Grumpy lefties and VENONA

[Jacob Segal]

>>>> Yoshie Furuhashi <furuhashi.1 at osu.edu> 12/07/99 02:51PM >>>
>John K. Tabor wrote:
>>Mike, I thought you made a good comment before that lefties should
>>not defend the indefensible. Based on the VENONA decrypts there isn't
>>a doubt in my mind that Julius Rosenberg illegally helped to pass
>>atomic secrets to the Soviets.
>
>Why should that be "indefensible"?  One might consider Julius Rosenberg's
>act a small service to humanity, for which he _and his wife_ were made out
>to be enemies of the people and murdered by the state.  While I believe
>Soviet scientists would have developed atomic bombs on their own anyhow,
>why should trying to help them to expedite the process be considered
>"indefensible" by _leftists_?
>
>I just showed _The Atomic Cafe_ to my students.  You can see, in this
>documentary, American politicians arguing for the first strike.  Without
>the speedy Soviet development of atomic bombs, the USA might have dropped
>them on more places than just Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
>
>


>
>CB

It is nonsense to think that the US would have started dropping nuclear
bombs here and there after WWII.  The atom bombing of Japan was a great
crime, of course, but there is no basis or reason to think the US would
have used nuclear weapons again if the Soviet has not developed the same
weapons.

The question of the Rosenbergs and Hiss is more a factual one than anything
else.  They committed the acts that they were accussed of. How serious
those "crimes" where is another matter.

Jacob Segal