War Is Terrorism, With A Bigger Budget

Byrnzie

http://electronicintifada.net/v2/article4690.shtml

'...As for "terrorism", which he defines as "random violence against non-combatants", he distinguishes it from "collateral damage" with the assertion that the latter "involves knowingly killing innocent civilians" while "Terrorism involves intentionally killing innocent civilians", concluding that "the moral difference is too academic even for an academic." Why, then, is "terrorism" considered to be particularly morally repugnant, while "collateral damage" tends to be taken in our moral stride?

"Imagine trying to make such a claim. You say: 'To achieve my objectives, I would certainly drop bombs with the knowledge that they would blow the arms off some children. But to achieve those same objectives, I would not plant or set off a bomb on the ground with the knowledge that it would have that same effect. After all, I have planes to do that, I don't need to plant bombs.' As a claim of moral superiority, this needs a little work."

catefrances

Byrnzie wrote:

http://electronicintifada.net/v2/article4690.shtml

'...As for "terrorism", which he defines as "random violence against non-combatants", he distinguishes it from "collateral damage" with the assertion that the latter "involves knowingly killing innocent civilians" while "Terrorism involves intentionally killing innocent civilians", concluding that "the moral difference is too academic even for an academic." Why, then, is "terrorism" considered to be particularly morally repugnant, while "collateral damage" tends to be taken in our moral stride?

"Imagine trying to make such a claim. You say: 'To achieve my objectives, I would certainly drop bombs with the knowledge that they would blow the arms off some children. But to achieve those same objectives, I would not plant or set off a bomb on the ground with the knowledge that it would have that same effect. After all, I have planes to do that, I don't need to plant bombs.' As a claim of moral superiority, this needs a little work."

hang on what?? theres a difference between knowingly killing innocents and intentionally killing innocents?? so if i know im gonna kill someone that shows if not intent, then just indifference. oh i get it now. :roll:

Byrnzie

Interesting article here on the subject of violence and terrorism:

http://www.counterpunch.org/neumann01132009.html

Slave Revolts and Passionate Evasions
Hamas and Gaza

January 13, 2009

By MICHAEL NEUMANN

This time, Americans disgusted with Israeli's treatment of the Palestinians are not an isolated few. Even among American Jews, the outrage is palpable, and the trickle of condemnation has become a deluge. Some polls indicate that almost as many American join in this condemnation as repudiate it. So there is an opportunity here; a chance that Americans will outgrow their infatuation with Zionism and Israeli 'democracy'. That might possibly mean relief for Palestine.

Or not. The old attitudes and biases are still dominant, and something in all the indignant protest undermines its chances of capturing mainstream opinion. It seems that, when the rights and wrongs of a situation are unclear, sympathy doesn't go very far. That, presumably, is why no one gives too much of a shit that three or four million innocent people have been killed in the Congo's unspeakable but obscure conflicts. Why then are we so upset about the suffering of the Palestinians? Why are we so sure that Israel is monstrously so monstrously in the wrong? It may seem that these questions have been answered in abundance, but they haven't. Instead, people who, often for legitimate but rather personal reasons, have focused on the Israel/Palestine conflict, rant at one another as if they were confronting the issues. But they aren't, and this does not play well in the mainstream. To grasp the opportunity before us, we need to be a bit more frank about the events we deplore. What follows tries to indicate, first, what has been evaded, and second, how the evasions can be overcome.

Part I: The Evaders

It's only human to shrink from hard choices. Current leftist writing on Gaza shrinks from an easy choice. A hard choice would be whether to fight for Hamas. An easy one would be whether, in safety and comfort, to speak honestly about what Hamas actually does. This isn't happening.

It needs to happen, and not out of some puritanical concern for honesty. Current writing on Gaza is crippled by cop-outs when it comes to Palestinian resistance. Hamas fires rockets which it knows can harm only innocent civilians, including children, who certainly bear no responsibility for Palestinian woes. Even the adults often bear little if any responsibility - some are Israeli Arabs, others are opposed to Israel's occupation, others are apolitical, which may be reprehensible but probably isn't deserving of violent death.

Every fifth-rate mainstream commentator notices this. Some of them recoil at the anguish engulfing Gaza. However they also know that nations and populations have a right to defend themselves. When someone sets out to kill innocents, or to fire weapons which can only be expected to kill civilians, that right looms large. In response to this, the left has, with great sincerity and passion, changed the subject. This hurts the Palestinians. Their defenders come over as anything from merely blinkered to cowardly, manipulative or, most often, selectively and implausibly tender-hearted. This doesn't capture hearts and minds; it just invites contempt.

Every kind of evasion surfaces.

Tariq Ali ("From the ashes of Gaza", Guardian, 30 December) is among the most adept. We hear that the attack on Gaza is timed to influence Israel's elections, that Israel's collective punishment of Gaza has to be considered when the rockets are called a provocation, that the supposedly democratic West doesn't accept democratic r?gimes it dislikes, that Hamas shows discipline in its cease-fires, that Palestinians are human beings. How does any of that justify the rocket attacks, which harm and try to harm people entirely innocent of Israeli crimes? (Let's not join American military creeps and talk about unintended 'collateral damage' here.) Apparently none of it does: "All civilian deaths are to be condemned, but since Israel is their principal practitioner, Euro-American cant serves only to expose those who utter it." Oh really? If Hamas' attacks are to be condemned, something Tariq Ali seems to be doing at the length of a fifty-foot pole, why shouldn't Israel try to stop them?

Richard Falk ("Understanding the Gaza Catastrophe", The Huffington Post, 2 January 2009) suggests Israel attacked "not simply to stop the rockets or in retaliation, but also for a series of unacknowledged reasons" - not just election opportunism but also a desire to efface the defeat in Lebanon. But so what if Israel has unacknowledged, perhaps lousy reasons? Maybe it also has good reasons. Maybe defending its innocent civilians is one of them.

Joseph Massad goes beyond mere evasion by writing on the situation without even mentioning rockets or missiles. ("The Gaza Ghetto Uprising", 4 January 2009) Oren Ben-Dor (The self-defense of Suicide", Counterpunch, 1 January 2009) very plausibly argues that Israel's strategy is self-defeating - which hardly explains why Hamas should attack civilians. Robert Fisk takes a similar tack: "Yes, Israel deserves security. But these bloodbaths will not bring it." ("Leaders lie, civilians die, and lessons of history are ignored", The Independent, 29 December 2008) Again, the attacks are not explained, nor is there anything beyond mere assertion to dismiss the possibility that Israel's response will bring, if not security, at least an end to the rocket fire.

Some think fiery rhetoric will do: "Let us get one thing perfectly straight. If the wholesale mutilation and degradation of the Gaza Strip is going to continue; if Israel's will is at one with that of the United States; if the European Union, Russia, the United Nations and all the international legal agencies and organizations spread across the globe are going to continue to sit by like hollow mannequins doing nothing but making repeated "calls" for a "ceasefire" on "both sides"; if the cowardly, obsequious and supine Arab States are going to stand by watching their brethren get slaughtered by the hour while the world's bullying Superpower eyes them threateningly from Washington lest they say something a little to their disliking; then let us at least tell the truth why this hell on earth is taking place."

And what is this truth? We get one mention of the rockets: "Islamist policies and politics.... have nothing to do with primitive rockets being fired over the border." But the Israeli assault? Does that have nothing to do with the rockets? Focus, focus.

This could go on for many pages. The articles are decent and humane yet, for all their deep sincerity, dishonest as well. The truth is we are all prepared to see children maimed and screaming to further the goals we approve. The first and most important thing we cannot face is our own morality.

Ever since World War II it has been crystal clear that, if defeating evil involves air power, we will bravely let the children scream. We know their fate but we're stuck with endorsing contemporary military responses to genocide and even mere aggression. In this respect it is we, not Bush or the neocons, who seem out to give Israel carte blanche. If someone is rocketing our cities, however inefficiently, are we to wait until their technology improves, or our population displays an appropriate number of bloody stumps? And if the enemy is lodged in a densely populated area, must we hold off? It seems not - otherwise why can we bomb strategic targets even when we're certain that civilians will die in the process?

It is beyond obvious that violence is sometimes justified. In some cases, we undoubtedly sanction the use of air power, a clumsy standoff weapon almost guaranteed to kill and mutilate civilians. Hamas uses exactly this sort of standoff weapon. What's more, Hamas, for the sake of military convenience, has adopted a weapon even more certain to detonate among civilians than when brave anti-fascist pilots took off to fight a genocidal Nazi regime. Jennifer Lowenstein gets it precisely wrong: "Slave owners were also human beings, some of whom suffered unjustifiably violent attacks at the hands of their slaves. What do we do with this information? Sum it up by saying "therefore both sides were wrong"? or try to make people understand what led slaves to lash out in ways that were often so brutal? This changes the entire equation without sanctioning acts of murder or violence." No, we do indeed sanction acts of murder and violence, in just such circumstances.

These evasions are just what make the defenders of the Palestinians look like sleaze next to the forthright pigs who revel in the brutality we merely try to sneak by our audience. It doesn't work; it has never worked; it never will work. We all live in the same world and we all know what goes on in it, and how brutal we have become. We cannot and will not go back, not in this millennium. What is happening in Gaza is indeed a horror, and indeed terribly, incontrovertibly wrong. But to show this requires using the morality we have, not the morality we like to pretend we have.

Part II: Credible Condemnation

It is no good saying Israel provoked the rocket attacks; the attacks harm people who had nothing to do with the provocation. It is no good saying Israel's tactics are atrocious, because neither we nor Hamas forswear atrocious tactics. We share this callousness with anyone who has ever endorsed any modern war or armed operation, or who ever would do so. Since these claims will invite a 'who's we?', the point needs belabouring: if you aren't against twiddling your thumbs through the Rwandas and Mauthausens and Nankings of history, you're for atrocities on some occasions, or you're in denial about what it means to participate in a real war. It is wishful thinking to suppose that we are in a moral position to complain about IDF tactics. The vilest of Israel's defenders are absolutely right when they say that the IDF is less brutal than some militaries which have been feted as heroes: when Berlin fell in 1945, for instance, as many as 150,000 civilians lost their lives. Even the most humane armies can be counted on, under pressure, to turn inhumane.

For our purposes, then, the morality of war turns not on its conduct but on the reasons for fighting. Iraq and Afghanistan offer proof that good intentions don't make for good reasons: when well-meaning idiots kill multitudes on the basis of faulty intelligence and twisted idealism, good intentions are no excuse at all. As for any alleged good consequences which might justify a war, we really have no idea what the ultimate consequences are in most cases, and certainly in this one. So the only way of assessing the rights and wrongs of this war, and most wars, is to fall back on the most universally accepted of all moral standards - a right of self-defense.

It's not complicated. The Palestinians in the occupied territories are in a state equivalent to slavery. The Palestinian Authority in the West Bank and Hamas in Gaza are not sovereigns. Israel has supreme authority in both areas. That means it can do literally whatever it likes to their inhabitants. This population has no political input whatever into their sovereign's decisions; the Palestinians in the occupied territories can't vote in Israeli elections. So the Israeli government has absolute power over these people, and they have no say at all in how they are treated. This is slavery without the muss and fuss of ownership. Slave revolts frequently involved the murder of innocent civilians, but I haven't seen much hand-wringing about the terrible morals of the rebels. Slaves and occupied peoples are accorded very generous rights of resistance. I doubt anyone today would condemn antebellum slaves on a plantation outside Charleston if they had used indiscriminate standoff weapons against that city. Allegedly freedom-loving Americans should therefore be particularly sympathetic to Palestinian resistance.

But what of Israel's right of self-defense? It exists, but it doesn't apply.

Israel, when it conquered the occupied territories in 1967, could have established a sovereign Palestinian state. This would have made the Palestinians, not a subject people at the mercy of their conqueror, but an independent people, responsible for their own acts and for keeping the peace with other sovereign states. Had the Palestinians then attacked Israel, Israel would have had the right to respond in self-defense.

But Israel didn't do that. Instead, it kept the Palestinians at its mercy, and its mercy didn't materialize. Israel embarked on a settlement policy that amounted to a declaration of war on a helpless population. The settlements were part of a project to take the Palestinians' land, all of it, for the use and enjoyment of the Jewish people. Of course Israel did not explicitly say it was going to take from the Palestinians the very ground on which they stood. But the settlements kept spreading, mopping up an increasing share of vital resources, and behind them was a settler movement, hugely powerful not only in the occupied territories but in Israel itself. This bunch of coddled fanatics, many of them American, quite openly proclaimed their determination to secure the whole of Biblical Israel for exclusively Jewish use. The Israeli government backed these racial warriors with unlimited military protection and extensive financial support.

These trends continue to the present day. Sure, Israel got the settlers out of Gaza, and I'm convinced that even Ariel Sharon, not to mention his successors, truly desired to resolve the conflict by withdrawing from the occupied territories and allowing something like a Palestinian state. But my convictions have no weight against what any reasonable Palestinian, or any reasonable human being, has to conclude: that given the continued strength of the settler movement, the continued popularity of the Israeli right, the continued military protection of the West Bank settlements, their continued expansion, and the Israeli government's all-too-obvious readiness to fight for whatever is politically popular to the last drop of Palestinian blood... given all this, the Palestinians are still faced with a mortal threat. They are still faced with a sovereign whose intentions, if not entirely clear, clearly countenance alternatives leading to an extreme humanitarian disaster for the Palestinians, and perhaps to the entire expropriation of most Palestinians' necessities of life.

This means that Israel is the aggressor in this conflict, and the Palestinians fight in self-defense. Under these circumstances, Israel's right of self-defense cannot justify Israeli violence. Israel is certainly entitled to protect its citizens by evacuation and other non-violent measures, but it is not entitled to harm a hair on the head of a Palestinian firing rockets into Israeli cities, whether or not these rockets kill innocent civilians.

Self-defense gives you the right to resist attacks by any means necessary, and therefore, certainly, by the only means available. The Palestinians don't have the option of using violence which hits only military targets - apparently even the Israelis, with all their intelligence data and all their technological might, don't have that option! But suppose a bunch of thugs install themselves, with their families, all around your farm. They have taken most of your land and resources; they're out for more. If this keeps up, you will starve, perhaps die. They are armed to the teeth and abundantly willing to use those arms. The only way you can defend yourself is to make them pay as heavy a price as possible for their siege and their constant encroachment on your living space. You're critically low on food and medical supplies, and the thugs cut off those supplies whenever they please. What's more, the only weapons available to you are indiscriminate, and will harm their families as well as the thugs themselves. You can use those weapons, even knowing they will kill innocents. You don't have to let the thugs destroy you, thereby sacrificing your innocents (including yourself) to spare theirs. Since innocents are under mortal threat in either case, you needn't prefer the attackers' to your own.

This may not be the most high-minded conclusion. However it's a conclusion we are forced to accept - we who very clearly countenance the killing and maiming of civilians in situations not nearly so precarious as what it is to be a Palestinian in the conquered, shrinking occupied territories. The thugs should keep their families from harm by ceasing their onslaught and withdrawing from the scene. Israel's obligation is similar. It must defend itself at the least cost to others. It should keep its families from harm by giving the Palestinians complete control of their external borders and allowing the creation of a Palestinian state. After this, if Israel is attacked, it can respond. Before, its response is not legitimate self-defense but continued aggression.

This is not about good and bad arguments for Palestinian resistance. It's about whether the defenders of the Palestinians want to vent, or whether they want to at least try to make a difference. If the bad or evasive arguments are effective, fine. My feeling is, they're not.

Michael Neumann is a professor of philosophy at Trent University in Ontario, Canada. Professor Neumann's views are not to be taken as those of his university. His book What's Left: Radical Politics and the Radical Psyche has just been republished by Broadview Press. He contributed the essay, "What is Anti-Semitism", to CounterPunch's book, The Politics of Anti-Semitism. His latest book is The Case Against Israel. He can be reached at: <!-- e --><a href="mailto:mneumann@trentu.ca">mneumann@trentu.ca</a><!-- e -->

yosi

I think you misunderstood my point. WW2 was a morally justified war for the Allies to fight. That does not mean that all the actions taken by the Allies were moral.

Best of Times

TriumphantAngel wrote:

yosi wrote:

I personally don't find the quote to be offensive, but I can see how the mod could think that the quote implies that soldiers = terrorists, and is therefore offensive. My problem with the quote is that it is naive. "Terrorism" implies a negative moral judgement, but I think it is quite plain that there is such a thing as morally justified warfare. Would anyone today argue that the Allies were wrong to go to war with Nazi Germany? I don't mean to imply that war is ever a good thing, but it unfortunately is sometimes necessary, a fact that this quote utterly obscures.

over 50 million people died in ww2

ww2 wasn't just about nazi germany. do the victims of Hiroshima and Nagasaki come under your definition of morally justified warfare too?

Yes. Unfortunately, the victims of a nation's aggressive gov't are sometimes the innocent citizens of that same nation. Fat Man and Little Boy ended WWII in the Pacific, rendering a land invasion by American forces unnecessary, saving American lives, and is therefore morally justified.

Drowned Out

Best of Times wrote:

Yes. Unfortunately, the victims of a nation's aggressive gov't are sometimes the innocent citizens of that same nation. Fat Man and Little Boy ended WWII in the Pacific, rendering a land invasion by American forces unnecessary, saving American lives, and is therefore morally justified.

Intentionally targeting civilians in order to shorten a conflict is a fucking war crime, a crime against humanity....it is most certainly NOT morally justified. It is telling that you justify saving the lives of American SOLDIERS, by killing Japanese CIVILIANS.

Everyone from Eisenhower to Macarthur to Einstein, to seven of the Manhattan project scientists, have all gone on record as agreeing that it was unnecessary.


Based on a detailed investigation of all the facts, and supported by the testimony of the surviving Japanese leaders involved, it is the Survey's opinion that certainly prior to 31 December 1945, and in all probability prior to 1 November 1945, Japan would have surrendered even if the atomic bombs had not been dropped, even if Russia had not entered the war, and even if no invasion had been planned or contemplated. (Strategic Bombing Survey)


In 1945 Secretary of War Stimson, visiting my headquarters in Germany, informed me that our government was preparing to drop an atomic bomb on Japan. I was one of those who felt that there were a number of cogent reasons to question the wisdom of such an act. During his recitation of the relevant facts, I had been conscious of a feeling of depression and so I voiced to him my grave misgivings, first on the basis of my belief that Japan was already defeated and that dropping the bomb was completely unnecessary, and secondly because I thought that our country should avoid shocking world opinion by the use of a weapon whose employment was, I thought, no longer mandatory as a measure to save American lives (Dwight Eisenhower)


"The Japanese had, in fact, already sued for peace. The atomic bomb played no decisive part, from a purely military point of view, in the defeat of Japan." Fleet Admiral Chester W. Nimitz, Commander in Chief of the U.S. Pacific Fleet


The use of [the atomic bombs] at Hiroshima and Nagasaki was of no material assistance in our war against Japan. The Japanese were already defeated and ready to surrender because of the effective sea blockade and the successful bombing with conventional weapons... The lethal possibilities of atomic warfare in the future are frightening. My own feeling was that in being the first to use it, we had adopted an ethical standard common to the barbarians of the Dark Ages. I was not taught to make war in that fashion, and wars cannot be won by destroying women and children." Fleet Admiral William D. Leahy, Chief of Staff to President Truman





http://www.commondreams.org/views06/0806-25.htm

Was the Atomic Bombing of Japan Necessary?
by Robert Freeman

Few issues in American history - perhaps only slavery itself - are as charged as the dropping of the atomic bombs on Japan. Was it necessary? Merely posing the question provokes indignation, even rage. Witness the hysterical shouting down of the 1995 Smithsonian exhibit that simply dared discuss the question fifty years after the act. Today, another eleven years on, Americans still have trouble coming to terms with the truth about the bombs.

But anger is not argument. Hysteria is not history. The decision to drop the bomb has been laundered through the American myth-making machine into everything from self-preservation by the Americans to concern for the Japanese themselves-as if incinerating two hundred thousand human beings in a second was somehow an act of moral largesse.

Yet the question will not die, nor should it: was dropping the atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki a military necessity? Was the decision justified by the imperative of saving lives or were there other motives involved?

The question of military necessity can be quickly put to rest. "Japan was already defeated and dropping the bomb was completely unnecessary." Those are not the words of a latter-day revisionist historian or a leftist writer. They are certainly not the words of an America-hater. They are the words of Dwight D. Eisenhower, Supreme Commander of the Allied Forces in Europe and future president of the United States. Eisenhower knew, as did the entire senior U.S. officer corps, that by mid 1945 Japan was defenseless.

After the Japanese fleet was destroyed at Leyte Gulf in October 1944, the U.S. was able to carry out uncontested bombing of Japan's cities, including the hellish firebombings of Tokyo and Osaka. This is what Henry H. Arnold, Commanding General of the U.S. Army Air Forces, meant when he observed, "The Japanese position was hopeless even before the first atomic bomb fell because the Japanese had lost control of their own air." Also, without a navy, the resource-poor Japanese had lost the ability to import the food, oil, and industrial supplies needed to carry on a World War.

As a result of the naked futility of their position, the Japanese had approached the Russians, seeking their help in brokering a peace to end the War. The U.S. had long before broken the Japanese codes and knew that these negotiations were under way, knew that the Japanese had for months been trying to find a way to surrender.

Fleet Admiral Chester W. Nimitz, Commander in Chief of the U.S. Pacific Fleet, reflected this reality when he wrote, "The Japanese had, in fact, already sued for peace.the atomic bomb played no decisive part, from a purely military point of view, in the defeat of Japan." Admiral William D. Leahy, Chief of Staff to President Truman, said the same thing: "The use of [the atomic bombs] at Hiroshima and Nagasaki was of no material assistance in our war against Japan. The Japanese were already defeated and ready to surrender."

Civilian authorities, especially Truman himself, would later try to revise history by claiming that the bombs were dropped to save the lives of one million American soldiers. But there is simply no factual basis for this in any record of the time. On the contrary, the U.S. Strategic Bombing Survey reported, "Certainly prior to 31 December 1945, and in all probability prior to 1 November 1945, Japan would have surrendered even if the atomic bombs had not been dropped." The November 1 date is important because that was the date of the earliest possible planned U.S. invasion of the Japanese main islands.

In other words, the virtually unanimous and combined judgment of the most informed, senior, officers of the U.S. military is unequivocal: there was no pressing military necessity for dropping the atomic bombs on Japan.

But if dropping the bombs was not driven by military needs, why, then, were they used? The answer can be discerned in the U.S. attitude toward the Russians, the way the War ended in Europe, and the situation in Asia.

U.S. leaders had long hated the communist Russian government. In 1919, the U.S. had led an invasion of Russia - the infamous "White Counter Revolution" - to try to reverse the red Bolshevik Revolution that had put the communists into power in 1917. The invasion failed and the U.S. did not extend diplomatic recognition to Russia until 1932.

Then, during the Great Depression, when the U.S. economy collapsed, the Russian economy boomed, growing almost 500%. U.S. leaders worried that with the War's end, the country might fall back into another Depression. And World War II was won not by the American laissez faire system, but by the top-down, command and control over the economy that the Russian system epitomized. In other words, the Russian system seemed to be working while the American system was plagued with recent collapse and a questionable self-confidence.

In addition, to defeat Germany, the Russian army had marched to Berlin through eastern Europe. It occupied and controlled 150,000 square miles of territory in what is today Poland, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Romania, Bulgaria, and Yugoslavia. At Yalta, in February 1945, Stalin demanded to keep this newly occupied territory. Russia, Stalin rightly claimed, had been repeatedly invaded by western Europeans, from Napoleon to the Germans in World War I and now by Hitler. Russia lost more than 20,000,000 lives in World War II and Stalin wanted a buffer against future invasions.

At this point, in February 1945, the U.S. did not know whether the bomb would work or not. But it unquestionably needed Russia's help to end both the War in Europe and the War in the Pacific. These military realities were not lost on Roosevelt: with no army to displace Stalin's in Europe and needing Stalin's support, Roosevelt conceded eastern Europe, handing the Russians the greatest territorial gain of the War.

Finally and perhaps most importantly, Stalin agreed at Yalta that once the War in Europe was over, he would transfer his forces from Europe to Asia and within 90 days would enter the War in the Pacific against Japan. This is where timing becomes critically important. The War in Europe ended on May 8, 1945. May 8 plus 90 days is August 8. If the U.S. wanted to prevent Russia from occupying territory in east Asia the way it had occupied territory in eastern Europe, it needed to end the war as quickly as possible.

This issue of territory in east Asia was especially important because before the war against Japan, China had been embroiled in a civil war of its own. It was the U.S.-favored nationalists under General Chiang Kai Shek against the communists under Mao Ze Dong. If communist Russia were allowed to gain territory in east Asia, it would throw its considerable military might behind Mao, almost certainly handing the communists a victory once the World War was ended and the civil war was resumed.

Once the bomb was proven to work on July 15, 1945, events took on a furious urgency. There was simply no time to work through negotiations with the Japanese. Every day of delay meant more land given up to Russia and, therefore, a greater likelihood of communist victory in the Chinese civil war. All of Asia might go communist. It would be a strategic catastrophe for the U.S. to have won the War against the fascists only to hand it to its other arch enemy, the communists. The U.S. needed to end the War not in months, or even weeks, but in days.

So, on August 6, 1945, two days before the Russians were to declare war against Japan, the U.S. dropped the bomb on Hiroshima. There was no risk to U.S. forces then waiting for a Japanese response to the demand for surrender. The earliest planned invasion of the island was still three months away and the U.S. controlled the timing of all military engagements in the Pacific. But the Russian matter loomed and drove the decision on timing. So, only three days later, the U.S. dropped the second bomb on Nagasaki. The Japanese surrendered on August 14, 1945, eight days after the first bomb was dropped.

Major General Curtis LeMay commented on the bomb's use: "The War would have been over in two weeks without the Russians entering and without the atomic bomb. The atomic bomb had nothing to do with the end of the War at all." Except that it drastically speeded the War's end to deprive the Russians of territory in east Asia.

The story of military necessity, quickly and clumsily pasted together after the War's end, simply does not hold up against the overwhelming military realities of the time. On the other hand, the use of the bomb to contain Russian expansion and to make the Russians, in Truman's revealing phrase, "more manageable," comports completely with all known facts and especially with U.S. motivations and interests.

Which story should we accept, the one that doesn't hold together but that has been sanctifiied as national dogma? Or the one that does hold together but offends our self concept? How we answer says everything about our maturity and our capacity for intellectual honesty.

It is sometimes hard for a people to reconcile its history with its own national mythologies - the mythologies of eternal innocence and Providentially anointed righteousness. It is all the more difficult when a country is embroiled in yet another war and the power of such myths are needed again to gird the people's commitment against the more sobering force of facts.

But the purpose of history is not to sustain myths. It is, rather, to debunk them so that future generations may act with greater awareness to avoid the tragedies of the past. It may take another six or even sixty decades but eventually the truth of the bomb's use will be written not in mythology but in history. Hopefully, as a result, the world will be a safer place.

Drowned Out

As for the theory of just war, Chomsky has written and spoken extensively on the topic.
I have no sound on my work computer, so I have no way to verify that the youtube video is the same as the transcript, but I believe it is.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ULpOYllLuoE
http://www.scribd.com/doc/24058496/Noam ... War-Theory

catefrances

yosi wrote:

I think you misunderstood my point. WW2 was a morally justified war for the Allies to fight. That does not mean that all the actions taken by the Allies were moral.

morally justified in their opinion.

lets not forget morality is subjective.

Smellyman

how can killing of innocents be morally justified?

It can't.

catefrances

Smellyman wrote:

how can killing of innocents be morally justified?

It can't.

i dont think it can be either. however...


... whilst we do not intend for innocents to die if that happens by our hand we deeply regret it. and then we move on to more killing. the only way to assure no innocents are killed in war is to end wars.

Smellyman

catefrances wrote:

Smellyman wrote:

how can killing of innocents be morally justified?

It can't.

i dont think it can be either. however...


... whilst we do not intend for innocents to die if that happens by our hand we deeply regret it. and then we move on to more killing. the only way to assure no innocents are killed in war is to end wars.

needs to be an international law. The world leaders who start war should go to thunderdome and hash it out.

its bullshit we keep fighting bullshit wars.

catefrances

Smellyman wrote:

catefrances wrote:

Smellyman wrote:

how can killing of innocents be morally justified?

It can't.

i dont think it can be either. however...


... whilst we do not intend for innocents to die if that happens by our hand we deeply regret it. and then we move on to more killing. the only way to assure no innocents are killed in war is to end wars.

needs to be an international law. The world leaders who start war should go to thunderdome and hash it out.

its bullshit we keep fighting bullshit wars.

humans do a lot of bullshit things.. and then they try to justify them... even if only to themselves.

Commy

Drowned Out wrote:

Best of Times wrote:

Yes. Unfortunately, the victims of a nation's aggressive gov't are sometimes the innocent citizens of that same nation. Fat Man and Little Boy ended WWII in the Pacific, rendering a land invasion by American forces unnecessary, saving American lives, and is therefore morally justified.

Intentionally targeting civilians in order to shorten a conflict is a fucking war crime, a crime against humanity....it is most certainly NOT morally justified. It is telling that you justify saving the lives of American SOLDIERS, by killing Japanese CIVILIANS.

Everyone from Eisenhower to Macarthur to Einstein, to seven of the Manhattan project scientists, have all gone on record as agreeing that it was unnecessary.


Based on a detailed investigation of all the facts, and supported by the testimony of the surviving Japanese leaders involved, it is the Survey's opinion that certainly prior to 31 December 1945, and in all probability prior to 1 November 1945, Japan would have surrendered even if the atomic bombs had not been dropped, even if Russia had not entered the war, and even if no invasion had been planned or contemplated. (Strategic Bombing Survey)


In 1945 Secretary of War Stimson, visiting my headquarters in Germany, informed me that our government was preparing to drop an atomic bomb on Japan. I was one of those who felt that there were a number of cogent reasons to question the wisdom of such an act. During his recitation of the relevant facts, I had been conscious of a feeling of depression and so I voiced to him my grave misgivings, first on the basis of my belief that Japan was already defeated and that dropping the bomb was completely unnecessary, and secondly because I thought that our country should avoid shocking world opinion by the use of a weapon whose employment was, I thought, no longer mandatory as a measure to save American lives (Dwight Eisenhower)


"The Japanese had, in fact, already sued for peace. The atomic bomb played no decisive part, from a purely military point of view, in the defeat of Japan." Fleet Admiral Chester W. Nimitz, Commander in Chief of the U.S. Pacific Fleet


The use of [the atomic bombs] at Hiroshima and Nagasaki was of no material assistance in our war against Japan. The Japanese were already defeated and ready to surrender because of the effective sea blockade and the successful bombing with conventional weapons... The lethal possibilities of atomic warfare in the future are frightening. My own feeling was that in being the first to use it, we had adopted an ethical standard common to the barbarians of the Dark Ages. I was not taught to make war in that fashion, and wars cannot be won by destroying women and children." Fleet Admiral William D. Leahy, Chief of Staff to President Truman





http://www.commondreams.org/views06/0806-25.htm

Was the Atomic Bombing of Japan Necessary?
by Robert Freeman

Few issues in American history - perhaps only slavery itself - are as charged as the dropping of the atomic bombs on Japan. Was it necessary? Merely posing the question provokes indignation, even rage. Witness the hysterical shouting down of the 1995 Smithsonian exhibit that simply dared discuss the question fifty years after the act. Today, another eleven years on, Americans still have trouble coming to terms with the truth about the bombs.

But anger is not argument. Hysteria is not history. The decision to drop the bomb has been laundered through the American myth-making machine into everything from self-preservation by the Americans to concern for the Japanese themselves-as if incinerating two hundred thousand human beings in a second was somehow an act of moral largesse.

Yet the question will not die, nor should it: was dropping the atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki a military necessity? Was the decision justified by the imperative of saving lives or were there other motives involved?

The question of military necessity can be quickly put to rest. "Japan was already defeated and dropping the bomb was completely unnecessary." Those are not the words of a latter-day revisionist historian or a leftist writer. They are certainly not the words of an America-hater. They are the words of Dwight D. Eisenhower, Supreme Commander of the Allied Forces in Europe and future president of the United States. Eisenhower knew, as did the entire senior U.S. officer corps, that by mid 1945 Japan was defenseless.

After the Japanese fleet was destroyed at Leyte Gulf in October 1944, the U.S. was able to carry out uncontested bombing of Japan's cities, including the hellish firebombings of Tokyo and Osaka. This is what Henry H. Arnold, Commanding General of the U.S. Army Air Forces, meant when he observed, "The Japanese position was hopeless even before the first atomic bomb fell because the Japanese had lost control of their own air." Also, without a navy, the resource-poor Japanese had lost the ability to import the food, oil, and industrial supplies needed to carry on a World War.

As a result of the naked futility of their position, the Japanese had approached the Russians, seeking their help in brokering a peace to end the War. The U.S. had long before broken the Japanese codes and knew that these negotiations were under way, knew that the Japanese had for months been trying to find a way to surrender.

Fleet Admiral Chester W. Nimitz, Commander in Chief of the U.S. Pacific Fleet, reflected this reality when he wrote, "The Japanese had, in fact, already sued for peace.the atomic bomb played no decisive part, from a purely military point of view, in the defeat of Japan." Admiral William D. Leahy, Chief of Staff to President Truman, said the same thing: "The use of [the atomic bombs] at Hiroshima and Nagasaki was of no material assistance in our war against Japan. The Japanese were already defeated and ready to surrender."

Civilian authorities, especially Truman himself, would later try to revise history by claiming that the bombs were dropped to save the lives of one million American soldiers. But there is simply no factual basis for this in any record of the time. On the contrary, the U.S. Strategic Bombing Survey reported, "Certainly prior to 31 December 1945, and in all probability prior to 1 November 1945, Japan would have surrendered even if the atomic bombs had not been dropped." The November 1 date is important because that was the date of the earliest possible planned U.S. invasion of the Japanese main islands.

In other words, the virtually unanimous and combined judgment of the most informed, senior, officers of the U.S. military is unequivocal: there was no pressing military necessity for dropping the atomic bombs on Japan.

But if dropping the bombs was not driven by military needs, why, then, were they used? The answer can be discerned in the U.S. attitude toward the Russians, the way the War ended in Europe, and the situation in Asia.

U.S. leaders had long hated the communist Russian government. In 1919, the U.S. had led an invasion of Russia - the infamous "White Counter Revolution" - to try to reverse the red Bolshevik Revolution that had put the communists into power in 1917. The invasion failed and the U.S. did not extend diplomatic recognition to Russia until 1932.

Then, during the Great Depression, when the U.S. economy collapsed, the Russian economy boomed, growing almost 500%. U.S. leaders worried that with the War's end, the country might fall back into another Depression. And World War II was won not by the American laissez faire system, but by the top-down, command and control over the economy that the Russian system epitomized. In other words, the Russian system seemed to be working while the American system was plagued with recent collapse and a questionable self-confidence.

In addition, to defeat Germany, the Russian army had marched to Berlin through eastern Europe. It occupied and controlled 150,000 square miles of territory in what is today Poland, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Romania, Bulgaria, and Yugoslavia. At Yalta, in February 1945, Stalin demanded to keep this newly occupied territory. Russia, Stalin rightly claimed, had been repeatedly invaded by western Europeans, from Napoleon to the Germans in World War I and now by Hitler. Russia lost more than 20,000,000 lives in World War II and Stalin wanted a buffer against future invasions.

At this point, in February 1945, the U.S. did not know whether the bomb would work or not. But it unquestionably needed Russia's help to end both the War in Europe and the War in the Pacific. These military realities were not lost on Roosevelt: with no army to displace Stalin's in Europe and needing Stalin's support, Roosevelt conceded eastern Europe, handing the Russians the greatest territorial gain of the War.

Finally and perhaps most importantly, Stalin agreed at Yalta that once the War in Europe was over, he would transfer his forces from Europe to Asia and within 90 days would enter the War in the Pacific against Japan. This is where timing becomes critically important. The War in Europe ended on May 8, 1945. May 8 plus 90 days is August 8. If the U.S. wanted to prevent Russia from occupying territory in east Asia the way it had occupied territory in eastern Europe, it needed to end the war as quickly as possible.

This issue of territory in east Asia was especially important because before the war against Japan, China had been embroiled in a civil war of its own. It was the U.S.-favored nationalists under General Chiang Kai Shek against the communists under Mao Ze Dong. If communist Russia were allowed to gain territory in east Asia, it would throw its considerable military might behind Mao, almost certainly handing the communists a victory once the World War was ended and the civil war was resumed.

Once the bomb was proven to work on July 15, 1945, events took on a furious urgency. There was simply no time to work through negotiations with the Japanese. Every day of delay meant more land given up to Russia and, therefore, a greater likelihood of communist victory in the Chinese civil war. All of Asia might go communist. It would be a strategic catastrophe for the U.S. to have won the War against the fascists only to hand it to its other arch enemy, the communists. The U.S. needed to end the War not in months, or even weeks, but in days.

So, on August 6, 1945, two days before the Russians were to declare war against Japan, the U.S. dropped the bomb on Hiroshima. There was no risk to U.S. forces then waiting for a Japanese response to the demand for surrender. The earliest planned invasion of the island was still three months away and the U.S. controlled the timing of all military engagements in the Pacific. But the Russian matter loomed and drove the decision on timing. So, only three days later, the U.S. dropped the second bomb on Nagasaki. The Japanese surrendered on August 14, 1945, eight days after the first bomb was dropped.

Major General Curtis LeMay commented on the bomb's use: "The War would have been over in two weeks without the Russians entering and without the atomic bomb. The atomic bomb had nothing to do with the end of the War at all." Except that it drastically speeded the War's end to deprive the Russians of territory in east Asia.

The story of military necessity, quickly and clumsily pasted together after the War's end, simply does not hold up against the overwhelming military realities of the time. On the other hand, the use of the bomb to contain Russian expansion and to make the Russians, in Truman's revealing phrase, "more manageable," comports completely with all known facts and especially with U.S. motivations and interests.

Which story should we accept, the one that doesn't hold together but that has been sanctifiied as national dogma? Or the one that does hold together but offends our self concept? How we answer says everything about our maturity and our capacity for intellectual honesty.

It is sometimes hard for a people to reconcile its history with its own national mythologies - the mythologies of eternal innocence and Providentially anointed righteousness. It is all the more difficult when a country is embroiled in yet another war and the power of such myths are needed again to gird the people's commitment against the more sobering force of facts.

But the purpose of history is not to sustain myths. It is, rather, to debunk them so that future generations may act with greater awareness to avoid the tragedies of the past. It may take another six or even sixty decades but eventually the truth of the bomb's use will be written not in mythology but in history. Hopefully, as a result, the world will be a safer place.

Don't forget the US go'vt official stance, released in the Official Bombing Survey just after the war.


"Based on a detailed investigation of all the facts, and supported by the testimony of the surviving Japanese leaders involved, it is the Survey's opinion that certainly prior to 31 December 1945, and in all probability prior to 1 November 1945, Japan would have surrendered even if the atomic bombs had not been dropped, even if Russia had not entered the war, and even if no invasion had been planned or contemplated. "


http://www.anesi.com/ussbs01.htm#conclusi

Drowned Out

Commy wrote:

Don't forget the US go'vt official stance, released in the Official Bombing Survey just after the war.


"Based on a detailed investigation of all the facts, and supported by the testimony of the surviving Japanese leaders involved, it is the Survey's opinion that certainly prior to 31 December 1945, and in all probability prior to 1 November 1945, Japan would have surrendered even if the atomic bombs had not been dropped, even if Russia had not entered the war, and even if no invasion had been planned or contemplated. "


http://www.anesi.com/ussbs01.htm#conclusi

I didn't...it's the first quote in my post

Commy

Drowned Out wrote:

Commy wrote:

Don't forget the US go'vt official stance, released in the Official Bombing Survey just after the war.


"Based on a detailed investigation of all the facts, and supported by the testimony of the surviving Japanese leaders involved, it is the Survey's opinion that certainly prior to 31 December 1945, and in all probability prior to 1 November 1945, Japan would have surrendered even if the atomic bombs had not been dropped, even if Russia had not entered the war, and even if no invasion had been planned or contemplated. "


http://www.anesi.com/ussbs01.htm#conclusi

I didn't...it's the first quote in my post

oops.



sigh, i went through the actual bombing survey to find that quote, like 50 pages of stuff.

Drowned Out

Commy wrote:

Drowned Out wrote:

Commy wrote:

Don't forget the US go'vt official stance, released in the Official Bombing Survey just after the war.


"Based on a detailed investigation of all the facts, and supported by the testimony of the surviving Japanese leaders involved, it is the Survey's opinion that certainly prior to 31 December 1945, and in all probability prior to 1 November 1945, Japan would have surrendered even if the atomic bombs had not been dropped, even if Russia had not entered the war, and even if no invasion had been planned or contemplated. "


http://www.anesi.com/ussbs01.htm#conclusi

I didn't...it's the first quote in my post

oops.



sigh, i went through the actual bombing survey to find that quote, like 50 pages of stuff.

Damn!...I cheated and used wiki

TriumphantAngel

Best of Times wrote:

TriumphantAngel wrote:

ww2 wasn't just about nazi germany. do the victims of Hiroshima and Nagasaki come under your definition of morally justified warfare too?

Yes. Unfortunately, the victims of a nation's aggressive gov't are sometimes the innocent citizens of that same nation. Fat Man and Little Boy ended WWII in the Pacific, rendering a land invasion by American forces unnecessary, saving American lives, and is therefore morally justified.

when you used to post under your other user name about how you train military personnel on how to spot and avoid IED attacks, i at least thought you might have had some basic understanding of previous history/wars etc.

clearly not if you don't even know this.
the US go'vt official stance, released in the Official Bombing Survey just after the war.

"Based on a detailed investigation of all the facts, and supported by the testimony of the surviving Japanese leaders involved, it is the Survey's opinion that certainly prior to 31 December 1945, and in all probability prior to 1 November 1945, Japan would have surrendered even if the atomic bombs had not been dropped, even if Russia had not entered the war, and even if no invasion had been planned or contemplated. "


http://www.anesi.com/ussbs01.htm#conclusi

Best of Times

Not debating the morality of our involvement in WWII w/ the leftist, statist, American apologist wackos on this site. NOT doin it.

If you don't know that you're crazy- it's because you are.

Sludge Factory

Best of Times wrote:

Not debating the morality of our involvement in WWII w/ the leftist, statist, American apologist wackos on this site. NOT doin it.

If you don't know that you're crazy- it's because you are.

Does that then make you inherently crazy?

Drowned Out

YOU are the one who mentioned the morally justified use of the A-bomb (even calling them by your pet names). You were presented with evidence that you are flat out wrong...so now it becomes simply about America's involvement in WW2, and not the bomb? Funny to see you accusing others of twisting and changing their arguments in other threads. So now you'll take your ball and go home. So typical.
What exactly does "leftist, statist, American apologist" mean? The people you are talking about here (myself included), are FAR from being 'statist'. In fact, I would say that most of us think the brand of statist nationalism you employ to your thought process is as big a problem in the world as any.
Lastly, you obviously don't know wtf 'american apologist' means. We are criticizing American foreign policy, you are defending it to the bitter end despite the FACTS you have been shown. That would make YOU the american apologist.