BusterStronghart@Gmail.comDear X,
Because I value your judgement so much I read the libertarian piece more carefully a little while ago. As I am a strict opponent of argument ad hominum I shall not dig too deeply into the rightist hatred of Roosevelt and isolationist hatred of Churchill and the Brits. Just remember who Ludwig Mises and Ayn Rand were.
As I said in my first note some good arguments were made. I have been moved. I see that the arguments against dropping the bomb should have been taken more seriously than I thought. Especially when the statements of military men who were on the scene at the time are taken into account.
Their statements, however, were all based on their sense of the dubious morality of roasting women and children rather than on military necessity. In fact, a careful reading elicits, in me, a suspicion that the writer of the review, was not only anti-Truman-Roosevelt, but also was against our entry into the war.
Apparently some philosophers or theologians believed that our insistence on unconditional surrender was at fault. It was felt that the Japanese did not want to lose their Emperor to a war criminal trial and so they were reluctant to give up a war already lost. The morality balance, therefore shifted from their shoulders to ours, because our terms were unclear to the Japanese.
When Raico, the author, writes "the Japanese," he appears to mean the Japanese public. But the only Japanese in a position to make a surrender decision were Tojo and the very war criminals who would have been tried. Their influence on the Emperor, who might have been tried as well, was overwhelming.
Although it has nothing to do with the Bomb, Raico also drags into his piece our entry into the war against the Germans, complaining that it was 'said that "had we not gotten in then the Hitler would have conquered the world." (a sad undervaluation of the Red Army.)'
Odd, when one remembers that it was American munitions and American food delivered on the Murmansk Run that kept that Red Army on its feet. Raico also attacks Churchill, and quotes JFC Fuller, a British military historian, who if memory serves, was cashiered from His Majesty's Army over a dispute regarding tank warfare after WWI.
Libertarian Raico can't help but quote the laudable conservatives who opposed the bombings. (Usually after the Missouri Battleship Peace was signed.)
He quotes Felix Morley, a founder of Human Events (please don't tell me that you are reading that too.) Father James Gillis of Catholic World and David Lawrence another pre WW 2 conservative are also quoted for their attacks on American atrocities. (If they protested then, on the spot so to speak, why wouldn't we protest in retrospect?)
Coincidently, last night on Air America, I heard the same arguments from Thom Hartmann. A man who deals in half-truths and is very close to Rush Limbo when it comes to lies and deception. Why can't we have Truth coming from the left-progressive instead of propaganda imitative of the right? Goebbels is too much with us, right and left.
Anyway, why is Hiroshima coming up now? It's not an anniversary, as far as I know. What's the tie in?
The Atomic Bomb, as it was quaintly known during the race with Germany to build it, was not thought to be an immoral weapon during its conception and development. We firebombed Germany and caused massive causalities with little demur from the public at the time. We wanted a bomb that would destroy the enemy (originally Germany) and would end the war.
When it became apparent that the war with Germany would soon end the target shifted to Japan. It seemed impossible to negotiate with them-although Roosevelt had some doubts about the use of the bomb against actual people, they were not expressed forcefully, and he did suggest a demonstration with Japanese observers, it seems that his idea was slight and was overlooked. By September 1944 an Air Force group was already being trained to drop the bomb.
A problem that FDR did not have to deal with was the political effect of a two billion dollar secret project that diverted money from other, possibly more effective war projects. Had FDR been alive and strong he might have been willing to deal with the politics--but poor HST, knew nothing of the project except what Stimpson and Marshall told him. He was at their mercy. The Bomb would have to be set off -- on people.
The problem for us, as citizens sixty years after the Bomb, is that we cannot share the hatred and fear that the Japanese Army engendered in us then. We do not know how we would have felt then--except to compare our thoughts today on the Iraqi citizens.
We know that the US is divided into a camp that thinks as little of them as most of American felt about the "yellow, squinty-eyed Japs" in 1945. There was little or no division then. Japanese atrocities against the Chinese in Naking and against our captured troops were well known. Today the gap between the two is very wide, and I would guess that only 10-15% of Americans bear any hatred at all towards the Iraqi civilian. This wasn't the case in 1945.
In any event--I have been moved, and I recognize the argument on the other side.
To bed!
NY tomorrow. I expect difficult days. I'll let you know.
mike
I got most, but not all, of my information from one if the articles quoted by Raices. "Foreign Affairs, Barton J. Bernstein, July/Aug 2000.
