Total War – Moon of Alabama

August 5, 2005

Total War

Some consider it in the same category as poison gas and were against its use on a civil population. Others were of the view that in total war, as carried on in Japan, there was no difference between civilians and soldiers and that the bomb itself was an effective for tending to end the bloodshed, warning Japan to surrender and thus to avoid total destruction. It seems logical to us that he who supports total war in principle cannot complain of a war against civilians. The crux of the matter is whether total war in its present form is justifiable, even when it serves a just purpose. Does it not have material and spiritual evil as its consequences which far exceed whatever the good that might result ? When will our moralists give us a clear answer to this question?
Eyewitness account of P. Siemes

Posted by b on August 5, 2005 at 16:01 UTC | Permalink

Comments

Today 6th August 2005 is yet another WW2 ‘anniversary’ day. There have been far too many seemingly meaningless anniversaries to nearly forgotten parts of WW2 yet many of us have remained silent about the attempted glorification of war so many of the ‘diggers’ have already died and it seems likely that the 60th anniversary will be the last multiple of ten anniversary that will have substantial numbers of veterans present. However foul many of us may consider war to be the people that fought in WW2 can’t be held individually responsible for a situation created mostly by the main chancers in the generation preceding them.
The 6th Of August 1945 is day that should be remembered long after any people from that time have shuffled off. On that day 60 years ago humans first engaged in the mass extermination of a population by nuclear fission. A thermo nuclear device was dropped from the Enola Gay and detonated over the civilian population of Hiroshima.
Without falling into the trap of debating who did what to whom and attributing ‘blame’ or assuaging guilt I’m sure that most MoA readers would agree that the world will be a better place if there are no more detonations of thermo nuclear devices on or about any citizenry anywhere. Which brings us to the next bit. How do people best act in order to discourage such devilish acts?
On the surface it seems a given that the less people who have access to these foul devices the better because that would mean there is less chance of one being set off wouldn’t it? I don’t know. The fact that both the Soviet Union and the USA had enough warheads to reduce the planet to an ashen wasteland may have actually prevented more detonations. So perhaps the spread of nuclear weaponry through the planet may have been beneficial for a time.
The ‘newer’ nuclear powers all appear to have been motivated by the desire to be part of the balance of terror in order to ‘protect’ themselves from perceived aggression by a regional competitor (India/Pakistan) or a superpower (North Korea). That being a given then there is no reason to suppose a nation such as Canada which is not known for either its regional ambitions or its conflict with an existing nuclear power would want to have its own nuclear arsenal. Except for one frequently ignored factor in all of this: National Pride.
Although most people tend to think of Iran’s alleged quest for the bomb to be because of either regional competition with Israel or BushCo’s asinine “Axis of Evil” classification, the reason that the majority of the Iranian population believe that Iran should have nuclear weaponry is much simpler. Someone from outside is telling them they can’t have nuclear weapons and even worse the bulk of the nations telling them they can’t ie Britain, US, France, Israel already have the cursed things themselves. Is that hypocrisy or what?
When Billmon posted the article (Bombs Away) about weird amendments to the energy bill I’m sure his primary area of concern was the blatant corruption of US politicians. I bet that isn’t how the average Canadian would read the story, complete with cracks about the McKenzie Brothers. How do you think that the knowledge that the US doesn’t trust its neighbour Canada with sufficient nuclear material to build 3 warheads when the US is sitting on in excess of 30,000 nuclear warheads sits with the average Canadian?
That situation is ripe for exploitation by some main chancing Canadian politician who wants to crank the population into nationalist fervour. Before we know it Canada will have a couple of nukes in the back pocket to take to stoushes where Canada feels it may be difficult to prevail.
Non nuclear nations will resent any attempt by nuclear powers to prevent proliferation until the existing nuclear powers have actually (rather than just promised to) substantially reduced their own arsenals. That means the state of the art weaponry and not just the obsolete must be publicly destroyed if people are going to have any chance at all of avoiding further Hiroshimas. The big boys must get rid of their toys first and all of humanity must avoid the tendency to ‘preach’ to others before they practise what they preach.
There’s a classic example in NZ at the moment. We are coming up for a general election and the nuclear issue had been largely forgotten by most. In fact there was a certain cynicism by the population since the ‘progressive’ government which introduced and enforced the ban on nuclear weapons in NZ privatised most of the state sector. The feeling is that people were hoodwinked in that they were led down the track of jingoistic nationalism about NZ’s nuclear free status in order to divert their attention from the sale of the ‘family silver’.
The the current government has been getting into strife in the polls and has concerns about its re election prospects. Suddenly the nuclear issue has appeared again. It seems that in a meeting between US politicians (members of some senate sub committee if I remember correctly) and the conservative opposition, it was suggested that overturning the almost unanimous support for NZ’s nuclear free position would require a concentrated, dedicated, and yes expensive public relations campaign. Could the US kick in a few million bucks? The witness who reported this meeting also reported that at the time the senators dismissed this as unwarranted interference in NZ internal politics.
Nevertheless less the opposition is in more pooh than a sewer duck and these revelations are likely to provide the impetus for a swing back to the government. The people are as cynical as ever about the real reason’s for the govt’s support of the nuclear free policy but that is not as important to them as the principle that a government should be making decisions about such things independent of foreign interference/ bullying.
In fact David Lange who some at MoA may remember as the NZ Prime Minister that introduced the nuclear free legislation and who then put himself about the place internationally debating the morality of nuclear weapons, had been held in a very low esteem by NZers. He resigned from Parliament and on the rare occasions he appeared in public he would talk about how he felt he had been made the scapegoat for NZ’s economic rationalisation. There had been no real ‘trickle down effect’ everything costs a lot more nowadays and the government has much less ability to regulate the country as so much of what happens is completely out of NZ hands.
My mother went to her death disappointed in the bloke she had become acquainted with when as a young man he was clerking at a legal office next door to her surgery. Right through our childhood she would regale us with stories of the character next door who had an amazing intelligence combined with a genuine compassion for others. She never spoke of him after he resigned as PM. Like so many of her generation she couldn’t accept that when a leftish party finally came to power they would destroy the ‘safety net’.
Not long after I returned to NZ I attended a funeral for an old friend who had done a lot of volunteer work in one of Lange’s offices. Lange arrived at the funeral with his partner and left once he had passed on his condolences to the widow. He didn’t speak to anyone and no-one spoke to him. One almost felt he would have felt more comfortable with a bell to ring while crying out “Leper” “Leper” before he entered a room.
Anyway David Lange is very ill. He body is shutting down and diabetes has led to gangrene on his lower extremities. His heart condition precluded an anaesthetic so he had to a have a leg amputated without a general anaesthetic on Wednesday. The surgeon claims that halfway through the procedure Lange called out “You sure you have the correct leg?” and when the surgeon paused just for a moment Lange chuckled.
Stories like that have had the cards and letters pouring in to him at hospital and will certainly greatly assist the current government in retaining power. To tell the truth I’m tempted to send a card myself. He once helped me far beyond the call of duty when a was an extremely irresponsible youth. I’m sure he shared few of my own beliefs and assisted because he always has believed that one human should help another without judgement.
So now David Lange has changed from feather duster back to rooster in the eyes of the NZ public and I must admit I prefer it since he mostly did try and do the right thing by the people of NZ, but he was essentially flim flammed by the economic rationalists and like all politicians he fell for the vain assumption that anything was better than losing power to the enemy. The other aspect which pleases me is that this rehabilitation has occurred while he is still alive so he won’t die thinking that New Zealanders consider him to have failed them.
After rereading this and feeling just as sickened by the reference to David Lange’s deathbed rehabilitation assisting the government as any reader would, I guess this is one of the major flaws in party politics in a nutshell. If it is impossible to ‘win’ an election without supping with the devil then ‘winning’ becomes oxymoronic. Probably equally troubling is the revelation that many of us prefer to hold politicians ‘responsible’ for pandering to our weaknesses rather than we like to actually confront that weakness.
While we harangue BushCo for their acts of aggression and cruelty we also need to look at why is was that voters re-elected these sociopaths and what individuals can do within a society to prevent their own complicity in their leaders’ crimes. Only then can we expect to have the leaders that we want rather than the leaders we deserve.

Posted by: Debs is dead | Aug 5 2005 22:27 utc | 1

The bombing of Hiroshima is disturbing for the same reason Auschwitz is: knowledge of it proves that there is no limit to how thoroughly modern political commitments to war can destroy the the mere ability of humanity to pass on a world to our own children. War, an economic activity – as the US economy has dedicated itself to proving – is eminently capable of destroying all our lives, civilian or military, friend or foe, and no matter the fairy tales of free market economists.
We will not survive our inventions unless we change our fairy tales. And the thought of beginning from the children populating our nursery rooms and the sociopaths populating our capitals and trying to undo our commitments to genocide – well, it is daunting. But the thought that someone who has never me has has already programed the coordinates to turn me and mine into shadows, that is uncanny. And the knowledge that I am a part of the nation that has already committed atomic murders – that is sickening.
The wave of End Timers in America who desire the end is not an unnatural outcome of the stripes we bear. But as we are discussing in the What is to be done thread (sorry folks, I’m late to the party), we can fight against the madness.

Posted by: citizen | Aug 5 2005 22:33 utc | 2

When this time of year rolls around, it is worth remembering that over one million civilians died from non-nuclear Allied bombing, including 100,000 in a single incendiary raid on Tokyo that began on March 9. The results were similar, but without the dramatic mushroom cloud, the bleeding sores, and the opportunity to observe people dying by degrees. The Japanese government of the day was hardly blameless, of course, but it is worth remembering that most of those incinerated in this way were women and children, who did not enjoy the right to vote for the military junta of their choice.

Posted by: Jassalasca Jape | Aug 5 2005 23:03 utc | 3

Good comments all. In a democracy, such ignorance as currently parades about America is intolerable. We must challenge, ridicule, insist, . . . whatever it takes, else we stay on this course of idiocy. Seen in context, what we did in WWII is understandable. In Vietnam, and now in Iraq we waged war against a people who didn’t attack us, a people with whom we had no quarrel. The answers lie within. It’s not only about democrats and republicans and who gets the most votes, it’s about turning Americans in to better citizens.

Posted by: ken melvin | Aug 6 2005 0:12 utc | 4

” I don’t think it was essentially wrong to call the work at Los Alamos scientific work. But it’s not trying in some objective way to search for the truth about how Nature works. We wanted to make something. What we wanted to make happened to be designed to kill as many people as possible. …But searching for the truth of the implications of the existence of the bomb, that’s a whole other matter. ”
Thomas B. Taylor, Physicist, quoted by author Robert Del Tredici, At Work In The Fields Of The Bomb.
” I didn’t go to Trinity. Kerst and I were busy trying out a new idea of ours, the chronotron. No, that wasn’t why I didn’t go. At Los Alamos they called it the Christy Bomb. The Christy Bomb ! I stayed home. Really, I hoped the goddam thing wouldn’t work. ”
Seth Neddermeyer, Physicist Los Alamos, New Mexico
” The most dangerous work was undertaken by the nuclear assembly experts of the GADGET division. So secret and sensitive were their experiments that most were carried out at night in a remote recess of Los Alamos Canyon. The place was called OMEGA because critical assembly was supposedly the last step in the bomb project. ”
Lamont Lansing, Author; Day Of Trinity
” Friday, July 13th. It had been Kisty’s droll idea to defy the superstition attached to that day by waiting until just after midnight Thursday to leave. Now, as the caravan with its lethal cargo rolled along…it glided through the sleepy farming town of Belen (Little Bethlehem) …At noon the convoy reached the TOWER …the scientists finished their final primping of the bomb. The work had been done amid an electrical storm so violent that they had debated bringing the GADGET down from the top. The steel TOWER was a giant lightning rod on the desert, and no one wanted to be around if a bolt struck it. ”
Lamont Lansing, Author; Day Of Trinity.
” ‘It was like being witness to THE SECOND COMING OF CHRIST!’ I heard myself say. It then came to me that both ‘Oppie’ and I, and likely many others in our group, had shared in a profound religious experience, having been witness to an event akin to SUPERNATURAL. ”
William Laurence, Author; Men And Atoms.
” The heavy cruiser Augusta…had been stocked and fueled…Harry Truman and James Byrnes would board it the next day for their trip to Potsdam and the conference code-named’ TERMINAL’…the finishing touches were being put on the three story stucco residence at #2 Kaiser Strasse in BABELSBERG, where the President would establish his ‘Little White House’. BABELSBERG was a Russian-occupied suburb of Berlin, lying in a woodsy area between the capital and Potsdam. ”
Lamont Lansing, Author; Day Of Trinity.
This incredible collage of words and images has been left to us by the men who built the bomb. And they said it meant nothing. Yet it obviously points to the unconscious fear that gripped the world at that time of war, the fear that Sigmund Freud was calling the ‘death wish’ of humanity. It was a time when men like Oppenheimer and Seaborg called themselves fathers and named their off-spring ‘Atom Bomb’ and ‘Plutonium’ respectively. Murder, death, and destruction occurred on a world-wide scale as ‘Christians’ from one country slaughtered ‘Christians’ from another and prayed to the Christ to help them.
~snip~
But the physicists who created the lethal forms of Uranium, the ‘isotopes’ known as U 235 and U 238 as well as Plutonium were men of muscular intellect who were ‘pumping’ their brains. They were ‘unstable’ and ‘atomically excited’ men living in a time called ‘wartime’. They were in a great hurry to fend-off a fear that engulfed the whole of the ‘civilized world’. They were our chosen ‘heroes’ and we gave them our collective burden to carry and asked that they find the solution. Adolph Hitler personified the collective fear of millions. He was spoken of as ‘mad’, ‘psychotic’, the very ‘devil’ and ‘Anti-Christ’. The totality of all this fear coupled with what their leader, the ‘father’ of the Atomic Bomb, referred to as the physicists’ “rather blasphemous sense of omnipotence” gave us Hiroshima, Nagasaki, artificial nuclear waste, and the entire, Corporate Nuclear Industry! In fighting Hitler these men SHAPED MATTER INTO A FORM NEVER BEFORE ENCOUNTERED BY MAN, a form of matter so unstable and atomically excited that any direct physical contact with it on the part of any living being produces rapid death. They summoned this matter with its attendant ‘half-life’ from the depths of our collective unconscious fear and christened it PLUTONIUM, -name of the ‘Lord Of Death’, embodiment of the ‘Lord Of The Underworld’, MATTER FROM HELL!
Francis Donald Grabau The Enchanted Bomb: A Journey Through The Critical Mass
” The conflagration that broke out in Germany was the outcome of psychic conditions that are universal. The real danger signal is not the fiery sign that hung over Germany, but the unleashing of Atomic Energy, which has given the human race the power to annihilate itself completely… the facts can no longer be hushed-up or painted in rosy colors.”
Civilization in Transition Carl Gustav Jung ( Princeton, 1964 )
” In theory, it lies within the power of reason to desist from experiments of such hellish scope as Nuclear Fission if only because of their dangerousness. But fear of the evil which one does not see in one’s own bosom but always in somebody else’s checks reason every time, although everyone knows that the use of this weapon means the certain end of our present human world. The fear of universal destruction may spare us the worst, yet the possibility of it will nevertheless hang over us like a dark cloud so long as no bridge is found across the world-wide psychic and political split -a bridge as certain as the existence of the Hydrogen Bomb. If only a World-Wide Consciousness Could Arise that all division and all fission are due to the splitting of opposites in the psyche, then we should know where to begin…people are largely unconscious of the fact that every individual is a cell in the structure of various international organisms and is therefore causally implicated in their conflicts.”
Carl Gustav Jung [1956] The Undiscovered Self in Civilization in Transition
” These are the Spells by which to reassume An empire over the disentangled doom:
To suffer woes which Hope thinks infinite; To forgive wrongs darker than death or night; To defy Power, which seems omnipotent; To love and bear; to hope till Hope creates From its own wreck the thing it contemplates; Neither to change, nor falter, nor repent; This…is to be Good, great and joyous, beautiful and free; This alone is Life, Joy, Empire, and Victory ! ”
Percy Bysshe Shelley, Author; Prometheus Unbound.
Excerpts from http://starpathvisions.com/EnchantedBook.htm

Posted by: crone | Aug 6 2005 0:38 utc | 5

At Los Alamos, when Oppenheimer observed the final product of his labors he is quoted as saying “I am become death, the shatterer of worlds.”
The exact quote from the Bhagavad-Gita:
If the radiance of a thousand suns
Were to burst at once into the sky
That would be like the splendor of the Mighty one…
I am become Death,
The shatterer of Worlds.
On a side note, scientists at Los Alamos had side bets on whether or not the detonation would blow the atmosphere right off the planet. They detonated anyway.

Posted by: SME in Seattle | Aug 6 2005 2:24 utc | 6

I find these numbers scary:
Gallup: Most Americans Still Back Atomic Bombings, But Gender Gap Appears

Released as the world marks the 60th anniversary of the bombing of Hiroshima, the poll found that 57% approve the bombing, and 38% disapprove, a margin just slightly smaller than a similar poll in 1995. Eighty percent overall say the bombing saved American lives.
There’s a huge gender gap, however, with 73% of males but only 42% of females backing the action. And among those under the age of 50, the approval rating falls to 53% compared to 63% for those over 50.

Posted by: Fran | Aug 6 2005 6:03 utc | 7

Fran,
That’s what they say about democracies, isn’t it. Slow to anger, but mighty trigger-happy when aroused.

Posted by: Jassalasca Jape | Aug 6 2005 7:06 utc | 8

When Billmon posted the article (Bombs Away) about weird amendments to the energy bill I’m sure his primary area of concern was the blatant corruption of US politicians. I bet that isn’t how the average Canadian would read the story, complete with cracks about the McKenzie Brothers. How do you think that the knowledge that the US doesn’t trust its neighbour Canada with sufficient nuclear material to build 3 warheads when the US is sitting on in excess of 30,000 nuclear warheads sits with the average Canadian?
I smiled when I read that, because as a Canadian it’s hard not to think “yeah, well at least we didn’t invade Iraq!”, even though I know Billmon wasn’t entirely serious.
On the main issue though I think it’s important to point out that the Allies already had the capacity to raze entire cities before they had atomic weapons -and they used it repeatedly against the population centers of both Germany and Japan. The only difference is that the old way required a thousand bombers dropping thousands of tons of bombs, many of them incendiaries to ignite a “firestorm” that could engulf an entire city. In Japan, where wood was the main construction material, this tactic was especially devastating. At a moral level the Allies did not do anything at Hiroshima or Nagasaki that they hadn’t done dozens of times before, they just did it much more efficiently.
As for controlling proliferation, that djinni is already out of the bottle. In truth this was probably inevitable, but there is no doubt it was hastened by a number of strategic miscalculations engendered by the hubris and arrogance of the current administration. In particular, the Bushites clearly intended to replace multilateral efforts at arms control like the Non Proliferation Treaty and Test Ban Treaty with the doctrine of pre-emption -i.e. the US would use the threat of invasion to deter countries from pursuing nuclear ambitions without America’s blessing. The problem is that the Iraq debacle has made it plain that this doctrine was based on what in retrospect were obviously ridiculously optimistic assumptions about American power. As a result, the US is left with no coherent strategy for controlling proliferation.
This situation is likely to continue because almost nobody in a position of responsibility in Washington is willing to confront the fact that America’s non proliferation efforts are based on a transparent conceit -that it’s ok for the US and certain chosen allies (like Israel and Pakistan) to have nukes, but not for other countries. This conceit robs the US of any moral authority and makes it impossible for it to built an international consensus against proliferation because, as much as the world might not think much of the idea of Iran’s mullahs having the bomb, they’ve also had more than their fill of the Bush administration’s bullying and hypocricy.

Posted by: Lexington | Aug 6 2005 7:41 utc | 9

Thanks, crone.
Martin Amis had something to say about this too, in Einstein’s Monsters. I recall he explained his great concern grew as a result of being a father.
For myself, I respond as a Canadian to Debs is Dead and his comment about the slight towards my country implied by Billmon’s distrust of allowing refined uranium to be purchased here.
Firstly, Debs, I think that Billmon was trying to point out, rhetorically, that corruption is rampant in government. I’d be a lot more concerned about the recent revelations regarding arms sales via Turkey revealed on Democracy Now!’s Sibel Edmonds story.
Again, Canada isn’t really offended by US arrogance and its nuclear capability — we’ve lived next door to it for decades, in fact my uncle was trained in top secret US radar schools when he served in the air force. Canada has since the second world war been a close partner in strategic North America, participating in the Manhattan Project by collecting heavy water.
We are more saddened than anything I think. As a commonwealth country we sent hundreds of thousands of soldiers to the world wars, yet we are not a warlike nation. Canada has been proud of its UN peacekeeping roles in Cyprus, Africa and eastern Europe.
I recently enjoyed a speech by the Canadian Ambassador to the United States, he was addressing the press.
In a tuxedo, he told jokes and explained that when he asked the appropriate ministry for guidance, they advised him not to speak at all. He clearly and thoroughly explained Canada’s diplomatic mission with the US, our main trading partner. He emphasized how difficult it is to fathom the US’s complete change since 9/11 towards physical defense and economic defense.
Canada’s current role is to explain, to introduce itself to Americans. As I remember, he said “they like us, but they don’t know us.”
I’ve always enjoyed visiting the US and its people, yet held a secret pride in not being American. To bring this back to focus, I have fought against the mindset that force can solve problems or prevent problems, especially since I understood the danger, the threat of nuclear arms. This has always been the bugbear, even if unused.
The coercion that has been used, economic and political, is equally as dangerous I believe. Yet all of us can look in horror at a single plane, a single bomb bringing such destruction. I recommend the movie Black Rain, which I saw years ago thinking it was a Hollywood mystery thriller of the same name.
This Japanese film portrayed the Hiroshima attack vividly, and then gave the tale of a family, a neighborhood in the years after the war. Japan has dealt with this event yet the West hasn’t really I think.
Is there a Hiroshima museum or monument here?

Posted by: jonku | Aug 6 2005 8:10 utc | 10

On the decision to bomb Hiroshima, see http://www.weeklystandard.com/Utilities/printer_preview.asp?idArticle=5894&R=C62A29C91.
Yes, I know it’s the Weekly Standard. Take a look anyway.

Posted by: JR | Aug 6 2005 14:28 utc | 11

On the decision to bomb Hiroshima, see
Link to weeklystandard.com/Utilities/printer_preview.asp?idArticle=5894&R=C62A29C91.
Yes, I know it’s the Weekly Standard. Take a look anyway.

Posted by: JR | Aug 6 2005 14:30 utc | 12

@JR
Unfortunately for the author of the linked piece, grieving doesn’t happen by numbers.

Posted by: Jassalasca Jape | Aug 6 2005 19:59 utc | 13

Liberals have strange romantic ideas that ignores the mindless random brutality of war and they even make the USA guilty for ending WWII prematurely. If Germans fought to the bitter end sending 14 and 15 year old boys to be slaughtered, the Japanese too would have willing sacrificed their young to kill foreign invaders.
Read Paul Fussell’s Doing Battle. Those who were sparred the invasion of Japan’s Main Islands are forever thankful.
Even today, liberals, army generals and neo-cons don’t grasp Sunni Arabs willingness to sacrifice to free their homeland of foreign invaders. There will never be a lack of Jihadist insurgents until either the Sunni are ethnically cleansed or the Sunni Arabs throw the Christian Crusaders out of their land.

Posted by: Jim S | Aug 6 2005 21:54 utc | 14

Jim S,
Liberals have strange romantic ideas that ignores the mindless random brutality of war and they even make the USA guilty for ending WWII prematurely.
I don’t know whether your post was meant to be a response to what I had written above, but if so, I’ll just point out that grieving and apportionment of blame are two very different things. Ask Koichiro Koizumi, the very much conservative Prime Minister of Japan (until tomorrow evening, at least) who, for better or for worse, has been trying to make that very point to the governments of China and South Korea throughout his term in office.
Apart from that, I’m afraid that I’m not sure exactly what it is that you are trying to say.

Posted by: Jassalasca Jape | Aug 6 2005 23:58 utc | 15

“We broke down and cried with relief and joy. We would live.”
Paul Fussell, at the time a 2nd Lt who had fought across Europe and been reassigned to the Japan invasion force, describing his reaction and that of his men to the news of the bombing of Hiroshima, in his essay “Thank God for the Atom Bomb.” 11 pages and every one worth reading.

Posted by: JR | Aug 7 2005 0:11 utc | 16

Fussell’s article is at
http://www.journeythroughjapan.org/images/indepth/ACF3022.pdf
Sorry I can’t seem to make the link work.

Posted by: JR | Aug 7 2005 0:14 utc | 17

JR, Jim S,
I’ve read the piece. What is the message.

Posted by: Jassalasca Jape | Aug 7 2005 0:43 utc | 18

Jassalasca, you wrote “The Japanese government of the day was hardly blameless…”
The issue is not one of blame. The bombs were not dropped as a form of punishment or retribution. They were dropped for a military purpose: to end the war quickly and without the massacres of beachhead invasions and house to house fighting. They ended the war. They saved lives — American lives and Japanese lives. In Fussell’s words, asking whether the bomb was necessary is fatuous. The point is that it was effective.

Posted by: JR | Aug 7 2005 0:59 utc | 19

JR, nowhere have I written anything, anywhere, that expresses a position on the efficacy of the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in hastening the end of the war. The statement that you quote pertains to the firebombings of 60 Japanese cities, that claimed far more lives than Hiroshima and Nagasaki combined.
Unless you have jumped to conclusions about what my views on the history of the Pacific War, I still don’t see the point that you are driving at. You have a problem with someone expressing regret about loss of life?

Posted by: Jassalasca Jape | Aug 7 2005 1:18 utc | 20

@JR
“The bombs were not dropped as a form of punishment or retribution. They were dropped for a military purpose: to end the war quickly and without the massacres of beachhead invasions and house to house fighting. They ended the war. They saved lives — American lives and Japanese lives. In Fussell’s words, asking whether the bomb was necessary is fatuous. The point is that it was effective.”
I agree with two of your points. The cities of Nagasaki and Hiroshima were not laid waste as a form of punishment or retribution for anything the Japanese government might have done. I also agree that the dropping of those bombs was effective towards its real, not ostensible, purpose.
The Pacific theatre war was just about wrapped up when Hiroshima and Nagasaki were bombed. The Japanese military was on its last legs having depleted its treasury and fighting population in continual hostilities against mainland Korea since the Meiji period and then in a grander scale war with the USA. The phenomenon of kamikaze or suicide raids does not occur within a conventional military context, nor is it “an Asian cultural thing”; it is an expression of a campaign of desperation when legitimate military exercises are no longer options.
The atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki did not save an appreciable number of American or Japanese lives. The argument that it did is simplistic, duplicitous, and erroneous. The point of showing off the new atomic toys was to deliver a message to the Kremlin. Period. And as effective as that action was, it was no less criminal.

Posted by: Monolycus | Aug 7 2005 1:22 utc | 21

Jassalasca
War is an abomination. The atomic bombs ended World War II. That reason alone is enough justification for their use at that time and place.

Posted by: Jim S | Aug 7 2005 1:32 utc | 22

Monolycus
You are repeating the neo-con’s argument that the invasion of a Iraq would be a cake-walk. Germans, Russians, Japanese, Vietnamese and Sunni Arabs are quite willing sacrifice their young to defend their homeland from foreign invaders even when apparently defeated.
The atomic bombs forced Japan’s total surrender and ended World War II.

Posted by: Jim S | Aug 7 2005 1:50 utc | 23

You can always count on the clarion voice of neoconservativism, The Weakly Standard, to find in the greatest event of evil, the thrilling extention of American power. Cool. And on the anniversary of the atomic catatrophe. How tasteful.
Is anyone here really willing to argue the mass murder of 1.5 million or so german and japanese civilians was ever justified to save soldiers?
If so, please enlighten us with the moral calculus used for such dispicable justification.

Posted by: slothrop | Aug 7 2005 1:58 utc | 24

hmmm…despicable/extension

Posted by: slothrop | Aug 7 2005 2:01 utc | 25

Jim S,
That reason alone is enough justification for their use at that time and place.
This is non sequitur. Again.
But since you insist on returning us here, it had actualy not escaped my notice that war is an abomination. On the other hand, it does seem to have escaped yours that the dropping of the atomic bombs was part of the war, not some separate act of heremetically sealed technological wizardry. You might as well sing the praises of any of the war’s other fields of slaughter; each contributed an essential element to the ultimate end of the conflict. There is no qualitative difference between one form of slaughter or wasted resources and another.
But the past is past. The more important question is whether you believe “there is enough justification” for the use of nuclear weapons in the future.

Posted by: Jassalasca Jape | Aug 7 2005 2:12 utc | 26

read through the thread, and my patience snapped there, you know. Imagine in thirty years when arab intellectuals reach a traditionalist consensus the atrocities of 911 were, mutatis mutandis, vindicated?
One can only imagine the disgust felt by germans and japanese reading American ex-poste celebrations of the murder of civilians. Sort of like a killer pondering the meaning of his crime without any threat of legal retribution.
Now, that’s power.

Posted by: slothrop | Aug 7 2005 2:13 utc | 27

j jape
yes. exactly. I was shocked really to read through Kevin Drum’s vanity project and the profuse commentary about the Weakly Standard article. So many smart americans have struggled to find rectidude in mass-murder, and are pleased when they discover old Japanese women were prepared to stab GIs w/ sharpened sticks. See? Toothless old hags, bam!

Posted by: slothrop | Aug 7 2005 2:28 utc | 28

the stale & peurile defence of the atomic bombs as an end to the pacific war is both fautous & stultifying in its stupidity. read anything about those who worked on the los alamos project & not one of them believed that – not even that certifiable psychopath edward teller
it was as jape mentions merely a means to an end – to tell the russians to go no further than berlin as if they really had any desire to extend themselves
it was done to yellow people by white people. the kind of moral ambivalences that were reflected upon the firebombing of german cities did not take place here – it was not even given a second thought
the firebombing of japanese cities were a murder of such dimensions & horror that today to even hustify it is as slothrop suggests – a form of pathology uniqe to killers who delight in their power
& there was no lesson learnt – the genocidal impulse has been given no rein & on the contrary imperial powers have gone on slaughtering left right & centre
the imperialists do not have a monopoly on murder but the means by which they exercise such acts are of a greater depravity & any legitimisation of that practice – is an act of vain & ruthless complicity

Posted by: remembereringgiap | Aug 7 2005 2:42 utc | 29

I saw teller speak years ago. To prove his point (well, point is not really the right word) the dangers of radioactivity are greatly exaggerated, he pulled a piece of what he claimed to be uranium something-or-other out of his green tweed jacket and popped it into his mouth. wow. better than a jim rose freakathon.

Posted by: slothrop | Aug 7 2005 3:06 utc | 30

Robert Lowell, “History”
History has to live with what was here,
clutching and close to fumbling all we had–
it is so dull and gruesome how we die,
unlike writing, life never finishes.
Abel was finished; death is not remote,
a flash-in-the-pan electrifies the skeptic,
his cows crowding like skulls against high-voltage wire,
his baby crying all night like a new machine.
As in our Bibles, white-faced, predatory,
the beautiful, mist-drunken hunter’s moon ascends–
a child could give it a face: two holes, two holes,
my eyes, my mouth, between them a skull’s no-nose–
O there’s a terrifying innocence in my face
drenched with the silver salvage of the mornfrost.

Posted by: slothrop | Aug 7 2005 3:15 utc | 31

rgiap,
The point of what I have written in this thread is only that the immense number of lives lost and otherwise ruined in the conflict is cause for regret. For me, August 6-9 is a time for grieving, nothing more. I do not believe that there is a ghost in the historical machine, and I am certainly not prepared to argue the toss over which country’s military establishment represented the more full-blooded version of imperialist ambition at this remove of time.
slothrop,
That’s extremely weird, I must say.
A close friend in uni was a chemistry major. He invited me along to his tutorial visit with his prof one day. “You’ve got to see this guy,” he said, “So you can see what will happen to me if I go into research”. His prof did indeed look a good fifteen years older than his actual age. All those chemicals around the lab. … … … I think what I’m supposed to say next is, “They sure don’t make ’em like that anymore.” But of course Kary Mullis is living proof that they still do …

Posted by: Jassalasca Jape | Aug 7 2005 3:32 utc | 32

For me, August 6-9 is a time for grieving, nothing more.
I don’t understand this at all. You mean the detachment of justification (gumless women w/ pointy sticks, show russians what we got, whatever) from application (BAM!) is wise? wha?
I’d feel better if you amended the sentence: “For me, August 6-9 is a time for grieving, and yet more proof the mass murder of innocents is never justified, nothing more…”

Posted by: slothrop | Aug 7 2005 3:49 utc | 33

Lots of people expressing lots of moral outrage. Slothrop, rememberinggiap, Monolycus. Once again I recommend Paul Fussell to you, who was there.
http://www.journeythroughjapan.org/images/indepth/ACF3022.pdf
Perhaps you will still feel the same sense of outrage after you read it. Let me know.

Posted by: JR | Aug 7 2005 4:23 utc | 34

I’ll try again.
August 6-9 is a time for grieving over a past tragedy that cannot be recovered. As a general matter, recriminations that reopen the wounds of this war long past, whatever their source, do not seem to me to be very helpful. The important lesson that those who died left for us is the horrifying knowledge of what a killing field is, and what nations are capable of. That lesson by itself is enough, if more could learn it.
It is one thing for a soldier to bless the atomic bomb for increasing his own personal life expectancy. It is something else entirely for someone to cynically leverage that man’s elation at the prospect of his own survival to argue in public that using nuclear weapons should therefore generally be considered “thinkable” in some bizarre utilitarian calculus. And that is where I think the force of argument must be brought into play most forcefully.
And JR, yes, I read the article, but as I have written until I have grown tired of repeating myself, it tells me nothing I didn’t already know. What I would be interested to know is what your own position on the aerial bombardment of civilians is, with or without the added attraction of a slow death from radiation poisoning, today?

Posted by: Jassalasca Jape | Aug 7 2005 4:53 utc | 35

@Jim S
“You are repeating the neo-con’s argument that the invasion of a Iraq would be a cake-walk. Germans, Russians, Japanese, Vietnamese and Sunni Arabs are quite willing sacrifice their young to defend their homeland from foreign invaders even when apparently defeated.”
Trying so very, very hard to be civil.
No. I am not repeating the neocon lie of Iraq. I am talking about an island nation that had been involved in over a hundred years of constant armed conflict with Russia, Korea and the United States in turns and had neither the population nor the resources nor the money to continue more than a show of resistance. They did not have the will nor the means to continue the war for more than a few short weeks before the atomic bombs were dropped on them… and the real targets of those bombs which killed so very many Japanese men, women and children were the imagination of Stalin and his supporters.
Comparing that to the situation in Iraq is apples and oranges… and I’ll go further and mention that you know it’s an incomparable situation. Heavy-handed implications that I am a neocon do not save your fallacious argument, but thanks for playing.
“The atomic bombs forced Japan’s total surrender and ended World War II.”
Sorry, Nope. And let’s take your argument a step further, shall we? If atomic weapons really did shut down the war, thus saving untold American and Japanese lives, then imagine how many lives could be “saved” if Kim Jong Il ended the ongoing Korean War by nuking Seoul? How many lives could be saved if either India or Pakistan decided to end their conflicts with one another finally? Hell, any time anyone has a problem, they could just shut it down with a quick tactical nuke and pin a medal on themselves for having “saved” everyone’s life. Or is it only heroic when the “good guys” are the ones dropping the bomb? If Hitler had possession of atomic weapons and used them on London or even Washington D.C., it would have “saved lives” and ended the war… but I’ve got a sneaking suspicion you wouldn’t be quite so supportive of that.
Of course it’s bullshit… in exactly the same fallacious way your comparing me to a neocon who thought Iraq would roll over and give US troops a flower-strewn parade inside a week of occupation. Don’t play semantic games with me. Killing people does not save lives and the kindergarten version of the history of the Pacific theatre of WWII might go over well in your local bar… but don’t expect that throwing a fallacy and an ad hominem attack out there is going to support your argument every time.

Posted by: Monolycus | Aug 7 2005 5:57 utc | 36

There’s an account somewhere of Truman at Potsdam. Things were getting pretty hard assed there for a while since Truman didn’t have Roosevelt’s rapport with Stalin and now it was going backwards and forward till the 3rd day when Truman suddenly became instransigent acted in the words of one observer like his dick had grown 6 inches. The word had come from New Mexico that the test had been successful.
He was meant to tell Stalin about the new bomb but was vague about the new weapon and Stalin didn’t appear impressed enough for Truman’s taste. There are many versions of this encounter but one can’t help wondering if Stalin had behaved suitably impressed whether hundreds of thousand of Japanese civilians would have died.
If the point of Hiroshima was to end the war with Japan and not win a dick swinging contest why did Nagasaki get bombed 3 days later after the japanese had already sued for peace?

Posted by: Debs is dead | Aug 7 2005 6:48 utc | 37

here is another version of why the US bombed Hiroshima and more closely follows comments above than does that of the weekly standard.

Posted by: dan of steele | Aug 7 2005 7:51 utc | 38

Monolycus,
The justification for the use of nuclear weapons to end World War II is a matter of belief and can no more be rationally discussed than religion. No matter how romantic you think about men and war, we all have shown a great willingness to splatter body parts of teenage boys across the countryside.
After a taste of the senseless brutality of a war that went on forever in Vietnam, the concept that Imperial Japan would have in one week in August 1945, unlike their Axis partners Germany, surrendered without an invasion beggars all belief to me. Japan had to experience the horrors of genocidal weapons before its leaders and people would surrender to an occupation by foreign invaders.
Lets be clear about Iraq, the only way to defeat the Sunni Arabs now is concentration camps and ethnic cleansing. If the USA is unable to do what is necessary to win the war, then withdraw. Otherwise, it will drag on forever killing and maiming thousands and thousands more men and women.

Posted by: Jim S | Aug 7 2005 21:07 utc | 39

Lets be clear about Iraq, the only way to defeat the Sunni Arabs now is concentration camps and ethnic cleansing.
This is insane. Go away.

Posted by: Jassalasca Jape | Aug 7 2005 22:23 utc | 40

again you show no such proofs & demand us to take faith in ‘belief’.
a belief constructed from ash. a belief borne within a murderous construct.
there is sufficient history to suggest as jape has most clearly indicated to suggest that after the horrific firebombing of japanese cities – there was every likelihood of surrender
& as i have also clearly outlined – & is in evident in any history of los alamos – that the vast majority of scientists did not believe it was necessary to shorten the war. they knew its other purpose – & why so many either directly or indirectly tried to make it a public knowledge. this new & terrible power
it was in the hands of fools then
it is in the hands of murderous imbeciles now
even if your suggestion re iraq is of the deepest irony – it is offensive & an offense you know you are deliberately conscious of
people like you would like a final solution to the arab problem
the genocidal impulse in white men – is so richly textured in their mythology & culture form st john of the apocalypse to tom cruise. their sub nietzsdhean delight in their own power as slothrop correctly indicates is not a question of history but one of pathology
& pathology so malignant – you sense no shame in articulating something(even in irony) that is about the current decimation of a people
blood/books/bustickets/bone/dolls/skin/photographs/teeth/intestines
the endless list of loss
& what is this malignant power, this malignant culture that can speak so easily of the death of others, to not even think or reflect about the deaths of others tht they are the direct beneficiaries & then expect the world to weep tears when one of the contingent realities fights back
what kind of culture is this – this culture of anhilation of the other – that creates within its own people – a fear so profoundly sick that they believe almost anything, they believe any lie, they are not upset at the most venal form of corruption of their legislative & legal system
you will say that your is a culture o men laws & rights
i see no men, i see no law & i certainly do not see any rights
i see corrupt contracts
i witness a faustian bargain between a populace & its leadership
i see a blindness that is conciouslly willed
i see a stupidity that is cultivated as if it was a jewel
& your sense of history seems to be as flawed as your morality

Posted by: remembereringgiap | Aug 7 2005 22:26 utc | 41

Hmm. R’giap suggests you were being ironic. There is a small possibility that I have misread what you have written. Satire sometimes works (A Modest Proposal). Sometimes it inadvertently feeds the fires at which it is directed (The Shortest Way with Dissenters). If you meant to suggest genocide in jest, I’m afraid that there are plenty of Americans today who are more than willing to take you seriously. They are idiots, of course, but that does not make them any less dangerous, and it is best not to encourage them. If, on the other hand, you meant to suggest genocide as a serious policy alternative (which sadly does appear to be the case, judging from the tag-line “If the USA is unable to do what is necessary”), then I have wasted enough words on you already.

Posted by: Jassalasca Jape | Aug 7 2005 22:54 utc | 42

The Japanese may not have surrendered immediately without the slaughter in Hiroshima, none of us can tell from this distance. However they would have surrendered and probably sooner rather than later, but more likely conditionally rather than unconditionally.
Why did the West want unconditional surrender from Japan? Two major conflicts within two generations provided some logic to the demand that Germany surrender unconditionally, but why Japan?
Because the Japanese bombed the occupying military forces on a US colony (Hawaii)?
Unlikely; the Pearl Harbour attack was a pretty standard methodology for competing Imperialist nations. France and Britain had been doing much the same particularly in North Africa for centuries and post ‘jostle’ neither had sought unconditional surrender from the other.
To demonstrate that ‘Whitefellas Rule OK!’? This suggestion has some merit but was rather impractical since the Asian colonies had witnessed Anglo Europeans getting their asses kicked by other Asians close up and that would leave a much firmer impression on them than the rather more abstract ‘unconditional surrender’ particularly considering the state of communications infrastructure in the former colonies.
To deliver justice to Japanese war criminals? The number of well documented ‘exceptions’ to this after unconditional surrender, particular where the victims were Chinese or Korean inform that if this was the reason it failed.
To keep those sticky beaked Russkie Commies out of the Pacific? Russia and Japan had been jostling since the year dot. Both wanted to get in on the Imperialist act that the Western European countries had been seemingly so successful at. Russia had no hope of expanding any further into Europe without major conflict with technologically superior rivals so eastwards was their only real choice. South into India would be problematic (hell getting through Afghanistan was more trouble than it was worth) and for the Russians, bluing with China had all the logic of poking a giant sleeping dog with a stick. It didn’t take Japan long to get bogged down in China so they were also looking East and South.
Trouble was the US wasn’t going to let Japan come to the party that they had planned.
The US was bent on confronting Japan throughout the Pacific and trying to reduce it to a vassal or nonentity with trade sanctions and blockades.
Unconditional surrender gave the US the ability to make Japan a vassal and keep the Russians out.
An economically driven inter colonial conflict could be sold as preserving ‘democracy and freedom’ and saving the Asians from the enslavement and degredation of communism.
Its all standard stuff that expansionist nations have been doing for ever.
Wiping out hundreds of thousands of lives had, prior to Hiroshima been an action that required the expenditure of lots of human and technological resources on the part of the murderer, but even worse as Dresden shows it also requires deliberate provable planning to maximise the civilian death toll.
Not a good look if today’s hero can become tommorrow’s war criminal.
Remember prior to WW2 a consensus had evolved that any bombing of civilian population was unjust and possibly criminal. After the German blitzkreig on Europe and the Battle of Britain, initial horror became a thirst for vengeance. Where have we heard that since? I know! Begins with a world trade centre and ends with an Iraq.
Dropping an A bomb is initially expensive but the resulting murder and mayhem can be written off as ‘accidental collateral damage’ resulting from a determined ‘peacemaking’ effort. After all no one had ever done this before “how were we to know that people would be reduced to smears of fat on the sidewalk”?
There would have been as many motives for this horror as people involved in its planning and implementation.
Underpinning it all would have been the knowledge that by taking Japan quickly there would be no need to cut old ally Russia in on any of the action.
For those raised on the purity of the motivation of the West during WW2 accepting this premise will be difficult but essentially this isn’t about those people.
We mourn for all the dead slaughtered in the name of whatever the current soundbite is, anywhere. This isn’t about the US being evil.
It’s really about the foul motives of people in power anywhere where there is insufficient restraint on their cupidity, hubris and mendacity.

Posted by: Debs is dead | Aug 7 2005 23:17 utc | 43

Speaking of …the Faustian Bargain of Western Modernity
“Salvation is by way of the truth, not by way of the fatherland” [or in this case “Homeland”— Chaadaev
Thank-you, r-giap.

Posted by: Uncle $cam | Aug 7 2005 23:21 utc | 44

unfortunately jape – i do not really think there was irony there – even of the perverse & sadistic kind
there are people who believe all our problems will be over with a final solution to this or that problem
they love absolutes & in their absolutes they find their crazed form of sanctification
& the culture that clebrates those absolutes is a form for them of the sacremental
there is no wonder in them
there is no awakening from the terrible sleep truman sent us into
there are people that would celebrate the wiping off the map entirely of people – thus their nighmarish hallucinations of bombs that can kill people without damaging infrastructures
crime after crime is committed & it is the greatness of the oppressed of asia africa & latin america have in their sense pardoned the evil that has been done to them. they have not forgotten. nelson mandela is not the kind of human being to forget that cheney & his evil kind wanted him to die in prison as a ‘terrorist’ – but is is not realpolitic but greatness in the man that has pardonned them for what they permitted, for what they benefited
it is the greatness of the vietnames people that after 3,000,000 of them were needlessly slaughtered for the diabolic foreign policies of the united states – that it was they who offered pardon – but not again out of any realpolitic – but out of a moral greatness borne in suffering
when a man loses his instinct he hoes mad. when a society loses its instinct it condemns it people to a useless suffering & fear
the culture of forgetting has become a virtue & any dull history can shit ink over those who shed blood but the reality has a way of emerging & reemerging

Posted by: remembereringgiap | Aug 7 2005 23:41 utc | 45

Not only was Japanese surrender imminent, but the United States, which had broken the Japanese military code, was aware of the fact.
Even were it not the case, and even were the United States somehow unaware that Japan industrial infrastructure was incapable of sustaining the war, the argument that the bombing saved X number of American lives is hyprocritical chauvinism, considering that the Germans and Japanese were subsequently punished for *their* crimes against humanity.
Bin Laden could as justifiably argue that the killing of innocent civilians in the twin towers was necessary to in the long-run save muslim lives.
Moreover, the War was itself illegitimate, a war of rival imperialisms which neither side had any business fighting, and which neither side deserved to win. We’ll notice that Britain didn’t voluntarily dissolve its empire post-war, and that the French immediately returned to Indochina, for examples.
In other words, even leaving aside the hypocrisy and chicanery, any atrocities carried out in service of winning the war were atrocities carried out in the service of winning an illegitimate war — and so all the more despicable.

Posted by: Eddie | Aug 8 2005 2:29 utc | 46

Now all you have to do is convince the warrrrrior-yankees and other imperialists-by-default that this is true Eddie. A long and tedious task but I’m with you all the way.

Posted by: rapt | Aug 8 2005 2:39 utc | 47

a reprint of david dellinger’s “declaration of war”

Posted by: b real | Aug 8 2005 3:17 utc | 48

My mother in law once insisted to me that the dropping of the 2 atomic bombs saved the lives of warring soldiers on both sides. At the time, I did not know that japan had already decided to surrender and was internally arguing on which terms.
But I knew enough to retort that dropping the bombs on unarmed civilian women and children was the most cowardly way possible to save the lives of soldiers who at least had the means and training to defend themselves.
Utter cowardice, dishonor, and shame of the U.S military to bomb children and their mothers in order for soldiers to avoid combat for which they were trained, I said. For once she was speechless.

Posted by: gylangirl | Aug 8 2005 3:42 utc | 49

well said, g-girl!

Posted by: lenin’s ghost | Aug 8 2005 4:44 utc | 50

Why did the West want unconditional surrender from Japan?
It was not the “West” that demanded unconditional surrender, it was the United States, and to understand why you have to go back to the very first modern war — the American Civil War — in which Northern generals (in particular Grant and Sherman) developed the American Way of War, namely, destroy the civilian population and cities of the enemy and you destroy the enemy’s armies. Unconditional Surrender was the outgrowth of this idea of Total War. There is a direct line from Sherman’s march through Georgia and South Carolina and its destruction of the civilian infrastructure (after the burning of Atlanta, Sherman’s troops hardly ever faced a large Confederate armed force again) to the terror bombings of Germany and Japan, culminating in the greatest terror bombing of them all, the obliteration of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, which, when you come right down to it, the United States did just because it could.

Posted by: Basharov | Aug 8 2005 5:04 utc | 51

And while we’re on the topic of “Total War” some of us have not forgotten the “other war” of that time…
Sifting Dresden’s Ashes
Tami Davis Biddle
wilson quarterly
Dresden continues to be a source of discomfort for Britons and Americans. But though the horrific firestorm that consumed the city and the tragic deaths that resulted are what claim a hold on the Western mind, they are not what distinguishes this episode from many others in the war. The most troubling aspect of the Dresden raid has not been emphasized often enough by historians: The raid—like others waged along with it—was envisioned in part as a way to cause disruptions behind German lines by exploiting the presence of refugees. Yet many of those responsible did not allow themselves to recognize what they were doing. In their compulsion to explain, to shape interpretations, or simply to distance themselves from the story and its implications, Allied military and political leaders displayed a collective conscience that was not unburdened by Dresden’s fate. Only by appreciating the fears, dashed hopes, and weariness of Allied leaders in the winter of 1945 can we fully understand how they came to embrace plans that, in essence, made refugees pawns in a fearsome drive to end the Wehrmacht’s ability to wage war. But the very existence of those plans ought to give pause to us all, and stir wider and more thoughtful debate about human behavior in wartime. Dresden is a stark reminder of how hard it is to control the human capacity for destruction, once the forces of war have set it loose. …

Posted by: Uncle $cam | Aug 8 2005 5:55 utc | 52

basharov traces total war back to sherman in the south – but if one reads the bible, one sees not just unconditional surrender, but slaughter of the inhabitants, as the way g*d commanded the israelites to take the land of canaan
it may seem inhumane – gosh, it IS inhumane – but there is a reason that the principles of creation, preservation, and destruction are personified in the hindu trinity – and i’ve read that after the first successful atomic explosion oppenheimer quoted krishna’s words from the gita, “Now I am become Death, Destroyer of Worlds” –
who knows if it’s good or bad?

Posted by: mistah charley | Aug 8 2005 12:51 utc | 53

It would seem that total war could also be traced back to the Greeks and the Trojans, if not further, albeit on a smaller, less devastating scale in terms of the fate of the earth…and, of course, each war and the wave of technology it has spawned has made the earth smaller and more vulnerable, no matter that it is ostensibly the reason for wars…whether the “issue” is real estate or resources or revenge.
But taking women as concubines and men as slaves and throwing children from towers and dragging warriors around a city by a rope after they’re dead isn’t exactly Roberts Rules of Order.
The issue is scale.
I heard a guy, a Native American who was at a bio conference whose name I cannot recall, and his view, from outside of the western paradigm, is that the “western world” has no concept of a future, and, for that reason, it is creating a world without a future. He mentioned that Native American prophecies have long told the story that scientists now tell about the fate of the earth in the hands of people who cannot imagine life beyond their own generation, their own wants, their own hubris.
Sadly, I think he’s right. But in the Native American prophecies, there is always the injunction to change, to undo the past and create a future, since they all exist at the same time anyway beyond the short-sightedness of our view of life.

Posted by: fauxreal | Aug 8 2005 15:24 utc | 54

Progressives have as many delusions as the neo-cons. Except, liberals tend toward the goodness of man and political correctness while the 101st Keyboarders tend towards malice and avarice.
The Romans showed how to win a war. Sow the enemy’s land with salt.
An empty land with 100’s of millions of dead Native Americans. A sign of God’s blessing on European settlers or an isolated population exposed to terrible new fatal diseases?
American Civil War and World War II were modern total wars that ended with no armed insurgencies in the occupied lands. Korea, Vietnam and the Middle-East are limited wars where the USA is unwilling to spend the lives and money to win. The wars drag on forever, until a cease fire and the US troops are finally withdrawn. Thousands of die for no good reason.
What is a true obscenity is the White House and Corporate Media stating War is a Last Resort when they meant the exact opposite. Neo-Conservatives and Liberals are both damned. The Neo-Cons for starting the war and Liberals for not ending it . Both are doubly damned for being unwilling to pay the price of victory but are quite willing to see thousands die for nothing.

Posted by: Jim S | Aug 8 2005 15:45 utc | 55

that ended with no armed insurgencies
Just read that the insurgency in those parts of Germany that became Poland lasted into 1947. (Penguins atlas of world history would be my source.)
Jim, they do not die for nothing, they die for profits and power. I am not sure what you would consider to be something.

Posted by: A swedish kind of death | Aug 8 2005 16:02 utc | 56

An empty land with 100’s of millions of dead Native Americans.
as rememberinggiap said, “your sense of history seems to be as flawed as your morality”

Posted by: b real | Aug 8 2005 16:08 utc | 57

A Cultivated World
Lacking immunity, the Indians died by the millions, reducing their numbers to a tenth of their previous population by 1800, in the greatest demographic catastrophe in global history. Seeing a wilderness, the colonizers misunderstood it as primeval evidence that the surviving Indians were lazy savages who did not deserve to keep so much promising land.

Posted by: Jim S | Aug 8 2005 16:26 utc | 58

American Civil War ended with no armed insurgencies?
1865- surrender at Appomattox
1865- Lincoln assassinated by confederate John Wilkes Booth
1865- Johnson’s surrender…the end of the civil war.
1865- black codes in the south deny blacks equal rights.
1865-the formation of the KKK.
1866- 14th amendment- equal rights for blacks.
1866- race riots in New Orleans and Memphis
1868- Georgia expels black from legislature, military rule installed.
1870- Force Acts (KKK acts) to compel black suffrage and to authorize the use of troops against the KKK (declared unconstitutional).
1873 The White League, a paramilitary group (insurgents) in the south clashed with the LA state militia (which was mostly black). only 3 of the white league died. more than a hundred black men were killed…nearly half murdered in cold blood after they’d surrendered.
–causing Grant to call in federal troops to restore order.
1877- Compromise of 1877 is the end of military intervention in the south, with the fall of the last radical govts.
1880 to 1940 lynch law…mobs of whites hanged, shot, burned at the stake and castrated blacks who expected to be treated like equal citizens. (Prior to 1882 reliable statistics of lynchings were not recorded.)
however, prior to reconstruction, both blacks and white were lynched. exclusively lynching blacks was a byproduct of the attempt to bring the south into the union, still. (The south accounted for nine tenths of the lynchings.)
…so tell me again how the Civil War stopped an insurgency?
maybe you’re right and the North should have forbidden any southerner to hold office, should have occupied their part of the country and installed people who would execute anyone guilty of a racial crime, and redistributed the ill-gotten gains of the southern plantation owners and cotten exporters and given that money to the people who did the work.
maybe anyone who fought for the confederacy should have been prevented from ever holding public office and, in fact, should have faced deportation or should have been shot in front of mass graves.
that would have salted the earth, wouldn’t it? but would it have changed the race hatred in the region? I doubt it.

Posted by: fauxreal | Aug 8 2005 16:32 utc | 59

“At the time, I did not know that japan had already decided to surrender and was internally arguing on which terms.”
You didn’t know it because it’s not true.
“But I knew enough to retort that dropping the bombs on unarmed civilian women and children was the most cowardly way possible to save the lives of soldiers who at least had the means and training to defend themselves.”
Soldiers don’t go to their deaths so that you can grade them on how brave they were. The bombs saved lives- American lives, Japanese lives– and and also the lives of hundreds of thousands in occupied countries, particularly China. And it put an end to an evil fascist regime that had mercilessly slaughtered millions of innocents throughout Asia.
“For once she was speechless.”
Yes, she was struck dumb by how self-righteously obtuse her own daughter had become. Was she old enough to have lived through the war? Did you ask her about it? And if she’s younger than that, did you ever talk to your grandparents?
Or is it more important for you to feel proud of yourself than to understand what the war was like for the people who were there?
But arguing with folks on this thread is like talking to flat-earthers. Facts don’t matter at all.

Posted by: JR | Aug 8 2005 16:40 utc | 60

Yes, I am amoral. There is no morality in war. It is dirt, blood, shit, and spattered body parts. It is pain, fear and hatred. If a nation fights a war, win it. Otherwise, end it now.
Yes, there was a White insurrection in the South against Blacks and carpet baggers but not against Union Troops or the Federal Government. The compromise of 1877 ended the Southern occupation and Southern Whites were accepted back into the ruling elite. There was no insurrection after WWII in US, British or French Zones of Occupation. There has been no official German movement to regain lost lands when the Soviet Union lifted up Poland and moved it 100 miles to the West. A good indication of the German acceptance of defeat and occupation unlike the Sunni Arabs who are still fighting a foreign invader.

Posted by: Jim S | Aug 8 2005 17:22 utc | 61

Jim S- the land was neither “empty” when the invaders came nor did “100’s of millions” die from the columbian exchange. this is OT for this thread, but, if interested, skim here and here

Posted by: b real | Aug 8 2005 17:42 utc | 62

JimS- tell me whose side Chalabi is on, please. He’s on friendly terms with Sadr, with the Shi’ite Clerics who want to establish sharia as part of the new and improved (thoecratic) dictatorship of Iraq, his closest aide was accused of giving information to the Iranian govt, he’s not opposed to ties between Iran and Iraq via the shared Shi’a beliefs…
and he was the one BushCo backed, the one BushCo staged the famous toppling of the Saddam statue for…it kind of makes you wonder if BushCo wasn’t the dumb muscle Iran used to get rid of Saddam and his secular govt.
As far as liberals in Congress…frankly, there aren’t many of them who seem to think they can honestly talk about what works to fight terror…terror is not a land you can conquer.
You cannot fight against terror like you fight a conventional war. You have to fight terror like you fight the mafia or like Europeans fought the Red Brigades…. by infiltrating their groups, getting information, disrupting their plots, and, finally, by turning to our own problems as a nation that need to be addressed….as in, the oil industry mafia that’s running our govt to ruin and sending our children off to die.
General Smedley Butler knew all about that truth…wars are fought for the elites. So let them go fight them and die in them. Let their children know the sacrifice, and then we might be surprised at how few of those republicans can be so cavalier about killing.

Posted by: fauxreal | Aug 8 2005 18:10 utc | 63

I’m just going to toss in another two cents and then I’m out of this one. JR says that “…arguing with folks on this thread is like talking to flat-earthers. Facts don’t matter at all.” I would like to caution him or her that one often runs into that kind of frustration when one tries to make the facts fit their opinion instead of the other way around. It does help to make one feel that they are absolutely right, but it often gets in the way of convincing anyone else of that “rightness”. Perhaps JR would feel less frustrated if he or she were discussing his or her beliefs instead of arguing them.
Jim S seems to feel that because I oppose the complete annihilation of a peoples and a lifeways that I support prolonged partial destruction. This is absolutely not true, but I think I understand where he has gotten that notion. Being against “Total War” and supporting “limited war” is not a tenable position, and it isn’t mine.
There is a message from Cloned Poster in the most recent open thread regarding US hypocrisy involving the Iraq War. It’s true that before things started going sour, the overwhelming majority of Americans supported that war (at no time was I one of them). Now that Americans have taken some losses and the human and economic costs of the occupation are becoming manifest, there are larger numbers of people who oppose the war. I think the author of the piece called it “doing the right thing for the wrong reasons”. I am actually a bit sickened by the people who think a war is just and right so long as they are winning it.
I was in the street protesting the invasion of Iraq while it was still a proposed invasion and, I can tell you firsthand, there weren’t very many of us. I was also very vocally opposed to our invasion of Afghanistan… and during another administration, I took to the streets to protest the US bombing of Yugoslavia and Sudan. I protested Bush the Elder’s Gulf War I and also didn’t get much support. To suggest that I am pro-war but anti-“Total War” is a charge to which I take gross offense.
I have not, in my lifetime, ever seen a situation that mandated the killing of soldiers and civilians by large scale military action (and that includes 9/11). The suppression of brutality such as we have seen in Rwanda or Haiti could have been accomplished by efficient policing actions if the time, money and energy could have been spent on them. But we do not live in the kind of world that is interested in fixing problems. We go to “war” not to resolve our problems with one another but to justify engaging in… even to the point of wallowing in… our barbarism.
If you could show me a situation in which we were fighting defensively and justly, I would reluctantly accept that war. But I have never seen that situation. I certainly would not make “heroes” out of that hypothetical war’s participants any more than I would deify anyone who did their job as was expected of them. Jim S has accused liberals of having romantic notions about war; I can assure him or her that war holds no enchantment for this particular “liberal”. But if you want to account for that romanticism, look no further than that perverse culture of hero-worship which affects liberals and conservatives alike.

Posted by: Monolycus | Aug 8 2005 19:41 utc | 64

JR,
You haven’t answered my question.

Posted by: Jassalasca Jape | Aug 8 2005 20:13 utc | 65

(via latest issue of secrecy news) the national security archive’s The Atomic Bomb and the End of World War II: A Collection of Primary Sources

The controversy has revolved around the following, among other, questions:
#Were atomic strikes necessary primarily to avert an invasion of Japan in November 1945?
#Did Truman authorize the use of atomic bombs for diplomatic-political reasons– to intimidate the Soviets–or was his major goal to force Japan to surrender and bring the war to an early end?
#If ending the war quickly was the most important motivation of Truman and his advisers to what extent did they see an “atomic diplomacy” capability as a “bonus”?
#To what extent did subsequent justification for the atomic bomb exaggerate or misuse wartime estimates for U.S. casualties stemming from an invasion of Japan?
#Were there alternatives to the use of the weapons? If there were, what were they and how plausible are they in retrospect? Why were alternatives not pursued?
#How did the U.S. government plan to use the bombs? What concepts did war planners use to select targets? To what extent were senior officials interested in looking at alternatives to urban targets? How familiar was President Truman with the concepts that led target planners to choose major cities as targets?
#Did President Truman make a decision, in a robust sense, to use the bomb or did he inherit a decision that had already been made?
#Were the Japanese ready to surrender before the bombs were dropped? To what extent had Emperor Hirohito prolonged the war unnecessarily by not seizing opportunities for surrender?
#If the United States had been more flexible about the demand for “unconditional surrender” by guaranteeing a constitutional monarchy would Japan have surrendered earlier than it did?
#How greatly did the atomic bombings affect the Japanese decision to surrender?
#Was the bombing of Nagasaki unnecessary? To the extent that the atomic bombing was critically important to the Japanese decision to surrender would it have been enough to destroy one city?
#Would the Soviet declaration of war have been enough to compel Tokyo to admit defeat?
#Was the dropping of the atomic bombs morally justifiable?
This briefing book will not attempt to answer these questions or use primary sources to stake out positions on any of them. Nor will it attempt to substitute for the extraordinarily rich literature on the atomic bombs and the end of World War II. This collection does not attempt to document the origins and development of the Manhattan Project. Nor does it include any of the miscellaneous sources (interviews, documents prepared after the events, post-World War II correspondence, etc.) that participants in the debate have brought to bear in framing their arguments. Instead, by gaining access to a broad range of U.S. and Japanese documents from the spring and summer of 1945, interested readers can see for themselves the crucial source material that scholars have used to shape narrative accounts of the historical developments and to frame their arguments about the questions that have provoked controversy over the years. To help readers who are less familiar with the debates, commentary on some of the documents will point out, although far from comprehensively, some of the ways in which they have been interpreted. With direct access to the documents, readers may be able to develop their own answers to the questions raised above. The documents may even provoke new questions.

Posted by: b real | Aug 8 2005 20:13 utc | 66

Judging by the bile in JR’s response, I guess I struck a nerve: Coward = soldier whenever he kills kids to save his own skin

Posted by: gylangirl | Aug 9 2005 0:08 utc | 67

gylangirl
in this case jr”s empiricism is of such crudity that i think you are wasting your time
ô the white man’s burden to save us from the intricate ways of the savages
ô mr kurtz – you are still there – these heroworshippers of the flawed individual who would pretend to be their own gods
the way they talk of people is such an abstraction – their ‘concern’ for people, history & morality is the same – flawed

Posted by: remembereringgiap | Aug 9 2005 0:53 utc | 68

so much evil
so little time
such big bombs
such small people

Posted by: remembereringgiap | Aug 9 2005 0:55 utc | 69

I see JR and JimS’s comments coming directly out of the post which incorrectly (IMO) attributed the WW2 slaughter by bombs as an extension of the ‘total war’ of the US civil war and attributable solely to the US. Apart from the simple fact that Germany was also bombing civilians unneccessarily and using anti-personnel (a piece of jargon to describe machines designed exclusively for their ability and priority to damage humans) devices like incendiaries I have always considered the US to be a natural extension of European hegemony, not seperate from it.
But none of that matters because even if one could seperate one country out from the mess that we’ve got ourselves in and use itas a scapegoat and whipping boy, people who did so would be committing exactly the same error as those who believe it possible to take anothers territory without a filthy, drag em out, shit-kicking fight.
Our basic loyalty to the people around us and who most closely share our culture is innate. We need it that way otherwise we would never have developed clans much less nations. When their ‘turf’ is attacked most people do not give a reasoned response. Yes that can be a flaw as well as a virtue but that doesn’t make it any less real. And turf can be as abstract as ideals or as concrete as your home and family. If people want to single out the US and say that it is just ‘evil’ well it’s a free world (LOL) but don’t be surprised when other people who at other times may be quite reasonable/reasoned let rip a stream of noxious bile. Those people aren’t being inhumane, quite the reverse they are revealing one of the essential drives of human nature. Furthermore it is impossible to change their minds with anything as puny as facts or logic. ‘Reasoning’ with someone who feels they have been attacked in this way is truly backing yourself into an unwinnable fight.
I dunno how ‘knock around’ MoA readers are but at least some will have witnessed or been on one side or another of one of those truly noxious fights males can have between each other. Whatever the reason for the fight it was pretty unimportant by anyone’s standard and one bloke knocks the other over but instead of carefully backing away makes the mistake of wanting the bloke on the ground to concede defeat. A situation has just evolved where this fight isn’t going to end until one or other is badly hurt hopefully just to the point of unconscious but since unconsciousness requires major brain injury there is no way there isn’t gonna be some big time hurting tonight.
Adolescent we think. Probably. More mature males have usually learnt not to let this situation develop. That doesn’t mean they wouldn’t behave the same way it just means that a mature male wouldn’t demand a concession of defeat from his opponent.
This ‘social story’ (sorry, I’ve been wanting to use that phrase for a while I keep hearing it this year outta educamationalists) applies to the poor judgement used when one person attacks another’s national integrity as well as when one country seeks ‘unconditional surrender’ from another.

Posted by: Debs is dead | Aug 9 2005 2:15 utc | 70

Back to Main