The Atomic Bomb: It Was Always Right

Townhall.com ^ | August 2, 2014 | Larry Provost

[xone]

By your reasoning then, civilians put in harm's way by their gov't, isn't our fault when death comes. Why is starvation different from a purposeful co-mingling?

Enemy civilian deaths not directly resulting from our military attacks are not our fault, in any sense of the word

But by co-locating civilians with legitimate targets we are responsible. I repeat myself, but you are an idiot.

[Pelham]

“And Curtis Lemay isn’t even appropriate to include in a list like that”

Of course he belongs. Curtis LeMay was the USAAF four star who designed and implemented the strategic bombing campaign for the Pacific war. His goal was to bring the war to an end as quickly as possible, a goal shared with and approved by the rest of America’s WWII leadership. So if you intend to cast LeMay as a war criminal you’ll have to include every senior military officer and political leader of that era. Maybe that’s your intention, I just don’t know.

Japan had intentionally decentralized their war production into small shops spread out in urban areas to make them immune to precision bombing. American war planners had the choice of leaving Japanese war production untouched because it was intermixed with civilians, or bombing the cities in which they were hiding their production shops. It’s basically the same choice Israel is confronted with when Hamas hides weapons among civilians.

“Your faith in government is pretty remarkable, to begin with.”

Oh really? You read minds do you?

Of course what you really mean is that you don’t like it when your morally smug posturing gets taken to task and your weak knowledge of WWII history gets exposed for what it is.

[Pelham]

This is quite correct. The Japanese were a proud and hard enemy for whom surrender was unthinkable. They even encouraged a mass suicide among the people of Okinawa, so the idea that large scale civilian deaths would move them to give up is something from fantasyland.

A former Imperial Japanese officer was a member of my dad’s class at the U.S. Army Staff and Commmand College in the mid 1950’s. This officer gave a presentation where he told the class that America’s strategy for winning the war had been correct.

He showed the class maps of the region where the American invasion force had been scheduled to land. As soon as you left the beaches it was all up and down, very mountainous and riddled with caves and tunnels. A dream for the defenders.

Japan had no intention of giving up. The culture was heavily influenced by Boshido where war is purifying and death a duty. It took something almost otherworldly to break their will to fight. And since Godzilla wasn’t around to help us the atomic bombs would have to do.

[xone]

when your morally smug posturing gets taken to task and your weak knowledge of WWII history gets exposed for what it is.

Well said. The best these guys can do is akin to past-posting at the track, you won, but you cheated, were immoral, unethical, etc. Thank God they weren't in charge. I've had enough pussies the last 6+ years.

[Pelham]

” The President is CIC and directs the overall war strategy at the highest level. Generals follow orders.”

Know a lot of general officers do you?

The “Generals follow orders” part makes me think that you are a bit unfamiliar with the breed. Hollywood may like to portray American generals as men who obediently follow orders, but then Hollywood is largely populated by fools and leftists. You shouldn’t follow their example.

To be accurate you should have said something along the lines of “Generals are obliged to follow lawful orders and have a duty to disobey unlawful ones”, but even that doesn’t capture the world as it is.

One of the generals involved in this discussion is MacArthur. And MacArthur openly defied President Truman during Korea. If we are to believe your version of history MacArthur was too shy in 1945 to speak up when this same Truman and a bunch of Harvard eggheads were ordering him around. This is amusing in its naivete. MacArthur wasn’t convinced that God outranked him.

Another officer, this one senior even to MacArthur, was William Leahy. Leahy opposed dropping the atomic bombs, he thought it was immoral. If we are to believe you he was willing to openly condemn American strategy, but somehow neglected to mention the cabal of Ivy Leaguers responsible for ordering it.

There have been other senior military officers who have openly defied and openly criticized the Presidents they worked for. General Singlaub said that Carter’s Korea policy was going to lead to war. Admiral US Grant Sharp bashed Lyndon Johnson and his advisors during Vietnam. Admiral La Rocque spent the 1980s attacking Reagan.

You expect us to believe that the senior Generals and Admirals who dropped the bomb didn’t think it was necessary, but did it anyway because they were ordered to by an Ivy League cabal. And yet none of them ever bothered to mention it, except somehow you know about it.

Well I don’t have much use for Ivy Leaguers but I still say ‘prove it’. I don’t believe you have psychic powers so you are going to have to provide evidence. Show us the orders. Show us who gave them. Show us where these senior generals and admirals say that they were ordered by Truman and his advisors to drop the bombs against their better judgment. The closest you will ever come is Admiral Leahy’s objection to the bombs but he never claimed anyone forced the decision on his fellow officers. The story you are expecting us to accept is just conspiracy nonsense if you can’t cough up some evidence.

[BroJoeK]

PieterCasparzen: "First, you did not address the first comment of mine that you cited, right ?
I mean, the morality of the statement, independent of numbers."

In full context, the quote from Lemay, "There are no innocent civilians," refers to officially declared "total war" -- WWII being the last example we've seen.
So remember first: nearly all those countries, including Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan, had formally elected governments -- their citizens voted, at least in theory, for the leaders whose policies took them to war.
Voters were ultimately responsible.

Further, and more important, "total war" means exactly that -- the entire population was conscripted, or otherwise organized, for the war effort -- so there were no non-war related civilian activities, especially in population centers.
Therefore, it was literally impossible to bomb a city without hitting some military related targets.

That is why, when President Truman announced the A-bombing of Hiroshima, he called it "a military target".
In "total war", it certainly was, indeed was impossible not to be.

Today there is no "total war" anywhere on Earth -- indeed there are not even formally declared wars, that I can think of.
So today, all civilians are truly innocent, but that status changes if war is formally declared, perhaps explaining why countries are so reluctant to do it, these days.

PieterCasparzen: "When one says “there are no innocent civilians”, that rationalizes just going up and killing non-combatants en masse."

Indeed, that is precisely what the Axis powers did, from the war's beginning.
Remember, overall, the ratio was 16 Allied civilians killed for every one Axis civilian.

The Axis clearly understood that "total war" meant total participation by civilians, and so their destruction was considered necessary to victory.
By contrast, the Allies made some efforts -- within the limits of available technology -- to limit destruction to "military targets".

PieterCasparzen: "Aren’t we Americans against our innocent American civilians getting killed by our enemies during wartime ?"

Of course -- what a silly assertion.
But some American civilians were killed -- at Pearl Harbor, on the high seas and elsewhere -- along with many thousands of British, French, Dutch and millions of our allied Poles, Russians & Chinese.
In no case did we try Axis leaders after the war for "bombing civilians".
Necessities of "total war" were recognized by all.

PieterCasparzen: "Ok, now you cite chart of deaths, and America shows up as having zero civilian casualties."

That chart is incomplete. This charts shows about 12,000 US civilians died from war related causes.
Yes, a drop in the blood-bucket compared to other countries (i.e., millions of Russians & Chinese), but equivalent in today's population to nearly 30,000 or ten times the number of civilians killed on September 11, 2001.

PieterCasparzen: "And you cite that as justification for American planes firebombing civilians, I guess to make up for the “other Allies” civilian deaths.
I’m not a citizen of “Allied” or “the world”, I’m a citizen of the United States."

In both World Wars, the US did not fight anybody alone.
We were always a member of an allied coalition, with at least something in the way of joint command.
US forces always fought in coordinated partnership with our allies and sometimes even under allied commanders.
So you simply cannot speak as if there were separate, unconnected wars going on, between, for examples, the US versus Germany, or Britain vs. Italy.
None of that nonsense.
It was one war, with one set of allies -- the US, Britain, Soviets, Free French & Dutch, etc. -- against the Axis coalition of Germany, Italy, Japan, etc.
To think of it otherwise is to grossly misunderstand history.

PieterCasparzen: "17.5 million Allied deaths were in Communist China and the Communist USSR.
Slightly over 7 million were in Poland and Yugoslavia, two countries that for decades after the war were not American “allies”.
Technically during the war they were all 'allies'."

You said it, however reluctantly: they were absolutely our allies, and without them, especially Russia, the war could not have been won, period.
Now, I'm starting to think, that's just what you wish happened, and so are hoping to re-write history, to make it look different.
But facts, even historical facts, are stubborn things.

PieterCasparzen: "As far as which specific countries did the killing, I’m sure you’ll agree that the US and UK took the lead on those numbers, as aerial mass bombing and aerial firebombing leaders."

No, you misunderstand.
The leadership in mass firebombing of enemy civilians came from Axis powers Germany & Japan, early in the war.
In total, German bombing killed roughly as many Allied civilians (most in the East) as Allied bombing later killed of German civilians -- about half a million each.

In short, there was nothing Allies did to German civilians which Germans had not first done to Allied civilians.
And we should note a simple fact of history: while each side was engaged in maximum bombing of enemy cities, they were also winning the war.
As Germany began to lose, so did its bombing slack off, just as the winning Allies increased theirs.

My point is: WWII victory and bombing were inextricably linked, so if you deny one, you deny the other.

PieterCasparzen: "But let’s say that we have this disparity, the other side killed several times more civilians than “the Allies” did.
Aren’t we taught at a young age that just because the other person commits a crime, that does not justify our committing the same crime ?"

First of all, in that "total war" bombing cities was not considered a "war crime", there was no "international law" against it, and no leaders were tried for it afterwards.
Instead it was considered then necessary for victory.

Second, as General MacArthur said, in a different context, but certainly reflecting WWII attitudes, "there is no substitute for victory."

You may remember that President Roosevelt and Prime Minister Churchill in 1943 set their terms for peace as, "Unconditional Surrender".
For men like Adolf Hitler, it was victory or death.

PieterCasparzen: "...why would they not prosecute the enemy leadership for their war crimes of ordering civilian killings ?
I mean, we could have prosecuted them and not our leadership, and said our killings were of “military necessity”, so they would not be prosecuted."

Obviously, you are confused & disoriented.
Throughout mankind's history, war itself has been considered not only necessary, on occasion, but noble & even glorious.
Humans have always treated our war-heroes with the greatest of respect & admiration, even in, or especially in the United States.

And war's "dark side" has not always been even acknowledged, but sometimes glorified.
On thinks of the total destruction of Jericho, or Romans said to "make a wasteland and call it peace".
So mass destruction is not a modern invention.

But it is often frowned upon, and in recent centuries rules made against it -- Marquess of Queensberry Rules of "good sportsmanship", so to speak.
Such rules, often ignored during a war, were sometimes remembered by the victors after it -- "victors' justice", it's been called.

My point here again, as I've said now several times: neither side in WWII considered "bombing cities" a "war crime", all sides did it, all thought it necessary for victory, and nobody was punished afterwards for it.

Which part of that do you not yet "get"?

PieterCasparzen: "The elites who make these decisions don’t seem too eager ever to actually do right by "the masses", even though that is whose interests they profess to have at heart.
"The masses" were the ones on the receiving end of the mass killings; no one much calls them heroes.
They’re just part of the 20th century mechanized warfare nameless faceless masses who fell as intentional targets based on their residence."

All your faux tears for "the masses" tells me that either America's public education has sunk to new lows even I never imagined, or you were educated in some Bolshevik dominated institution.
Americans don't think or talk that way, FRiend, especially not conservatives.
Why do you?

In America, we didn't have faceless "masses" or "classes", we had citizens, individuals, voters, responsible for selecting their leaders, and holding them to account on good behavior.
Duties of citizenship included jury duty and military service, as required.
Citizens are responsible for their government, and it is accountable to them -- that's the way our Founders intended it, and it's how most Americans have tried to live.

To Americans, all this Bolshevik-Communist talk about "masses" and "classes" is corrupt and corrupting to the core, and we don't like it, even a little bit.
So why do you?

Public opinion polls before & during WWII showed that Americans overwhelmingly hated Europe's wars and didn't want to get dragged in, but once attacked just as overwhelmingly supported the President's call for Declarations of War and Unconditional Surrender of the Axis powers.
What you call faceless "masses", I call responsible citizens who elect leaders to do the right thing, and trust (or at least hope) that our Constitutional system will keep things right.

Americans have many doubts about our leaders, both before and after WWII, but nearly all still agree that we were not mislead into the war, and that our "Greatest Generation" gave us the best results we could expect from it.
Unlike many wars, there is very little ambiguity in the minds of Americans about WWII.
It was "the good war".

PieterCasparzen: "Would George Washington condone the firebombing of a city ?"

Certainly not American cities.
The US declaration of independence accuses the King of England of:

"He has plundered our seas, ravaged our Coasts, burnt our towns, and destroyed the lives of our people.
He is at this time transporting large Armies of foreign Mercenaries to compleat the works of death, desolation and tyranny, already begun with circumstances of Cruelty & perfidy scarcely paralleled in the most barbarous ages, and totally unworthy the Head of a civilized nation."

Of course there's no way Washington would commit such acts on his fellow Americans.
Our Founders did, however, drive tens of thousands of loyalists out of their homes, forcing them to emigrate, most to Canada, at no doubt, considerable financial loss.

So our Founders were as hard-nosed as they needed to be.

PieterCasparzen: "Killing more Axis civilians does nothing to right the wrong of killing so many Allied civilians.
Neither sides’ civilian dead are really paid any honor.
Everyone from the leftist history professor to Hitler himself seems to say “they got what they deserved”.
Thanks, new world order !"

You don't seem to "get" that the highest order objectives of people like President Roosevelt and Prime Minister Churchill were to not only 1) "win the war" but to 2) defeat Germany so thoroughly, so completely, that they would never, ever, think of starting another one.
That was the legacy of the First World War -- Wilson's 14 Points, "peace without victory", left Germany feeling undefeated and cheated of victory which was almost, almost theirs.
Allied leaders in the Second World War intended to make certain that could not happen again.

In their minds, bombing enemy civilians was necessary not only to win the present war, but also to prevent future wars.

PieterCasparzen: "After we “think” about this for a while (and no one has to respond), which way are we going to make our moral stand on this issue ?
Is it morality that depends upon the situation and we’ll decide situation as it arises ?"

My opinion is that you are confused, disoriented and unable to think clearly about a subject which is difficult at best, but not impossible, if you know the real history.

Fortunately for you, Free Republic provides many, many history related threads, all at a very reasonable cost in your voluntary donations...

;-)

[BroJoeK]

Pelham: "Japan had no intention of giving up.
The culture was heavily influenced by Boshido where war is purifying and death a duty.
It took something almost otherworldly to break their will to fight.
And since Godzilla wasn’t around to help us the atomic bombs would have to do."

Thanks so much for sharing your & your Dad's experience.
My Dad was part of the invasion force which did land on those Japanese beaches, in September 1945.
On coming ashore they were met, not by suicidal fanatics determined to kill as many Americans as possible, but rather by Japanese children, holding flowers.
Our guys were treated with respect by the Japanese, and returned the same.
We tried to do right by them, and I don't we did so badly.

Japanese were courageous beyond all measure in war, honorable to a fault in peace, we could not have better allies today.

[BroJoeK]

correction: "...and I don' think we did so badly."

[PieterCasparzen]

Know a lot of general officers do you?

I know a few folks in the military, one of which has been to the White House, another of which spent a lot of time under water.

They tell me that its pretty rare for someone to tell their superior that an order is unlawful and they're not going to follow it. I think pretty much everyone on FR knows about only lawful orders, etc.

Please let's dispense with the all-too-frequent practice of determining who "wins" according to who has better military connections.

This is where the typical neocon misses the point when it comes to this type of discussion. Yes, by and large, the American military conduct was exemplary during WWII. Phenomenally exemplary. Almost all of those men (aside from the typical few bad apples which were typically flushed out very well) performed with honor, did their duty and "followed lawful orders".

When us "conspiracy wackos" talk about conspiracies, we're not talking about the military per se (if we know what we're talking about). The tricks are played at the top. That's the easy way. Get a screwy President and Secretary of War (Defense) in place, and you get what you want if you're a global elite.

FDR - Harvard, old money New York families, run horribly amok. Grandfather Warren Delano made his fortune in the Chinese opium trade. FDR was classmates with future OSS leader William Donovan at Columbia Law School in NYC. Etc., etc.

Henry L. Stimson - Yale, Skull and Bones, friends with Elihu Root who was the close confidant and attorney of of John D. Rockefeller, Sr.

If you actually do a background on the men who were the top advisors to FDR, you find a tiny "incestuous" little world of high finance / old money focused in NYC, with some of the most significant players actually having played similar roles for President Wilson during WWI. It's like the "old ivy league rich boy war boys club", that loves war, rations, national debt, rule by administrative decree, massive government contracts, etc. That is what the Federal government became after 1913.

Actually, it's fantastic that you bring up good old MacArthur, in relation to "wacky conspiracy theories". As he was aware that OSS was filled with communists, he refused to let them operate in the Pacific theatre.

http://www.history.army.mil/books/wwii/70-42/70-424.html

"The Office of Strategic Services never played a major role in the Pacific. Admiral Chester W. Nimitz, the overall commander of the Central and South Pacific theaters, limited OSS activities to an intelligence and liaison office in Honolulu. Donovan's envoys were even less successful in their negotiations with the Southwest Pacific Theater. MacArthur and his staff intended to conduct their own brand of special operations in the theater without any interference from a semi-autonomous organization that had its own command channel to Washington. Although the OSS periodically attempted to "penetrate" the theater, MacArthur was able to close his command to Donovan's agency until the last days of the war.1"

OSS leadership - coincidentally (????????????) also had the core ties to that old money eastern establishment.

Now ain't that weird ?

I may be a little slow on the uptake sometimes, but how can "insider, always in the right place at the right time, slick, privileged east coast ivy league boys" have their espionage operation filled will communists ?????? They're too smart for that to happen by accident. Wait, we see their fathers generation of Wall Streeters helped finance the Bolshevik revolution. Hmmmm...

Yes, Generals, due to their rank, while they publicly try to show the decorum and respect of their rank, certainly they do have considerable latitude in how they execute the operations they are tasked with.

And good ol' cranky MacArthur leaves us a historical breadcrumb - to me, it is amazing that he did what he did. And the implications of the matter - sit there like a big old fat pimple on the buttocks of the pure-as-the-driven-snow history that we are fed by the mainstream sources. ESPECIALLY GIVEN THAT THE PRESIDENT WAS A CLASSMATE OF WILLIAM DONOVAN AT COLUMBIA LAW SCHOOL. If a theatre commander kicks the official government intelligence agents out of his theatre, something is rotten in Washington, DC, IMHO.

[PieterCasparzen]

Nothing you responded with refutes anything I wrote.

[BroJoeK]

PieterCasparzen: "Nothing you responded with refutes anything I wrote."

Everything you wrote is nonsense, so I provided you with reason & facts to improve you understandings.
Sorry if it all flew over your head.

I "get" that your education was deeply flawed.
Really, stick with Free Republic.
We'll straighten you out... eventually. ;-)

[riverdawg]

“Alberta’s Child has an understandable moral position. Moral positions are very nice until you start a shooting war. At that point, you win or you lose. And if you have any decency, you try to win by having as few of your own people killed as possible.

But when it comes to the enemy and their people, in order to win you have to kill them. The equation is that killing more of them means you have fewer of your own killed. So that is what you do. Moral positions take a back seat. Period.

War is a nasty, ugly and brutal business. It always has been and will always be so. The idea that we can control, contain or manage the violence is a modern fallacy, and is simply unrealistic.”

As Dutch Van Kirk, the last surviving member of the Enola Gay who died this week, said, “It's really hard to talk about morality and war in the same sentence.”