Was Harry S. Truman a War Criminal?

[Grumpier Than Uncle Joe]

The word is so easily bandied about by everyone, here's a guy that killed LOTS of people......presumably to save that many more.

Is he a war criminal?

[Oakvale]

No (normal etc. etc.)

[World politics is up Schmitt creek]

No. While the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki were ghastly business all around and I'm skeptical of the common rationales and justifications for them, they weren't war crimes as such.

[Goldwater]

No (normal etc. etc.)

[TNF]

Leaving aside even the question of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, one can clearly find criminal activity in Truman giving the go-ahead to bomb dams during the Korean War.

[H. Ross Peron]

No (normal etc. etc.)

[IceSpear]

No (normal etc. etc.)

And the fact that "war criminal" is becoming a generic insult from True Leftists to apply to 95% of world leaders is starting to really make the title lose meaning.

[Tetro Kornbluth]

Probably. But not for the thing he is regularly accused of.

[SPC]

No (normal etc. etc.)

And the fact that "war criminal" is becoming a generic insult from True Leftists to apply to 95% of world leaders is starting to really make the title lose meaning.

It's meaning of "member of the losing side"?

[Atlas Has Shrugged]

No, though I think I would have gone through with an invasion of Japan instead of using the bombs, as it opened a pandoras box. Being the paranoid type of guy that I am, I'd rather not want to be in charge of an atomic standoff unless I knew the Cold War was going to end the way it did.

[they don't love you like i love you]

No. While the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki were ghastly business all around and I'm skeptical of the common rationales and justifications for them, they weren't war crimes as such.

[politicus]

Bombing dams in North Korea thereby killing upwards of 2 mio. civilians clearly makes Truman one of the better candidates for that title among US Presidents.

[TDAS04]

No

[dead0man]

Bombing dams in North Korea thereby killing upwards of 2 mio. civilians clearly makes Truman one of the better candidates for that title among US Presidents.

cite?  Only 1.5 million Nork civilians died in the entire war.  I've been all over wiki, nothing.  I've even googled expecting to find some....sketchy.....sites showing what you're saying.....but alas, no.  I did get this

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From here.  But even that biased place doesn't blame Truman for it.  I suppose the buck did stop there....

[politicus]

Bombing dams in North Korea thereby killing upwards of 2 mio. civilians clearly makes Truman one of the better candidates for that title among US Presidents.

cite?  Only 1.5 million Nork civilians died in the entire war.  I've been all over wiki, nothing.  I've even googled expecting to find some....sketchy.....sites showing what you're saying.....but alas, no.  I did get this

You must be logged in to read this quote.

From here.  But even that biased place doesn't blame Truman for it.  I suppose the buck did stop there....

Bruce Cumings: Korea's Place in the Sun (and other of his books). He is not unbiased, but I reckoned his facts regarding this were more or less accurate.

[dead0man]

Yeah, we may have over bombed the North, but everybody was still playing by WWII rules at that point.

[Consciously Unconscious]

He was a HP, but not a war criminal. 

[Rooney]

"Killing Japanese didn't bother me very much at that time... I suppose if I had lost the war, I would have been tried as a war criminal," is what General Curtis LeMay stated and he was right. Truman is a war criminal who killed a lot of innocent people in Japan and Korea.

[PiMp DaDdy FitzGerald]

By definition, the heads of great powers are not war criminals. Also, Japan and Korea were illegal combatants, so their armies didn't count.
Crimes against humanity were murkier, but were he tried any of the judges would also have their hands in the democide pie.

[Bacon King]

By definition, the heads of great powers are not war criminals.

lol u wot m8

[World politics is up Schmitt creek]

"Killing Japanese didn't bother me very much at that time... I suppose if I had lost the war, I would have been tried as a war criminal," is what General Curtis LeMay stated and he was right. Truman is a war criminal who killed a lot of innocent people in Japan and Korea.

I think there's a definite argument to be made that the incendiary bombings of Japanese cities in the months and years prior to the atomic bombings were both worse in raw terms and less excusable than the atomic bombings themselves (which, again, I don't think are really justifiable either).

[Oldiesfreak1854]

Definitely more so than Bush, Cheney, Nixon, Kissinger, Rice, or Rumsfeld.  But of course, they were all Republicans, so they get the label and Truman doesn't.

[🐒Gods of Prosperity🔱🐲💸]

If the Japanese had dropped an atomic bomb, wouldn't that have been a war crime?  I mean I guess one difference is that they lost the war and war crimes tribunals for victors don't happen.

[PiMp DaDdy FitzGerald]

If the Japanese had dropped an atomic bomb, wouldn't that have been a war crime?  I mean I guess one difference is that they lost the war and war crimes tribunals for victors don't happen.

Calley disagrees.

[World politics is up Schmitt creek]

If the Japanese had dropped an atomic bomb, wouldn't that have been a war crime?  I mean I guess one difference is that they lost the war and war crimes tribunals for victors don't happen.

Calley disagrees.

So the heads of great powers are 'by definition' not war criminals, but other people from great powers can be? How does that make any sense? It flies completely in the face of the principle of accountability. It's essentially 天高皇帝遠 as applied to international law, which is downright surreal.

I'm also wondering how a continent-spanning empire like World War II-era Japan can possibly be considered an 'illegal combatant'. Hideously immoral and guilty of a staggering variety of crimes, yes, but that's not the same as its status as a combatant being illegal.

I came into this thread not thinking of Truman as a war criminal, but the ineptitude and internal inconsistency of your trolling defense of him is tempting me to reconsider that.