Posted on 08/19/2011 2:21:26 PM PDT by mojito
What ended World War II?
For nearly seven decades, the American public has accepted one version of the events that led to Japan’s surrender. By the middle of 1945, the war in Europe was over, and it was clear that the Japanese could hold no reasonable hope of victory. After years of grueling battle, fighting island to island across the Pacific, Japan’s Navy and Air Force were all but destroyed. The production of materiel was faltering, completely overmatched by American industry, and the Japanese people were starving. A full-scale invasion of Japan itself would mean hundreds of thousands of dead GIs, and, still, the Japanese leadership refused to surrender.
But in early August 66 years ago, America unveiled a terrifying new weapon, dropping atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. In a matter of days, the Japanese submitted, bringing the fighting, finally, to a close.
On Aug. 6, the United States marks the anniversary of the Hiroshima bombing’s mixed legacy. The leader of our democracy purposefully executed civilians on a mass scale. Yet the bombing also ended the deadliest conflict in human history.
In recent years, however, a new interpretation of events has emerged. Tsuyoshi Hasegawa - a highly respected historian at the University of California, Santa Barbara - has marshaled compelling evidence that it was the Soviet entry into the Pacific conflict, not Hiroshima and Nagasaki, that forced Japan’s surrender. His interpretation could force a new accounting of the moral meaning of the atomic attack. It also raises provocative questions about nuclear deterrence, a foundation stone of military strategy in the postwar period. And it suggests that we could be headed towards an utterly different understanding of how, and why, the Second World War came to its conclusion.
(Excerpt) Read more at boston.com ...
Looks like we're in agreement on that.
Now may I ask again (I'm not nagging, just have an interest): would you offer a definition of murder?
The historical definition of murder, as far as the State and social order was concerned, was the unlawful killing of members of your own nation.
Hence while in Deuteronomy 5 we have the Ten Commandments which include "[17] Thou shalt not kill", in the same book, in Deuteronomy 20 we have instruction on how to deal with the inhabitants of the Promised Land:
[16] But of the cities of these people, which the LORD thy God doth give thee for an inheritance, thou shalt save alive nothing that breatheth:The people of those nations whose customs, practices, and beliefs could not be permitted to contaminate Israelite culture, were to be destroyed completely.
[17] But thou shalt utterly destroy them; namely, the Hittites, and the Amorites, the Canaanites, and the Perizzites, the Hivites, and the Jebusites; as the LORD thy God hath commanded thee:
[18] That they teach you not to do after all their abominations, which they have done unto their gods; so should ye sin against the LORD your God.
[19] When thou shalt besiege a city a long time, in making war against it to take it, thou shalt not destroy the trees thereof by forcing an axe against them: for thou mayest eat of them, and thou shalt not cut them down (for the tree of the field is man's life) to employ them in the siege:
[20] Only the trees which thou knowest that they be not trees for meat, thou shalt destroy and cut them down; and thou shalt build bulwarks against the city that maketh war with thee, until it be subdued.
In Rome, murdering a fellow citizen was a serious offense, yet they had no problem killing the people of Carthage.
In the United States, we killed the Indians until their population was down to insignificant levels. If we hadn't, we would have had our own "Palestinian" issues.
My point is that, in order to pacify a situation, sometimes there is no alternative but to inflict such damage on an enemy society that they lose all interest in continuing the fight. Notice that WW-I had casualties being predominantly among men in the military, and Germany was back for a rematch in just 20 years; in WW-II we devastated cities and populations to the point where the German and Japanese people have lost all interest in war, which probably saved many lives in the long term.
Yours was a long reply, I'm going to answer in pieces as I have time.
That's the logic of your conclusion. It's very leftist and European. It means that any “civilian” killed in a war who is not directly related to the prosecution of the war is a murder and a war crime, and that the troops, the commanding officer, and the commander in chief who ordered the operation wherein the death occurred should all stand trial as criminals. Preferably, I suppose, under the auspices of some “international” tribunal.
WW2 was fought as a “total war,” meaning that the enemy population centers were targets. It was the axis powers who inaugurated this strategy.
I believe that US civilian and military leaders were justified in using any means in order to destroy Nazi Germany and fascist Japan. The hideousness and utter cruelty of these regimes and their political philosophy made their eradication a necessity if human liberty and Constitutional government were to survive.
That's my position.
Do you allow for NT scriptural and Christian Western legal philosophy here, or in your view, is that to be disqualified in favor of OT and secular imperial law?
And: I take it for a fact that, as you said, "The Japanese elites were unconcerned about casualties among the common people (as is common with elites around the world).
Is that a morally corrupt thing about elites? Or are you OK with that?
And if the Japanese elites' willingness to squander the the lives of a whole lot of people, including their own subjects, was morally reprehensible, then wouldn't the Soviets' approach have been morally superior to ours? After all, they would have hunted down and killed the Japanese elites and their families, whereas we tried to coerce the leaders by killing common Japanese people --- people whom the Japanese ruling class were actually willing to sacrifice, if their position could in some measure be secured?
| I do tend to pile up questions, but I'm just taking advantage of the fact that you think about them and answer them -- an unusual characteristic in FReeperdom--- :o) |
One more question, and then I'm off to do the dishes:
Is there such a thing as a right to life? Or can any number of innocent people be deliberately killed if one has, in his judgment, a good enough reason? IOW, does a good reason make the intentional killing of the innocent morally blameless?
Now, off I go.
Several points to be made.
1) The use of atomic weapons in WWII was moral and ethical and probably saved more lives/suffering than it consumed by an order of magnitude.
2) In order to understand the distinctions between murder and killing, one needs to understand legitimate authority and the justification in the use of deadly force.
3) WWII and the Pacific War especially are probably the best documented of all wars, in part because it was total war.
In total warfare, all elements of society are engaged in warfare with the opponent nation. Historically, there hasn’t been a war where there were more military casualties than civilian casualties. That’s why people form armies, navies, the military, and rally behind leaders. They are safer in well organized numbers than as disorganized mobs of individuals. Those who refused and preferred to fight an army on their own, as individuals, are generally never heard of again, except by those who bury their remains.
In total warfare, the war also tends to be a war of attrition. Operationally, destroying resources of an opponent implies the enemy has less resources to attack friendlies. This means we are using deadly force to influence the will and ability of an enemy from opposing our volition. We act within legitimate authority to impose our volition legitimately upon the enemy.
When Japan attacked the US at Pearl Harbor, she had not issued an ultimatum nor other negotiation by which any sane or rational person or government could comply with her volition. She engaged in a surprise attack with full knowledge and intent of destroying other nations in blatant disregard for human life or legitimate authority over those people.
At Hiroshima and at Nagasaki, both instances were in states of Total War between combatants and both cities had operational and strategic import for their placement on target lists in a campaign to ultimately cause the defeat and unconditional surrender of Japan to the US and Allied powers.
The atomic bombs developed were not specifically designed to be indiscriminate weapons. Nobody gave criterion to mad scientists to build something that would not discriminate in who might be injured by them. They were designed to cause as much blast and destruction as possible for a given payload. Their scarcity also implied their extreme value in operational deployment, but as revolutions in military warfare, they also contained valuable psychological import.
Even in Vietnam, until computer based bombadier sights were developed circa the mid 1980s, delivery of airborne ordnance to pinpoint targets was not very accurate. If somebody needed a bridge taken down, like those in Vietnam, numerous sorties were flown with unsuccessful results.
The atomic weapons being developed and deployed in Japan made it clear and obvious to senior decision makers that resolute willpower would still be inadequate to resist American invasion of the Japanese homeland.
I strongly dispute the assertion that this is leftist conclusion. Leftists justify the killing of the innocent, or shall we say noncombatants, in theory and in practice, all the time: they kill civilians, captives, class enemies; they deny there is any objective moral law which would classify this as murder; they assert that anything can be justified by consequences, especially (in their "long" view) "progress," a "better human future," and "the judgment of History."
As for the distinction between innocent and guilty being a "European" thing, I will accept that label, if by that we mean these distinctions are at the heart of the moral tradition of the Christian West.
I think maybe you have conflated the collateral deaths of civilians (which are foreseen but not intended), with the deliberate targeting of civilians. These two things are not the same and not even similar. It is a point very important in the thinking of Western Civilization; one which the U.S. affirmed in the U.S. Army Field Manual, and one which the Allies insisted upon at, for instance, Nuremberg.
It is true that the Axis power initiated the policy of total war involving the murder of civilians. That is one of the main reasons why we say the Axis powers were morally depraved.
It is hard to see what "human liberty" means if innocent persons have no right to life. The whole moral justification of a good soldier (I'm thinking of my son, who served in Iraq) and their leaders, is that their intention is to shield the innocent, and smash the aggressor.
Another interesting tidbit is that the USSR denied the US from using Soviet land bases from which to launch any airstrikes or assault upon Japan, while the US gave volumes of material supplies and weaponry to the Soviets to fight the Germans. That’s the same Russians who had also made a pact with Germany to oppose GB earlier in the war until Hitler also attacked the USSR.
“Then why did the Japanese air force put up no resistance to our massive bombing campaign with conventional and atomic bombs at this time in 1945.”
The Japs were holding their remaining capital for the invasion.
I don’t know of any first hand account in Amphibious Warfare Planning which believed an all out invasion upon the Mainland of Japan was a guaranteed success.
Statistically, the number of casualties for every significant amphibious assault against a fortified shore had doubled fro about the past 7 island campaign landings leading up to and including Okinawa.
1 million friendly casualties were conservative estimates from the Mainland Japan assault with provisos of steeper resistance since the enemy would have their backs against the wall and no other foreign invader had ever successfully assaulted the Mainland in her history.
Logistically, it appeared to be feasible, but also remember the American people had been at total war approaching 4 years and politically our resources also were beginning to dwindle.
There were many after Tarawa who questioned if amphibious warfare was a valid operational tactic.
IMHO, the Germany First policy later influenced by the Yalta then Potsdam Conferences did more to influence the Japanese position in the war. Without Germany, Japan didn’t have the resources to resist total war against the Axis Powers and the American use of Atomic power made the decision more intuitive.
WW-I was a particularly stupid war. It happened because all these politicians had made treaty commitments to other politicians, and just one spark dragged everybody into years of senseless slaughter. The best of the men of the 1900 generation were tossed into the meat grinder, and nobody stepped back and said "Wait! This is insane! Why are we doing this?"
One particularly loathsome thing that stuck me when reading about WW-I was the Order of the White Feather. Thousands of women went around England handing white feathers, as a symbol of cowardice, to able-bodied young men who had not volunteered for the military. It was to shame yet more men to jump into the meat grinder. The women, I guess, thought it was the thing to do. They paid little personal cost from the war, and stood to gain some benefit if the preservation of the British Empire caused the economy to stay good.
After WW-2, the women who had been subjected to bombings, fires, and hunger (plus rape from the advancing Soviet Army if you were in Germany or Eastern Europe) could be relied upon to react with terror and horror at any mention of war, rather than handing out white feathers. This was likely a factor in the relative peace that prevailed in Europe post-WW2.
You got something against art?
I think if we took all the liberal collage professors with a little SuperGlue, we could make an amazing piece of art. ;^)
(just imagine what it would look like with liberal college professors!)
I'm one of those people who thinks that the NT attitude was viable primarily in the context of the Roman Empire, in that it's all fine to talk about total pacifism and submitting to authority, when that did not present an existential threat. You can be a pacifist as long as you are surrounded by non-pacifists who are willing to kill (and die) to maintain the safety of the common people.
Once the Roman Peace went away, Christianity had to undergo some transformations, in that the feudal lords had to protect their people from various raiders, pirates, and bandits, and not be seen as sinners for so doing.
My moral philosophy on the subject of violence can be summed up as:
1) Do not be the one to initiate or threaten violence.2) If a threat appears, do what's necessary to eliminate the threat, using the minimum level of violence that will permanently terminate the threat.
3) While using excessive force may be immoral, using an inadequate level of force (ie, a level of force that does not dissuade future aggression) is stupid and puts your loved ones at risk.
I don't believe the record supports this view. Hiroshima and Nagasaki both contained military assets, which is why they were targeted, after a lengthy debate in which the extent of civilian casualties was a major consideration. If civilian deaths was the goal, the bombs would have been dropped on Tokyo, Osaka, or Kyoto, all with greater civilian populations. Kyoto, in particular, was not targeted because of humanitarian considerations.
Furthermore, I don't believe that heads of state can commit the crime of murder against the civilians of another nation with whom they are at war. Murder is a crime that exists only within the jurisdiction of the laws of a state, not between states.
Your views are those primarily adopted by 20th century pacifists, although you don't seem to be one yourself. They are not supported by the “laws of war,” such as they are, as they have been expounded since the 17th century.
Presumably, the Japanese would have wanted to avoid Soviet occupation of the main islands.
We demanded unconditional surrender from Japan.
So either there was a secret deal to prevent Soviet occupation, or Stalin's declaration of war wasn't a major factor.
That’s funny. You’re killin me! You also are a good sport.
I would be far more comfortable dropping a bunch of JDAMs on the homes of the people who run a country than in slaughtering a bunch of conscripts in uniform.
Define "innocent". Is the manager of a munitions factory more innocent than a soldier? Is a mother who marches in support of a war, and hands out white feathers to young men who do not want to serve, innocent? Are a group of muslims who send money to jihadist causes innocent?
Conversely, is a man guilty of a crime if he finds that the only way to protect his people is to incinerate an enemy city? That was the thing that prevented the Soviets from rolling over us, the certainty that we would incinerate their part of the world if they pushed.
"1) Atomic weapons …probably saved more lives/suffering than it consumed."
I take it then that you are a consequentialist: that you hold that no act is wrong in itself, but any act can be justified on the basis of its consequences.
(Is this your belief? If not, tell me what and why.)
If so, I would be interested in what sort of consequences count for you: is it a calculation of the number of human lives saved or ended, and that's all? Can this calculation have any cut-off point in time, or does it extend indefinitely?
Or do you, like the utilitarians, gauge "good" and "evil" by the increase or decrease of pleasure and pain? The promotion of an advanced civilization, and the suppression of a barbarous one? Or is it the kind of consequentialism that computes the number of people whose preference is satisfied by that action? Do moral and cultural consequences count, the suppression of depravity (e.g. Canaanites and their child sacrifices to Moloch, marriage by bride-capture, entertainment by pederasty) or the promotion of elevated values (the Reformation, Democracy, a Catholic realm for the Catholic monarchs, the Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere, the Workers’ Paradise?)
These aren't idle points, as I think that ordinary bad men usually only do a very moderate number of homicides and are satisfied with that. They're not consequentialists. But to rack up a truly large number of noncombatants killed, you generally have to be a "good" man or men: a government, or a religious movement, or a very, very high idealist, with a complete sense of justification that the good consequences outweighed regrettable but realistic expedients like "killing the innocent."
2) In order to understand the distinctions between murder and killing, one needs to understand legitimate authority and the justification in the use of deadly force."
Legitimate authority is one of the criteria which must be satisfied in the decision of entering into war, but it’s not the only one. The bombing of Pearl Harbor was clearly an act of aggression and justified the US House of Representatives making a declaration of war. Yet satisfying those two criteria for jus ad bellum (just cause and just authority at the outset) doesn’t mean that subsequently anything and everything is justified (jus in bello). What was justified at that point, was physically destroying Japan’s military forces.
(I think you have noticed that I am not arguing for pacifism here. Good. I am convinced that pacifism is a false doctrine, and also an extraordinarily harmful one: unusually harmful for a thing that sounds so noble.)
3) WWII … was total war…all elements of society are engaged.
I dispute that. Even if a regime is whipping up the total populace to make total war, it is in fact not so. In actual fact, many or even most people are still doing things which are unaggressive and morally blameless: the farmer farms, the mother mothers, the just man (as Hopkins says) justices: makes a distinction between good and evil.
It might be argued that sometimes it's devilishly hard to figure who and what is a military asset. Of course: every time you draw a line, there are some things that are borderline cases, and some things that are far to one side, or far to the other. But that is not an excuse for drawing no line at all. Normally, people act normally. (There's a good maxim.) And so normally, the wood-hauler is hauling wood,which he must do be there peace or war. If there are IED's hidden in the woodpile, all bets are off: blow 'em sky high. But to kill everyone in the countryside, or everyone in the city, by intent: that's murder.
Or if not, what is murder?
When I spoke of NT and Christian Western legal philosophy, I was not speaking of pacifism. I do not believe pacifism is a NT doctrine; I believe it is a false doctrine; and while all false doctrrines are harmful in some sense, pacifism is really significantly harmful because it stops rational discussion on what is right and wrong in war. It leads to an attitude of all or nothing (Killing is evil! I don't kill. So go ahead and knife my granny!" ~or, more likely~ "Killing is evil! But I'm not all that goshdarn noble and good, so if it comes to that, I'll knife YOUR granny, and your unborn baby too, because all's fair in love and war and I'm no Francis of Assisi."
Fact is, not all killing is evil. Sometimes killing is just; physical forceful struggle is very often just; failing to do so is sometimes thoroughly corrupt. So the hard work has to be done, the hardest work: drawing the line.
Your points are respectable I think (not wanting to comb through for every possible nuance) BUT: intentional killing of the innocent is always murder.
If that's not murder, then what is murder?
And murder is something you actually must not do.
Unfortunately we do not live in a world where pure points of doctrine exist. Often it is a case in war where every choice is doctrinally "evil".
The notion that there is some sort of pure doctrine that can be imposed in all cases is an interesting class room exercise, it is extremely naive in dealing with problems in the real world.
Your argument rests of false notions of moral equivalence. That some how the Japanese and the Americans were on an equal moral plain. No they were not. The Japanese were the aggressors. It is a total sophistry to assign them to the same moral plain as the victims of their aggression.
This is one of the absurdities of modern theologians. They want to argue that it was some how immoral to use the Hiroshima/Nagasaki bombs. That we could of “Besieged” the Japanese.
That utter nonsense. The infrastructure of the Japanese islands was breaking down. Japan could not feed it self and rely ed on food imports. Instead of killing Japanese Civilians in the tens of thousands. The Leftist “Siege” would of killing millions from disease, starvation and malnutrition. EVEN then there is NO indication that would of broke the Japanese will. Japanese soldiers hung on various pacific islands for decades after WW 2 ended. Even after the bombs dropped die hard militarists tried to stop the Emperor from surrendering.
Then their is the question. What response would the Japanese been to an invasion and occupation. The Left screams about the Iraqis “Insurgency” what do you suppose a Japanese Insurgency would of done? Also, who knows if the Japanese would of survived as a people? The Civilian and Military casualties on Siapan and Okinawa were horrific. Give the intensifying tempo of suicide attacks,the fire power brought down on the Japanese Home Island prior to and during an Invasion would of killed tens of thousands if not millions of civilians as well as military forces.
So while remaining doctrinally "pure" you would of been guilty in fact of genocide.
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