War To The Knife
Dean
I don't have much respect for people who casually suggest that U.S. bombing attacks on enemy cities during World War II were done for racist reasons--which isn't just balderdash, it's a racist belief in and of itself. I have somewhat more respect for those who say it was unnecessary since you could make a rational case for saying it wasn't necessary. On the other hand, my tolerance for those who condemn those in command who decided it wasn't worth the risk is pretty thin.
One who didn't offend me much was Rudy Rummel, who argued yesterday that any intentional bombing of civilian targets constitutes a war crime. I know his work and I know he's an honorable academic who speaks as a political scientist, not as a kneejerk America-hater. Furthermore, General Curtis LeMay, the man who crafted the bombing war against Japan, said himself that he fully expected to be tried for war crimes if the Japanese were victorious.
Yes, it was a war crime. Sometimes in war you have no choice.
I thought I'd reprint, in slightly edited form, what I wrote on Rudy's site:
And there it is. The Battle of Okinawa killed more people than Nagasaki and Hiroshima.I've had other people try to tell me that the mass-bombings in Japan were terrorism or mass-murder--Rudy's the only one to say it who hasn't offended me, since I know from his vast body of work exactly where he's coming from and that he's not applying double standards.
My "disagreement" is merely what others have said: by 1945, bombing of civilian targets had become the normal behavior of all major players in the conflict. The Axis powers started it, and, while that's not an excuse, the fact that it was such a common practice meant the allies could either be "better than that" or they could retaliate in kind. In each case, the goal was to break the will of the populace and permanently damage the infrastructure necessary for the enemy to keep fighting.
It was an awful war, the worst in world history. Was it terrorism? Okay, it was terrorism. It was total war, war to the knife.
As for the "theoretical" notion that lives were saved by those bombings: it has a strong underpinning. See for example this excellent article on the battle of Okinawa. That battle took place only a few weeks before the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
To give you a tast of what's in that article: in just that one battle to take and hold one small part of the Japanese Empire, we saw:
38,000 Americans wounded
12,000 Americans killed
107,000 Japanese and Okinawan conscripts killed
Approximately 100,000 Okinawan civilians killedWe also had 34 allied ships sunk, and 368 crafts damaged. The wounded-to-killed ratio for the Navy was about 1:1 (normally it was about 5:1).
That wasn't even in trying to take the mainland--just the small, slender island of Okinawa.
Read the article. There's more.
It is all well and good to say in the armchair view of history that the firebombing of Tokyo or the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki were war crimes. It is quite another to condemn those who made a decision that seemed most likely to save American lives and end the war sooner--men who made a decision in a conflict where, by the time 1945 rolled around, everyone was bombing civilian targets--everyone.
Today's modern military does its very best to avoid harming civilians. But that's very much a function of the fact that we have enough power and technology to make that practical. Were we to face a military enemy that was close to a match for us on a continental scale, I have no doubt that the situation would be different.
I would also ask Rudy this question: you have said that the Reagan approach to the Soviet threat was vindicated by history. Yet do you have any doubt that if the Soviets had fired nuclear weapons at us, we would not have retaliated in kind, no matter who was President? Would you consider such retaliation a "war crime?"
You may think that Curtis Lemay and Harry Truman should be condemned, but I don't think the men who served under them--especially those who were part of the struggle for Okinawa--would have much nice to say to you about it.
I didn't even mention the fact that the Japanese were distributing some of their war production in civilian areas--which is itself a war crime. They and the Germans were also the first to start the mass slaughter of civilians. Once one side begins committing war crimes, how long can the other side hold out from retaliating in the face of it? Especially when it's being used to weaken your own fighting capability?
The most absurd assertion I've heard is that the US should have taken one of its precious--and highly experimental--atom bombs and blown it up as a warning to the Japanese. I honestly think you have to be unbelievably arrogant to suggest such a thing. And unbelievably stupid. These weapons were highly experimental, and they weren't 100% sure that they'd go off. To gamble that a bluff would cause the Japanese to immediately surrender once they saw us blow up an uninhabited island would be just that: a gamble and a bluff. If we had used up one of those bombs and the gamble failed, we would have wound up using the other--and if that failed, the entire gambit would have failed. In retrospect, from the comfort of hindsight, we might be able to argue that the Japanese were ready to surrender. But to assume that those in command of allied forces had such knowledge, or "should have known" that, is the height of hubris.
I am rather relieved that the standing policy of the modern military is to avoid causing civilian deaths as much as practical. But if that became impractical, and we were at war for the future of our civilization, then I'd be appalled if our country's military leadership were willing to gamble countless American lives simply to conduct a "civilized war."
My grandfather fought the Japanese in the South Pacific. I don't think he'd much appreciate people calling Franklin Roosevelt and Harry Truman monsters and war criminals. I don't much either.
Related Posts (on one page):
The amazing thing to me is that the U.S. - and Israel for that matter - have been as restrained as they have been in the face of the terrorists "hiding" among civilians while fighting.
In other words: stick to it as long as it is mutual; otherwise, bomb the shit out of them.
As Kagan observed, the division of enemy into military and civilian is an accident and artifact of military technology. Routinely, armies would invade and as a matter of course reduce the defeated enemies' population centers through the brutal slaughter of civilians. They did this because it was universally recognized that civilian populations supported their armies and reduction of them amounted to defeat of them.
When military technology advanced to musket and pike warfare, the creation of specialized fortresses to take advantage of the same was required, and the removal of armies to wider areas in order to pursue warfare itself was incumbent on both attack and defender.
From this point onwards, the conception of the 'civilian as non-combatant' came about; chivalry took care of the rest.
WWI was the ending point of that military conceit with the advent of the airplane and the Paris Gun - a terror weapon. Again, military technology advanced to the industrial stage, returning a recognition that civilian populations are also targets.
Military logic is a cruel thing, and nobody has to like it, but this legalistic conceit should be recognized for what it is: An artifact of history.
Now, the Geneva and Hague Conventions as least give us the hope that civilized rational thought aimed at preserving life will ultimately prevail. It may lose a few battles, but it will win out in the end. To adopt the philosophies "The point of war is to destroy the enemy and save your own ass. Having rules in a war is counter-intuitive to that objective." and "stick to it as long as it is mutual; otherwise, bomb the shit out of them."
is immoral at best. It's easy to sit back and say those things when there is almost NO chance that your city or home will EVER be bombed.
I'm not saying the Conventions weren't noble in intention - they were - but I am saying that they originated in a different milieu, one that doesn't adhere anymore. Goodbye to all that, and sorry to be harsh.
Kinda blows a hole in the "a-bomb attack was racist" line of thought, so to speak.
Oh, but wait, here come the Japanese, colonizing Asia. Taking its share of the profits away from our buddies in Europe. If we weren't racist in our views, then we should have made efforts to protest all emperial conquests and European domination of Asian lands. Did we? FUCK NO!
We interned people of all races, Germans, too.
Had the bomb been invented years earlier, we'd have used it on Dresdan and Berlin. Don't kid yourself. We've have dropped that sucker on any enemy in our sites, regardless of race.
In other words its only a war crime if you lose.
It did not impress the Japanese.
So for the second one, he felt he absolutely HAD to get their attention with his last card, and so they nuked Tokyo instead, supposedly causing much more devastation.
And in the Real World, I'm reading a history of Sherman's March which makes the case that it was justified by collective guilt. One of Sherman's rules in his March to the Sea was that if a district did not resist, they only got foraged, but if they resisted then serious damage was done to the district's industrial infrastructure. Works for me.
Throughout history, the "other" has always been denigrated. Always. It's only recently that this view has been undergoing change, and that primarily due to liberal Western ideology. Even today, most cultures and / or races look down on others. Need examples? Tribal warfare in Africa, Islamist warfare against infidels, the depiction of blacks in Japan, Chinese views on everyone else, the view of the French / cultural European elite towards cowboy America, the list is seemingly endless.
So pardon me if I take Timothy's view that we were incredibly racist in WW2 and should be condemned for it with a heaping mound of salt. Unless, of course, Timothy is also condemning the rest of the world as much as, if not more than, he condemns us.
If it's the same one I think you mean, the President in the AU was Thomas Dewey, and after the demonstration failed to force the surrender, Dewey was left with the choice of either proceeding with a massive invasion of Japan or nuking Tokyo--with Oppenheimer telling him that there could be as many as eight million dead from the attack. Dewey considered the options--cursing FDR for having been too ill to run for re-election--and authorized the attack, wishing to God that someone else had the responsibility for the decision.
If they weren't suitably impressed with the destruction of one of their cities, an a-bomb to a deserted islance would really be pointless.
BK
He wrote:
"It's easy to sit back and say those things when there is almost NO chance that your city or home will EVER be bombed."
I have to say that's one of the most preposterous things I've ever read. The whole reason we are at War in the first place is precisely because we WERE attacked -- on September 11, 2001. The Muslim terrorists destroyed the World Trade Center, murdering some 3,000 civilians (and with the intent of murdering 50,000 of them). The whole point of this War is to see to it that we don't allow them to do it to us again (as they have since been doing from Bali to London). We must destroy the Terror Masters before they destroy us.
If our War against Japan was racist, then why didn't we bomb China, too? Why didn't we intern Chinese-Americans? Why did we go to War against Germany at all? After all, if we were racists, then we would have shared Hitler's ideology and wanted him to win. (There were, in fact, Nazi and pro-Nazi fifth columnists in America who did -- and they were investigated and locked up by our government.) If President Truman was a racist, then he would not have integrated the military.
As to colonialism and imperialism, I could not be more confirmed in disagreement. The biggest blunder we made after World War II was the massive rush to de-colonization in Africa and Asia. It was the worst thing we ever did to the Africans. We did not give them freedom. We gave them Bokassa, Idi Amin, Mengistu, Mugabe.... Both the West and the African lost when we handed over mineral-rich free Rhodesia to the Communists under the hectoring of the Politically Correct. Now the Negroes in what is now "Zimbabwe" are starving to death -- by order of their government. It was as disastrous a betrayal as the surrender of the Suez Canal and the Panama Canal -- and of Viet Nam and Cambodia. It is the old story: Communism vs. the Negro. And it is the Suicide of the West. I'm against that.
The city of my birth was attacked and I knew 6 of the dead, could have been much worse. When it's kill or be killed, I'd rather not be killed. I have no delusions that my city won't be attacked, that I'm safe, that war couldn't happen to me. Our current enemy targets civilians (a "war crime" I presume?) and you want us to play nicey-nice? Should we call "time out" and go over the rules?
I can see it now:
An outstanding weapon I really, honestly would admire. It explodes and fills whatever borders have been drawn up, from the vast expanses of Russia to the tiniest fiefdoms of Europe - but never, ever spills beyond.
And it would only affect gunmetal. Yes, it would shatter gunmetals into a thousand tiny, deadly fragments, destroying sidearms, rifles, ships, artillery, missle silos, the lot.
Of course, they would announce the test well ahead of time, which they'd run on our own soil, to the world.
And then promptly drop the second on Israel.
First off, we did protest--very strongly--at least one of those European colonial escapades. We even fought two wars over it--the American Revolution and the War of 1812--at the earliest point in our history, and managed to successfully reduce the imperial might of one colonial power. I admit that we had selfish motives for doing so, however.
After that, we did what we could to limit Europe's hold over some parts of the world, through policies such as the Monroe Doctrine. We weren't perfect--see the Spanish-American War and our subsequent Philippine occupation, for example. But even there, I don't see much in the way of toleration for European colonial ambition, given that Spain is European.
Finally, I don't recall when one of the European powers bombed a US naval base to protect their colonies, and we ignored the provocation. Since our entry into war with Japan was provoked by Pearl Harbor, an example like that seems pretty important to your "we can't stand the slant-eyes getting any" thesis. So: can you provide us the details?
Actually, quite a few German-Americans were imprisoned, and some executed. I would imagine the Japs were easier to identify, though, and it was after all Japan that attacked us, not Germany.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Gomorrah
It was monumentally stupid - and the idiocy was compounded by the way the Japanese acted in the very short time they had the upper hand...most people who piss and moan over Hiroshima don't remember the captive Americans beheaded by the Japanese for their amusement; and that is only one of a thousand Japanese war crimes which incensed Americans during World War Two. The root cause, by the way, of Japans idiotic desire to attack the United States and its monumentally stupid treatment of Americans was racism - Japanese racism. They were convinced that they were so superior to the United States in the racial sense that they were sure to beat us even though we outnumbered them nearly two to one and had a vastly larger economy. It was as if all the members of the KKK challenged all black Americans to a stand up fight.
When I read up on the World War Two bombing campaigns the thing which struck me is that the best analysts of it all were of the opinion that, outside of morality, most of the bombing was militarily in-effective. We were dropping tens of thousands of tons of bombs on whole areas of cities when a campaign of striking only at railroad bridges, canals and seaports would have swiftly crippled the enemy's ability to sustain the fight (its amazing, even to this day, how much of our goods move via rail and water - back in the 1940's, it was nearly everything). In the Rhur the Germans were pouring out more finished military products in late 1944 than ever before...but the snarled railroad network of Germany - caused by belatedly concentrating on it - prevented these materials from swiftly reaching the German armies.
The fire-bombings of Dresden, Hamburg and Tokyo capture the imagination - but they didn't materially affect the course of the war. So, why was it done? Because of a theory - the theory that if you terrorise an enemy population with aerial bombing, he'll force his government to quit. It was an asinine theory, as many dissenters from it pointed out at the time, but it had captured the minds of American, British and German aerial strategists. It wasn't racism which dropped the bombs on Japan - just the fulfillment of a theory.
The atom bomb did work, however; but even then not strictly in accordance with the theory...most Japanese outside of Hiroshima and Nagasaki had no idea the bombings had happened - the bombs did, however, provide the face-saving excuse the Japanese government needed to quit prior to an American landing in Japan. In that, the bombs saved a vast number of lives.
Another reason that drove the switch to fire-bombing German cities was specifically because the precision bombing of railroad bridges, canals and seaports and the like had turned out to be nowhere near as effective as it had to be.
Why? Because the available tools for precision bombing were nowhere near being up to the job. Our best wasn't close to being precise enough.
It wasn't until the early 1970s that tools like laser-guided bombs became available and good enough to be usable.
And, Timothy, remember that the Geneva rules (and IIRC the Hague ones too) require that both sides abide by them; if the other side cheats, the Conventions don't apply to the side cheated on either - the Conventions are not a suicide pact.
And as far as I know, since 1941, none of America's enemies except the Germans have even attempted to follow those "laws", while the US has done a much better job, despite not being required to.
Not all that absurd. No cite (whenever I try to find something with a search engine, I get about 200,000 hits - none correct), but there was at least one test to which the Japanese were offered the chance to watch. But it was described only as "a powerful new weapon" and the Japanese military scorned it as a propoganda piece.