He who controls the present controls the past;
and he who controls the past controls the future...

As with any kangaroo court, in this growing era of anti-Americanism, charges must be found commensurate with the forgone conviction which will ultimately be applied. So, inevitably, one recent theme has been that the US, during its "isolationist" stage, somehow started World War II, viciously attacking such nice, peace-loving nations as Imperial Japan and Nazi Germany.

Well, not quite, but that's the general gist of it. Japan still features not-so-rare pockets of deep historical denial:

At Yushukan Museum on the shrine grounds, visitors learn that the conquest of Nanking in 1937 meant that residents "were once again able to live their lives in peace" - an assault otherwise known as the "Rape of Nanking," in which Japanese troops killed some 150,000 people. Chinese estimates run to some 300,000 dead.

(Here are some rather grisly photographic remembrances of the "liberation" the good people of Nanking were enjoying at that time.)

And this idea is growing here in the US: not too long ago I had a conservation with a friend in which he roundly condemned the US's use of the atomic bomb to end World War II -- and such atrocities. That's a view I can understand, if your argument is that more lives could have been saved by not dropping the bomb (and if you at least have a ghost of some evidence to back it up), but -- as usual -- saving lives wasn't apparently part of my friend's analysis.

The Weekly Standard has a very interesting article on some new data which has come to light on this topic. There is the usual neglected evidence about the ongoing human toll risked by NOT dropping the bomb...

Several American historians led by Robert Newman have insisted vigorously that any assessment of the end of the Pacific war must include the horrifying consequences of each continued day of the war for the Asian populations trapped within Japan's conquests. Newman calculates that between a quarter million and 400,000 Asians, overwhelmingly noncombatants, were dying each month the war continued. Newman et al. challenge whether an assessment of Truman's decision can highlight only the deaths of noncombatant civilians in the aggressor nation while ignoring much larger death tolls among noncombatant civilians in the victim nations.

... and a good summary of the problems associated with one of the more respectable critical theories:

...it is clear that all three of the critics' central premises are wrong. The Japanese did not see their situation as catastrophically hopeless. They were not seeking to surrender, but pursuing a negotiated end to the war that preserved the old order in Japan, not just a figurehead emperor. Finally, thanks to radio intelligence, American leaders, far from knowing that peace was at hand, understood -- as one analytical piece in the "Magic" Far East Summary stated in July 1945, after a review of both the military and diplomatic intercepts -- that "until the Japanese leaders realize that an invasion can not be repelled, there is little likelihood that they will accept any peace terms satisfactory to the Allies." This cannot be improved upon as a succinct and accurate summary of the military and diplomatic realities of the summer of 1945.

The displacement of the so-called traditionalist view within important segments of American opinion took several decades to accomplish. It will take a similar span of time to displace the critical orthodoxy that arose in the 1960s and prevailed roughly through the 1980s, and replace it with a richer appreciation for the realities of 1945. But the clock is ticking.

Yes, dear professor, but there's a reason this displacement happened in the first place. It didn't happen because of the overwhelming evidence to the contrary. Like any bit of propaganda, it happened for political reasons. Also as with all propaganda, in the long run, the lie will be exposed.

But in the mean time, it will serve as a valuable tool, as all such propaganda has before, of those who need a bogeyman in order to accumulate unchecked political power.