Jake Tapper (as reported on Tapper’s blog), “The bow (Obama) performed did not just display weakness in Red State terms, but evoked weakness in Japanese terms… The last thing the Japanese want or need is a weak-looking American president and, again, in all ways, he unintentionally played that part.”
Unlike President Richard Nixon’s bow to Hirohito or President Bill Clinton’s bow to Akihto—who both bowed slightly, as equals—Obama bowed as an inferior.
Never mind more than 200 years of U.S. State Department protocol that said “thou need not bow,” three presidents have. But the most glaring bow is Obama’s, who also bowed to the king of Saudi Arabia last spring.
What would Thomas Jefferson—who penned in the Declaration of Independence the words, “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal…”—say about Obama’s bow?
The Founding Fathers, after having suffered under the rule of a king, didn’t take kindly to royalty. As Article 1, Section 9 of the Constitution says, “No title of Nobility shall be granted by the United States…”
Those statements answer the Jefferson question. Even better are the words of President Theodore Roosevelt: “If I see another king, I think I shall bite him.”
Now Will Obama Bow to the Global Warming Liars?
Having spent his formative years in Indonesia rather than the U.S., Obama apparently doesn’t understand that Americans are subservient to no one. This thought causes great consternation as Obama heads to the United Nations (U.N.) Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen this week.
As I wrote in U.N Using Climate to Push One World Government Reforms, Obama is expected to bow to the climate change/One World Government crowd even as the house of cards that built up the man-made global warming hysteria comes crashing down.
In case you missed it—and it wouldn’t be surprising considering the U.S. mainstream media has ignored the scandal—emails between man-made global warming proponent scientists have either been hacked or leaked. The emails show what many—including me—have said: that the “science” of global warming has been completely fabricated, with numbers fudged and critical opposing views deleted or omitted.
Man-made climate change “science” is the abode of today’s anti-capitalist, anti-freedom communists. The so-called consensus of global warming science has been created on a fraud of speculation and corrupted data.
That Obama’s team would continue—in the face of forced resignations of the proponent scientists and calls for investigations—to claim man-made global warming is settled science demonstrates the Copenhagen meeting is not about climate change at all. It’s about control.
Or, as global warming skeptic Lord Christopher Monckton claims, “a world government is going to be created.”
Rather than a bow, if Obama agrees to this it’s more of a bend-over-and-grab-the-ankles moment… for all Americans.
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