Hiroshima, moral purity and moral blindness
Cathy Young | August 7, 2007, 3:30pm
A thoughtful, poignant post by Shaun Mullen at The Moderate Voice (and in a longer version on his own blog) commemorates yesterday's anniversary of the bombing of Hiroshima in 1945. Mullen opens with a heartbreaking image of human suffering -- the death of a three-year-old boy who was outside riding his tricycle when the bomb hit. Then, he examines the arguments for and against the decision to bomb Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and concludes that Harry Truman made the right call.
Oliver Kamm, British commentator and liberal hawk, makes the same argument in The Guardian, challenging the "alternative history" which claims that Japan was on the brink of surrender and the nuclear bombs were dropped in order to intimidate Stalin's Soviet Union. Says Kamm:
Hiroshima and Nagasaki are often used as a shorthand term for war crimes. That is not how they were judged at the time. Our side did terrible things to avoid a more terrible outcome. The bomb was a deliverance for American troops, for prisoners and slave labourers, for those dying of hunger and maltreatment throughout the Japanese empire - and for Japan itself. One of Japan's highest wartime officials, Kido Koichi, later testified that in his view the August surrender prevented 20 million Japanese casualties. The destruction of two cities, and the suffering it caused for decades afterwards, cannot but temper our view of the Pacific war. Yet we can conclude with a high degree of probability that abjuring the bomb would have caused greater suffering still.
Here, I will say that my knowledge of World War II is limited. I don't know who is factually correct about the situation in the Pacific theater at the end of the war. (The revisionist case is made
here by the Hoover Institution's David Henderson.) The argument that the primary goal of dropping the bombs was to intimidate the Soviets doesn't make much sense, given that we allowed the Soviet Union to keep all of Eastern Europe, half of Germany, and the Baltics as part of its empire.
On a purely instinctive level, I am of course appalled by justifications for the killing of about 150,000 civilians, many of them children. One cannot, if one is a normal person, justify such an act without doing violence to one's moral sense. But are there times when the unspeakable is the lesser of two evils? Obviously, arguments that noble ends can justify terrible means can lead to some dark places, and such arguments have also served countless tyrants as excuses for barbarism. The danger of becoming "as bad as the enemy" is real.
But at the opposite extreme, the view that all use of terrible means is equal represents a kind of moral laziness, an abdication of critical distinctions and context. When some have the will and the power to do evil things -- to enslave and murder -- there is generally no way to stop them except by force; and when we choose to use force, terrible choices must sometimes be made. Yes, even necessary violence, particularly when it kills innocents, damages the soul. I will agree that we should all find it a little harder to live with ourselves knowing that the victory over evil in World War II was bought with the lives of so many innocents, not only at Hiroshima but in Dresden or in Tokyo, where the men, women and children killed by "conventional" firebombing were as dead as the victims of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Nonetheless, it was as clearcut a victory over evil as there has ever been in history.
And that's why what truly shocked me was the responses to Oliver Kamm on the
Guardian website, where many of the anti-Kamm posts were truly striking in their venom and their strident moral equivalency:
What a disgusting article. For me, the dropping of an atomic bomb on any town anywhere is entirely despicable. In my opinion it proves beyond a shadow of doubt that whilst Americans may be lovely people when they are getting their way, they will stoop to any depths to ensure their personal gain in the face of opposition. They will also, always hide behind "holier than thou" reasons for their contemptible behaviour.
Wow. Americans are just shocking in their denial. By this sick logic the jihadis are completely justified when they attack American civilians in massive acts of terror - which I might add are mere blips in comparison to Hiroshima and Nagasaki. We live in a sick culture, where 60 years have passed, and there isnt even a shred of shame with regards to this heinous crime. For the sake of our species - Boycott America.
"Our side did terrible things to avoid a more terrible outcome."
The other side also did similar terrible things to avoid a more terrible outcome which became war crimes.
It is the winner who decides what is or is not a war crime.
America has ever been a psychopathic bully ever since it's (sic) first days and the genocide against the indiginous Americans. Why all these attempts to justify what was clearly a war crime greater than all others?
The US has never learned the lesson of treating one's enemies with grace and magnanimity once those enemies have lost--it is always vindictive, always demands unconditional surrender, complete acquiescence to US subjugation.
What is absent from these comments (and many others like them) is any awareness of things like the Rape of Nanking or the Bataan Death March, or the Holocaust for that matter; or of the fact that America's supposed determination to crush her enemies manifested itself in rebuilding postwar Germany and leaving Japan with a political system that allowed it to become a strong economic rival to America herself. A few commenters suggest that America should have allowed the Soviets to end the war by invading Japan, blithely unaware of the hell on earth that would have awaited the Japanese under Soviet occupation. This isn't mere ignorance; it's a profound conviction that only evil done by the West, and above all by "psychopathic bully" America, truly matters. Meanwhile, posters who point out Japanese atrocities in World War II are rebuffed with accusations of "the implicitly racist overtone [of] recounting the endless 'savagery' of the Japanese."
When anti-Americanism becomes so extreme that it turns the U.S. into the bad guy of World War II, that's truly frightening and depressing. As for whether the bombing was indeed the least evil of all available options: again, I don't know. I'm sure there is room for legitimate debate on this issue. But that debate is almost entirely drowned out by hate and self-righteousness. The insistence on moral purity has turned to moral blindness.
See more at The Y-Files.
Joe Dokes | August 7, 2007, 7:16pm | #
D. Greene,
Sorry Gar Alperovitz is an idiot. After reading about 30 books on the dropping of the Atomic Bomb and its relation to the foundation of the Cold War, it has become evident to me that the dropping of the bomb on Hiroshima and Nagasaki was the natural extension of U.S. policy at the end of the war. The US policy was under the misguided notion that air power could accomplish the following: 1) reduce a nations will to fight 2) reduce a nations capability to fight, and 3) shorten the war. In fact the US expended far more resources building bombers that did little to reduce the effectiveness of German or Japan's war machine.
Alperovitz and his cronies wish to rewrite history so that it seems as though there was a serious discussion about whether to drop the bomb or not. No such high level discussion ever took place. Once Roosevelt began the Manhattan project it was assumed by all decision makers that if the bomb were developed it would be used. The old myth that there was serious discussion as to whether to have a demonstration is just that a myth. There was a discussion, but it was held only between scientists who worked at Los Alamos and who directly witnessed the test bomb. (They were the first to understand the true significance of the weapon) Following the discussion they sent a letter to Truman which was completely ignored.
Think about this,let's say that Truman decides not to use the bomb and the war drags on another six months, during that time an additional 10,000 service men are killed. (not an unreasonable number) Japan finally surrenders in December of 1945 and people are ecstatic, six months later news of a super bomb is leaked to the press. What would America's reaction have been? Would Truman have been impeached? After all he needlessly sacrificed 10K American lives?
As far as the tired argument, that we wouldn't have used it on the Germans my research indicates that those familiar with the project were deeply disappointed that it would not be able to hasten the surrender of Germany.
The reality of the end of WWII was that it was a COMBINATION of dropping the atomic bomb AND Russia's entrance into the war, AND the US agreeing secretly to allow Japan to retain the emperor that caused Japan to surrender. Up until Russia's entrance into the war Japan was hoping to use back channel negotiations to negotiate a surrender that was conditional.
While leaders in both the US and UK understood that the atomic bomb was important, and thought it might hasten the defeat of both Germany and Japan. Leaders of both countries saw the bomb as nothing more than a really big bomb. The true significance of the Bomb was not fully understood until the development of ICBMs and the Hydrogen bomb that truly made the destruction of civilization a clear reality. This did not occur until the late 1940s or 1950s nearly a full decade after Hiroshima.
The better historical questions are, Why did it become acceptable to drop bombs on civilian populations at all? and Why has it now become unacceptable?
In my view it is understandable but lamentable that the U.S. engaged in the whole sale destruction of civilian populations. I think far more interestingly is that technology has made bombing so much more accurate that it is now a spectator sport. During the 2003 invasion Iraqi civilians would gather on roof tops to watch American bombs fall on Iraqi defense positions.
Regards
Joe Dokes
mabman | August 7, 2007, 11:04pm | #
There's always a tendency to review and judge the acts of the past by the standards of the present. Hiroshima and Nagasaki did not occur in isolation - they were the culmination of 14 years of escalating barbarity, from the Japanese invasion of Manchuria and its far more brutal "China Incident" to German bombings of civilian centers, the "Final Solution," the unimaginable horrors of the Russo-German War, the vicious racialism underlying the attitudes and motivations of both Japanese and Western forces in the Pacific, and finally the mass bombings of German and Japanese cities. Freeman Dyson had a brilliant passage in his book
Weapons and Hope, describing the "moral creep" he experienced working for the RAF in WWII as the strategic bombing campaign steadily escalated from 1940 to 1945.
It's true that civilized nations shouldn't annihilate cities full of civilians, but there was nothing "civilized" about WWII other than the technologies used to wage it. I agree with the earlier posters who claimed that if any good came from city-bombing, it was that it filled the Western world with such revulsion after the fact that it was never again considered a justifiable strategy. We didn't bomb Pyongyang or Hanoi out of existence, nor did we destroy Baghdad (we may be doing that indirectly now, but that's another story).
Let's not kid ourselves - the Pacific War wasn't going to end without a lot of dead people, one way or another. Starving the Japanese into surrender might have taken another 6 - 12 months, and millions of Japanese civilians would have died of disease and malnutrition - they were already living on less than 900 calories a day by the summer of 1945. An invasion would have been incredibly costly - the only guy who thought it might be cheap was McArthur, and he was a grandstanding bozo who was pressing for one. As for "limiting civilian casualties" in an invasion, as many Okinawans as Japanese soldiers died during that campaign (~100,000), and the number of Japanese civilians who died on Saipan was close to the number of military dead. The Japanese Army and Navy had over 4,000 aircraft stationed on Kyushu alone for kamikaze attacks on the Third Fleet, and they wouldn't have hesitated in mobilizing the civilian population to resist - they were issuing bamboo spears to civilians in the summer of 1945!
I have mixed feelings about Hiroshima and Nagasaki - my mother was ~100 miles outside Hiroshima on August 6, 1945, and I can easily imagine her taking the wrong train trip at the wrong time. OTOH, my dad was in the 8th Army in the Philippines on that same day training for the invasion of Japan that fall, and as he freely admits, he was pissing his pants at the idea. For purely selfish reasons (i.e. my current existence), I'm kinda glad things worked out the way they did.
Neu Mejican | August 8, 2007, 12:41pm | #
HOWARD ZINN: Yeah. Well, we thought bombing missions were over. The war was about to come to an end. This was in April of 1945, and remember the war ended in early May 1945. This was a few weeks before the war was going to be over, and everybody knew it was going to be over, and our armies were past France into Germany, but there was a little pocket of German soldiers hanging around this little town of Royan on the Atlantic coast of France, and the Air Force decided to bomb them. 1,200 heavy bombers, and I was in one of them, flew over this little town of Royan and dropped napalm -- first use of napalm in the European theater. And we didn't know how many people were killed, how many people were terribly burned as a result of what we did. But I did it like most soldiers do, unthinkingly, mechanically, thinking we're on the right side, they're on the wrong side, and therefore we can do whatever we want, and it's okay. And only afterward, only really after the war when I was reading about Hiroshima from John Hersey and reading the stories of the survivors of Hiroshima and what they went through, only then did I begin to think about the human effects of bombing. Only then did I begin to think about what it meant to human beings on the ground when bombs were dropped on them, because as a bombardier, I was flying at 30,000 feet, six miles high, couldn’t hear screams, couldn't see blood. And this is modern warfare.
In modern warfare, soldiers fire, they drop bombs, and they have no notion, really, of what is happening to the human beings that they're firing on. Everything is done at a distance. This enables terrible atrocities to take place. And I think reflecting back on that bombing raid, and thinking of that in Hiroshima and all of the other raids on civilian cities and the killing of huge numbers of civilians in German and Japanese cities, the killing of a hundred thousand people in Tokyo in one night of fire-bombing, all of that made me realize war, even so-called good wars against fascism like World War II, wars don't solve any fundamental problems, and they always poison everybody on both sides. They poison the minds and souls of everybody on both sides. We are seeing that now in Iraq, where the minds of our soldiers are being poisoned by being an occupying army in a land where they are not wanted. And the results are terrible.
rob | August 8, 2007, 5:45pm | #
"The numbers don't lie here. There were more intense periods of slaughter that didn't last as long, and more lengthy periods of killing that weren't as intense, but you're not going to find the two combined in such a horrible manner as 1939-1945. By the criteria of lives ended and destroyed, World War 2 really stands out." - joe
All true statements, more or less, but if the criteria were to include "as a percentage of total population" (which is certainly as reasonable as your criteria) then WW2 suddenly looks like more of the same, on par with the Black Death and other assorted historic tragedies.
"Go piss on yourself, you wanna-be Prussian asshole." - joe
Wow. I can always tell when you're fresh out of actual arguments because you start spouting profanity. Nice. And Prussian... that's actually pretty funny, considering Prussian military history. (Extra credit for that joke - I assume it was intentional... but it's not enough to overcome the fact that an insult isn't a counter-argument.)
"You don't gain special status in understanding history because you obeyed orders during a military catastrophe, rob." - joe
Excuse me? Where did I ask for "special status"? Admittedly, I tend to believe that "expertise" isn't all it's touted to be. (It has limits, for example, claiming to be an expert on how other people should live because you are or used to be a "city planner.")
Actually, you're the guy who thinks "certified expert" status is so important it should over-ride individual choice, while I'm the guy who thinks "certified expert" status just means they usually know what they're talking about. (Grain of salt, etc...) By your standard or mine, though, wouldn't a master's degree in Military History and actual military experience count for something?
C'mon... Are you really that angry over the term "armchair general"? (I wouldn't be mad if you referred to me as an "armchair city planner" - I'm a self-professed layman on the subject!)
"I'd say that the lives lost are no less of a tragedy for our victory." - joe
No argument there. Lost lives are tragic. As much as tragically lost lives are a horrendous consequence of war, however, it's always better to have that tragedy fall disproportionately on the enemy. (See also: Patton, George.)
"Sure, from a military perspective, winning is the only thing that matters. A complete human being doesn't only look at things from that perspective." - joe
In a war of the magnitude of say, WW2, I'd argue that victory - the military perspective being all about gaining victory - actually is the only thing that matters. Caveats about a "complete human being's" perspective just reveals how incredibly asinine and counter to survival such whinging is. Sadly, this is usually carried out by those who deem themselves morally superior to the folks who carry out the distasteful things that make sure that said whingers never have to do for themselves.
I'm going to assume that you're not saying that those who view things from the "military perspective" you seem to decry are somehow less "complete humans." Although I'd love for you to clarify yourself on that one.
Frankly, joe, you sound like the guy who decries the slaughterhouse while wolfing down a bacon cheeseburger. Or the guy who shows up to the LiveEarth concert in his private jet. Or the guy who shows up to speak at the PETA rally wearing a leather jacket. Or... Well, you get the point, right?
joe | August 8, 2007, 6:45pm | #
Percentage of total population is not as reasonable a figure. A million violent deaths is a million individual human lives being snuffed out, regardless of the overall population.
I did answer your argument, asshole. You just deserved to be insulted for your militaristic arrogance, as well.
Excuse me? Where did I ask for "special status"? When you waived away my argument with "Spoken like a true armchair general." You know, it's easy to tell when you're out of arguments, because you pretend that alluding to your profession raises you above the need to utilize reason and facts.
And since you didn't get the Prussian reference, it is exactly your habit of waving your military credentials to treat others as second-rate that I was referring to. You know, like when you dismiss the arguments of civilians by referring to careerist military professional as
the folks who carry out the distasteful things that make sure that said whingers never have to do for themselves. You're an elitist asshole who fancies himself part of elite, better and more serious than the rest, because of your background. That's what makes you a wanna-be Prussian. Glad I could clear that up for you.
As much as tragically lost lives are a horrendous consequence of war, however, it's always better to have that tragedy fall disproportionately on the enemy. Sure, but a complete human being can mourn for the lives lost on both sides, even if those killings were necessary.
I'm going to assume that you're not saying that those who view things from the "military perspective" you seem to decry are somehow less "complete humans." Although I'd love for you to clarify yourself on that one. The statement I made was "A complete human being doesn't only look at things from that perspective." ONLY, rob. I'm going to assume that you can figure out the additional meaning you stripped out by editting out that word.
Or... Well, you get the point, right?
Yes. Unable to actually come to grips with my arguments, you've taken to flailing away at a straw man, as usual. In this case, by pretending that *yaaaawwwwwwwwwnnnnnnnn* disagreeing with you in a political discussion is an expression of contempt for Da Troops.
Spare us all the warmed over Few Good Men speech, asshole. It was a desperate gambit by a cornered man, and wholly inappropriate for his target, in the original, too.
rob | August 8, 2007, 9:24pm | #
"Hey, rob, if we'd sent Saddam a strongly-worded letter, we wouldn't have wasted the lives of 3500 better men than yourself on nothing." – joe
Spare me the Robert Redford impression from "Three Days Of The Condor" where you strain like a constipated anaconda to crap out the idea that the biggest threat to the U.S. and civil liberties comes from the "industrial-military complex." For the record, I agree that those who have died are better men than I am (by virtue of what they’ve laid down alone), and I’ve never claimed otherwise. Where does that leave you, with your characterization of the military folks I work with? Y’know, this one:
"Maybe if you'd spent less time among authoritarians, you'd be less infatuated with your blinders." - joe
You think that people in the military aren't more keenly aware of why the "Posse Comitatus Act" exists than most U.S. citizens? You don't think that those liberty-loving traditions aren't reflected in generation after generation of military commanders who consider the idea of using the military to seize power anathema – antithetical to the principle of military service in defense of the Constitution? Apparently you think that being in the military is about infatuation with authoritarianism … that’s just sad.
(Sarcasm warning) It's a shame that General MacArthur in Japan and Generals Marshall and Clay in Europe didn't institute respect for democracy, civil liberties, and the rule of law when they had the chance.... Germany and Japan could be functioning as First World democracies right now! I mean, really, it pains me to see you lump me in with such a tradition of authoritarian-loving, jack-booted thug-type military officers. (Sarcasm ends.)
When did you become such a pathetic parody of the guy who used to be capable of posting the occasional intelligent, thoughtful comment? You at least used to be on board with the idea that the military has men and women of conscience in its ranks, who value liberty and took an oath to defend the Constitution and didn't join up because they were either stupid, naive, impoverished or evil authoritarians who just love to wear jackboots. (Not that examples of that don't exist - though thankfully they are by no means representative of the military as a whole.)
And BTW…
“Percentage of total population is not as reasonable a figure. A million violent deaths is a million individual human lives being snuffed out, regardless of the overall population." - joe
In terms of "great tragedies" I'd argue that it's the damage done to the population that can be most crippling and tragic, though. Surely you'd agree that a million lives lost is bad, but a million lives that equates to genocide is worse? (To clarify: I'm not arguing that WW2 wasn't a great tragedy, simply that the U.S. was justified in taking the horrendous measures it did to ensure victory with as little damage to the U.S. and its people as possible.)
rob | August 10, 2007, 1:35pm | #
Neu - The actual comment was in reference to the idea that joe seemed far less concerned about the number of casualties taken by the side fighting for him than he seemed about the losses suffered by all sides. That's the kind of crap that gets under my skin - and he knows it - so was he baiting me?
Unlike the folks who actually lived through WW2 and had to make some of the hardest decisions in human history, we have the luxury of knowing how it all turned out. Second-guessing the decisions that ensured Allied victory certainly qualifies joe for promotion to "armchair general!" I referred to him as speaking "like a true armchair general" because that's EXACTLY what he was doing: second-guessing decisions about military attacks made during WW2 by civilian and military leadership and whinging on about how mourning the casualties overall is more important than it was for the Allies to win.
I think there's a significant difference in accurately calling someone out on their BS than the slew of vile, profane, and untrue insults he responded with:
1.) He calls me a "Prussian asshole" (code for "Nazi").
2.) He refers to me as someone who shouldn't "gain special status in understanding history because you obeyed orders during a military catastrophe" (alluding that I'm a "Nazi only following orders"). Let's not leave out his false claim that my armchair general statement was somehow an appeal to authority - as though I was in a position of leadership in WW2 or that my military experience makes me better qualified to judge (something he infers but which obviously never occurred.)
3. And finally alludes to me as less than "a complete human being" (basically as a "subhuman Nazi" by his reckoning).
All because I realize that fighting and winning wars requires bloody singlemindedness that polite society would consider horrifying, and for accurately describing what he was doing. Apparently, I'm less of a human being because I don't fault WW2-era leaders for making decisions that were certainly a "necessary evil" - even if guys like joe consider them "evil." "Necessary evil" is a perfect description of even the most justifiable war, and the fact that it's necessary doesn't make war any less evil.
When joe starts whinging on about the overall casualties from all sides, as though his faux-angst makes him a better (more "complete") person, it makes him an armchair general by revealing him as the sort of person who not only shows a profound lack of understanding of the realities of WW2, but of human warfare throughout history.
Like I said, my real problem is with people who (like joe) delusionally believe that wars can be fought without killing noncombatants (or that victory can be achieved with a minimum of noncombatant deaths). The reality of war is that there's simply no way to avoid such horrors, and history bears this out repeatedly.
The self-delusional belief of those such as joe dramatically demonstrates that people who hold to that belief have never really contemplated the true nature of war - most likely because they've never actually seen it. (There are guys like Howard Zinn who actually committed the horrifying actions required by war who don't fully understand it.)
Armchair generals often fail to realize that the war is naturally the worst part of humanity and that war is ALWAYS worst on civilian populations - because the only route to victory is to kill all of your enemies (civilian and military alike) or force those you haven't killed to surrender. That includes guys like Howard Zinn, who dropped bombs while never contemplating their real effects and now whinges on in order to salve his conscience instead of facing up to the reality that he callously killed people and yet still can't make the next step to comprehension that this is a tragic but also inescapable element of war - including the most justifiable of wars.
War is either you or your enemy horribly dead and the survivors often horrifyingly physically ruined. It's the ultimate zero-sum situation, and anyone who worries as much about what the enemy lost as they do about their own losses are probably doing so from a position of complete safety (say 60 years into the future and using hindsight that keeps them nearly-blind to the horrendous realities of war). That's what an armchair general does – and that’s why joe is one.
FWIW, joe is on record as a big cheerleader for the war in Afghanistan - he feels it to be just and proper (though he second-guesses how it has been carried out). I'm curious… How does he salve his conscience about supporting a conflict that has killed numerous civilian, noncombatant Afghans? His tune changes considerably when war is being conducted against people he perceives as an actual threat, even if that threat will never actually come to his door and he'll never have to fight it himself. (joe's quick to call other people bedwetters for exactly the same sort of support of the Iraq war and support for the PATRIOT Act - a guy who calls other people "bedwetters" and "chickenhawks" should have a thicker skin when someone accurately refers to him as an "armchair general").
War is atrocity. Complaining about atrocities of war is like complaining that fire burns - it's delusional to think you can have one without the other and its sad that so many people try to salve their consciences with such nonsense rather than simply face the reality. Facing that reality might prevent a lot of the horrors of war, too bad so few have the courage to do it.
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