I’m in the middle of reading Victor Davis Hanson’s “Soul of Battle” and, much like the phenomenon of buying a new car, I now see echoes of it everywhere I look. I was reading some of the comments in a thread (Mexi’s Dec. 31 links) and sure enough, the theme of the book popped up there in a discussion between Mojeaux and JarFlax (primarily) over the subject of how one should make war. Given my recent post (here) on the subject of the composition of the military, I thought this was a good follow-up on the related, and even more difficult subject, of how We, the Leaders of Libertopia, would ethically engage in the worst of all human endeavors, War. As I noted in that piece, the idea of the structure for a military necessarily has implications about one’s foreign policy that either enjoins or unleashes that military. Perhaps backing out one further step is a consideration of what kind or style of warfare one will allow its military to employ and under what circumstances.
There are entire degrees to be obtained in studying and arguing about theories of warfare, what constitutes sufficient causus belli, and under what circumstances nuclear and/or total warfare might even be considered. These are not merely academic matters, however. Most of us are… of a certain age and can remember during the 1970’s and 80’s adults, and even public figures, had discussions about exactly these kinds of issues because of the Cold War. (Given they were making kids get under the desks for air raid drills in public schools, it would have been a bit difficult to hide). I can remember the hysteria from democrats about what would happen if Reagan was elected; nuclear annihilation was certainly mentioned and the television event of the time was “The Day After.” More salient to my own life as a young lieutenant were Rules of Engagement briefs while we sat off the coast of Bosnia, just before the UN Enclaves fell and the horrors at Srebrenica followed.
The “most recent unpleasantness” of a certain September morning raised the issue right to the fore, but in the immediate aftermath, the American people were (generally) more than happy to “let slip the dogs of war” – and I must confess, I volunteered because I thought we had sufficient ‘causus belli’ to go hunt down the people who did it. Instead, we wound up with the Patriot Act, FISA courts, NSA mass surveillance, and a WHOLE LOT of debt, while our “allies” in the Musharaff government Pakistan took a ton of our money to occasionally deliver up the #4 guy in AQ whenever we threatened to stop sending guns and money. (For a very detailed look at that mess, you should read this CATO paper. I don’t have to agree with his thesis, but his explanation of the dysfunction that is Pakistan is illuminating and well-sourced.) As to the Law of War and how we – the United States – would conduct it, we set up renditions teams and snatched people from foreign countries, used ‘enhanced interrogation techniques,’ held people in secret prisons, and otherwise wiped our asses with most of the norms we had been screaming about other regimes violating over the prior decades. That doesn’t even cover the human rights abuses of experiments on our own troops that I’ve documented in the anthrax series in the years well-before 9/11.
Which brings me to Victor Davis Hanson’s brilliant introduction to “Soul of Battle,” in which he graphically describes our response to the attack on Pearl Harbor by Japan. The March 9, 1945, napalm incendiary bombing of Tokyo, Japan, was an act of incredible savagery.
Planes flew in small groups of three, a minute apart. Most were flying not more than 5,000 feet above Japan. Five-hundred-pound incendiary clusters fell every 50-feet. Within thirty minutes, a 28-mile-per-hour ground wind sent the flames roaring out of control. Temperatures approached 1800 degrees Fahrenheit…
He [Curtis LeMay] wished to destroy completely the material and psychological capital of the Japanese people, on the brutal theory that once civilians had tasted what their soldiers had done to others, only then might their murderous armies crack. Advocacy for a savage militarism from the rear, he thought, might dissipate when one’s house was in flames…
There was to be no public objection to LeMay burning down the industrial and residential center of the Japanese empire – too many stories about about Japanese atrocities toward subjugated peoples and prisoners of war had filtered back to the American people. To a democratic nation in arms, an enemy’s unwarranted aggression and murder are everything, the abject savagery of its own retaliatory response apparently nothing…
In revenge for the unprovoked but feeble attack at Pearl Harbor on their country, American farmers, college students, welders, and mechanics of a year past were now prepared – and quite able – to ignite all the islands of Japan.
The Soul of Battle, pp.2-3
I would argue that Hanson is vastly understating the strategic and global situation of the United States with regard to Pearl Harbor by selectively ignoring the Axis Powers, which included Japan, Germany, and Italy, and the situations of the U.S. Allies, including England, France, and the rest of Europe at various times. Regardless, however, his point remains and mine just adds contextual items that would only sharpen the debate: when is total warfare acceptable? Under which specific circumstances? And like the common law, the specific circumstances have to be held up to for elucidation of a principle under which a moral people could at least agree: yep, as a nation, we will unleash hell on enemies as, for example, in a matter of national survival.
Thankfully, Hanson doesn’t dodge the subject and, indeed, states the following as a thesis:
Democracy, and its twin of market capitalism, alone can instantaneously create lethal armies out of civilians, equip them with horrific engines of war, imbue them with near-messianic zeal within a set time and place to exterminate what they understand as evil, have them follow to their deaths the most ruthless of men, and then melt anonymously back into the culture that produced them. It is democracies, which in the right circumstances, can be imbued with the soul of battle, and thus turn the horror of killing to a higher purpose of savings lives and freeing the enslaved.
The Soul of Battle, p. 4.
The first thing that pops into my mind is that all revolutionaries believe they have a ‘higher purpose’ of ‘saving lives and freeing the enslaved;’ it’s practically a mantra for every socialist ever. We’ll come back to this issue in a bit.
Hanson’s book is broken into three parts, with each one analyzing the circumstances of a particular general that Hanson believes personified the necessary traits to lead such democratic armies: the Theban general Epaminondas against the Spartans from 372-362 B.C.; William Tecumseh Sherman and his (in)famous March to the Sea from late 1864 to June of 1865; and Patton’s command of the Third Army from its creation on August 1, 1944, until his crossing the Rhine into Germany 10 months later.
Now if I seem to have marshalled the case for Hanson’s view of the justifications for some tactics of total war, such as the massive – and rather indiscriminate – killing via aerial bombing, I should add to the mix Giles Milton’s excellent book, Churchill’s Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare as an antagonist to that notion. In the late 1930’s, as Hitler’s Reich romped through Europe, Great Britain faced a very real crisis, both of identity and survival.
In villages across the realm, well-spoken youths in whites and flannels spent their Sundays playing cricket, a game with so many rules that only the British were equipped to master it. Even more violent sports like boxing came with a book of regulations. In 1867, the 9th Marquess of Queensbury (though hardly a gentleman) had put his name to a set of rules that ensured boxing was fought in a spirit of decency. No longer could you hit a man when he was down: that was deemed to be underhand…
As international relations grew increasingly strained in the late 1930s, the question of what constituted gentlemanly combat became a subject of heated debate on the letters pages of The Times. A certain Dr L.P. Jacks of Oxfordshire fired the opening salvo when he wrote to the editor expressing his belief that the sword alone was a ‘gentleman’s weapon.’ His reasoning was quintessentially British. Attacking someone with a sword ‘was more likely to give the other fellow a chance, and so make it more of a sporting affair between him and me.’
CMoUW, p. 20.
The letters that followed played out the argument in all of the usual forms and even spilled into the House of Commons. There, the Conservative MP Robert Bower of Cleveland, who had once used a racist epithet at a Jewish colleague that resulted in him receiving a rather ungentlemanly punch in the face on the floor of the House, berated his softer, more squeamish, and more gentlemanly colleagues who were unwilling to consider what methods must be considered as a matter of national survival. ‘When you are fighting for your life against a ruthless opponent, you cannot be governed by the Queensbury rules.’ Bower’s view did not necessarily carry the day and many were appalled when he added that ‘We must have a government which will be ruthless, relentless, remorseless. In short, we want a few more cads in government.’ CMoUW, p. 22.
The Irish and many other colonial subjects might well have argued that the British government was already quite ruthless enough and needed little coaching or encouragement in that regard, but in one of the great ironies, it was a British officer who had served in ‘the Troubles,’ one Colin Gubbins, who would become the driving force behind the UK’s systematic use of ‘ungentlemanly warfare’ on the Continent against Hitler. Gubbins was recruited into Section ‘D’ and literally wrote the manuals “The Art of Guerrilla Warfare” and “The Partisan Leaders’ Handbook” that would become the template for all of the trainees that came out of what would eventually come to be known as “Bletchley Park.” Gubbins drew inspiration from the Irish tactics against the British, as well as Al Capone’s gangsters in Chicago during Prohibition, and T.E. Lawrence in Arabia.
Unlike Curtis LeMay, however, Gubbins and his colleagues Joe Holland and Lawrence Grand, believed that targeted operations on the ground were far preferable to carpet-bombing from 30,000 feet. It was an issue that would plague their operations for years as they fought for British and Allied air support to drop supplies behind enemy lines or parachute in specially trained spies and saboteurs to manage resistance operations everywhere from France to Egypt to Eastern Europe and even as far afield as the Middle East. Gubbins believed that Hitler’s Axis War Machine must have sand thrown in its gears everywhere it went, but that was far preferable – and far more successful, and even moral – than what LeMay envisioned doing to Japan. Milton makes an equally compelling case for Gubbins’ point of view over LeMay’s, but neither Milton nor Hanson would likely disagree about the need for tactics that would normally be ‘out of bounds’ but for certain factors that each believes demanded and justified such actions. I now resurface the question about all revolutionaries needing to operate outside of what are acceptable norms in order to fight ‘existential threats’ and will let the readers argue about where FARC, narco-traffickers, and even bin Laden and AQ fall on the list.
Before that debate begins, however, I remind the reader of Professor Hanson’s admonition that these kinds of academic debates are “the easy anxieties of the deskbound class.” Even the vast majority of military members never see up close and personal engagements with the enemy and so I caution against giving their opinions special status in these debates. Additionally, consider that Harvard professor Alan Dershowitz has openly advocated the sue of “torture warrants.’ I have always wondered if Dershowitz himself was really willing to torture another human being for the “ticking time bomb” hypothetical or if his argument would be different if he had that actual experience. Would he really pull someone else’s fingernails off, one by one, for an (relatively mild) example? Use a power drill and put a bit through someone’s kneecap?
I am cognizant that my own experience with these issues as a former judge advocate and combat arms officer is perhaps somewhere between the “deskbound” academic and the shooter. How it plays out for the individual soldier charged with violating these ‘norms’ has been how I made my living, however. In 2006 I was brought back to active duty to defend one each of the Haditha and Hamdiniyah murder trials, where squads (essentially) of Marines were each charged with murder, war crimes, and various other offenses for actions that resulted in deaths that were judged to be “out of bounds.” While I was conflicted off of the Haditha case, I was a part of Corporal Trent Thomas‘ defense team. I also later defended an Army officer on murder and war crimes in Iraq; we tried the case in the same courtroom where Saddam Hussein was convicted and sentenced to die for his crimes against the Iraqi people. My client was acquitted of everything except for a Law of War violation for setting a field expedient boobytrap on an insurgent weapons’ cache that locals had pointed out to his team. He received a Letter of Reprimand in the end, but it still cost him a promising career in the Army.
This is hardly a new phenomenon or debate and I believe some historical perspective can be helpful in untangling these rather twisted skeins. Tom Hanks’ Captain John Miller struggles with this issue throughout “Saving Private Ryan.” It wasn’t the slaughter of the landing at D-Day that stuck with me, but the immediate aftermath where we see U.S. soldiers “crossing that line” after finally breaking through the German defenses at the beach. It happens in the ‘background,’ but it’s clear that Spielberg is trying to show us that our WW2 “heroes” might have engaged in what would be pretty clear violations of the Law of War. The theme comes up repeatedly throughout the movie, from Tom Hanks’ decision to either kill or let a captured German soldier go, to Private Mellish’s death that leads to another blatant LoAC violation when Upham executes the Waffen SS soldier that he previously could not shoot during combat.
When I was brought back to active duty, I was stashed at the Naval Justice School in Newport, RI, and by sheer coincidence an article was submitted for publication in the Naval Law Review that was an intimate look at this issue by a former Marine judge advocate who had defended a Marine on murder/war crimes for slitting the throat of a Vietnamese villager and dumping his body in a well, all in plain view of a number of witnesses. I was in the middle of defending my own client and didn’t have time to do the grunt-work necessary to make the original into a scholarly article, so I did what every good Major does: I gave it to a trusted Marine Captain, in this case, Joe Markel, and I commend it to you as essential reading on a very difficult subject. It is entitled “Reflections on Murder in War” by Edward F. Fogarty, Naval L. Rev., No. 54, p. 105.
The questions present themselves. Can we reach a consensus on murder in war: defining it, investigating it, prosecuting it, defending it, and punishing it? Must we all scream at the top of our voices? Can military law achieve just results in the midst of a sometimes irrational uproar?
Id., p. 105.
Mr. Fogarty does an exception job, in my view, of offering up what may be a way “through” this morass by describing what he calls a”diminished moral capacity” defense during war. In other words, once one acknowledges the need – indeed, perhaps the essentiality of putting limits on the conduct of war – he recognizes that any standards, regardless of what one advocates, will necessarily require some mechanism for investigating and adjudicating violations of them. And that means putting some members of the desk-bound class – lawyers, worst of all – in charge of prosecuting those who are engaged in the “improper” kind of murder… during War.
And to put what may be a slightly positive spin on the entire (depressing, yet fascinating) subject, I will add that Americans have typically been reluctant to demonize citizen-soldiers for acts done in war, even the ones that violate all norms of behavior. While the most egregious examples get the most press – like almost all divisive issues – the American people as a rule seem to understand that war is a most horrible place to expect people to kill in only the “proper military fashion.” We see this in the recent media coverage of Trump’s pardon of Navy SEAL Eddie Gallagher (bias alert: he was defended by an NJS classmate and personal friend of mine), although the media ignores that even Lieutenant Calley of My Lai infamy only served 4 or so years of his original life sentence before appeals, political influence, and widespread public outcry limited his sentence.
A final anecdote for consideration: as a brand new, young second lieutenant fresh from Basic School, I was back in South Boston awaiting orders to flight school when the former Mrs. Mandias was working at a nursing home. She had two patients who were both former WW2 Marines and after learning their young caregiver was married to a “green second john,”I accepted the invitation to visit with them. Dressed in freshly pressed Service Charlies, I was regaled with firsthand accounts of battles that I had studied from the Marine Corps’ island-hopping campaign in the Pacific. The most interesting to me, however, was their account of waiting in Australia to be a part of the invasion force of “Fortress Japan.” You never found two more devoted fans of Harry Truman‘s decision to drop not just one, but two big ones, on ’em. And in one of the strange ironies that only war can produce, both men spent significant time in Japan as part of the occupation force and spoke lovingly of Japan, the Japanese, and their culture. They also had some good laughs about the change in US Military propaganda they were fed before and after the war.
“They spent all this time showing us videos of what brutal savages the Japanese were, how they were subhuman butchers, and then a few months later we were getting lectures on the wonders of such an ancient, advanced, and venerable civilization and how we should respect their culture and be careful about what we say and do.”
But that’s a subject that’s best left to another day and another article.
First, Bitches!
Yes! Finally.
Aren’t you already first by virtue of having written the article?
Way to piss on my celebration, UCS.
*womp, womp, womp*
Well when you put it that way…
I’m just teasing. I’ve been caught two or three times posting “FIRST” only to be, like, third or fourth. Yes, doing it on my own article when I knew exactly when it would be published is pretty lame and deserving of ridicule.
I could have beat you, but I wanted to RTFA first.
I won’t make that mistake again!
I tried that once and immediately got called out for knowing the exact time the article would go live.
The Fist of Etiquette?
People read the articles here?
Sorry, only counts for links. Try again next time.
I found two typos: After “Dershowitz” I meant ‘use’ not ‘sue’ although that’s kinda funny.
Much further down when discussing the Naval Law Review article it should be “exceptionAL” not merely “exception.”
Fantastic, Ozy. I’m very conflicted on this subject.
At first blush, the idea of a “Law of War” seems absurd. War means you go all out until you’ve achieved your goals.
On the other hand, bombing civilians intentionally is evil as fuck.
But isn’t war evil as fuck, anyway?
I pimped one of Carlin’s podcasts called The Destroyer of Worlds that tackled the change in warfare post-nukes. Very interesting.
Thanks for writing this.
“Making War Ethically…” Heh.
I was in a war were we killed relatively few “civilians”. It was still just an organized slaughter of peasants who had been rounded up and issued (mismatched) uniforms. I went through the minefield breach from Saudi Arabia into Kuwait on D-Day and saw the dead everywhere. At the minefield breech itself was a dead Iraqi – either the unluckiest or bravest guy ever. The bottom half of his body had been run over by an entire mech regiment before my truck ran him over too – no swerving in a minefield. There were similar dead idiots everywhere. Anyone who stayed in their tanks were dead – and probably a smear across the desert as the ready shells inside the tank exploded and the pressure shoved them out the penetration hole cut in the armor the size of a dime. I suppose it’s more ethical to just slaughter the young men rather than the women, children, and old folks.
My only real sentiment – which I heard other Marines repeat several times: “Better them than me”
I just missed Gulf War I – got commissioned that May – but most of the guys I flew with in the Fleet were Gulf War Cobra pilots and they had a field day destroying Iraqi tanks on the “Road of Death” or whatever the fuck it was called. Truly like ‘fish in a barrel’ according to most of the guys I talked to.
“Better them than me” is always the first thought of the soldier. In this one, I’m zooming in and out between large-scale considerations of how a Nation conducts War and the microcosm of how individual soldiers carry that out. And then I’m layering over that the considerations of “if rules, then how do you handle violations of those rules.” I’ve spent a considerable chunk of my life thinking about/obsessing over this.
My father-in-law did Parris Island in early ’45. He was supposed to be cannon-fodder for a beach landing in Japan. To him, nuking Japan was the ultimate “better you than me”.
Uncle was in the same position. Why wasted battle hardened soldiers when the first wave is pretty much going to be wiped out no matter what you do?
Nuking Japan was legitimate and moral in my opinion. An actual ground invasion by us or the Russians would have gone a lot harder on the Japanese population than those bombs did.
Dropping the 2nd one was less so, but the Japanese could have surrendered before the 2nd one was dropped.
I’ve heard people say that the second was as much a warning to the Russians as the Japanese. It certainly allowed MacArthur to tell the Ruskies to piss off when they wanted to occupy northern Japan.
The only objection I would have to nuking the Japanese is that the first one could have, should have, been a demonstration nuke. Not targeted at a city, but at a small island, say, within easy viewing distance of a major city, something like that.
As it happened, that wouldn’t have induced surrender, but giving them fair warning before actually nuking a city seems more ethical.
My dad says the same thing. He was close to draft age when the bomb dropped, much to his relief.
My father-in-law was in the Pacific in WWII. Also a big fan of the nukes.
One quibble with VDH:
Democracy, and its twin of market capitalism, alone can instantaneously create lethal armies out of civilians, equip them with horrific engines of war, imbue them with near-messianic zeal within a set time and place to exterminate what they understand as evil, have them follow to their deaths the most ruthless of men, and then melt anonymously back into the culture that produced them.
I disagree with the “alone”. The Soviets and the ChiComs both did pretty much this, didn’t they? Not as well equipped, perhaps, but they both managed to kick the crap out of armies from “democractic” “capitalist” countries, both head to head and via proxies.
Hmmmm… The both produced very large but not very advanced armies. The Chinese won some victories in Korea based on the massive size of their army. Then it settled down into a stagnant slaughter – costing them something over a million dead compared to our 35k.
His “alone” applies to all of the things he mentions, including that the armies melt away at the end. He makes that clear throughout that it isn’t just building an army, nor winning, nor liberating (even) that are the sine qua non of his case: he is fascinated by the fact that all of the armies he uses as examples were gone within 10-12 months of their victories. They came, they saw, they conquered… then they went home because it wasn’t actually about conquest.
Ditto Charlton Heston, who was stationed in Alaska at the time.
Jus in bello – Jus ad bellum
This was a significant part of the mandatory philosophy class I had to take at trade school, and also a big part of Military Science and Military Law.
The ethics of why you’re fighting the war and how you’re fighting the war and how those concepts conflict and interact with each other.
*insert standing ovation opera applause gif here*
*looks around, assumes it’s for self, tips cap*
Go after the heads of state. Fuck Jimmy Carter.
Here’s the thing about Japan. We unleashed the most destructive device ever unleashed in the history of war completely annihilating an entire city. They didn’t surrender. WTF do you do about that?
A-yep.
A lot of people make a lot of excuses to blame the US for the second bomb, but it requires completely ignoring what happened in the lead-up to the first bomb – I’m thinking of the Battle of Okinawa – and then the no surrender after the first.
Drop the second one.
Exactly. How many more do they have?
Do you really want to find out?
If Facebook existed during WWII.
My first real comment (I will have more) is this, since I was name-checked. I have three primary and very primitive drivers for my stance of crush-and-leave.
1. Mind my own business. Not my circus, not my monkeys. Any smart girl involved with elementary school and high school girl drama experience knows this is how to stay out of drama and girl politics.
2. Do not act until acted upon. No imperialism, no collecting territories, no spreading of democracy. That is immoral bordering on evil. Just defense. Then crush, so as not to necessitate dealing with it again, which leads to …
3. I suck at followup. Really suck. I want projects I can bang out with a defined beginning and end. I also do one project all the way through without stopping until it’s done. So. Marshall the forces. Burn the field. Say, “Please do not provoke us. Thank you in advance and have a good day.” Go home. Send everyone back to doing whatever they were doing. Once and done. Burn the field.
Which is entirely separate from the real purpose of war, which I tell my kids all the time: making money. Crank up the Wartime Military Industrial Complex, boys! It’s time to collect that sweet, sweet government funding!
Now. My kitty is demanding to play fetch.
This puts you in good company with VDH, Moj. I’m not through with the book yet, but Hanson’s pretty clear up front that, despite using adjectives like “savage,” “brutal,” “maniacal” – and a few more I may have missed – to describe Curtis Lemay, he also compares him directly to Sherman and he views Sherman’s campaign as a kind of moral crusade against the South, not just a military one.
You kinda summed up the Powell Doctrine.
I thought the Powell doctrine was show the p at the UN under protest to show old unconvincing pictures as a pretext to launching an open ended engagement in Iraq.
OT – To what extent can congress meddle i the issuance of military decorations?
This is still in the context of the Tarnished Sterling universe and ATOM wanting to be seen as a real branch of the military. They think they have their first Medal of Honor candidate in a guy who held off a substantial hostile force long enough for the rest of his unit to get a civilian column to safety. (He expected it to be fatal, but survived wounded and was picked up later). However, prior to his military career, he faced a very racially charged prosecution for murder which ended with the charges being thrown out because the prosecuter tried to hide a video of the event that exonerated him. The media coverage of the event means half the country thinks he’s a racist murderer who got off on a technicality. So the congresscritters would be emboldened to interfere in whatever manner they can concoct to score points with their bases and donors.
So back to the original question – how much could congress meddle in the process?
They literally have the power to “to make rules for the government and regulation of the land and naval forces.” Art I, sec. 8.
As it works out more generally, the executive write the manual for courts-martial, which is actually an executive order, but it is very clear that Congress can meddle in that at will (and they do – almost always for the worse).
So if a congresscritter who thinks the candidate is scum gets wind of the nomination, it’s entirely feasible to have very public congressional hearings arguing over the matter?
Congress has to approve every promotion list, which is pretty rote below the rank of O-5, but flag officer promotions are frequently haggled over behind the scenes and sometimes in front of the scenes. I know of cases of Admirals having their careers ended because of politics – where they did nothing wrong, and likely something right – but a Senator or Congresscritter is gunning for them because a family fiend – er, constituent – thinks they got a raw deal from said flag officer.
The Senate advises and consents on promotion lists for O-4 and above for Compo 1 and O-5 and up for Reserve Compos.
Most medals are approved at the proper level of military commander. The MOH is approved by Congress.
The process I saw didn’t include congress in approving the MOH, just the president. Can you point me to where you saw congressional approval as standard?
On a similar topic what are y’alls opinion on this:
Revoking awards from the past
While i could see revoking an award for someone if it is discovered that they fraudulently recived it, i think doing so to the dead is just dumb. I’m not sure i can say why, but something about it seems grossly petty.
Well, in the case of the 27th maine, they were given their medals not for the degree of valor of other recipients, but for merely re-upping their enlistment. That’s a much lower standard, even in wartime, and “you didn’t even come close to the standard”* seems like grounds to revoke to me.
* if there was, in fact, as standard in place at the time. I don’t recall if it had been set yet.
Heck, they’re not just removing awards, they’re removing the names of confederates from their gravestones.
Upon review… The CMOH is commissioned and controlled by Congress, but the President is charged with presenting the medal in the name of Congress.
The POTUS has final approval on who receives the award.
Looping back around to the previous ATOM thread — I wasn’t suggesting psychic surgery or the like, I’m assuming that would either be too convenient or too dystopian for your desire to de-sass a new recruit. What I was suggesting is that there would be a special course/training site (ostensibly to teach people to control their mental powers or to resist mental powers of others) but would really be a way of getting the recruit into a place away from the eyes of normies so that the behavior of both the recruit and xir instructors might be overlooked as needed.
I will admit I haven’t read any of your books –yet. I have had bad experiences when a good friend wanted me to experience some creation of theirs and I was not appreciative enough or appreciative of the bits they were really proud of that led to interpersonal conflict. However, after reading the Ink and Infatuation miniseries, I’m pretty confident I’ll be able to honestly say I enjoyed the books. I’ve got a few thousand pages of other stuff to get through first, then I’ll pick them up.
Shit, I’m not bothered if someone doesn’t like my work. I generally am curious about why, but I’m not going to get affronted or offended. I write for entertainment, first to entertain myself, then others if its suits them.
I’ll have to think on the ‘black site’ question, the draft there is maybe five pages in.
I suppose it’s more ethical to just slaughter the young men rather than the women, children, and old folks.
Okay. I’m going to be the bastard here. Is this really still the case? I understand where it came from. Through most of history, young men could defend themselves and the rest couldn’t. But, is that really still the case?
There is a theory that war is to control the population of young aggressive men. Harness their aggression, send them far away from home, then they come home tamed.
“then they come home
tamedbroken.” FIFYNo one with two brain cells to rub together – or who had been to war – could possibly think War tames young men. It may make some reconsider or lose their ardor for killing; it makes some broken for life; and it also makes a whole cadre of well-trained men who now have some sociopathy and are significantly less squeamish about the taking of human life.
But the idea that it “controls” young men is idiotic.
IIRC, this was a theory prompted by what the British were doing for a good portion of the 1800s.
That said, this is only a vague recollection from research for my Revolutionary War novel. Or a long-forgotten history class, I dunno.
And it only struck me and semi-sorta stuck because young men in my church are sent off to missions at 19 (18 now). It is a cultural expectation and if you don’t go (or in lieu of that, in the military) there are social repercussions. The first thing a Mormon girl asks when a boy starts chatting up a girl is, “Where did you serve your mission?” An “I didn’t go on one” is immediate cold shoulder.
Otherwise, often, parents send their kids off on missions to straighten them out.
It’s a rite of passage and I firmly believe that young men need some sort of rite of passage into manhood. Otherwise we’re stuck with a society of Pajama Boys and Soy Latte Children.
Uh, does sex, drugs and rock ‘n roll count as a rite of passage>
I actually sort of do. I was going to mention blackjack’s stories as an example but I can’t equate it to something like a walkabout or a bar mitzvah.
The question I have, basically, which is not part of Ozy’s discussion so I won’t start a new thread is this:
What makes a man a MAN?
*Grins and unzips*
I’m glad you asked, young lady!!
I stated that wrong. What makes a MAN out of a boy?
I heard it said once and I swear I cannot document this, but “A boy does not become a man until his father dies.”
I don’t know if that’s true. I knew a 22yo man with the quiet, humble arrogance of power and I’ve known 50yo withering pussies.
I don’t know why the psychology of manhood fascinates me so much, but it does.
I’ll not say more because a couple of you have read my books and I’m totally outing myself here.
*longsuffering sigh*
I’m trying to be SERIOUS here.
I know, it’s such a rare occurrence.?
It’s early afternoon on a friday, even in Central time. Serious thoughts are going to have a hard time taking root in this mental soil
Long article and part of a series. But I really like this exploration of the issue.
https://www.artofmanliness.com/articles/where-does-manhood-come-from/
The series took its basis from this book.
https://www.artofmanliness.com/articles/where-does-manhood-come-from/
Sorry this book.
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0300050763/ref=as_li_ss_tl?imprToken=BfLJ11vm3fGpIBmiNSArWA&slotNum=0&ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=390957&creativeASIN=0300050763&linkCode=w61&tag=stucosuccess-20
I’m off the edge and can’t reply to my own comments.
*zips up, grumbling*
The hell, Mo?
It’s Friday and Ozy already lobbed a serious grenade 😉
@Dr Fronkensteen, thanks. I’ll look that up.
Unfortunately, my church’s culture of stoic gentility in its men does some damage, I think. It’s the “gentility” part. It’s supposed to be Christlike, but Christ broke out the whips and the rage and our men can’t do that.
Our men’s only socially acceptable outlet for rampant aggression is high-stakes litigation and there are a LOT of litigators running around.
Romney was hobbled by it. He was an alpha in embryo who couldn’t wield it when he should’ve because he was still trying to be a nice guy. “Mormon” was stamped all over him and while I think he knew how tomwage “war” on Obama’s pop culture cult of personality, he couldn’t bring himself to do it. Or else he wasn’t charismatic enough to pull it off.
The days of Porter Rockwell are long gone.
@Tundra Do you need me to link Chapter 18 again, sweetie?
What is a MAN?
I’m a MAN
One of my favorite tunes.
I knew someone was going to hit me up for a definition.
Let me think about it and get back to you. My feelings are nebulous. I can tell you what I DON’T think is manly, e.g., having a half dozen baby mamas and not supporting any one of them, but I have a hard time with a solid definition.
We say, “Man up,” but what does that mean? Does that mean “Be brave enough to get therapy and drugs when you need it”? Or “A real man doesn’t need therapy or drugs.” Except, you know, for that whole self-medicating alcohol thing.
I don’t know.
I expect the two common notions of manhood to be responsibility and virility. These may or may not led to contradictory definitions.
Look, in order to provide for your family, you need to create it first.
I’m a MAN M-A-N
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SaC5ZKRjLUM
Well, now I don’t have to think because you just summed up my feelz brilliantly.
“Man up” has always meant to me that I should follow my dad’s example and do the right thing, no matter how much it sucks.
“I’m a man. I’m forty.”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zQ3oXkDPKbM
Mannish Boy
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bSfqNEvykv0
YEAH!
I’m the Man
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GiHdr4rWG98
I’m the man! I’m the man!
I’m so bad I should be in detention!
I’m the man!
For further musical guidance, this.
What does it take to be a man?
And to (somewhat) tie it back to Ozy’s article:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3L_isSGyVqU
You take a mortal man
And put him in control…
An’ if I get aggression
I give ’em two times back
Heck yeah.
I’m a man!
Also a man
If you want to consult the famous movie about a porn star of your religion, it’s the size of the titties of the woman in his arms.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=851BqHMCaeM
There you are!
Fuck off, Tulpa!
Dang, Frank (if that’s your real name). Off to a good start, I’d say.
Welcome, and stick around. This place is a festival of injokes and obscure references, so if you’re thinking “are these people crazy, or is just me?”, well, we’re crazy.
Ask the Amish.
Rumspringa
They try going English. If they like it, they leave the Amish. If they don’t like it, they comit to a lifetime of Amish ways. I’ve heard the majority stay Amish.
I like that they at least give them a choice.
Ultimately you choose the Amish way or say goodbye to your family and friends forever? Tough choice if so.
I’d say that war has always been as is still a young man’s game. At least in terms of the fighting. Historically no one was spared unless taking into slavery. Also there is the notion that in terms of procreation women are more valuable then men. As a fewer number men can more easily impregnate a larger number of women.
Great job Ozy, there is still the question of what should our military look like,
and Victory conditions Damn it!
Hey, I just write the articles – you guys are supposed to solve the problems in the comments. Jeesh.
Only pussies think the dropping of nuclear weapons on Hiroshima and Nagasaki was immoral. Pussies like four star general Dwight Eisenhower, notorious bitch Senator Robert Taft, and the man who inspired that weak sauce general in “Doctor Strangelove”, Curtis Lemay.
TGA, but what is the overarching ethic that is sufficient to decide the “morality” or “immorality” of such an act? LeMay burned more people – innocent civilians – to death than either Fat Man or Little Boy did. So what exactly was his argument?
I appreciate your underlying point, but it’s a naked appeal to authority – and specifically to people who sanctioned and commanded at least as bad.
So what is the actual moral argument they made? Did LeMay say it was bad because it was one bomb instead of many bombers using many bombs of napalm? Or because it was someone else beside him who ordered it?
I’m being slightly facetious because it’s a grim subject, but I’m genuinely curious as to your position, if you have one.
My position is that
1) Indiscriminate killing is even wronger than discriminate killings of enemy personnel.
2) Japan without a Navy is done.
In the end, my understanding is that the Japanese were willing to surrender conditionally, and the U.S. government was insisting that the surrender had to be unconditional. The Japanese condition was that they keep the emperor. After they surrendered, the U.S. decided to let them keep the emperor.
Emperor Hirohito played a major role in organizing not only Japan’s expansion, but blessing the atrocities committed in his name. He was definitely culpable of stuff that Tojo was hung for. And in deciding to allow him to remain on his throne the U.S. authorities were sabotaging the very thing that they claimed the unconditional surrender was vital to – to ensure that the rulers of Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan were brought to justice.
I personally think that the result of dropping the atomic bombs really affected little beyond satisfying the domestic political concern that the U.S. emerge as the unquestioned victors in a way that a negotiated end wouldn’t accomplish (as well as to send a message to potential adversaries in the post war era). The stated reason, to force Japan to surrender strikes me as ridiculous; Having no navy, no long range air arm, no oil fields, the Japanese were done. Who cares if they surrender or starve?
So blockade and starvation are more ethical than bombs and surrender?
I have repeatedly told people that sanctions punish the poor and the weak. Far more ethical is targeted assassination of the decision makers.
I’m reliably informed by smart people that read the Ny Times that killing peons in non-leadership roles shows sound judgement and humanity, while killing leaders who plan and supervise atrocities demonstrates unhinged, dangerous, impulsive bellicosity.
If we want to go down the route of “blockade and starvation are no less evil than the atomic bomb” then the UK won both world wars via atrocity.
Every war is won via atrocity.
I donno, The Toledo War was pretty atrocity-free.
Starving people can surrender – they have a hope of survival.
Obliterated people cannot.
With hat having been said, let’s pose a thought experiment. You are President Truman. The guys in charge of the Manhattan project come to you and say the bomb doesn’t work.. some babble about the cross section of neutron absorption for all heavy elements being too low to sustain a reaction.
So it’s not an option.
You get word that the Japanese are willing to discuss a negotiated end to the war as well as to work out “the future for prosperity in the American and Asiatic spheres”.
You also have access to the plans to invade and subjugate Japan with the hunderds of thousands of expected American, millions of expected Japanese casualties as well as a prediction that the war will last another four years.
Meanwhile Stalin is carving up Eastern Europe.
Do you
a) invade Japan?
b) use strategic bombing to do waht nukes can’t do?
c) negotiate?
Do you go to trial when your cause is just and you have an excellent chance to win a judgement? Or do you consider negotiating a settlement with the asshole that was wrong, wrong, wrong?
I understand why you think the Atomic bombings were more humane than an invasion. For that matter, I agree: in comparison to a ground invasion and occupation, the atomic bombs were far less deadly and destructive. But those aren’t really the only two options are they?
Do you see my point?
Tarran – if that was for me, absolutely yes. There were certainly a lot of options on the table to Truman, but my reading of the time – and it is really difficult to have a true feeling for the overall zeitgeist of a time you didn’t actually live through – is that the Battle Of Okinawa sent a chill through a lot of important decisionmakers. I don’t think most Americans today, no matter how well read they think they are…. (ahem, even certain…Apologists) appreciate what Okinawa was like.
It was Total War compacted onto an island of ~450 sq mi. The US sent 180,000 men against it and the Japanese had 120,000 men to defend it, plus the locals. What happened during that battle and after it was over, including the ritual suicide by the Commander and his staff rather than surrender, along with the killing of civilians by the Japanese, as well as the suicide by the people themselves, PLUS the terrible toll that the kamikaze pilots had on US ships, planes, and personnel, provided a LOT of momentum for the bomb and not the other options.
I suspect that if all of us had been around for that, we might view the decision through a very different lens. Over 12,000 men were killed, 49,000 total US casualties.
From History.com’s article on the Battle.
Absolutely, Ozy. I’ve long been a WWII scholar of sorts, but since my focus was mostly the ETO, I didn’t know all that much about the Pacific war. Iwo Jima was made famous by the flag raising, so I always assumed that was the biggest, bloodiest battle of the Pacific. I was shocked when I learned that Okinawa had more than double the casualties of Iwo.
In the hypothetical, B & C would seem to be the answer (as well as considering the efficacy of a blockade/invasion of China, which is where 2/3rds of the Japanese army was), however, the sticking point is the whole USSR carving up Europe at the same time. The US being bogged down in a war while the Soviets are at peace would weigh on the president’s mind, considering that the USSR had been one of the aggressors in the war. Yes, the Soviets had been ravaged and were in a weakened state, and yes, they did pledge to join the war against Japan, but the first bomb was dropped before the Soviets entered the war in the Pacific and I don’t think that was without consideration.
In the end, my understanding is that the Japanese were willing to surrender conditionally, and the U.S. government was insisting that the surrender had to be unconditional. The Japanese condition was that they keep the emperor. After they surrendered, the U.S. decided to let them keep the emperor.
I think getting the unconditional surrender was a good thing, even if we did let them keep the conditions they wanted. You can have mercy on the defeated, but make sure it is a total defeat first, and they understand they are receiving mercy, not bargaining.
Japan today is the way it is because of total surrender.
The catch with the emperor is that he was no longer “divine”.
How’s that for lack of “cultural sensitivity”?
It is the exact proper amount of lack of cultural sensitivity. We had to destroy their culture. Their new culture is better.
And yes, I said that.
On that I’d agree.
However, its exactly what we won’t do anymore. Which is why I believe we are in such a quagmire in other places.
I agree with that. Plus, I am not sure that Iraq or Afghanistan have enough of a central authority to get it to work.
“However, its exactly what we won’t do anymore. Which is why I believe we are in such a quagmire in other places.”
I am opposed to fighting wars these days because they are supposed to be horrible and brutal things in which you make the absolute effort to break the enemy’s will to fight, even if it means massacring them all. Something horrific like this is far, far less likely to be engaged in. Instead we now have a ton of sanitized adventurism type conflicts, oft labeled on purpose to distract from what is going on, like “kinetic engagements”, so you can pretend what is going on is not so bad. I believe that had war stayed ugly and brutal we would have far less appetite for it, and thus, far less of it.
“Japan today is the way it is because of total surrender.”
“Total surrender” is the myth that will not die. The Germans surrender more in total than the Japanese.
The Japanese kept their emperor, the royal family was exempted from war crime tribunals (even those who personally oversaw war crimes), war crime tribunals for Japan were very much truncated in comparison to those that occurred in Europe, Japanese school children today learn a VERY different version of WWII then we are taught, the prime minister still makes an annual pilgrimage to honor the war dead (that includes many war criminals), and the Japanese never apologized for anything that they did during the war.
Where is the “total surrender” part? The part where we gave them a constitution that was similar to ours and not all that much different from the system that the Japanese already had?
The PM usually doesn’t make a visit, but sometimes does. Most, but not all of the time, he sends a flunky. This is a political litmus test the plays to one part of his base in some ways similar to the “confederate flag” crowd here. There is more to that flag than slavery.
In a similar way Yasukuni Shrine enshrines many more war dead than just war criminals. Problem is the folks who run the shrine aren’t what I would call sticklers for the truth.
On the whole I’d avoid the place, but if you are a believer you can’t disentangle the fact that “good” souls are also there.
I’m not going to argue over a historical event that happened almost eighty years ago. What I am saying is that it was widely acknowledged among the Allies that the dropping of nuclear weapons on Japan was a political decision and not a military decision. It was only in the post-war period where the myth of the impenetrable Japanese will to fight was used as the excuse for the action.
The fact that “internationalist” Republican Dwight Eisenhower and “Old Right” Republican Taft agreed on that point is rather revealing since the two men never much agreed on almost anything with regards to foreign policy. Similarly there were as many people defending firebombing Tokyo as there was people defending the bombing of Dresden (which was technically classified, but whispers about it were already in the public conscience).
Everything in war is a political decision – that’s the point of fighting the war in the first place.
You’re actually claiming the Japanese did not have a messianic-like zeal for killing and not surrendering? You’re claiming that’s made up?
I submit Kamikaze planes and every battle the Marines fought on their way to japan as evidence. Please watch “The Pacific” or, if you’re willing, read E.B. Sledge’s book “With the Old Breed.”
I couldn’t disagree with you more; and I believe the historical record compiled by the men who fought against the Japanese – including those in China – is roundly against you on this one.
“You’re actually claiming the Japanese did not have a messianic-like zeal for killing and not surrendering?”
Assume for a second that your adversary is a rational actor. In the US there is a common game that we play where we pretend as if all our adversaries are crazy zealots who don’t value their family’s lives as much as we do.
TGA – I’ll try this again. Are you saying that all of the stories told by GIs who actually fought the Japanese in battle are bullshit? Or will you duck the question yet again in order to avoid the uncomfortable position it places your pet theory about WW2?
The Bataan Death March actually happened. Really. It did.
We did not, on the other hand, march Japanese or German prisoners to their deaths, nor did we gas the Jews, nor did we rape Nanking.
Do you agree or disagree?
I didn’t answer your question, because it’s in bad faith. I noted that most generals during World War II opposed the bombing and your counter is some anonymous GIs who disagree. OK. Well I’ve met some anonymous GIs who agree with me. So there.
If you think my argument here is that the Japanese waged an honorable war then I’m not sure what I can do for you.
All I know is that the “they’re not rational” argument is an old charade that is pulled out when its convenient to excuse away our own actions. And it didn’t end after WWII. The same argument has been used in practically every conflict we’ve ever been in. And I don’t buy the argument that the entire world is populated by blood thirsty zealots intent on war, excluding the US and its allies. That has no basis in reality.
Why would LeMay firebomb Tokyo, but be opposed to nuking a smaller city?
I’m genuinely curious.
And if we doing utilitarian ethics here, as in, “would more have died if we blockaded or invaded”, I think its pretty clear the answer is the nukes saved lives. As clear as a counterfactual can be, of course.
The question of whether we should have accepted a conditional surrender is, I think, a different question than how we should have gotten whatever surrender we wanted.
“I felt there was no need to use them [atomic weapons]. We were doing the job with incendiaries. We were hurting Japan badly…. We went ahead and dropped the bombs because President Truman told me to do it…. All the atomic bomb did was, in all probability, save a few days”
Except it’s not just a charade, it’s a truism. “Assume a rational actor” ranks right up there with “assume a spherical cow.” Sometimes using it to model behavior works, but it’s ridiculously far from a useful premise.
So Lemay’s objection was purely tactical (“we’re doing just as much damage with my fleets of firebombers”), and I think his conclusion (“the nukes only saved a couple of days”) is highly questionable. Did he really think more of the same was going to get a surrender within a few weeks?
To me, it sounds like a guy who doesn’t like his plan being challenged or changed. There is certainly no ethical component that I can see to his objection.
Yeah, using LeMay as an ethical defense seems… odd. And you keep asserting the Japanese were “rational,” so please offer up the rational explanation for the Rape of Nanking. Or the Bataan Death March. Or the Philippines. Or the treatment of POWs. Or kamikazes when you yourself claim the war was over. Or the not surrendering after Bomb No. 1. Please show me where the rationality is that I am somehow glossing over.
And why is my question in bad faith? Because I’m asking you the exact same thing you asked us to consider as conclusive on the subject? You’ve cited LeMay and other political generals, described them repeatedly as those who “fought the war,” and accused anyone who disagreed with you as disregarding those who “fought” – and you have the balls to say that I’M the one arguing in bad faith??
I don’t think you realize at all how much you project onto others exactly what you’re doing.
This is why I said below that nukes are a distraction. This debate always boils down to should we have dropped the nukes? Check box a for yes and b for no. The nukes were NOT the worst things we did. Nor were the unique examples as Ozy and VDH discussed. We spent the entire war terror bombing civilian targets, often without even a serious pretense that the targets were military.
Deliberately making war on civilians is, and has historically been seen as, different in kind morally than war against a nation’s military. You can certainly disagree with this point, although the arguments all sound to me identical to FOP arguments that shooting some innocent kid is a price we have to pay to make sure our heroes come home safe, but I really do not see a difference between one big bomb and 100,000 smaller bombs, except that the smaller bombs actually are likely to kill more people.
“is highly questionable. Did he really think more of the same was going to get a surrender within a few weeks?”
All I know is that those generals from WWII were clearly not as informed about the war as we, born after the fact, living in the 21st Century
“Nor were the unique examples as Ozy and VDH discussed. We spent the entire war terror bombing civilian targets, often without even a serious pretense that the targets were military.”
I’m not disagreeing with that, but the conversation began when discussing the dropping of the atomic bomb.
The atomic bombs were a terror campaign too, as their effectiveness of further disabling the war machine is a laughable ex post facto excuse.
Slight aside – you say “All I know is that those generals from WWII were clearly not as informed about the war as we, born after the fact, living in the 21st Century”
Eisenhower was stricly ETO. He never set foot in the PTO. I would say that a well-read student of the war would have more information than Eisenhower in 1945.
LeMay is different, but as others have pointed out his objection was purely tactical as he certainly never showed any hesitance to kill enormous numbers of Japanese civilians by incendiary bombs. In any case, he also said this:
Assume for a second that your adversary is a rational actor.
Robert MacNamara, is that you?
Have you read Dereliction of Duty? This was EXACTLY the idiotic conceit that drove Viet Nam right up until Nixon was sworn in. You stepped on a flaming bag of dog shit with that one my friend.
TGA – I think you’re exactly wrong in your view of the post war revisionism. I’m pretty sure it was the observed horror of the atom bombs that caused a lot people to question the decision after the fact.
I think a big factor was the rehabilitation of the Japanese, and the ongoing exposure of the atrocities of the NAZIs, that memory holed the equally atrocious behavior of Japan.
I don’t know about that. Taft and Eisenhower both privately expressed disagreement with the dropping of the atomic bomb, although Eisenhower publicly supported the decision during the war and remained fairly silent on the matter during his political career.
You’re probably right that a lot of people changed their minds about dropping the atomic bomb after witnessing the act, but people within the government and military were expressing concern about the decision right away either publicly or privately.
I’m pretty sure it was the observed horror of the atom bombs that caused a lot people to question the decision after the fact.
And in all honesty, the observed horror probably meant that dropping the bombs saved far more lives than just avoiding Downfall. The Cold War was coming, nukes were coming, and a Cold War with nukes wherein everyone is ignorant of the reality of those weapons strikes me as a far more dangerous time. The fact that the Cold War was waged with two data-points on the horror of using nukes probably greatly reduced the likelihood that they would be used again.
I’m still convinced that Operation Downfall would have killed far, far more people on both sides than the atom bombs did. And much more horrifically. At that point in the war, it was the least bad option available.
And I’ve heard that a climate tax would save thousands of lives, as well. The reality is that both statements are just opinions with no way to falsify, unless we discover parallel universes in which we can play out multiple scenarios. Until then it’s only an opinion and one that was not shared by the bulk of military commanders within the allied ranks at the time.
The estimates the military commanders at the time had of Japanese forces were also only 1/3rd of what was actually deployed against them.
“Our estimates of the climate thus far is only 1/3 of the reality”
Your false equivalence isn’t doing much. We know what was actually on Japan at the time. While Truman didn’t, and made his decision for whatever reason. I am not talking about Truman. I’m talking about the probable outcomes.
The declaration that it was the least bad option available is with the cheat codes of hindsight.
The fact that American generals, like MacArthur said that the Japanese were willing to surrender before the dropping of the atomic bomb (but with conditions) should not get in the way of your conclusion that cannot be falsified.
And you’re convinced that MacArthur was right?
The Japanese sources do not support his assessment on that.
Well clearly all those military generals were wrong- MacArthur, Lemay, Eisenhower, etc- all wrong. We, seventy years removed and having not experienced that conflict, are correct.
*raises eyebrow*
Your appeal to authority isn’t really making any sense, man.
“Hey here’s the opinion of the guys who actually fought in that conflict. Maybe their opinion should bear more weight than what me or you think today.”
“Nice appeal to authority”
Well, what was the Japanese assessment of the situation? The ones who were giving schoolgirls knives and telling them they had to take at least one enemy soldier down before they died. You ignore half the equation in favor of the assessment of a handful of top men.
“but with conditions”
That was the problem. Getting unconditional surrender was the proper requirement, IMO.
Even after the Japanese government decided to officially surrender, there were elements in government and the military that tried with varying degrees of success to carry on. That was post 2 atom bombs.
“Getting unconditional surrender was the proper requirement”
What if the only condition was that Japan would surrender, but the Emperor remained in place and the royal family would be exempted from war crime tribunals, which is exactly what ended up happening from our “unconditional surrender”?
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kyūjō_incident
Is one. There was also isolated armed resistance post surrender.
Your false equivalence isn’t doing much.
LOL, it is doing something. It is irritating the hell out of me because I am generally on the “no targeting of civilians” side of the debate, and I find that arguments that boil down to “if you disagree with me you are so stupid and evil” are counter productive so I prefer to see them on the opposite side.
No – the vets who actually fought the Japanese said so. Along with what the Japanese did in China, along with what they did in the Philipines, along with what they did in Okinawa – including down to the civilians who threw themselves off of the cliffs at Shuri Castle – along with how they treated POWs, etc., were all sufficient to convince Truman and many others that the big one would be necessary. You pick one very limited aspect of the war – that Ike and LeMay and some other leaders were agains it, all of whom were known to be egomaniacs who didn’t always give many shits about their troops, and you claim that as “proof” the bomb was an unnecessary and therefore immoral act. But you have yet to articulate an actual ethical rubric or framework to support the claim. Other than some big guys didn’t think we needed to, ergo immoral.
I’m not picking on you, but that’s not exactly a well-defended syllogism.
So what’s interesting is that you dismiss the beliefs of the men who were involved in that war and instead take the position that they were just wrong. Eisenhower was clearly out of the loop in that conflict.
It’s interesting that you dismiss the Japanese accounts of their beliefs and determination.
What’s interesting is that this is always the fall back explanation for every American military action.
“Well, you just don’t understand, they’re fanatical. You can’t reason with these people.”
At some point it gets tiresome.
So, you never bothered to read or listen to the japanese account of events? I guess geting all the information is just too tiresome.
No, I discount the opinions of people who did NOT actually hump a pack and rifle and see the Japanese eye-to-eye, but rather commanded far from the field, but I BELIEVE the men who ACTUALLY fought the Japanese and lived to write about what they saw.
You completely ignore anything contrary to a narrative you have in your head and then project that unwillingness onto me, by claiming (rather unironically, and with complete lack of self-awareness) that one of us is quoting first-hand accounts of battle and the other is relying upon the opinions of politicians wearing stars, i.e. Eisenhower (who went on to run for the Presidency), MacArthur who was rumored to be considering it and is widely known to have been a complete egomaniac, and LeMay, as well as another politician, Taft. Those are your sources and you have repeatedly failed to even address a single one of my points. But yes, it’s definitely me ignoring “those who fought” the war.
If your enemy will fight to the last man, oblige him.
If you can convince your enemy to change that stance and save your own people, do that instead.
I meant with the bomb and was being somewhat facetious. Of course I agree with you.
Given what I’ve studied and my interest in the culture I’m of like mind as well.
Like I said above, my father in law was a Marine Private in 45. He thinks those bombs saved his life.
Even for the younger among us, we had similar discussions. The first time I was called a libertarian was by a middle school teacher in civics class when I argued against the patriot act and the way we were conducting military operations in the middle east. These arguments have been going on for a long time, and will continue for at least as long as we’re the dominant military power in the world.
…middle school teacher in civics class when I argued against the patriot act…
*feels suddenly ancient*
Had exactly the same thought.
I would complain able feeling old, but Fourscore would just come around and put me in my place.
War in of itself is unethical. But if you have to do it, the LeMay approach has it merits. Namely the war at least won’t last 20 years.
Is it? Is that completely true with no possible exceptions?? Are you certain? You can’t come up with a single instance of war being justified and/or necessary and/or ethical?
To wit: American Revolution – moral or immoral? War against Germany to liberate death camps (assume for the moment that was its purpose) – completely immoral??
You hopefully get my point.
The term ‘war’ covers a lot of ground. A war of liberation seems like a much different animal than a war of conquest.
That seems to be Hanson’s claim. He’s very overt about that, but he also seems to miss (IMO) that ‘bad’ people can use the exact same words (and often do) to call their wars of conquest wars of ‘liberation.’
Our own Civil War amply demonstrates these ambiguities, perhaps more so than some other famous civil wars, but it returns us to Mexi’s original statement: Is all “War” unethical?
If black slaves had risen up in rebellion and undertook a guerrilla campaign against southern slaveowners and the people who “supported the regime” would it have been unethical? If so, someone needs to explain to me what “ethic” they’re using to measure. Because that’s what really needs to be gotten at.
If?
Nat Turner was a stone cold mutha.
So, ethical or unethical?
Women and children, dude.
Yeah, I thought of Nat Turner, but I didn’t think it quite met my definition of ‘War.’ It wasn’t quite successful or prolonged enough for my own sense of war, but reading what you linked, I think I may have to revise my opinion. It’s unfortunate that it didn’t quite catch on or US history might be very, very different, but that’s an eye-opening collection of actions by various people and groups.
For the record, I would be in the ‘ethical’ camp every time.
Dude…I’m an OIF vet. I had my reasons.
Yes, but I’m asking about your assertion that [all] “War is Unethical.” I’m not attacking your own decisions in service.
That’s (part of) the point of the article: to examine both War as an act of a Nation of people, as well as what that means for the individuals who are out there trying to win the War with – as HM notes below – their individual decisions. And then how do we judge those people, given all of that?
I am saying it is entirely possible to do something you know is unethical if it is to achieve a desired (and hopefully ethical) end. Evil exists after all. I know I would be haunted forever by shooting and killing a criminal that broke into my house and attacked my family. Justified? Yes, but I did kill him.
In the same way that were I Truman I would indeed drop the bomb on Japan. Was it justified? Certainly, but I won’t accept the argument he didn’t murder people.
Ok. But I wonder if we can meaningfully discuss morality in the collective. A war is an aggregate of millions of, if not billions of, individual decisions, each of which could be judged moral or immoral in the context in which they occur. Does the fact that a grunt in Vietnam decided to frag a Lt. represent a collective black mark upon the morality of the entire nation? While a particular casus belli might be justified, the actions taken in its name are often not – and vice versa. As such, I can’t agree to say war in and of itself is anything.
Agreed HM. And one thing that bothers me is people that judge historical events based on current morals. It seems lazy and trite to do that.
Just as bad is dismissing the feelings of the people who were alive and fought in the conflict at the time, because we know better today
Quite honestly, man, you’re doing a fair bit of that by focusing only on what a few generals said (and like I pointed out earlier, Eisenhower had no part in the Pacific war because MacArthur hated him and wouldn’t allow it, plus LeMay said other contradictory things) and ignoring the accounts of the infantrymen who did the fighting. Read Helmet For My Pillow by Robert Leckie or With the Old Breed by Eugene Sledge, two Marine comabt veterans of the Pacific, and tell me that the Japanese weren’t a fanatical enemy.
If you look at every single one of my comments, at no point have I ever said “everyone opposed it in the military”. But, I have had a lot of “well I’ve heard random GIs loved it”. I don’t know what you want me to do with that. OK. Some random anonymous GIs. I don’t doubt it. Nor do I doubt that some generals supported it. We know the joint chiefs of staff were mostly in favor.
So I’m not the one doing anything of the sort. But, God does it upset some people to hear that not everyone was patting themselves on the back after dropping atomic bombs
But, I have had a lot of “well I’ve heard random GIs loved it”. I don’t know what you want me to do with that. OK. Some random anonymous GIs.
I can’t speak for anyone else, but that about sums it up for me. If those atomic bombs saved the life of just American GI, then I consider morally justified. Eisenhower’s opinion carries about just about zero weight.
*saved the life of just one American GI
That is the distinction between soldiers acts and strategic acts that I think is most germane to this discussion. War is frequently going to involve ‘atrocities’ by individuals that need to be judged as individual cases, and need to be understood in the immediate context. But strategic targeting of civilian populations is a different animal entirely. Bombing a city into rubble requires much more justification IMHO than Pvt. Smith shooting a couple of prisoners the day after he watched his buddy burn to death.
Immoral actions undertaken by individual soldiers who are fighting to say alive is almost more excusable than are immoral actions ordered by leadership far from the fighting
“Almost,” eh?
Did you read the article I referenced?
Correct. What’s worse, a low intensity conflict that lasts for 20 years or a high intensity conflict that resolves the situation one way or another as quickly as possible? Discussing the ethics of fighting a war is a fool’s errand when the most ethical course is to not get into one in the first place.
“They spent all this time showing us videos of what brutal savages the Japanese were, how they were subhuman butchers, and then a few months later we were getting lectures on the wonders of such an ancient, advanced, and venerable civilization and how we should respect their culture and be careful about what we say and do.”
While a humorous juxtaposition, both of these things can be true at the same time.
Also, A+ on the article. A good read, and an interesting topic to think about.
These two old guys were like Waldorf and Stadler. They served 23 and 28 years respectively in the Marine Corps – from the same neighborhood, in the same unit together, and in the same nursing home. Just… amazing gentleman. And oh, the stories they told! I should have gone back more and taken notes.
Well written Ozzy.
He [Curtis LeMay] wished to destroy completely the material and psychological capital of the Japanese people, on the brutal theory that once civilians had tasted what their soldiers had done to others, only then might their murderous armies crack.
I’d say the entirety of WWII is an example that this is not true.
What do you mean? Didn’t they crack…eventually?
They certainly did materially.
So the idea is that since the war ended then all strategies used by the victor met their intent?
To a more concrete point: if Bombing civilian population to were a successful strategy to get the enemy populace to force an end to the war, then why were the Germans raids of London unsuccessful at achieving this? Why did the Germans persist in the war up until Berlin was taken rather than force a surrender years prior? Why was it that it took the Emperor of Japan to end the war, not his people?
Hitler’s London bombings were idiotic and were not designed to destroy the British material capital at all. It had the opposite effect – taking all the pressure off the RAF as their airfields were no longer getting bombed.
Yes because they were designed to break the will of the British People to fight. It was a common belief that such bombing would allow the war to end quickly, as the common people would demand a cessation to hostilities.
And it almost worked, by the way. We keep looking back from the end result and not analyzing these decisions in the context in which they were made. Hitler almost got the Brits to capitulate. There were very serious factions in the UK government who called for a “peace” with Hitler. Churchill ultimately prevailed, but it was by no means a certain thing in the early 40s.
Hmmm. The War Cabinet crisis occurred mostly prior to the Battle of Britain. I’ll concede that some pressures may be placed on the government, but you can’t discount that it seems that those pressures are often overridden or ignored.
The Germans weren’t good enough at strategic bombing to be effective like the USAAF,
and People don’t end wars, Governments do,
People don’t end wars, Governments do,
This is my point. The idea that targeting the civilian populace will get them to put pressure on the regime to quit does not pan out, and WWII has examples on both sides to illustrate that.
I’ll agree to the futility of “breaking the will of the people”, particularly in a totalitarian nation. Bombing ports, factories, railyards, etc. definetly degraded the German and Japanese ability to wage war. Neither of them had an air force worth speaking of by the end.
For sure, destroying the capabilities seems to be effective, if a bit of a long game strategy.
Looking back at my comment, i should have made that more clear, i think i skipped a step:
if Bombing civilian population to were a successful strategy
Should have been “If Bombing civilian population to oblivion were a successful strategy…”
See my comment above. You can’t judge from the end backward in time.
Some mistakes people never learn from and that one is certainly near the top of the list.
Add in: Dont judge what people did in the past using your values today. It is impossible to know all of the factors that went into their decisions.
True, but the ethical implications of war today are very much the same as the ones that were in place in the time of Caesar.
The technology has changed, and some of our ethical framework has changed, but the moral question about slaughtering people isn’t affected by whether its 100 men assembling and launching a nuclear weapon or 100 men armed with pila and gladii sweeping through a town doing the deed.
People keep saying don’t judge the acts of the past by the morals of today, but the morals I am discussing are set out in Aquinas, and based on older ideas. Objection to terror tactics goes way back in the history of ethical thought.
It gets even worse; in the late 60’s early 70’s, in West Germany, there was a movement to honor the people who attempted to assassinate Hitler.
The public polling in West Germany revealed that the majority of West Germans viewed the assassins as traitors and reviled them. The assassins’ surviving families adopted a strategy well into the 1980’s of downplaying or even hiding links to their ancestors because of the condemnation and vituperation they faced when their links came to light.
So, despite the utter misery living under Hitler and his ‘vampire economy’, the destruction of their country at his hands, the knowledge of the genocide committed at his behest, they still viewed those who sought to end the horror as traitors.
Hitler was trying to break the will of GB’s people. Period. My grandmother lived through it, in fact.
The V1s and V2s were terror weapons, of almost the same exact ‘kind’ as Hamas lobbing rockets into Israel.
Giles Milton’s book makes the point that Colin Gubbins wanted the Nazis in command to know the same kind of terror and so he was quite prepared to conduct targeted assassinations (and did, successfully).
Hitler was trying to break the will of GB’s people. Period. My grandmother lived through it, in fact.
I do not disagree. In fact it’s my whole point. He was trying to break the will of the people and it failed.
Hitler was trying to break the will of GB’s people.
And that is why he lost the Battle of Britain.
Why do you pretend like people that we make war with are human beings like your or me? Ignore that and it makes everything better
I’m all for being contrarian, I’ve been one my whole life, but do you have an underlying point? I mean that as a serious question.
Under what circumstances would you recognize a ‘just war,’ or would you say, a la Mexi, there aren’t any? If so, are you a pacifist? i.e. Do you have a principled opposition to war? Because I can’t get a coherent, principled point anything from what you’re saying, other than you appear to be flailing against what everyone else is saying.
A just war would be one that meets “Just War Theory”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Just_war_theory
I’m familiar with just war theory. Does war with Japan not meet those requirements in your mind?
I’ll post them here for you to save you the labor.
The US was justified in engaging in war with Japan. I’m not disputing that. But, Just War Theory also restricts your actions in war and I don’t believe the dropping of atomic bombs on Japan was “proportional” (as required by Just War Theory), nor was it “necessary”.
The last part is the point that you are all disputing. But, from my perspective, you are also ignoring the proportionality.
But, Just War Theory also restricts your actions in war and I don’t believe the dropping of atomic bombs on Japan was “proportional” (as required by Just War Theory), nor was it “necessary”.
Certainly no less “proportional” than firebombing cities, just more efficient. I think we had already crossed that line. Proportionality in war is a very difficult question, except perhaps at the absolute outer margins. It would seem to to rule out overwhelming force, when overwhelming force can bring a war to an end quickly and with less damage and casualties.
Not “necessary”, for what? Ending the war as quickly as possible? Minimizing US casualties? Sparing Japan a prolonged blockade and invasion?
Not necessary for getting an “acceptable” conditional surrender? OK, but I still maintain that whether we should have demanded unconditional surrender, and what would have been an acceptable conditional surrender, are separate issues. IOW, the question of at what point we end the war, and what we do to get to that point, are separate.
I’m not ignoring anything. I suspect I’m just further down this road than you are.
One of the justifications for Just War theory is “punishment” of the people who “started it.”
So what is the proper punishment for Imperial Japan’s Rape of Nanking and occupation of China? How about for the Philippines? How about for Pearl Harbor? How about for Bataan? How about for their POW camps?
Now, if you can “do the math” on all of that, then please tell me the calculus on how the two A-bombs are “not proportional.” Please “Show your work,” as math teachers like to say.
On the other hand….
Obviously no strategic bombing in WWI. Only a few battles were actually fought on Germain soil… So in a country which sufffered no visible damage, all kinds of conspiracy theories emerged on how they were betrayed. Which led directly to the next war.
Maybe busting things up a bit is a good way to make people accept defeat.
It had a lot more with how peace was conducted after the war than the lack of outcome in Germany.
Germany, France and Britain all suffered the same consequences, a ‘generation bled white’.
WWII happened because the League of Nations was formed and punitively oppressed Germany for the next decade.
Wilson didn’t just fuck up America. That motherfucker was international.
This is an almost verbatim quote from the episode of the Twilight Zone titled “The Encounter”.
Pretty close to a class I got in ’90 before going to the Persian Gulf. “Be very respectful of the Muslims while killing them…”
I never saw that one: with Sulu of all people.
I’m also paraphrasing these two gentlemen, but they were pretty funny about it. In the naval aviation museum in Pensacola they have war bond drive posters showing the Japanese as complete caricatures in early versions. I think the exhibit even has some text on the art about this subject. It’s kind of been a thing for all time, I imagine. Dehumanize your enemies… until they’re conquered, then we have to live with these people.
It’s one of my favorite episodes. Particularly because they had the courage to not go with a fuzzy warm ending.
There were many episodes that didnt end well for the protagonist,
Mr.Pip?
The thing is, in this episode there was no protagonist. Both characters were people dealing with the shitty grayness of what occurred in wartime.
I’ll track that one down and watch it and drop you a note here.
Looking forward to it!
First broadcast on May 1, 1964, its racial overtones caused it to be withheld from syndication in the U.S. On January 1, 2016, the episode was finally re-aired as part of Syfy’s annual Twilight Zone New’s Year Eve marathon.
It may be tough to find. If You do let us know.
I might have it, I’ll have to check when I get home.
It’s on Hulu.
And Netflix.
That’s the fundamental point, I think : unless your plan is to kill everyone, every time, then you have to live with the survivors afterwards. And if that is your plan, then don’t be surprised if someone does unto you first.
Side note: the Museum of Naval Aviation in Pensacola is awesome and one of the few things I truly miss about living there. We lived two minutes from the back gate of the base, so I went there all the time.
Well done Ozy.
Part of the problem here in the US is a fundamental misunderstanding of what other ‘countries’ are. They are not like us at. all. Not even close. As far as I know the USA is the only country in the world, in history, based on an idea and not ethnicity, language, geography etc. Other countries are just arbitrary lines on a map encircling Multiple ethnicities speaking differing languages where one group has gained dominance over the others. In a word: tribal. Often defeating the dominant group and replacing them with another results in…you guessed it…the SOS. They are inherently backward and weak easily dominated by a strong man. The notion that we can replace those cultures with an American style democracy where the population has a homogenous set of values is insane.
*Keep this in mind when you see the deliberate, calculated balkanization that the left is trying to impose on the US.
Shit, I had two points and got distracted so naturally I forgot the second.
Well… Historically countries were typically based on race or ethnicity. Empires were comprised of many – which was often their undoing as they petered out.
Ah, maybe this was it. The primary enemy in the mind of any ruling regime is not foreign but native. The citizens in any given country are what ruling classes fear the most. Most war with foreign powers are really about increasing and securing power at home. The motives of the people driving war are never what they say they are and this invariably bears out in their revealed preferences. While the citizen soldier patriotically marches off to defeat the foreign devil the leaders at home are scribbling out the latest Enabling Act.
*Keep this in mind when weighing the wisdom of ‘common sense’ gun control.
Off Topic. https://www.bbc.com/news/business-51058929
One unnamed employee wrote in an exchange of instant messages in April 2017: “This airplane is designed by clowns who in turn are supervised by monkeys.”
Apparently, engineers today don’t get the same training I got 25 years ago.
Don’t write anything in an email (or IM) that you don’t wan’t to read on the front page of the
New York TimesBBC.Well, when you replace engineering colleges with clown schools, you get clowns designing airplanes.
Welcome to the future, man.
I looked at my father’s transcripts once. He is a metallurgist who got his degree from Missouri School of Mines in 1964 with a BS. After looking them over I am fairly certain that people with that education today are addressed as ‘Doctor’.
Nice article Ozy.
I have two positions.
1) If warfare is worthwhile, then it’s total war. There shouldn’t be any distinction between military and civilian targets. You are out to win, period. If not, then why are you going to war? It’s foolhardy to put restrictions on your own troops that place them in greater danger to preserve the enemy’s civilians.
2) I especially disagree with the distinction between civilians and military when there’s conscription. If an American baker conscripted into the military during WWII is killed by the Japanese, I don’t think that’s any different than an American firebombing killing a Japanese baker who hadn’t been conscripted.
1. Do not instigate.
2. If attacked fight to win*.
*War is hell and should be avoided. But you do not have the only say as to if you are at war or not. Your enemy gets a say as well. If you find yourself in one, try to avoid harming noncombatats and accept surrender (until that becomes a problem, see: japanese soldiers in wwii). There are plenty of circumstantial contingencies that I am sure many here understand but I work so I ain’t got time fuh dat.
“1. Do not instigate.”
What does that “really” mean, though?
If we want to play revisionist history there was no point during World War II, before America’s entry, where the US was not actively supporting the allies and instigating the axis powers.
– ‘Lending’ weapons to the UK
– Declaring that we will trade with anyone, but then only getting upset when the axis powers tried to stop our trade with the allies, while ignoring allied blockades
– Imposing an oil embargo on Japan
That war is so ridiculously mythologized, it’s no wonder why it captures the American imagination so much while most Americans couldn’t even tell you anything about World War I. It was the perfect sequel- it overshadowed the the original and stripped away the in-depth narrative with bombs, explosions, and ticker tape parades.
What does that “really” mean, though?
Don’t attack first. I’m aware of all the thing the US was doing prior to entry into WWII.
So meddling only requires bombs?
As I was scrolling by I saw your comment whiz by and read that as “So weddings only require bombs?”
“So weddings only require bombs?”
Drone bombs, to be more specific
Not to mention the ‘neutrality’ patrols.
it’s no wonder why it captures the American imagination so much while most Americans couldn’t even tell you anything about World War I.
Mythologized, yes, but the simple fact is that the US was barely a part of WWI. Congress declared war in April 1917, but the AEF didn’t begin major operations for over a year, until the German spring offense of 1918 and Third Aisnes in early June. Basically, the Americans were in combat for five months. Five bloody months, granted, with 53,000 KIA in that period, but a minor role in the war as a whole. WWII was very different.
Heroic strip club does more for the homeless than San Diego city government
https://www.10news.com/news/local-news/san-diego-news/strip-club-hands-out-branded-tents-to-homeless
“Do we write it off as charity or advertising?”
Both.
Either way, it’s a win/win.
Appropos, from Apocalypse Now…
“Shit … charging a man with murder in this place was like handing out speeding tickets at the Indy 500.”
“We train young men to drop fire on people, but their commanders won’t allow them to write “fuck” on their airplanes because it’s obscene!”
When we were gearing up for war – or at least combat and our participation in Bosnia – we all wanted to paint our planes with the shark’s teeth you see on the old Cobras photos or WW2 bombers. Our CO was a hard “No” on that stuff.
Completely took the fun out of killing people.
What was the rationale behind the no?
I believe it was: “I’m the CO and I fucking said so.” Nah, just kidding. The truth is he was a GREAT CO and a good man. He was a prior grunt, however, and so he had his own ideas about ‘aviators’ and he didn’t think painting shit on planes was ‘professional’ and made us look like a bunch of high school jerkoffs and he didn’t want it fo his squadron. I disagreed, but he was otherwise a great man, so no painting on our bombs or aircraft.
Your CO was wrong.
This is professional AF.
I agree with you and Plisade. There is a long tradition in aviation of doing this, but they were ‘his’ aircraft and I was a 1LT, so I just nodded and conveyed the message to the troops – who were much more pissed about it than we were, I think.
Crazy as it may sound, what with being in the highly disciplined (like your CO) Corps and the constant threat of attack, I felt a strong sense of freedom across the line of departure. It’s like knowing I could initiate violence if needed, rather than wait to be attacked to defend myself as it was back on the block, was a more comfortable attitude.
Somewhat along the lines of, “He who makes a beast of himself gets rid of the pain of being a man.” At least for some reason that quote popped into my head when writing the above.
I would agree. When I was way out beyond the FLOT in Afghanistan, though I was often in Indian Country, I felt remarkably liberated because fundamentally I was operating in a “free fire area” with regard to my own actions.
Booorrring. What a buzz-kill.
Just War
Wars should be fought by politicians, personally, not by proxy. Since that will never happen I don’t have the answer. It seems there was a brief period when defeat was accepted and people understood they should just move on. But in my admittedly small reading of history the opposite has been true for the vast majority of human conflict. Defeated people simply let the defeat foster resentment and hate until they grew strong enough to mount a retaliatory attack. Our recent experience with the Middle East is an example. We pissed them off and they figured out how to get us without waging a conventional war. Now what? The “bomb the ME to glass” theory may “solve” the problem short term, but any remaining folks are just going to bide their time until they can respond. Does anyone really think they’ll just say “Oh well, you beat us. I guess we’ll leave you alone now.”
Again, I don’t have the answer, but I do think getting the fuck out of there is a good start.
As a professional defense industry engineer, my opinions of what’s fair in love and war might not be considered tasteful or mainstream.
Generally I think that if a nation thinks it’s worth going to war over, they should strike swiftly and decisively. We lose too many of our own soldiers and prolong the agony when we try too hard to protect civilians and “win hearts and minds.” If the civilians would take out their own trash, we wouldn’t have to.
I do have one major no-no in war making, though: no land mines. Land mines are unethical and do not comply with ceasefires and peace treaties. They lurk for decades and blow up innocents. I’d have a hard time ever giving the go-ahead to lay down mines.
I got one! no blowing up Satellites, that’s a Civilization wrecker
I can see the argument about land mines. That’s basically declaring “This ground will never be viable to use again”. Satellites have a distinct lifespan and have to be regularly replaced anyway. Shooting down unmanned spysats just doesn’t even ping on my bad things in war scale. It’s like popping drones with a higher price tag.
“This ground will never be viable to use again”
See Carthage, 146 BC
See Carthage 46 BC, one of the breadbaskets of the empire.
You didn’t see Gravity?
Also https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yS1ibDImAYU&t=16s
Debris fields forever, no more launches,
A lot of debris will quickly fall out of orbit or be flung out of orbit.
Mixed feelings on those things. When a few of us are assigned to guard a ridiculous perimeter, mines and trip wires sure come in handy, but third world armies aren’t diligent about mapping them and pulling them up when they are done.
The two reasons to wage war are conquest and defense against conquest.
The global-chess-board/police-action/nation-building conflicts we engage in now are horseshit.
Possibly because we can’t do all-out war anymore?
Well, when going all out would destroy the entire livable surface of the planet several times over… that’s not really an option.
We can go “all out” vs a random middle east country without destroying it. We can’t fight the Russians or the Chinese.
Naw, that’s still holding back, so we weren’t ‘all out’.
Right, which is why every smaller country scrambles to align themselves with one of the big dogs. No one can afford to let the smaller wars grow to where the big dogs have to square off.
Who can stop us from declaring Iraq and Iran US territories and moving the indigenous population on the reservations?
The profitability of empire seems long gone. There’s some oil in the ground, but even that isn’t worth it.
Profit? It’s where we exile the dissident commies to.
See my comments above. ‘Nation building’ was never the goal. The enrichment of contractors and cronies at home was always the point. It is why we are still there, why the establishment shit a brick when Trump wanted to pull troops out of Syria, and why they are chomping at the bit to go to war with Iran and Russia. They aren’t endless, pointless wars as Gabbard calls them. They are a business.
?? It’s champing!! ??
You are not from the south, are you?
Why? Do you guys not speak English there?
No.
Re: The video
“They invented the language but never learned to speak it”
I had to take a girl from Merseyside to a hospital in Newcastle. After she was x-Rayed the doc came in and explained everything. When he left she turned to me and asked “What the hell did he say?”
Me: “Weren’t you listening?”
Her: “Yes, but I can’t understand that garbage. He is from *crinkles nose and hisses* Newcastle”
Well, launching more drones and missiles would be good for my 401K. What’s not to like.
Agreed, and said as much up above.
I don’t really think you can make the case that war can ever not be evil. The best you’re going to get is that it might sometimes be a necessary evil or a lesser evil than the alternatives. But, I don’t think that gets you out of the fact that it remains evil.
Honestly, at times I find myself inclined toward a “Nuke the Moon” strategy. Maybe the best way to avoid war is to seem so psychotic that nobody would want to go to war with you. That seemed to work for the Swiss. (ducks)
Ozzy. Good article and discussion. Thanks for the mindfuck.
Thanks, Mexi. My honor. (And specialty!)
And thank you for your service, my friend. It is appreciated – all of it.
Nineteen years after WW2, Japan awarded LeMay one of their highest decorations. On Dec 7.
A bit pressed for time so will reread later, but many moons ago when I was wet behind the ears, I had the opportunity to talk to some ww2 veterans of my regiment. I had heard, in those days before being able to google, of Japanese nicknames (based on alleged war crimes) for the division. They didn’t talk specifics but weren’t apologetic for what they felt they and their division had to do.
I mentioned Hardcore History below. One of the things Carlin mentions is that when he’s spoken to WW2 vets they’d often times have at least some respect for German or Italian soldiers, maybe even be able to have a drink or two with them, but every one of them hated the Japanese. They saw the Japanese as treacherous, evil, and subhuman, based on things like their treatment of prisoners, their penchant for sneaking into trenches and killing soldiers at night, basically dishonorable people who fought dirty. Libertarian/anti-war sentiments aside, it seems like soldiers in combat have a code of ethics even in regard to the enemy.
Philosophically speaking, I’m not seeing the problem.
If you want to conquer, fighting “clean” is not the way to do it.
One of my grandfathers, long since deceased, was a 19 year old sailor on an LST that was hit by a kamikaze during the Battle of Okinawa. He was trapped for a few minutes in a paint locker in the confusion after the impact, and the fumes from the burning cans of paint destroyed his lungs, leading to the emphysema that eventually killed him at the relatively young age of 58. He HATED Japan and Japanese people with the heat of a thousand suns. I can remember riding around in the car with him and hearing him curse angrily at people driving Japanese cars. Wouldn’t have anything of Japanese manufacture in his house. This was all in the ’80s, now. Forty years past did nothing to temper his hatred.
I’ll keep repeating this, but I don’t think people appreciate the effect that Okinawa had on the ‘collective’ American consciousness. Men like your grandfather came home and many of them, not all, but enough, told their stories, and it made an impact. Plus there were war correspondents and the tales of what had been done to American POWs were not well-received, either. Then there was what the Japanese did in China, who many seem to now forget was our ally. We had a Marine Regiment in Shanghai that had to flee (in part) and surrender (in part).
My Christian grandfather, who never had bad word to say about anybody, said “the Japanese weren’t nice people”.
Given his generation I can honestly say I never heard him say anything racist. And his wife, my Jewish grandmother, her family fled Austria Hungary and the Czech Republic. Those that remained were killed in the camps. And I never heard him say such a blanket statement about the Germans.
People need to read “With the Old Breed” by EB Sledge. Or watch “The Pacific” – all seven parts. No one has ever questioned a word of what EB Sledge wrote, which was compiled from notes he kept in a pocket bible during his time in the Pacific Campaign, which included some of the big battles as a mortarman and infantryman.
Or read Bob Leckie’s “Helmet for my Pillow” – Leckie would go on to write numerous history books over the course of his life.
I’ll take their words, as well as the men I’ve personally spoken to, numbering in the dozens, probably close to a hundred, over MacArthur’s, or Eisenhower’s, or LeMay’s, or Taft’s, any day of the week and twice on Sundays.
Indeed. There were three things you absolutely didn’t want to be in WWII:
-A German prisoner held by the Soviets
-A Soviet prisoner held by the Germans
-An Allied prisoner held by the Japanese
I would argue that there is no moral justification for warfare that does not also provide a moral justification for total warfare up to and including genocide and implementation of Carthaginian solutions (Kill everybody and salt the earth).
If the war is morally justified then all means to end it are morally justified as well.
The question then devolves to when it is necessary to go to that kind of extreme lengths to end the war with a minimal loss of life on your own part.
Firebombing Tokyo, Nuking Hiroshima and Nagasaki ball entirely justified because we were not targeting civilians for the sake of targeting civilians. We were directly attacking the enemies will to continue the fight. If you can find a way to end the war on terms that are sufficiently satisfactory to both sides that there will be no need for a second act sometime down the line that would be preferable but if not no number of enemy civilian casualties are too high a cost to pay to ensure that they would never dare attack you again
If the war is morally justified then all means to end it are morally justified as well.
The question then devolves to when it is necessary to go to that kind of extreme lengths to end the war with a minimal loss of life on your own part.
That is odd…. and dodges the question of what then morally justifies a war?
For example wouldn’t the actions of Imperial japan be morally justified under this code? They were only seeking to end the war.
Morally justified war = oxymoron. War is the end or suspension of morality.
It is a semantic trick but the term ‘police action’ more accurately describes a measured response. When I hear war I think of throwing off the gloves and pulling out a .38.
what we are doing now in the ME is not war. It is fucking around theater as a pretense for looting American tax payers.
I remember one incident that barely made the news. 350 Taliban were captured. Instead of lining them up and shooting them there were some kind of negotiations that were never explained clearly and they fighters were released. Immediately they attacked the Afghan cops, stole their weapons, slaughtered them all and melted back into the mountains to continue trying to kill Americans. Brilliant. Whoever made that decision should be in Leavenworth today.
‘The Taliban’ is the Pashtun tribe. We are dealing with a culture over 5000 years old who consider it a moral good to rape children and kill or enslave anyone not Pashtun.
They aren’t going to be won over with negotiation or measured responses but they can be defeated.
I’ve only had time for a quick scan because I’ve got a narrow window where I’m not handling a newborn, convincing a toddler that she isn’t being upstaged, or trying to convince my wife that carrying baskets of laundry up and down stairs is not in fact the recovery the doctors had in mind post-caesarian. VDH is on my to-read list, and Soul of Battle in particular. Anyway, I’m also listening to the latest Hardcore History series, which has to do with the Japanese in WW2. He brings up several reasons why the Pacific theater was so much more ruthless, but two stand out in mind juxtaposed with Hanson’s reference to LeMay and the Tokyo air raids.
One is that the Japanese military cultivated an image of being absolutely implacable and unstoppable, something that the state encouraged in the civilian population as well. Japanese units never surrendered and would often launch relatively pointless suicide attacks rather than appear to cede ground to the enemy. The image of the Japanese soldier as an unstoppable fanatic made them terrifying, true, but also dehumanized them, making a massive, brutal attack seem more justifiable.
The other thing, and this is extremely important, is that the Japanese military routinely engaged in horrific atrocities either as set policy or without commanding officers being all that concerned about it. We’re talking torture, rape, dismemberment, murder, you name it, and against civilians, women, children, surrendering troops, neutral populations, even people the Japanese were “liberating” from colonial powers. Of course the Germans did some of that too–I’m setting the Holocaust aside in part because it wasn’t widely known among the Allies–but where the German army might have a few “werewolves” who would kill a few American soldiers in gruesome ways for terror purposes, the Japanese adopted that as a default tactic everywhere. And, again, they routinely and unapologetically tortured, raped, and massacred civilians.
Two wrongs don’t make a right, for sure. Also, the “total war” concept is one of the great sins of humanity. But, if you’re fighting against, or think you’re fighting against, an enemy that refuses to be held to any ethical standards when it comes to the prosecution of a war, I think it’s understandable to believe that actions and policies that would be considered unethical in another context might be justifiable.
Okay, now, my extended thoughts on specific points:
The terrorists won.
This rationale isn’t entirely incorrect, though. A population that has a legitimate gripe gets coopted by someone starving for power and charismatic enough to get it, then when the revolutioning is done and governmenting starts, it all goes sideways for the people and they have no clue what actually happened. “This wasn’t what I bought.” “Sorry, no refunds.”
This is Britain’s imperialism, so I don’t think it’s applicable, though I get the point. Now, where are they in defending their homeland in the face of immigrants coming in and defeating them by screaming “racism” at every turn? Britain is not only not ruthless, they’re curled up in fetal position in a corner whimpering while they make a half a show at having a military. The most powerful nation in the world at one time and they can’t even pull the tick that is Europe out of its skin. I haz a sad for USA Mama.
They should’ve figured it out during the Revolutionary War, marching in straight lines in red through a forest. WTF?
Guilty.
Although I will say (again) that when provoked, women are vicious (well, we’re vicious even when we’re not provoked, so take that with a grain of salt). We just don’t use the same tactics. Poison is a woman’s weapon and I dare say we make damned good spies.
Jordan Peterson addressed this in reference to Nazis and doing what they were told to do. His basic premise is, “They wouldn’t have done it if they weren’t dark enough to be willing to do it.” His point: We all have a dark, evil place inside. We must acknowledge it to quell it and control ourselves.
Charles Easterly linked me to Stephen Fry and Craig Ferguson discussing Wagner, and Fry tells a poignant story about a woman who played the cello for Mengele. She said, “We were not human. This is why they could treat us the way they did. We were tools. Machines.”
“I was following orders.” Well, that’s what propaganda is for, to make sure you feel you are morally correct in following those orders.
Chastise, then love and guide.
I think the ethical way is to approach war as if it’s analogous to self-defense between individuals.
Consider your personal being: aggression is unethical no matter what (what defines “aggression” I’ll leave to the reader). If someone attacks you, you have the right to self-defense. While it’s preferable to end the conflict without having to resort to deadly force, sometimes deadly force is unavoidable. Killing your adversary is equivalent to total war/genocide/complete destruction of a nation state. Basically I agree that if war is thrust upon you, you need to be prepared to utterly annihilate your adversary but hope that it doesn’t come to that.
What if I’m Joe six pack in some shithole country and team America comes sweeping through my village, kicking in doors looking for some scumbag I’ve never heard of. Do I have the right of self defense? If I clip some US soldier, is that grounds for an escalation of war? Does it matter that as a 3rd world peasant I have no idea a US embassy has been attacked in an adjacent country?
I would differentiate between two things that you discussed here. Heat of the moment violations by individual soldiers in combat are to my mind frequently excusable, and in many cases the laws in question are malum prohibitum rather than malum in se, for example the rule against hollow point bullets. Strategic choices like terror bombing, the nukes are IMHO a distraction in this argument, are much harder to justify.
Honestly, I think the concepts of “moral/immoral,” “ethical, unethical,” “righteous, evil” are nonstarters here.
I agree with Q’s analogy to defense of one’s personal being: the will to survive is not any of the above, because at the heart of it, what defensive warfare is is fighting for the right to survive.
Honestly, I think the concepts of “moral/immoral,” “ethical, unethical,” “righteous, evil” are nonstarters here.
I’m not sure what you’re getting at here.
I am not convinced that defensive (I am going to make that qualification) warfare has any component of morality/ethics/righteousness when the goal is to survive.
It reaches down into the deepest parts of our primitive animal brain to try to survive. At that point, when a person is defending himself, a mother protecting her baby, a cadre of soldiers fighting (for what they believe) is the continued existence of his way of life (or, more crudely, against his tribe’s annihilation and/or enslavement), morality ceases to have any meaning.
Maslow’s hierarchy of needs. The bottom rung is food, water, warmth, rest. The second rung up is security and safety. Only after those needs are met can one consider morality as an existential question. In My Fair Lady, Doolittle’s assertion that morality is not affordable to poor people makes Higgins stop and think about that for a moment. Doolittle pimps Eliza out, but he doesn’t want TOO much money because then he’d be beset by moochers. The colonel says something like, “Don’t you have any shame?” and Doolittle says something like, “Nah, can’t afford it.”
In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus says, “the meek will inherit the Earth.” Yeah, after they die. Until then, they just have to do what they can to survive.
So, back to morality. Morality is a choice we as humans make, but we cannot make it until our basic needs are met. Most of the time, meeting our basic needs requires cooperation amongst other surviving humans, and so warfare is counterproductive.
Productive/counterproductive is a stronger urge than moral/immoral.
(Where generation of profit is not a motive, but that’s, like, never.)
Further, let’s define “survival” to mean never having to deal with that enemy again.
Let’s not. That is an argument for genocide as only if you wipe them out root and branch are you assured that you will never face them again.
Genocide are just the cultures we extinguish together.
-me
So, back to morality. Morality is a choice we as humans make, but we cannot make it until our basic needs are met.
Wholeheartedly disagree. Morality is the practical application of Universal Truth to human behavior. The fact that it’s sometimes really hard, or even fatal, to adhere to one’s morals is part and parcel of Truth existing outside of and above humanity.
It also seems odd to me to bring Jesus into the argument, considering that He died to fulfill another part of the Universal Truth, Justice. He also prevented self-defense when He and His compatriots were arrested, fully knowing that they would all eventually be slain for their faith.
Christianity, both in the Biblical tradition and in the historical tradition, has a long history of people dying for the faith. There’s a reason that the concept is named after Justin Martyr (at least in English, and I assume most other European languages).
Fair.
I meant that only to point out that the meek get shit on until after they’re dead, and then we are into Christian theology.
But again, my premise is that most people probably aren’t thinking about God’s judgment when their backs are to the wall.
“I’ll take my chances with the Big Guy once I put this fucker in the ground.”
^^^ That.
Whether it’s right/wrong, moral/immoral, righteous/evil, ethical/unethical, I don’t know. I’ll find out when/if I get there.
morality ceases to have any meaning.
Eh, I don’t find the “God isn’t watching when you’re backed against the wall” argument very convincing.
Morality is really easy to adhere to when times are good. What’s the point of having any morals if you don’t exercise them in times of crisis?
That said, most sane moralities have some semblance of a right of survival built in. Most sane moralities also has some level of sacrifice/martyrdom baked in, too.
Ethics are a luxury good.
-me
I did not say that. Not at all, nor do I believe it.
Really? Because I kinda read it the same way as Trashy did.
“Survival uber alles because there is a psychological model of human behavior that puts survival before ethics.”
I’d like to hear what you really meant.
I mentioned Jesus’s beatitudes, so I understand why that would be a first thought.
God’s judgment is probably not foremost in most believers’ minds when their backs are against the wall. Let us posit for a moment that it is not. It can go one of three ways:
1. “God turned a blind eye because I was justified.” — I did not say that.
2. “I did it, I do/don’t regret it, I’ll take what I get on Judgment Day.” — This is me.
3. “Please, God, please grant me mercy for what I did while I was not thinking about you.” — This is not me.
If God’s judgment is foremost in a believer’s mind when his back is against the wall, then he’s going to try to think of other options and if he can’t, he will:
1. Close his eyes real tight and squeeze the trigger, hoping he’s not going to go to hell, OR
2. Submit.
1. Close his eyes real tight and squeeze the trigger, hoping he’s not going to go to hell, OR
2. Submit.
First, I think this is a false dichotomy, because not all killing is wrong.
Second, sometimes the right answer is to submit. A person, knowing with full clarity that their survival is at odds with their morality, sins by staying alive. If you (generic you, not directed at Mo) legitimately believe what is written about God, dying for your faith is sometimes the level of obedience required. Morality trumps the survival instinct, whether or not people correctly prioritize in times of crisis.
And I agree with that insofar as I’m thinking about God’s judgment in the moment.
I cannot say that I would or would not, but based on my own past behavior, I’ll say likely not.
Fair.
“There is no moral solution to an immoral situation.”
-Me
There is no problem that can’t be resolved with plastic explosives.
-me
*tries to think of exceptions*
“Law of War violation for setting a field expedient boobytrap on an insurgent weapons’ cache that locals had pointed out to his team. He received a Letter of Reprimand in the end, but it still cost him a promising career in the Army.”
Jesus, how is that a war crime?
Obviously it may be a bit reckless if you get the wrong guy.
For the last reason. When the general brings a fuckload of charges and none will stick, sometimes the jury will convict of “something.”
But we also drop ordinance on people knowing some will miss and hit civilians, what’s the functional or even moral difference there?
Procedures were followed….
But yeah, i mean if a bomb hits off target there can be an investigation into why and who was at fault.
I’m surprised that so much of these discussions focus on the legality or morality of what troops do to “the enemy” and don’t discuss the culpability of government officials and high level commanders for what they force their citizens own citizens to suffer. Reading about General Haig’s tactics, for example, makes me wonder why he wasn’t hung by the Brits for war crimes against his own people.
Paging the Edit Fairie.
And I put this in the wrong place. I give up.
I believe that falls under the “Top Men” theory of Law and War.
https://youtu.be/cdExsAQuCQA
OT: something for p.m. lynx
Some words have such powerful Juju that they must never be uttered.
Indeed.
Mojos are carried because the have juju. Just sayin’
RE what makes a man:
I don’t think I can define it outside of responsibility. That means being responsible for himself, his actions and those under his care/protection. Everything else is window dressing with the sports ball and drinking and roughhousing.
Agreed. I have none of the window dressing but I dont think anyone does not consider me a man.
” and those under his care/protection.”
This is just an extension of being responsible for your actions.
I’ll call this the “Lackadaisical Distillation”
Man = Responsibility
And I don’t see how the responsibilities of women are substantially different.
I agree. I don’t subscribe to the traditional it’s a man’s world viewpoint. I’m using man more as the traditional “human”.
Here’s how.
One of the best lines ever written
I like the evolutionary theory that the woman protects the children and the man protects the woman.
Look Ma’am I don’t make the laws, i just judge and sentence men according to them.
The cops and judge should be doing hard time for that.
Looks like Jarred Karal just won the lottery.
How does that law get past the first judge who has to make a ruling on it? Ridiculous.
FYTW.
The student will also be forced to under go “diversity and bias” training.
I might take the 30 days in jail instead.
The students claimed they were playing a game centered around screaming vulgar words, but were charged under CGS 53-37, “ridicule on account of creed, religion, color, denomination, nationality or race.”
How is that even remotely Constitutional?
Alright, I think I’ve made enough of a mess here, time for me to go get a cold one!
Thank you all for engaging with my mental illness. Even you TGA! (Although I’m still not sure what point you’re trying to make, other than that you believe the A-bombs weren’t proportional because some politicians got all squishy after they saw what they could do). I think I may write a follow up on your point in light of Glenn T. Seaborg’s slideshow to a bunch of high school students, some of whom were Japanese and pointedly asked about his part in the Manhattan Project and the bomb. But maybe not – I think we’ve probably flogged that deceased equine enough.
Love you all.
Come back and argue with me!
Seriously good article Ozy, this is a topic that needs discussion.
Inspired by your discussion with Mme Mojeaux, Jar!
One of my peeves is that it seems that our Nation has abandoned these discussions: serious, important, and necessary ones, in favor of 140/280 character tweets or instagram memes that are supposed to count as ‘deep thought’ on incredibly complex subjects. And yes, I do blame the public education system for it. I’m not even sure we have enough “public intellectuals” who are well-versed in these topics, or the intellectual history of them, to have serious discussions that might better inform people.
Where are the Buckleys and Vidals, even though that predates me, or other serious intellectual heavyweights? And when one does raise their head above the fray (e.g. Jordan Peterson) the current answer is that they must be silenced rather than debated.
TL/DR: The marketplace of ideas has only a few stalls and an otherwise empty square, where the wind blows the detritus of ancient and profound ideas around like so much fast food wrapping.
But maybe not – I think we’ve probably flogged that deceased equine enough.
Well if not then I hope the hypothetical slot for that article gets filled by an article on the proper definition of pizza.
Great stuff, Ozy.
MOAR! I DEMAND MOAR FREE CONTENT!
Come back here and fight me, you coward!
Very interesting and profound. Thanks!