Japanese calls for surrender so that he could drop the atom bomb on Hiroshima anyway to scare the Russians. Gar Alperovitz sounded that theme in the 1970s. And the Left still talks like that today. I've gotten so tired of having to correct the Left on this, time and again. (Japan refused to surrender unconditionally, insisting on certain conditions that no American president could accept after the Bataan Death March. And even after the A-bombing of Nagasaki, militarist hard-liners would have continued the fight if Emperor Hirohito hadn't thrown in the towel.) But this theory of theirs has acquired a status of myth. Can't touch it. And if you think THAT is bad, here's what Noam Chomsky said about World War II: "Of course, it was politically impossible after Pearl Harbor for the United States not to declare war; we know how very difficult it is to restrain from striking back, even when you do know that the guilt is distributed. [!!!].... "Now what were the consequences of striking back and what was our own role in creating the situation in which the violence took place? On December 8, we struck back quite blindly, quite unthinkingly, and I'm not at all sure in retrospect that the world is any the better for it. It's quite striking to read the dissenting opinion at the Tokyo tribunal of the one Indian justice who was permitted to take part, and who dissented from the entire proceedings, concluding himself that the only acts in