WMD American Style
by L. Neil Smith
Attribute to L. Neil Smith’s The Libertarian Enterprise
A few weeks ago I wrote an article for Jews for the Preservation of Firearms Ownership (JPFO) that concerned itself with the great number of genocidal acts committed in the 20th century, and suggested—parenthetically—that the atomic bombing of the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki during World War II might belong on such a list. Among all the other things I said in that article, the one and only item that readers commented on was that one brief parenthetical statement.
The only times I’ve been called worse things was when I wrote to defend the rights of tobacco smokers, or to point out, correctly, that saintly Abraham Lincoln was a lying, hypocritical, racist, homicidal megalomaniac.
Mostly, my disgruntled readers wanted to talk about the “vile sneak attack” on Pearl Harbor, although one of them was also emotional about the “Rape of Nanking”. Not one of my detractors appeared capable of distinguishing between the Japanese individuals guilty of those crimes and the much greater number of Japanese individuals who were not.
Nor, apparently, were they aware that certain Japanese officials had done things that were even more terrible—like sterilizing “comfort women”, Chinese girls abducted for the sexual entertainment of the troops, or encouraging soldiers to _eat_ prisoners of war. If I were defending the nuclear bombings, I’d certainly want to throw that in.
So let’s begin with what the Japanese were doing in Nanking in the first place. President Franklin Delano Roosevelt had been pathetically unsuccessful at ending the Great Depression, which had been brought on in the first place by the United States government’s and the Federal Reserve System’s criminal mismanagement of the money supply. In fact, more people were out of work in 1941—after nine years of New Deal policies—than had been the case in 1932, when he was first elected President.
Sound familiar? Much like the mess we’re in today, everything that the then-current administration tried was the precise, geometrical opposite of what they should have done, and, predictably, only made things worse, like throwing gasoline on a house fire. Limited by their collectivist mindset, Roosevelt and his “Brain Trust” were out of ideas.
Except for one: what America (meaning Roosevelt) needed was a good war. It would take the Depression off of the voters’ minds, and at the same time, provide an acceptable excuse for inflating the currency, generating the same false prosperity that Federal Reserve policies in the 1920s had. Getting involved in the war already raging in Europe would be perfect, but most Americans were determined to stay out of that.
Enter the Empire of Japan.
At the time, many Japanese were eager, for a variety of reasons, to drag their quaint monarchy, kicking and screaming, if need be, into the 20th century and onto the stage of world powers. In some ways, this was a good idea, but one of the saddest things I’ve ever seen is a photograph of high-ranking Japanese military officers dressed like British navy captains during the Napoleonic Wars, and carrying swords with ugly European-style hilts mounted awkwardly on superb Japanese blades.
They already had an Emperor, what they needed now was an Empire.
Roosevelt took to the airwaves making speeches about Japan’s aspirations, using epithets and racial slurs against them that would have been out of place in the alley behind a sleazy bar. When he threatened to (and eventually did) cut of their oil supply—Japan has no petroleum of its own—they did the natural thing for an empire on the make, they invaded a neighbor, Manchuria, that did have oil. However at the same time Roosevelt was running his oil embargo, he kept selling them scrap metal. If you were Japan, what would you do?
Owing to these and other affronts, Japan’s ruling “peace party” was replaced by a “war party” willing and more than eager to fight. To say that the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, a military outpost lying isolated and nearly undefended halfway across the Pacific Ocean from the country it belonged to, came as a surprise to anybody would be dishonest, stupid, or insane, and maybe a little bit of all three. It was fruit ripe for the plucking. Moreover, such an attack had been predicted decades in advance by Sun Yat Sen’s military advisor General Homer Lea, and by General Billy Mitchell, who invented the kind of aerial attack that was launched there—and was court martialed for it.
Roosevelt clearly wanted it to happen, and to make the target more attractive, the former Secretary of the Navy crowded the narrow- and shallow-mouthed harbor with the last generation’s battleships (the U.S.S. _Arizona_ was commissioned in 1915), while leaving the nation’s most modern fighting vessels—the aircraft carriers—and the overwhelming majority (all but four) of its submarine fleet safely at sea.
The Japanese carrier fleet was spotted several times on its way to Hawaii. Somehow, those reports were never relayed to Pearl Harbor. A midget submarine was detected and destroyed just outside the harbor an hour before the attack. An experimental radar installation on a hill above the harbor detected and reported the oncoming enemy, but its early warning was circular-filed between the Pacific and Washington D.C.
Thus Roosevelt and his administration are as equally to blame for the “sneak attack” as the Japanese. Roosevelt was saved from his own faulty economic policies, at the “acceptable” cost of 2,402 American lives.
Altogether, the Second World War consumed 60,000,000 lives.
The Roosevelt Administration spent millions, recruiting Hollywood and the radio to dehumanize the Japanese, depicting them as stunted, buck-toothed creatures wearing Coke-bottle glasses. At the same time, Japanese cities were saturation-bombed with incendiaries, creating fire-driven storms that killed hundreds of thousands of innocent subjects of a theocracy and absolute dictatorship they had no control over.
Which brings us to the point of this exercise. When _Enola Gay_ dropped her atom bomb “Little Boy” on the city of Hiroshima, it killed 80,000 people outright, producing casualties that brought the ultimate death toll to between 90,000 and 140,000 individuals. How many of those, do you suppose, had anything to do with the Rape of Nanking, or the air-attack on Pearl Harbor, or could have done anything to stop them?
When a second nuclear weapon, called “Fat Man”, was dropped on Nagasaki three days later (after frantic attempts by the Japanese government to surrender were deliberately ignored), it killed about 74,000 people immediately, including 2000 Korean slaves, and at least a dozen Dutch prisoners of war (23 Americans had been similarly killed in Hiroshima, a fact left undisclosed by the government until the 1970s), and may have killed an equal number later due to injuries and radiation. Rumor has it the second bomb was spent to appease our ally Josef Stalin, who had been led to believe that two A-bombs were all we had.
One of my correspondents insisted that, after Pearl Harbor, “the Japs deserved 20 bombs!” And so I ask once again, how many of these quarter-million subjects of a military dictatorship had anything to do with that or with anything else the Japanese government did? Our own government, at the end of World War II, helped British troops please Stalin by rounding up Russian refugees in western Europe—two million of them—and shipping them back where they were immediately shot to death. Would he, my correspondent, like to share the blame for that?
It has often been claimed that the nuclear attacks on Japan “saved a million American lives” but there is no more reason to believe that than there is reason to believe anything else that government—which produces lies the way mildew produces spores—has to say about anything.
It has also been famously said—by Aeschylus, the Greek dramatist, sometime between 525 and 456 B.C.—that, in war, the first casualty is the truth. But Aeschylus was wrong. The first casualty of war is individuality, as the lives, liberty, and property of each of us is consumed in a mindless frenzy of destruction and death.
War is the ultimate collectivizer. The minute it starts—on September 11, 2001, for example—the people of a free country have lost.
Note:
For those interested in learning more about this subject, I recommend George N. Crocker’s Roosevelt’s Road To Russia, John Toland’s Infamy, and F. Paul Wilson’s novel Black Wind.
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Roosevelt took to the airwaves making speeches about Japan’s aspirations, using epithets and racial slurs against them that would have been out of place in the alley behind a sleazy bar. When he threatened to (and eventually did) cut of their oil supply—Japan has no petroleum of its own—they did the natural thing for an empire on the make, they invaded a neighbor, Manchuria, that did have oil.
Sigh. Let’s look.
Japanese Invasion Of Manchuria September 19, 1931
<a href="Franklin Delano Roosevelt also known by his initials, FDR, was the 32nd President of the United States [from] 1933 to 1945…
In the olden days of books and libraries far far away, such errors may be forgivable, if extremely dubious lapses for somebody writing an historical article. In the days of the internet, and wikipedia, and instant factoid checking, this is intolerable and tantamount to lying.
See, this is the thing in the other thread down below. I am no fan of the US government, let alone Franklin Statist Bastard Roosevelt. But what we see here is this naive, left-derived intense bias that anything that Western Governments do must be evil, and anything apparently bad that anyone else does must be explicable as a reaction to the evil of the West, i.e. America. Those poor peaceful Japanese, left with no alternative.
It’s simply assinine. Please stop it. At least friggin’ look at Wikipedia before shouting your mouths off, people.
HTML failure again. That should have been a link to the WIKI article on FDR-
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Franklin_D._Roosevelt
-showing his presidency as 1933-1945.
Also worth adding-
Rape of Nanking, December 1937.
US Oil Embargo, July 1941.
L. Neil Smith’s ideological fervour and enthusiasm are admirable, and stronger than his history, but he is surely correct at least in his starting point – that the actions of the US government should be judged like those of other states, as the actions of a state, rather than assumed to be those of a bunch of basically decent men trying to do their best.
Buchanan has written better stuff on this topic:
Did FDR Provoke Pearl Harbor?
“At a Nov. 25 meeting of FDR’s war council, Secretary of War Henry Stimson’s notes speak of the prevailing consensus: “The question was how we should maneuver them [the Japanese] into … firing the first shot without allowing too much danger to ourselves.””
Dresden, Tokyo, Hiroshima, and Nagasaki: Terror on a Monumental Scale
“In the documentary Fog of War, former Defense Secrefary Robert McNamara, who worked with LeMay on the plans to incinerate Japanese cities, says the general came to the conclusion that “if we’d lost, we’d be prosecuted as war criminals; and I think he was right. LeMay, and I, were acting like war criminals.””
But no doubt Buchanan (a former US Republican Party presidential primary candidate) is just an “anti-American fanatic” like me.
“suggested—parenthetically—that the atomic bombing of the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki during World War II might belong on such a list. Among all the other things I said in that article, the one and only item that readers commented on was that one brief parenthetical statement.
The only times I’ve been called worse things was when I wrote to defend the rights of tobacco smokers, or to point out, correctly, that saintly Abraham Lincoln was a lying, hypocritical, racist, homicidal megalomaniac.”
It is interesting that this topic seems to provoke such an emotional response with so many people (I think some of the same can be seen in the responses on the topic here). I suppose it threatens some asumptions that people hold very tightly to for personal and/or ideological reasons.
Assumptions, damn it!
I wonder whether Marian ought to investigate the motives and anticedents of the US politicos, who deliberately ended up with a collectivist FDR in the US when they did? I agree that certainly FDR was no friend of the Western Allies (that being Britain, France and the British Empire.) being a democrat, he probably wanted it for himself, which explains some of his actions like the “lease” of 50 rusting destroyers in 1940, in retiurn for perpetual use and eventuall ownership of some important strategic bases.
No surprise that Randal has mentioned (with approval) the words of Pat Buchanan – a man who thinks that reistance to Hitler was a mistake (i.e. that N.C. should have been more [yes more] of an appeasement man than he actually was) and that modern American policy is controlled by the Jews.
Still at least Randal has not said (as Buchanan has) that the solution for American economic problems is to put a tax on imports – after all 1931 worked so well…….
In this way (according to Pat) the Welfare State (or what he calls “compassionate conservatism” – he used that term long before Bush) can be made to work. Pat is, of course, totally wrong.
Still – the post itself.
I suspect that Sean has pubished this post here out of sense of naughtyness – a sense of mischief that motivates many of his actions.
However, L. Neil Smith wrote it in all good faith.
The history is, of course. wrong – but that does not mean that L. Neil Smith knows it is wrong. And the post does inspire some thoughts.
For example, those dreadful broadcasts by President Roosevelt.
I am English by birth and upbringing – yet even find that weird fake English accent that FDR had (taught to have in school I believe) hard to listen to – the voice of his wife is actually worse (it puts my teeth on edge, E. Roosevelt reminds me of a upper class Hampstead Communist, someone who had escaped from a “Peter Simple” column). And then there are all those ten Dollar words he uses (when ordinary words would have done better).
The words “upper class twit” spring to mind.
However, did he really use “racial slurs” in 1930s broadcasts? Not wartime broadcasts – 1930s broadcasts? Or is this much the same as calling Lincoln (not a person I like – I would have supported Salmon P. Chase at the 1860 Convention) a “meglomanic” and “genocidal” – i.e. it is the product of someone who does not actually know much about history, but insists on writing about it (which is fine in fiction – but not for actual historical writing).
Certainly making pro interventionist speeches was not (repeat not) a way to get votes in the 1930s – in fact it was a way to lose votes.
But I would still like to know what Roosevelt actually said – partly because I am prepared to believe (or at least open to) basically any hostile story about that man – but I would like to see some proof.
On the atomic bombings…..
O.K. what it the L. Neil Smith alternative miltary approach – I am open to being convinced.
Produce a method of winning the war with fewer (not more) Japanese civilian casualties – and (please) no B.S. about how the Japanese were ready to give up…..
Concentional bombing had failed (in spite of killing more Japanese civilians than the the atomic bombs) and an American invasion would have killed millions of Japanese civilians.
So what policy to win the way should have been followed?
By the way I thing that L. Neil Smith (had he been around in the 1930s) would not (repeat not) have spent his time making absurd excuses for the Empire of Japan.
I see him more a “Flying Tiger” type – taking to the air against the truly “genocidal” forces of the Japanese military regime.
By the way – on Pat Buchanan.
I can remember when Pat was a free trade supporter – who greatly admired Winston Churchill (specifically for standing up against the Nazis – and then the Communists, the new Pat opposed the Korean War as well as World War II).
Pat now sounds like a very different man (indeed some of his statements seem to be from Father C. and his down-with-the-Jews “Social Justice” stuff from the 1930s). However, I believe the true Pat Buchanan is still there – somewhere deep down.
I believe that if Pat (for example) actually watched people being driven into gas chambers he would not (not) jump up and down with joy shouting “Social Justice” (as Father C. would have done) – he would still try and stop it.
As Edmund Burke put it “armed doctrines” that aim at world conquest (be they Jacobinism, National Socialism or Marxism) have to be opposed – and waiting till they come knocking on your own door is leaving it too late.
As I observed on the other thread, it’s no surprise to find that Paul Marks is that particularly unpleasant type who conflates opposition to Israel with anti-semitism, and who slings that nasty charge around freely.
Of course Buchanan’s views on import taxes or the welfare state are nothing whatsoever to do with the topic of this thread, but his historical analysis on the origins of Pearl Harbor and on US and UK WW2 bombing policies are very much relevant, of course, which was why I mentioned them.
Buchanan’s knowledge and analysis on this topic is spot on, where L Neil Smith’s is shaky and rather over-run by his libertarian enthusiasm. Certainly it’s evident from their comments here that both Ian B and Paul Marks could benefit greatly from considering Buchanan’s writings on the topic.
Another libertarian figure who has written on the Hiroshima bombings is the thoroughly decent Jacob Hornberger:
War Crimes at Hiroshima and Nagasaki
Well Randal it was you who told me to “fuck off” (not the other way round) – so who is “unpleasant”?
I did not raise Israel on the other thread – you did.
You could not resist the temptation for a bit of Jew bashing – even though no one (other than yourself) had raised the subject of Israel.
And I did not raise Pat Buchanan on this thread – again you did.
As for saying that his view that resistance to Hitler was a mistake was “spot on” well that is astonishing (or it would be – if I did not already have some experience of you).
Neville Chamberlain can certainly be attacked (and has been) – but to attack him for not being enough of a Appeasment man (saying he should have been more of an Appeasment man) is (at best) demented rather than “spot on”.
Overall you seem to confuse apologies for the Axis powers (both National Socialist Germany and the various miltiary regimes in Japan – with their totalitarian ideology, of which the Japanese people themselves were the first victim) with libertarianism.
I have not flung any change round easily – you have accused (and convicted) yourself. See above.
“Well Randal it was you who told me to “fuck off” (not the other way round) – so who is “unpleasant”?”
You jumped in to an ongoing discussion with a presumably deliberately insulting implication that debating with me would be a waste of time because I am an “anti-American fanatic”, to which my response was not, as you state here, to tell you to fuck off, but as follows:
“I suppose the proper response to this pathetic kind of empty, passive aggressive insult is just to write “fuck you” and move on. But I’m not familiar with the expectations of this site regarding use of swear words (however apt in cases like this).
So instead I’ll treat it as though it’s an honest comment and respond (with an appropriate “sigh” to be assumed) straight, if with some irritation.”
Having only interacted with you for a day or so, I’m seeing a clear pattern in your dishonesty in attributing to others what they have not written. In the other thread you also wrote: “So for Sean to compare the Einsatzgruppen to British Bomber Command, of which about half died in combat, is rather odd.” Whereas in fact what Sean had written was: “Himmler said something about the bravery of his execution squads in Russia”.
“I did not raise Israel on the other thread – you did.
You could not resist the temptation for a bit of Jew bashing – even though no one (other than yourself) had raised the subject of Israel.”
I wrote, as an aside to an account of the change in my view of the US’s role in the world over the past few decades, that “similar considerations apply to Israel”, which you then used as a pretext to launch into a diatribe about my “longing for the deaths of millions of Jewish civilians in Israel”.
And it is entirely in keeping with the dishonesty that I drew attention to above, that you now describe that comment of mine as “a bit of Jew bashing”.
“And I did not raise Pat Buchanan on this thread – again you did.”
Indeed, because he wrote two very good and very apt pieces, of direct relevance to the topic under discussion.
“As for saying that his view that resistance to Hitler was a mistake was “spot on” well that is astonishing (or it would be – if I did not already have some experience of you).”
Again, see my comment above about misrepresenting what others have written. I wrote that Buchanan’s analysis on “this topic” is spot on – the topic of this thread, and of the two essays of his to which I had posted links.
I might or might not extend that to other essays written by Buchanan on other topics, but that’s something to judge case by case.
“I have not flung any change round easily – you have accused (and convicted) yourself. See above.”
You explicitly accused Noam Chomsky of being an anti-semite. I have no time for most of his leftiness, but it is frankly ridiculous to accuse him of anti-semitism, and only those who are determined to conflate opposition to Israel with anti-semitism, or who simply hate his politics sufficiently that they are prepared to repeat any lie about him, could do so.
In my case, of course, you just accused me of longing for the deaths of millions of Jewish civilians in Israel merely on the basis that I indicated unspecified disapproval of that country’s policies over the past couple of decades.
I think my charge against you stands on pretty solid grounds.
Having just read the Hornberger blog you kindly attached Randal, I must say that I can see nothing that’s new in there. To me at least, he seems to be just another chap sitting in his warm study, with his WW2 history books open, trying forlornly to pave his way into heaven. I’m sorry, but that’s how
it seems to me. Why do you attach a blog in which the author is unashamedly putting silly words into General Patton’s mouth? There’s never been a war, I should think, in which innocents hadn’t died to benefit soldiers. And what’s Patton to do with it anyway? MacArthur was CinC. He accepted the Japanese surrender and from what I know of the man, he intensely disliked all things Nipponese. Mind you, he did seem to dislike everyone no matter where they came from – but maybe that level of distrust is no bad thing in a soldier. This is nonsense. A filthy war was raging. Innocents were dying all over the place every day. You know, whenever my conscience is nagging me, and, from time to time, it nags at all of us over this particularly distasteful issue, I ask myself this question: If the Japanese (or Germans) had been clever enough to get their hands on Fat Boy first, would they have dropped him on Sheffield? And of course Randal, history indicates that they would have delighted in dropping him… would’t you say? God lost count of the innocent dead a million years ago. None of us will be going to heaven so don’t go wasting time trying to buy a first class ticket.
The reason I linked to the Hornberger piece was merely because it represents another libertarian opinion on the topic, since Buchanan’s excellent summary was from a conservative rather than libertarian source, and this is after all a libertarian blog.
Here’s another libertarian opinion piece:
The Hiroshima Myth
Which mainly adds a reference to the involvement of James Byrnes (the Democrat Dick Cheney of his day), and thus highlights the murky human processes that determine policy in these areas in the US regime.
“There’s never been a war, I should think, in which innocents hadn’t died to benefit soldiers. ”
Probably not. Is it your view then that commanders should pay no heed to civilian casualties, whether collateral or directly intentional and instrumental? I suspect not.
“MacArthur was CinC. He accepted the Japanese surrender and from what I know of the man, he intensely disliked all things Nipponese. ”
Indeed. He’s also one of the men who believed that the dropping of the atomic bombs was not necessary, and that: “he saw no military justification for the dropping of the bomb. The war might have ended weeks earlier, he said, if the United States had agreed, as it later did anyway, to the retention of the institution of the emperor.”
“You know, whenever my conscience is nagging me, and, from time to time, it nags at all of us over this particularly distasteful issue, I ask myself this question: If the Japanese (or Germans) had been clever enough to get their hands on Fat Boy first, would they have dropped him on Sheffield? And of course Randal, history indicates that they would have delighted in dropping him… would’t you say? God lost count of the innocent dead a million years ago. None of us will be going to heaven so don’t go wasting time trying to buy a first class ticket.”
Well the Japs certainly wouldn’t have dropped it on Sheffield, or on any US target, because by mid-1945 they had no realistic means to deliver it anywhere outside the vicinity of Japan, short of attaching it to one of their balloon bombs and sending it off in the vague direction of the US.
But yes, I have absolutely no doubt that neither the German nor the Japanese regime would have hesitated an instant before dropping anatomic bomb on a US or UK city, if the opportunity had been available to them. (Actually, I suspect Hitler would probably have regarded it as unacceptable against Britain and used it against Russia instead, early on in the war at any rate, but events and circumstances would soon have persuaded him to overcome such scruples.)
How is that relevant to whether or not it was right for the US regime to drop atomic bombs on two Japanese cities in August 1945?
What would you have done?
This is the question often aimed at those who criticise the US decision to destroy Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August 1945. So here is the opportunity to take Truman’s hot seat and decide for yourself (this was posted as a reply to John Warren on the other thread, but it seems more directly applicable to this thread topic, so I’ll post it again here):
You are the US President at the beginning of August 1945. You know that the war against Japan is won and it is just a matter of the proper application of overwhelming force (as was observed in another context). You know that two atomic bombs are ready to go, with a third to be available a week or so later and around three per month thereafter.
You know that your intelligence reports (having thoroughly penetrated Japanese communications) indicate no signs of a Japanese bomb being imminent, and in any event you know that they would have no way to deliver such a weapon anyway, to any location where it could do really substantial damage. You know that the Soviets are to attack Japan on 15th August, and you have on your desk the July report of the Combined Chiefs of Staff, with its “Estimate of the Enemy Situation” stating: “An entry of the Soviet Union into the war would finally convince the Japanese of the inevitability of complete defeat”.
The question is, do you authorise the prompt destruction of two entire cities full of women and children, or do you:
1 order your forces to hold off until after the Soviet entry, to see what changes that would bring to the Japanese negotiating position, or
2 order the first two bombs to be dropped in quick succession on uninhabited regions of Japan, to see what effect that would have upon the Japanese negotiating position when they were informed that the third would be dropped on Kyoto and the fourth on Tokyo?
Do you really believe that Truman’s choice was acceptable, civilised or indeed anything but a straightforward war crime? And if so, can you honestly, hand on heart, say that if such an act were carried out in similar circumstances by a government that was not Britain’s or the US’s or another with which you identify at some level, you would have the same opinion?
I may be biased in this matter, but I can’t see any answer to the central point that dropping those two bombs was utterly indefensible. I’m surprised the Japanese took it so well.
So what would you have done. Sean?
“I’m surprised the Japanese took it so well.”
I don’t think they had a lot of choice in the matter. And, in fairness, it’s true that the atomic bombings were not the worst they’d suffered during the war.
I’d not have smiled and bowed, and spent the rest of my life dressing up like James Dean. Funny lot, the Japanese.
My answer, by the way, would be 1, followed by 2.
Oh good grief Sean, now you’re just taking the piss.
“I’d not have smiled and bowed, and spent the rest of my life dressing up like James Dean. Funny lot, the Japanese.”
A kind of national Stockholm Syndrome, I suppose.
Brute power is always appealing to the majority of humanity, especially when combined with incredible wealth.
For God’s sake Randal, you are speaking with the benefit of hindsight. How on earth could anyone have known that the Japanese didn’t have (definitely didn’t have) an aircraft, or several for that matter, secretly lined up to relay a nuclear bomb, or some other equally destructive explosive device to its target? You are also quoting people who were certainly involved at the time, but who were forbidden from talking about sensitive war efforts during their period of active service. They made comments later… and with the use of the all-seeing, all-knowing, hindsight. They were hardly likely to say later that killing a load of civilians was a great idea were they?
I’m grateful that you were not in charge of defending us from what we know (with hindsight) to have been that most savage of enemies (hacking off countless living heads with their horrible swords… ugh!) Had you been in charge during the 40s, it would all have ended with our enslavement. Of course the Americans often got things wrong Randal and so did we. But we didn’t get them quite so badly wrong – at least not in the way the beasts in the Axis coalition did.
Had you been in charge, I also fear we’d not be here now, the both of us discussing a wicked war from the safety of comfy arm-chairs. We were lucky enough to be on the winning side. Settle for that. Really, if must grieve for what was the enemy way back then, please do it in private – the way I do. You’re an enthusiastic writer, so why not get it all down in book form? You’ve clearly been very deeply affected by what happened. I’m speaking the way friends speak to each other when saying that. No condescension at all from this end I do assure you. We’ll always need to protect our homes and families from butchers old chap and it’s not going to get any better with the passage of time… and there’s the end of it for me.
“How on earth could anyone have known that the Japanese didn’t have (definitely didn’t have) an aircraft, or several for that matter, secretly lined up to relay a nuclear bomb, or some other equally destructive explosive device to its target?”
Indeed, such fantastic possibilities can never be ruled out in war.
Is it your view then that, in Truman’s shoes in 1945, delaying destroying those cities by a few weeks was unjustifiable because of the risk that the Japanese might have had a secret super-weapon program just coming to fruition that they’d avoided mentioning on any of the penetrated communications systems through which numerous disastrous secrets had been revealed to the Allies, along with a hitherto unsuspected aircraft with the range to hit the US which they had refrained from using so far with this in mind?
Personally, I think that’s beyond the realms of military hyper-caution and well into the realms of paranoia, or dishonest rationalisation.
“you are speaking with the benefit of hindsight”
Obviously, but for the purposes of the “what would you have done?” question I’ve limited the information to what we know Truman knew at the time.
“You are also quoting people who were certainly involved at the time, but who were forbidden from talking about sensitive war efforts during their period of active service. They made comments later… and with the use of the all-seeing, all-knowing, hindsight. They were hardly likely to say later that killing a load of civilians was a great idea were they?”
So when US politicians and military men like MacArthur, Leahy, Halsey, Nimitz and Arnold say what you don’t like to hear, they are lying because they were “hardly likely to say later that killing a load of civilians was a great idea”, but when US politicians and military men say they were justified in killing loads of civilians, they are telling the truth, are they?
“Of course the Americans often got things wrong Randal and so did we. But we didn’t get them quite so badly wrong – at least not in the way the beasts in the Axis coalition did.”
You keep returning to Axis behaviour, but that has no bearing on whether or not the decision to drop bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki was right.
Perhaps you need to take a more detached view of the issue?
“You’ve clearly been very deeply affected by what happened.”
No, I haven’t been, as it happens. I try to avoid sentimentality in such issues. Deaths of people whom you don’t know (whether celebrities, or war victims) can only really affect you emotionally if you indulge in sentimentality. As for guilt, neither you nor I need to feel any guilt over any decision taken in WW2, since neither of us were involved in them.
For me, it’s just an ethical issue, and the only reason to feel strongly about it is because the myth that has been spread to justify the unjustifiable is used for propaganda purposes today (it fits into the general theme of US exceptionalism and western moral superiority, particularly in the modern western way of war).
Sean:
“I may be biased in this matter”
Why might you be biased in the matter?
By the way, Sean, I found this article on the Foreign Policy website interesting this morning:
The Lie That Screwed Up 50 Years of U.S. Foreign Policy
Obviously, anyone alert and interested in foreign affairs has known about the Jupiters for many years, but I found it interesting because it addresses a question I’d always wondered about: why did the Soviets so tamely let themselves be painted as weak when a leak of the Jupiter deal would have at least gone some way to redressing the balance?
(And obviously anything that helps to knock the absurd worship of JFK can’t be a bad thing.)
Apologies if this is too far off-topic on this thread, but I don’t think we have the ability to post new threads here, do we?
I don’t have time for another long screed, Randal, so I’ll try to be brief.
The basic problem here is that you, and Sean, and Smith, are making an assumption as to optimal outcomes. In particular, underwriting all your comments is the assumption that peace of any kind would have been preferable. You’re entitled to think that, but it’s not how military planners and nations have ever thought. It is also not at all clear that that was an optimal outcome.
The second assumption you are working with is a judgemental bias. So, the Allies are judged harshly for not trying to end the war on any terms, whereas the Japanese are not judged harshly for the same approach; there is at the very least a moral equivalence. The were prepared to carry on killing to get a war aim (total surrender); likewise the Japanese were prepared to carry on killing to get a war aim (conditional surrender). We have already ascertained that the Japanese were absolutely willing to carry on fighting if their terms (no occupation, no disarmament, no war crimes) were not on the table. And yet you resolutely refuse to lay any blame for the war’s continuation at the feet of the Japanese. We are in a position of one side (Allies) condemned for being willing to kill 150,000 to get their preferred result, but no condemnation of the other side being willing to kill millions to get their preferred result. This is simply raw bias on your part.
Additionally, there were valid reasons for the Allies wishing a total victory; leaving the Japanese regime intact after such collossal carnage, a regime whose barbarity was incomprhensible to us, tucked up safely at our desks, would have been a very reasonable and grave cause of concern to anyone fighting them. IT was simply not a situation in which one could say “peace on any terms”. The Allies needed a surrender; the Japanese were trying to hold out for an armistice. That is a big difference, after several years of total war. A primary concern for anyone would be to ensure that the Japanese could not regroup themselves and rise again. There comes a point in a war where just calling it quits and everyone going home is no longer an option. That point had been long, long passed.
Once the emergency of 1940 was over, it was plain we couldn’t actually lose the war. The only question was on what terms we chose to bring it to an end. Continuing it until the Americans and Russians were able to push us out of the way and carve the world up to their own liking was not in British – or world – interests.
As for the argument from morality, since we and the Americans claim to be better than everyone else, we do have an obligation to behave better than everyone else. So what if the Germans and Japanese would have dropped atom bombs on women and children? By our proclaimed standards, they were lesser breeds without the law.
“The basic problem here is that you, and Sean, and Smith, are making an assumption as to optimal outcomes.”
No, I’m not, and it beats me how you can write such nonsense only a few replies below my comment asking the question: “what would you do in Truman’s place?”
That piece makes it absolutely clear, beyond possibly misunderstanding, that Truman’s action was wrong even if you accept the “unconditional surrender” paradigm.
Presumably your answer to my question is that you’d have destroyed the two cities just in case, rather than wait a couple of weeks or stage a demonstration first. You must be proud of your firmness of mind and resolve.
“The second assumption you are working with is a judgemental bias. ”
As has been pointed out to you over and over again, Japanese behaviour or culpability is simply not an issue when considering the legitimacy or otherwise of Truman’s decision to destroy Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
I think “two wrongs don’t make a right” is such a basic ethical point that there must be an emotional reason why you are so determinedly incapable of applying it in this case.
“Additionally, there were valid reasons for the Allies wishing a total victory”
As I’ve noted above, resolving the issue of unconditional surrender is clearly not necessary to condemn Truman’s decision.
But perhaps you could discuss the wider implications of your adoption here of “the end justifies the means” as a justification for killing innocents.
What ends justify such means in your view? Is it limited by nation? Is it only British or US ends that can justify such means? Who decides what ends justify killing tens of thousands of civilians?
As for the argument from morality, since we and the Americans claim to be better than everyone else, we do have an obligation to behave better than everyone else.
…and from that reasoning comes much of the anti-western self-hatred that fuels the modern Left. You excuse everyone else, but hold your own to a perfect standard of morality, and thus they are always found wanting. And thus, the need for more “reform” and apologies for sins past and present, and so on.
The Allies behaved immeasurably better than the Nazis and Japs throughout the war and afterwards. But we were at war nonetheless, and that is a matter of killing people in nasty ways. There was simply no moral obligation to do any special favours for the Japanese; they got a good deal by any reasonable standard.
There’s one interesting thread repeating itself in the anti-Western commentaries on this, which is worth noting, which are claims that the Japanese just needed a face saving way out, and we are at fault for not giving them one. It really must be stressed that the Japanese were grown ups who started a major war in full knowledge of what losing it would mean; that once they started losing they would have liked to avoid the consequences does notmean they were enitlted to any forebearance. To use an example; if a man breaks into your house with the intention of murdering you, but you have a gun to hand and managed to subdue him, he is beyond the stage where he can say, “let’s find me a face saving way out of this”. He threw away his rights to consideration when he embarked on his aggression.
So let’s remind ourselves again; the Japanese got it easy. Far fewer died on both sides than they desired. They were occupied in a kindly manner, their nation rebuilt, that nasty little shit of an Emperor even got to keep his skinny rump on the thone; millions of their own people survived who would have died had they not been forced into surrender by the atom bombs. They could never even bring themselves to give a proper apology for their monstrosities. They are certainly not owed one by us.
As has been pointed out to you over and over again, Japanese behaviour or culpability is simply not an issue
Not for you it isn’t. It is for people looking at the whole picture, instead of trying to pretend that only white people do bad things.
“Not for you it isn’t. It is for people looking at the whole picture, instead of trying to pretend that only white people do bad things.”
I think with this smear you perhaps reveal something of the origin of your emotive response to this issue and inability to confront it rationally.
Of course, at no time have I suggested or even implied that “only white people do bad things”, still less “pretended” that it is the case, and nor do I believe such an absurd notion.
So what has triggered this falsehood on your part? Or are you Paul Marks in disguise and it was just a matter of habit?
Well, there must be some underlying belief you hold that excuses non-western peoples of culpability for their actions. What is it?
Allow me to suggest a reply for you, Ian B to allow you to stop digging (and I freely admit that I’m necessarily speculating as to your motivation):
Ian B: “Yes, on reflection I accept that I was overly concerned that if I were to admit that the US decision to destroy Hiroshima and Nagasaki was unjustified, and therefore that the act was a war-crime of significant proportions, it might be taken to imply that the Japanese were not themselves guilty of monstrous crimes.
I now realise that those concerns were exaggerated and therefore I am now able to accept that I was wrong and that the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki were in fact indefensible.”
Oh, my. You really are quite up yourself aren’t you, Randal?
I have yet to see alternative military tactics suggested (by Randal, Sean Gabb – or anyone else here) that would have led to fewer (not more) Japanese civilian deaths. A conventional invastion would clear have led to millions of Japanese civilain deaths – unless some fundementally new tactics are being suggesed.
I can not see any fundementally new tactics being suggested here – just Randal telling absurd lies about how the Japanese were just about to unconditionally surrender anyway and the evil Americans (led by the supposedly evil Harry Truman – in fact a rather ordinary shopkeeper from the mid West) wanted to kill large number of Japanese civilians for no good reason.
However…..
If Randal would only turn his attention to the conventional bombing of Japanese cities (which killed more people than the atomic bombings) he might be on stronger ground.
The policy of conventional “Area” bombing has already been tried in Germany – and had failed with the German capital (Berlin) having to be taken house-by-house by ground troops.
Area bombing also failed in the case of Japan (in spite of killing more people than the atomic bombs were to do) , resistance was actually more (repeat more) fanatical in Japan than it was in Germany – with resistance to the last being the state religion (State Shinto – fundementally different from the old shrine Shinto).
So if Randal (and Sean Gabb) wish to oppose the policy of conventional bombing of Japanese cities (on the grounds that such a policy had already failed in Germany – and it was reasonable to suppose it would fail in Japan) they might be on stronger ground.
However, to oppose the atomic bombings one would have to produce alternative mitiary tactics that would cause less (rather than more) civilian deaths.
This Randal does not do – instead he, I repeat, just comes out with a vast stream of lies worthy of Noam Chomsky. To judge by his intervention in this thread Sean Gabb supports these lies – although, I suspect, this is out of his usual sense of mischief (naughtyness) rather than out of any deep ideological committment to Chomsky-Randal.
By the way I repeat my own position (a case I have made many times – here and elsewhere over the years) that Japanese representatives should have been invited, under safe conduct, to observe a nuclear test – in the hopes that they might have got to the Emperor and got him to personally act (which he eventually did – but till after the atomic bombings).
I fully accept that my suggestion is very unlikely to have achieved anything (possibly a hundred to one chance) – but still, I believe, worth trying.
“Oh, my. You really are quite up yourself aren’t you, Randal?”
When I am on my own ground, as in this discussion, I am confident of that ground and my positions.
If we were discussing issues on which I am less knowledgeable and experienced (economics, say, or literature) I would be less so.
But given the hostility with which both you and Marks (the latter especially) responded to my position, I hardly think either of you are in any position to complain about a robust response. If you don’t like to take it, don’t dish it out.
Not that a hostile response was unexpected or unusual. As L Neil Smith points out in the original piece, this is one of those issues on which people do tend to respond angrily. Think about that for a while.
“I have yet to see alternative military tactics suggested (by Randal, Sean Gabb – or anyone else here) that would have led to fewer (not more) Japanese civilian deaths.”
What was this then?
“1 order your forces to hold off until after the Soviet entry, to see what changes that would bring to the Japanese negotiating position, or
2 order the first two bombs to be dropped in quick succession on uninhabited regions of Japan, to see what effect that would have upon the Japanese negotiating position when they were informed that the third would be dropped on Kyoto and the fourth on Tokyo?”
You might recognise it, if you’ve been paying attention. It’s the “alternative military tactics” specifically suggested by me on both this thread and the other one.
“Chomsky-Randal”
Idiot.
Perhaps, ande I’m just throwing this out here, when one orders the deaths of hundreds of thousands of people one should face a war crimes tribunal where the evidence and reasoning behind your decision can be dispassionately evaluated and your innocence proven beyond a shadow of a doubt.
But victors don’t have to go through that, do they? (Bush)
“Randal-Chomsky idiot” – if you use the “arguments” of Chomsky to advance the position of Chomsky, then there is nothing idiotic in comparing you to Chomsky.
“Soviet intervention” – the Soviets did not attack till after (not before) the first atomic bombing.
Of course an actual Soviet invasion of the main part of Japan would have led to the deaths of tens of millions of Japanese (not just during the fighthing – but afterwards during the collectivisation of land, which would have led to starvation).
“Drop atomic bombs in uninhabited areas….”
At last your score Randal – and you are correct, I missed your previous suggestion.
Obviously it should not have been the first two atomic bombs – it should have been the first one. If one blast in an unhabited area has no effect it is obviously pointless to try again.
Nor should an atomic bomb be dropped on Tokyo or Kyoto – as the Emperor might have been killed.
The Emperor was not a nice man (he very much was not a nice man) – but only the Emperor could trump the military government (and prevent millions of Japanese fighting to the death).
The chances of dropping an atomic bomb in an unhabited area having the needed “shock” effect?
One in a hundred? One in a thousand? One in a million?
But it should still have been tried.
At least I have long argued this – and thus can not suddenly oppose the idea just because you suggest it.
“But it should still have been tried.”
And that, in itself, is enough to establish that the bombings were unjustified (and to lay to rest the ridiculous view of the US regime as concerned primarily with humanitarian issues in its decision-making).
““Randal-Chomsky idiot” – if you use the “arguments” of Chomsky to advance the position of Chomsky, then there is nothing idiotic in comparing you to Chomsky.”
Of course there is. At best it is empty name-calling. At worst it is the fallacy of guilt by association. I’m a conservative, somewhat libertarian, somewhat nationalist, borderline racist and “homophobic” right-winger. Your views are probably closer to Chomsky’s than mine, overall.
““Soviet intervention” – the Soviets did not attack till after (not before) the first atomic bombing.”
But the fact of their imminent intervention was well known to the US regime. Truman famously wrote in his diary (17th July 1945), on receiving confirmation that the Russians were to enter the war: “Fini Japs when that comes about.” And he wrote in a letter to his wife the next day: “…I’ve gotten what I came for—Stalin goes to war August 15 with no strings on it…I’ll say that we’ll end the war a year sooner now”.
Randal – the fact that you do not regard the idea of Soviet intervention in Japan with utter horror (even knowing all the things that some 1940s politician from the midWest could not be expected to know) rather confirms what I have said about you.
I repeat – millions of Japanese would have died from an American conventional invasion. Had it been the Soviets (and a Soviet regime been set up in Japan) it would have been tens of millions.
keddaw:
“But victors don’t have to go through that, do they? (Bush)”
Not the senior ones, no.
Though in fairness, it’s very difficult to see how tribunals could be set up that could possibly try such people.
A lot of people who are concerned about the failure to try Blair over Iraq don’t realise that whilst his actions in conspiring to attack Iraq were undoubtedly war crimes in a moral sense, in fact he cannot ever be tried for that crime because there is simply no tribunal competent to try him.
Waging a war of aggression is – perhaps remarkably in view of the Nuremberg precedents – not a crime in English law. (I suspect that situation must have been very carefully protected by the British elites over the past half century, and it’s worth thinking about that).
And the international tribunal that was supposed to try that crime – the International Criminal Court – was specifically prevented from dealing with it until a structure could be put in place to ensure that US and British rulers would never face trial by it (initially by attempting to require that the Security Council – where they have a veto – must define when a crime has been committed).
The truth is that real power is generally above the law in such matters, and makes very sure it stays that way.
Paul Marks:
“Randal – the fact that you do not regard the idea of Soviet intervention in Japan with utter horror (even knowing all the things that some 1940s politician from the midWest could not be expected to know) rather confirms what I have said about you.”
Sigh. Nobody (except you) is even contemplating a Soviet invasion of the Japanese mainland, for goodness’ sake.
How on earth did you think they were going to get there, anyway? Massed flying pigs?
When I am on my own ground, as in this discussion, I am confident of that ground and my positions.
You might like to remember that I disproved all your main factual assertions in the last thread, leaving you with nothing but quoting others’ opinions as authority. For instance, if you had had sufficient knowledge to back up your confidence, you would not have asserted, repeatedly, that the only Japanese surrender condition was the status of the Emperor. And so on.
Secondly, we’ve shown that even your speculations are unsupportable; for instance, you have asserted that a demonstration of the A Bomb may have led to a Japanese surrender. But we can be sure that it would not, since they did not surrender after the first A Bomb devastated Hiroshima; as clear a demonstration as one could possibly have.
Really Randal, your confidence is just confidence in your own moral certainty. You are of course entitled to that, but you’d be wise to show a little humility after being so consistently wrong on factual (and counterfactual) matters.
The thing is, you’re committing a fallacy of comparing the real possibilities with an ideal. The Japanese were not going to surrender without conditions that were simply not ever going to be acceptable to the countries who had been fighting them for several years. So in the real world, it’s a question of which was better- the A Bombs or the carnage of a conventional forces invasion. Those were the practicalities of the situation.
The Soviets were certainly contemplating Soviet rule in Japan – and many people in the United States government (the same traitors who worked to bring Marxism to China) were eager to help them. And, of course, the British government has its own network of traitors also.
However, if we are talking about a Soviet invasion of Manchuria – that does not alter the fundemental position.
Certainly the Soviets could crush the Japanese in tank battles on the plains of Manchuria (that was proved long before 1945 – indeed there was Soviet attack in August 1939, which the world basically ignored).
The “Northern Faction” of the Japanese military (the faction that favoured war with the Soviets – rather than the Southern faction that favoured expansion into China and into the Pacfic) never really dealt with the basic problem that Japanese military doctrine had not really evolved from 1905 – masses of (fanatical) infantry might be enough to defeat the army of Nicky II, but against the tank armies (with their endless T34s – with their American Christie suspension systems) of the Soviets, they were useless.
Even the nature of Japanese infantry can be used against them. As General Slim discovered – the reason Japanese infantry move so fast is that they carry little supplies, that makes them a nightmare till one understands them (then one destroys everything in front of them – and they starve). The Soviets do not need to discover that form of warfare – they destroy everything as a matter of standard policy.
Personally I believe that the war of 1905 could have been won (had the Cossacks been given their head, rather than being used as conventional cavalry – and fully [and without reservation] allowed to operate behind Japanese lines to destroy communications and supplies, as they were, eventually, allowed to operate in the war of 1878 against the Ottomans) – but that is another debate, and Nicky regarded traditional Cossack tactics as “bestial” anyway (there is a reason he did not stay alive – he was not cut out for politics).
Still none of the above alters the fact that, without direct intervention from the Emperor, the Japanese in Japan would have faught to the death.
How to get this intervention is the puzzle.
If there is another way (apart from the use of the atomic option) I have not thought of it.
And it needs to be something the Emperor can “sell” to the public.
Remember the broadcast was not “I want to save my life” (the Emperor’s real motive) it was “we must endure the unedurable – in order to save civilisation…”
The dramatic nature of the mushroom clowd, whole cities destroyed by one bomb, was a vital part of his argument.
I was opposed to the Iraq war – not because I loved the socialist Saddam Hussain (a typical social justice type), but because I believed that democracy in Iraq was not worth the life of one British or American soldier (I still believe that) as the sort of regime that the Iraqi people would vote in would be, basically, vile. This position was (almost needless to say) denounced as “racist” and everything else ist. After all it was based on practical experience (a family friend served in Iraq in the 1930s – and told me, as a child, a lot of things about the culture – and it is has not improved).
However, the 2003 operation was not a “war of aggression” because, formally speaking, the conflict of 1991 had not ended.
There was a cease fire agreement in 1991 (which the Iraqi side violated before the ink was dry) but no formal peace. Therefore the British and American government could engage again whenever they pleased – without being guilty of any “aggression”.
Saddam had given up any rights he had (and I do not believe that post 1958 Iraqi regimes had any rights anyway) – the moment he ordered his forces into an ally of the United Kingdom and the United States. That he may have thought he had he had green light from the American Ambassador (I am a native English speaker – and the things this lady said appear utterly confused to me, so …… knows what it sounded like to Saddam) is not relevant.
“You might like to remember that I disproved all your main factual assertions in the last thread”
Why would I want to remember something that is basically your personal fantasy?
Of course you didn’t “disprove” anything – your points were repeatedly refuted, where they weren’t irrelevant or straw men.
You were obviously making it up as you went along, and your arguments were emotionally driven rather than intellectually, which meant you kept repeating things which had already been refuted. I followed my usual practice in such a discussion of eventually ceasing to repeat things which were repeatedly being ignored. I shall breach that personal guideline again, now, to deal below (*) with the two “examples” you gave here.
I fully expect you to ignore what I will write again, and repeat the falsehood that you have “disproved my points”. And the real irony is that the points you address are, as I have repeatedly pointed out to you, irrelevant to the basic point at issue between us – the morally indefensible nature of the bombings. That has already been established by your inability to provide any plausible reason why the bombings could not have been, first, delayed to establish what the Japanese response would be to the Soviet attack on 15th August, and second, replaced by demonstration bombings of uninhabited areas of Japan, with bombings of cities held as a threat in reserve.
You have produced, and have, no reasonable defence against these points, which also render entirely redundant the arguments (which you also have problems with) over the legitimacy of the unconditional surrender demand.
(*) Regarding your false claims to have”disproved” my points:
You wrote that I “have asserted that a demonstration of the A Bomb may have led to a Japanese surrender. But we can be sure that it would not, since they did not surrender after the first A Bomb devastated Hiroshima“.
In fact, the suggestion is of two demonstration bombings, since the claim made was that after the first one they might have believed that the US only had one bomb. The fact is that they did surrender after two atomic bomb strikes, so there’s no valid reason to suppose they might not have surrendered after two demonstration drops.
This specific correction was put to you in response to your previous occasion of making this false assertion, on the other thread, but characteristically you have ignored it and repeated the error, as I have little doubt you will do again, and will again claim to have “disproved my point” when you have done no such thing.
You also claimed: “if you had had sufficient knowledge to back up your confidence, you would not have asserted, repeatedly, that the only Japanese surrender condition was the status of the Emperor.” In fact, of course, I never stated what you attribute to me here. I suggested that: “if casualties (ours or theirs) were really the concern for those making the decision then the war could have been ended immediately with the acceptance of the emperor being left in place (which was done anyway in the end)”.
If you read carefully and try very hard to think rationally, you might see the difference, and understand why your claim to have “refuted” my assertion by referring to various wishful negotiating positions stated by various Japanese government figures is so absurd. What I wrote was a counterfactual assertion involving the likely action of a historical body. Such things are not provable or disprovable by reference to some “historical fact” as distinct from the statements and opinions of all those involved. The only way to assess them is in the light of all the available evidence, including the stated opinions and intentions of all those involved and including the overall circumstances and available alternatives. That’s what historians do, and all you can possibly end up with is the opinion of a historian.
In this case the stated opinions of Japanese officers are relevant, as are the actions of the Japanese government in the real circumstances, but so are the actions and stated opinions of other Japanese players, including the Emperor, and of those best placed to know the circumstances at the time.
In the end, we have your opinion that the Japanese could not have been persuaded to surrender, versus the opinion of some of those best placed to have an opinion on the ground at the time. Your opinion has the advantage of hindsight and access to internal Japanese deliberations, but the disadvantages of general ignorance on the period and circumstances, and evident strong personal emotional bias. Those quoted as having the other opinion have the advantages of proximity, and depth of understanding of the circumstances.
Again this is not a matter in which a final proof can be had, but the most you could claim is to have cast doubt on the certitude with which I expressed my opinion. We disagree.
“Still none of the above alters the fact that, without direct intervention from the Emperor, the Japanese in Japan would have faught to the death.
How to get this intervention is the puzzle.”
The counterfactuals can be argued endlessly, but at the end of all the argument the simple facts will still remain that there was no good reason not to delay the atomic bomb attacks until after the Russian entry, which the Combined Chiefs of Staff had stated would “finally convince the Japanese of the inevitability of complete defeat”, and find out then whether the Emperor would act, nor any good reason not to make the first two strikes against uninhabited territories and to tell the Japanese that the next two would be on cities and again see whether the Emperor would act.
There were, of course, bad reasons not to do these things, which I have previously highlighted. You can claim that these bad reasons were not, as I suggest they were, the motives behind the US action, but only by conceding (at its most charitable) the negligent slaughter of tens of thousands of innocents by Truman.
Having just written a comment (on another thread – but in relation to Randal) about controlling my anger – I will try to do so here.
Randal – please go and read “Blacklisted by History” by M. Stanton Evans. On the scale of agents-of-influence in the United States and Sentator McCarthy’s efforts to fight them (an effort that ended in his total destruction – his very name turned into a insult “McCarthyism” and generations of the people he tried to save, taught to despise him).
It is then possible that you will not write such things as there was no need to knock Japan out of the war “before the Soviet entry” into the war.
To quote Tolkien.
“Some people have to give things up, lose them, so that others may keep them.”
If the price of saving others (if only for a period of time – and in part) is to be hated for generations, to have one’s very name turned into an insult – and children taught to spit upon it.
Then it is a price worth paying.
However, I repeat, there is no justification for the mass (Area) conventional bombing of Japanese cities.
This policy had already been tried in Germany – and had failed to lead to the collapse of the Nazi regime.
There was no reason to suppose that mass conventional bombing of Japanese cities (which killed far more people than the atomic bombings) would have the needed “shock” value.
Randal: “Though in fairness, it’s very difficult to see how tribunals could be set up that could possibly try such people.” [Victorious leaders]
Difficult but not impossible. Most of the difficulty comes from the new leader not wanting to be held to the same standard so forgiving the previous leader. My personal view is that any leader who compromises the rights of any of his fellow citizens should step down as soon as the immediate emergency is over and put him/herself forward for prosecution. But I’m a dreamer.
As for WW2, I’m not as learned as many people here on this era, or anywhere near as interested in military strategy, but if pushed I would ask why no-one considered a swap of treasure for lives? Surely the US could have easily persuaded China and Russia to set up a blockade of all ships and planes into Japan? Starving a country of oil would appear to be a damn effective way of closing down the war machine. Coupled with a nice nuclear explosion a few miles off the coast of Tokyo it might lead to internal uprising and cost fewer (Japanese) lives, with less blood on US hands.
“Most of the difficulty comes from the new leader not wanting to be held to the same standard so forgiving the previous leader.”
In democratic countries, yes, where power tends to be held amongst a collegiate elite who protects each other in order to protect themselves. Most clearly exemplified in the Obama regime refusing to try the former US regime members for warrantless wiretapping and for torture and other security apparatus crimes, in order to protect their lower level apparatchiks and to set the precedent for how they in turn will be treated by the next lot of.rulers.
“My personal view is that any leader who compromises the rights of any of his fellow citizens should step down as soon as the immediate emergency is over and put him/herself forward for prosecution. But I’m a dreamer.”
I’ve had such dreams in the past. Such as any members of a government advocating or voting for a war having to automatically step down and face a tribunal after the war to determine that the war was truly necessary and honestly defensive in intent and in practice.
But in the end I’ve always had to face the fact that the laws would be drawn up by, and the members of any tribunal would be drawn from, the same ruling groups, with the same interests and biases as the people they were trying and would inevitably find ways to justify whatever had been done. And even juries will rarely apply the letter of the law against authority, such as against victorious war leaders.
You have only to look at how few policemen are ever even tried, let alone convicted, for killings in this country and (much more so) in the US.
You can see from the kinds of dishonesty and logical hoop-jumping that the apologists for the Iraq war engage in that there is always a way to rationalise the unjustifiable.
If it were not so, then those with power would never consent to be tried at all. Why should they, when there is no established precedent requiring them to do so? The British government collaborated in the trial of German leaders for waging aggressive war after WW2 and then the British establishment quietly “forgot” for 60 years to enact the same laws in their own country.
The U.S. Navy had already imposed a blockade of Japan – many thousands of Japanese were killed by aircraft and submarines sinking Japanese ships. The Japanese were prepared to fight on.
It would have been hopeless – most of the Japanese opposing a conventional American invasion (the mass civilian levy) would have been armed with little more than spears (which do not need oil) – they would have slaughtered in their millions. Those who refused to fight (even on the grounds that the military situation was totally hopeless) would have been killed by the regime, or forced to commit suicide (for example by jumping off cliffs – or being pushed off).
I also notice that Randal now seems to want Bush era people prosected for “warrentless wiretapping” – well the criminal justice system would be a bit overwhelmed, as (by your defintion of what “wireless wiretapping” would be) virtually everyone involved in intelligence work (for example at the NSA) would have to bearrested and charged, Not just in the Bush era – but now, and ever since these agencies were founded. Of course the Bush era people (who were rather more legalistic than government people tend to be) would argue that they did have warrents – but I doubt you would accept their definition of the term.
For example, standard observation of the internet is (by some definitions) “warrentless wire tapping” as the internet uses some things that are physically in the United States – so internet observation (even communication between two non American citizens both of whom the United States) can involve “warrentless wiretapping” of some things inside the United States. Ditto telephone conversations – if the connection involves something inside the United States.
Still – Randal has a point of view on this matter (or, at least, has stated a point of view), and it is a point of view that can be defended. Just dismantle the whole security system – on strict consitutional grounds (and, I repeat, that can be argued for).
Indeed so much information is gathered (by Fort M. and so on) that it can not really be examined (personal are just overwhelmed by all the conversatons and so on, and putting computers in charge just does not really work) – so, it could be argued, the whole process is rather pointless anyway.
What is not acceptable is for Randal to compare the British government at the time of the Iraq war to the Nazi government of World War II. Which he has just done.
The irony is, of course, that real Nazis do exist – but they are not to be found in the British government. They are to be found in the “Occupy” movement that a few people who have written on this very site, so admire.
Paul Marks, why would there need to be any invasion if the blockade is effective? China (and the US) would sit off the coast stopping oil and the USSR would do their thing. Deaths would be caused by the Japanese decisions and that, frankly, is their business. Intervening at that point is a whole desperate discussion, one I may not disagree with, but irrelevant to the situation at hand.
As a libertarian, would you force US soldiers to attack the Japanese islands, or would you allow shit to play out in order to keep the rest of the region safe from apparently mad people?
“Indeed so much information is gathered (by Fort M. and so on) that it can not really be examined (personal are just overwhelmed by all the conversatons and so on, and putting computers in charge just does not really work) – so, it could be argued, the whole process is rather pointless anyway.”
I know this is a widespread view, but personally I think it’s very over-confident. We are well past the point when technology is merely a huge aid to the security state, where most of our public movements are monitored and recorded (by cctv, anpr and online device monitoring), and we are getting towards the point when software will become a straight replacement for a lot of the intelligent (as well as mere observation and recording) work of the security forces. Technophilic libertarians blithely declare that tech advances will always be a net gain for liberty and that freedom-lovers will always be a step ahead of the government but I don’t think either is sufficiently true to resolve the real problem we face.
It was said of the totalitarian states of the past that they ran out of people to watch the rest of the population. That won’t be a problem in the future. Yes, there will be a competent and motivated few who can counter the state’s technology with their own, but they will be few and isolated. And once the nations of the world have been bullied into cooperation, there will be nowhere to run and nowhere to hide.
“What is not acceptable is for Randal to compare the British government at the time of the Iraq war to the Nazi government of World War II.”
Not acceptable to you and the rest of your obsessed ilk, perhaps, but I never have and never will kowtow to your attempt to maintain a taboo over the WW2 German government. To me, it’s just another vicious state regime like many others, and if it was a bit nastier than most (but not all), that’s mostly just a matter of opportunity.
keddaw.
I am not anarchocapitalist – but I am open to being convinced.
Give my your private enterprise plan to overthrow the Japanese regime (a hardened team of mercs perhaps) and I will look at it.
However, I know from experience that blockaids get denounced – even the limited sactions against Iraq (which did not even include food and meds) supposedly killed X zillion Iraqi civilians and were totally unacceptable…. By the way this argument was used to support the intervention of 2003 (which I have always believed was a mistake) “the sanctions can not be maintained, the pressure on us is too great…..”
There X zillion Iraqi civilians then returned to life to be killed again by the Americans when the conflict of 1991 (for which there had never been a real peace) resumed in 2003. Of course the real mass killings of Iraq civilians (by Islamists) never attracted any protests whatsoever from Western leftists.
This does not mean the the decision to overthrow the socialist Saddam Hussain in 2003 was the correct one (after all he was only replaced by another bunch of social justice people – this time from the Shia side of the street), but I would have liked to have seen at least one protest in a Western city about the real Iraqi civilians being killed in Iraq – killed by Islamist terrorists ,
Saddam was once fairly secular (Stalin, not Muhammed, was his great hero), but in his latter years he became, or pretended to become, more Islamist – writing a copy of the Koran with his own blood and engaging in other stunts, and opening the door to anyone who said they would fight his “infidel” enemies.
But it is not too late to organise such a protest – as Iraqi civilains are still being killed by Islamist terrorists (almost every day).
However I will not be holding my breath waiting for a protest in the West organised by the socialists (or the “libertarian left”) against the Islamist terrorism in Iraq that is killing civilians almost every day.
Randal.
I actually agree with your first point – technology is a tool (nothing more) it can be used for good and for ill.
However, your second point is that there was (and is) no fundemental difference between Western govenrments and National Socialist Germany, Between Winston Churchill and Adolf Hitler.
I doubt that you actually believe this stuff – you are just doing the Sean Gabb thing (“how do I shock stuffed shirts like Paul Marks” once he started to write about men cutting each other’s private parts off, for amusement, and asked me my opinion of the matter).
If I actually thought you believed the total nonsense you write (such as that there is no fundemental difference between Winston Churchill and Adolf Hitler) then, yes, I would be disgusted.
However, I have learnt that you people do not really believe in anything.