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Japanese "Universal" Military Conscription in World War II: Justification For Nuclear Bombings of Japan?
[25 May 2008]
http://socrates58.blogspot.com/2...l-
military.html
Seems easy to judge the nuclear bombings as unjust after the fact; when at the time; the leaders at the time felt they had no other choice to end the war. The Japanese just would not stop or surrender; even though Italy had been defeated; and Hitler's Nazi Germany had surrendered.
In the same way; in 2003, those that watched Colin Powell give his one hour speech to the UN, with evidence from satelite video, cell phone interceptions, etc. as to the justice of going into Iraq and taking down the Saddam Hussein regime.
Most people, when given the evidence, saw the reasonableness of it; also given the post 9-11-01 world and the fact that Saddam H. spend 13 years of trickery and lying and cat and mouse with UN inspectors, etc.
Then later, there was not a whole lot of evidence found of WMDs (some evidence of wanting to re-start nuclear and mass weapons programs, and some little things and left-over shells from the Iran-Iraq war, etc.); it became easier for the liberal press and pacifists to openly criticize the USA war effort. Also, the Abu Garib scandal was surely a bad testimony for the nation that promotes human rights, etc.
Interesting that Douglas MacArthur, according to the article you cite, opposed the nuclear bombs.
Application to today -- it is much harder to do all the hard work that most American soldiers are doing now in Iraq and slower; training them and fighting with them.
O how we need soldiers who fight with honor. Most are doing that; but unfortunately the liberal press and Muslim world interprets all of our good efforts through the lens of the Abu Garib and other bad apple stories of soldiers who did not act honorably; and the Muslim world still looks at every attempt by the west as another "crusade"; and they also throw the inquisition and treatment of blacks and American Indians into the mix (like Jeremiah Wright did.)
Muslim apologists and most Muslims also use the atom bombs of Hiroshima and Nagasaki against us in their argumentation against Christianity in general. Iran asks, "why can't we have nuclear power for peaceful purposes?"
They also speak against the existence of Israel.
Furthermore, the doctrines and practices of Islam in
1. Jihad (Surah 9:1-5; 9:14; 9:29, just to name a few)
2. in Dar Al Islam vs. Dar Al Harb (territory of Submission vs. Territory of War (atheists (USSR, communists) , polytheists and pagans (Hindus in India, Buddhists in Thailand and other places) , and Christians and Jews- the west and Israel)
3. Taqqiye (Arabic) Kitman (Farsi) -- passive lying, deception, dissimulation. Allowing one to not clearly say where they area coming from; to allow the enemy to be confused about where they are coming from by trickery and lack of explanation.
Also, denying the bigness and heinousness of the Holocaust and saying that "Israel should be wiped off the map". (Ahmadi Nejad)
All of these things together make it difficult to trust them. Muhammad said several times in the Hadith, "War is deceit".
The Muslims also say: "You guys in the west are the ones that invented the thing (or discovered how to split the atom) and you are the ones who actually used it."
So, given that Japan did surrender and they made peace and became friends with the west; why would you want to argue so much against it all the time? Hindsight is 20-20, right?
So, given that Japan did surrender and they made peace and became friends with the west; why would you want to argue so much against it all the time? Hindsight is 20-20, right?
Because it is forbidden to do evil that good may come of it. The eternal good that came of the passion and death of Our Lord did not make His unjust abuse, torture, and execution any less unjust. Sin is sin even if God is able to bring good even out of evil. That President Truman and others thought they had no choice but to commit an act they knew would mainly kill noncombatants to bring the war to a speedy conclusion, in the context of the unimaginable bloodiness of the conflict, makes the decision understandable -- but it doesn't justify it one bit.
We condemn the bombings of London in one breath, then we carpet bomb Dresden and Tokyo and drop nukes on large cities. But we were the good guys getting revenge so it makes it a-ok.
It prevented a lot of bad things so that made it right. The same exact logic is used in abortion: "this will prevent a lot of undesirable things so I'll kill this child and eliminate the possibility of all these potentially bad events."
I continue to await an answer to my question: how the various groups of people I mentioned magically became "combatants" so they could be morally slaughtered.
Because it is forbidden to do evil that good may come of it.
This is a true principle; but my point was at the time, a decision had to be make; and then later; years later; it is easy to sit back and have all the facts and books and research and judge things.
About the innocents that died: I guess they considered them what is usually called "collateral damage"; and it is horrible and sad and tragic and massive. It causes us to think; as we are doing now. I don't envy the positions Presidents and other leaders are in.
My dad was a B-17 pilot and bombed Nazi Germany 35 times flying from England to Germany. He was sure; and I am sure civilians and innocents died as a result of those bombings raids; but the leaders of that country are the ones who bear the greater responsibility because they started the whole thing; and with such an evil motive and plans and racism made it so much more heinous.
I used to ask my dad; "why don't you fly a plane anymore?" He said, "son, there are too many negative associations with flying to do that anymore after the war; too much blood and death and danger and stress."
One time were up late and I was sharing the gospel with my dad. (he was an agnostic most of his life)
I spoke about sin and eternal judgment and hell; and that Christ died for sinners and rose from the dead in victory over sin. He looked at me with his protruding big eyes and said, "son, I am not afraid; I have seen another man's head get shot off by the gunfire from the Nazi fighter planes and the head and blood flying around in the cockpit. I am not afraid of hell."
But 20 years later, he repented and finally trusted Christ, 3 years before he died.
I don't say this lightly or without feelings for the innocent civilians; but they could not help if other innocents, civilians, etc. were around the targets. He was always very upset during the Vietnam war, because the liberal media and news drove a lot of the atmosphere about how we back home were to interpret the events.
Germany attacked first with aggressive ambitions to "take over all of Europe"; perhaps the whole world. Japan attacked first; mercilessly.
But we were the good guys getting revenge so it makes it a-ok.
Is it "getting revenge" or justice (obviously relative to God's perfect justice) and trying to make them stop their evil plans to take over the world?
This is a true principle; but my point was at the time, a decision had to be make; and then later; years later; it is easy to sit back and have all the facts and books and research and judge things.
Unintentionally killing noncombatants while aiming at combatants is tragedy, but is not the same as dropping a bomb without taking care to avoid causing the deaths of noncombatants. A decision had to be made, and they had the means and knowledge to make a different decision, but still made the wrong choice. Understandable, yes. Justified, no.
It used to be that the overwhelming majority of deaths during war was of soldiers. Now I wonder if innocent civilians are the huge majority of the dead.
If there could be moral certainty about going to war, then I suppose I could better accept "collateral damage." As a Canadian, I believe that the US does indeed make a sincere effort to eliminate such collateral damage.
Ken, I would not have wanted to step into your Dad's shoes for a day. How in the world was he able to carry around some of those memories? Such horror. Was he able to cope O.K.after he served?
Above post from Peter P.
Exactly. In my lengthy treatment of the subject, I didn't blame Truman or consider him an evil man for doing what he did. I understand the circumstance, and quoted people who also made the same point (e.g., George Weigel). But that doesn't change the evil of the act itself.
My father was in the Canadian Air Force and flew over Germany too. I don't blame him for that. I'm proud of it. But it didn't entail making a morally indefensible choice, as in the nukes.
[The debate got very ugly when the person contending for the "pro-bombing" viewpoint (a friend) couldn't handle the criticism ]
As God is watching, I hope for your sake David that you were not referring to me with that comment. The written records of the events do not lie and the problem we had (as they well convey) was that I responded to every assertion you made (indeed went ridiculously overlong in doing so) and in part because I was very livid at you for refusing to properly dialogue on these matters. A lot if vitriol was spilt on both sides and it is all documented on my weblog and used to be to some extent on yours until you changed combox software (where many of the comments were stored) and then deleted threads from your blog on the matter.{1} But that is not my reason for deciding to respond to you here -I simply note it to provide “the other side” and trust that you will not modify, edit, or delete this comment or the one that will follow because you cannot “handle the criticism.” (Or claim that I have “used up a strike” or whatever your refereeing system is now on these comboxes.)
[I continue to await an answer to my question: how the various groups of people I mentioned magically became "combatants" so they could be morally slaughtered.]
Of course you are picking at one thread of the mosaic again rather than considering if what was noted (the conscription factor) was not one ingredient to the stew rather than the whole stew (to use a food analogy).
This posting of yours was brought to my attention by an emailer and while a lot could be written to substantiate my previously made points{2} I simply am left wondering why you felt impelled to resurrect this issue at the present time.
If this was August and we were around the anniversary dates of the events, then there would be at a minimum the veneer of timeliness. But bringing it up just because Mark Shea did makes you appear to be a follower of him which (considering how uncharitable as well as unhinged on some subjects Mark has become) is not an advisable thing.
To be continued...
Notes:
{1} It is pretty easy to say whatever you want about an event when you think others cannot document it but remember: I am familiar with the Internet Archive and how to use it. And I am not at all concerned about what is in there and remember well some of your evasions on these matters which are in there as well as where to find them.
{2} Including that you attempted a "refutation" without bothering to assimilate first the position you presumed to refute; ergo showing not only a serious lack of ethics by objective criteria that the dialogue you claimed to want was never by objective criteria what you intended exactly as I claimed all along. (Though you called me a "liar" when I first made those assertions.)
Continued from previous posting...
Of course I suppose at the very least I should commend you for not going the route of presuming insanity in those who do not agree with you ala what Mark did. (This is to your credit.) But seriously, this issue has a way of sucking up a lot of time and emotions by all sides involved when it is not confined to at least a time proximate to the anniversaries of the events. And that time and those energies are so much more profitably utilized in various other endeavours, activities, or discussions of a far more significant nature.{1}
Thus -and considering how you have presumed the worst in things I wrote before without warrant I want to say this carefully- this move on your part gives all the appearances of trying to start a provocation and an unnecessary one at that.{2}
Furthermore, considering how much effort on my part was put into setting forth a hypothesis that you admitted publicly and in other places (and long after the fact) to not caring much about in various parameters precisely as I had claimed all along but you had denied{3}, why would you think I or anyone else would want to expend any time or effort responding to your latest "question" when by logical extension as well as directly that point was covered back in 2005 anyway??? Based on the precedent you set on this subject in years past, I do not anticipate any additional time on this matter to be time profitably spent; ergo I will not spend it.
Now gentle reader is when the apologist claims that their "adversary" is "incapable of answering [their question]" when it is left unanswered and that said “adversary” needs to "run for the hills" or whatever David's current formularies are for attempting to claim his statements stand unrefuted. I however refuse to play that game and hopefully this time David will resist that temptation also.
Notes:
{1} Heck, even another round of "James White is Dodging David “Has the Answers” Armstrong -Part MCMLXXXIV" could be said on one level to be time better spent than on this matter.
{2} Though you may well claim that was not your intention and it would be de ja vu all over again.
{3} See the part of footnote one in part one about the Internet Archive.
You gotta grant points for chutzpah to a guy who comes to one's blog (having deleted unread two ambitious conciliatory overtures in private e-mail and having obstinately spurned the efforts of a mutual friend and mediator whose position on the disputed issue is relatively closer to his own) to sanctimoniously lecture one about a particular topic and also the prerogative of free expression and "equal time" in said environs, when his blog doesn't even allow comments.
But so it is. Life is filled with ironies and folly.
Ken, I would not have wanted to step into your Dad's shoes for a day. How in the world was he able to carry around some of those memories? Such horror. Was he able to cope O.K.after he served?
Peter
It was hard. My dad learned to drink heavily during the war. (see below). His first wife (before my mom) tried to kill him. She was insane or manic depressive; my dad said. His first marriage only lasted 7 years.
My dad became a functioning alcoholic (he could hold a lot and drink all day and not really show it until the evenings). It actually calmed him down and make him "nice" (my mom says). She said without it, "he was angry and impatient".
Eventually, his liver at the end had a lot of damage. He had nightmares a lot of the Nazi Messersmits and other fighter plans surrounding him. But he was also private. He struggled in his jobs, it seems; always trying to "make it big" with real estate and restaurants, but never really being successful. I think he got depressed over those failures and drank more as life progressed. He was real smart, but not around too much -- seemed to work until 11:00 pm all the time. (a period of about 20 years when he owned 4 different restaurants, around 5 years each). We did not see him much during those years; and that definitely bothered me. When he got older, he opened up more. But the alcohol definitely took a toll on him.
After I became a Christian, and my dad's alcoholism was obvious; I used to ask him why and how he became that way.
He said the stress of those bombings raids, when they made it back to England; the survivors had drinking contests -- long and big ones; and that was how he learned to be so tolerant of the Scotch Whiskey and Bourbon; and whatever else there was. (I think those were the main ones, but I am not sure.)
Thanks for asking and your obvious compassion.
A decision had to be made, and they had the means and knowledge to make a different decision,
Jordanes,
How do you know they had the means and knowledge to know about all the collateral damage? I guess I am showing that I have not read much on the subject.
It didn't require any secret intelligence for them to know that if you completely wipe out an entire city, most of the people you're killing would be noncombatants and therefore off-limits for an intentional military attack. They chose two targets that were mostly non-military. But this was part of the whole "victory at all costs" mindset that the Allies had adopted. Firebombing Dresden and Tokyo came before nuclearbombing Hiroshima and Nagasaki. During World War II, both the Allies and the Axis made a conscious and deliberate decision to fight unjustly -- not merely to be careless about "collateral damage," but to intentionally seek to cause as much "collateral damage" as possible.
[You gotta grant points for chutzpah to a guy...]
Need I remind you that you deleted without reading a couple of emails in that series David??? Pots should not call kettles black kemosabe particularly since I deleted without reading your emails after you did this with mine. Considering the time and thought I put into them, I was livid at your attitude and what you measured unto me was measured unto you (cf. Mark iv,24) for better or worse.
[to sanctimoniously lecture one about a particular topic and also the prerogative of free expression]
Considering that you made some factually inaccurate statements in your posting, what is wrong with setting the record straight however briefly??? You falsely claimed I could not handle criticism yet look at your reaction here. Interesting...quite interesting indeed.
[...when his blog doesn't even allow comments.]
I have outlined very good reasons for my view. And yes you know this because I explained again my reasons for this last year again on my blog and sent you the thread after it was blogged when you raised this issue at the time. Furthermore, others have come to see the wisdom in my approach as well (for example, Jonathan Prejean). Now you need not agree with our reasons but it is certainly disingenuous of you to pretend that we do not have good reasons -particularly since I made you aware of the first of these threads at the time it was posted.
And as far as the "mediator" issue went, if not for wanting to maintain some semblance of peace I could quote those sources to show parts from the moderator that were not to your credit -again pot it is not wise to call the kettle black.
As I see it, the one with the "chutzpah" is the one who claims to want to have a dialogue and then violates every precept of what constitutes a dialogue by objective criteria manifested in what they write in presumed "responses" then gets angry when this is pointed out based on what they wrote that proves beyond any reasonable doubt that they did not bother to assimilate the position they were supposedly going to mull over before attempting a "refutation" of it.
But I agree with you that "[l]ife is filled with ironies and folly." I want to end this note on that point of agreement with something you may find to be of some interest.
I recently completed a review of one of your books from some outline jottings set down in mid 2005 pre-Hiroshima situation. The longer version is viewable here, the shorter one is at Amazon. As for whether or not it constitutes "irony" or "folly" depends I suppose on the perception of the viewing individual.
God bless you and yours David.
You used to at least have a sense of humor:
--------------
. . . your claim to want to dialogue was a sham exactly as I said it was. You should have had the decency to have admitted to it publicly rather than try to pretend that you wanted to dialogue. Furthermore, if you never intended to interact with my arguments, then you have NO BASIS WHATSOEVER for crying about how soundly I bitchslapped your crap down publicly after 8/28.
. . . In light of the absolute outhouse compost that he threw together, Dave has a lot of gall referring to "skewed factual data" or "mere aversion." He has acted as disgracefully as Benedict Arnold in this whole situation and my tolerance for his blatant misrepresentation of my position on this was used up long ago. I was content to let the issue die but with his latest attempt at grandstanding and public sensationalism (and once again violating the private discussion forum to resurrect this subject publicly), I decided enough was enough.
. . . every assertion Dave makes above is a bald faced lie.
And Dave should be ashamed of himself for attempting to pass off such a heap of dung as he has as some kind of “serious scholarship” when in fact, I wrote better and more convincing papers than this offering in junior high school back in the day.
It is frankly embarrassing to see a person with Dave’s gifts act in this fashion but I am not surprised to see it really. That is what happens with those who have either a provincialist approach to issues or an apologetic "must-debate-anything-however-ignorant-I-am-about-
the-subject-to-be-discussed"mentality coupled with a predictable and "one-size-fits-all" approach to these matters. And in Dave's case, it is pretty evident that he has all three of those problems in spades along with perhaps a few others I am not about to go into at the present time.
LOL! Would one person in a hundred have any patience with a ludicrous attitude like this? And that is only a hundredth of all of this sort of sewer scum that was written, believe me. I'm proud that I had the patience to last for months before this fool stopped reading my letters.
David, anyone can cherry pick statements from context. The next time you are critical of a Protestant for "proof-texting" I hope one of your readers points out that you do the same thing.
As I said before and recently, you manifested such an obvious unwillingness to dialogue properly that repeated attempts on my part to get you to be honourable on this tested my patience -particularly when you admitted later on to precisely what I had been saying all along (but had been called a "liar" by you for asserting). That is why the tonality of the postings from late 2006 is so much different than the ones that preceded them.
It is unfortunate that I am flesh and blood and do not suffer Steve Hays-like demagoguery well -particularly from those who should know better. And having crystallized the problems you displayed into three specific postings drawn in some respect directly from the material and themes from our attempted mediation. I would be glad anytime to go over the substance of them with you and see if you can finally see with greater clarity what I and numerous others have said about your approach at times. (I presume you do not see what others see.)
But that is all I plan to say on the matter now except may you and yours be well and blessed David.
Ken insists that 'hindsight is 20/20' and we aren't in a position to judge what went through the mind of Truman when he ordered the bomb dropped, but this ignores the fact that he was widely criticized at the time, for the same reasons he is criticized today. This excellent article demolishes the tired old myths one-by-one:
http://www.lewrockwell.com/raico...co/
raico22.html
From the article:
"The bombings were condemned as barbaric and unnecessary by high American military officers, including Eisenhower and MacArthur.(96) The view of Admiral William D. Leahy, Truman’s own chief of staff, was typical:
'[T]he use of this barbarous weapon at Hiroshima and Nagasaki was of no material assistance in our war against Japan. . . . My own feeling was that in being the first to use it, we had adopted an ethical standard common to the barbarians of the Dark Ages. I was not taught to make wars in that fashion, and wars cannot be won by destroying women and children.' (97)
...
"Those who may still be troubled by such a grisly exercise in cost-benefit analysis – innocent Japanese lives balanced against the lives of Allied servicemen – might reflect on the judgment of the Catholic philosopher G.E.M. Anscombe, who insisted on the supremacy of moral rules. When, in June 1956, Truman was awarded an honorary degree by her university, Oxford, Anscombe protested.(100) Truman was a war criminal, she contended, for what is the difference between the U.S. government massacring civilians from the air, as at Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and the Nazis wiping out the inhabitants of some Czech or Polish village?
...
"By early summer 1945, the Japanese fully realized that they were beaten. Why did they nonetheless fight on? As Anscombe wrote: 'It was the insistence on unconditional surrender that was the root of all evil.'(101)
...
"To the Japanese, this meant that the emperor – regarded by them to be divine, the direct descendent of the goddess of the sun – would certainly be dethroned and probably put on trial as a war criminal and hanged, perhaps in front of his palace. (103)
...
"For months before, Truman had been pressed to clarify the U.S. position by many high officials within the administration, and outside of it, as well. In May 1945, at the president’s request, Herbert Hoover prepared a memorandum stressing the urgent need to end the war as soon as possible. The Japanese should be informed that we would in no way interfere with the emperor or their chosen form of government. He even raised the possibility that, as part of the terms, Japan might be allowed to hold on to Formosa (Taiwan) and Korea. After meeting with Truman, Hoover dined with Taft and other Republican leaders, and outlined his proposals.(104)
"Establishment writers on World War II often like to deal in lurid speculations. For instance: if the United States had not entered the war, then Hitler would have 'conquered the world' (a sad undervaluation of the Red A
...Army, it would appear; moreover, wasn’t it Japan that was trying to 'conquer the world'?) and killed untold millions. Now, applying conjectural history in this case: assume that the Pacific war had ended in the way wars customarily do – through negotiation of the terms of surrender. And assume the worst – that the Japanese had adamantly insisted on preserving part of their empire, say, Korea and Formosa, even Manchuria. In that event, it is quite possible that Japan would have been in a position to prevent the Communists from coming to power in China. And that could have meant that the thirty or forty million deaths now attributed to the Maoist regime would not have occurred.
"But even remaining within the limits of feasible diplomacy in 1945, it is clear that Truman in no way exhausted the possibilities of ending the war without recourse to the atomic bomb. The Japanese were not informed that they would be the victims of by far the most lethal weapon ever invented (one with 'more than two thousand times the blast power of the British "Grand Slam," which is the largest bomb ever yet used in the history of warfare,' as Truman boasted in his announcement of the Hiroshima attack). Nor were they told that the Soviet Union was set to declare war on Japan, an event that shocked some in Tokyo more than the bombings.(105) Pleas by some of the scientists involved in the project to demonstrate the power of the bomb in some uninhabited or evacuated area were rebuffed. All that mattered was to formally preserve the unconditional surrender formula and save the servicemen’s lives that might have been lost in the effort to enforce it. Yet, as Major General J.F.C. Fuller, one of the century’s great military historians, wrote in connection with the atomic bombings:
'Though to save life is laudable, it in no way justifies the employment of means which run counter to every precept of humanity and the customs of war. Should it do so, then, on the pretext of shortening a war and of saving lives, every imaginable atrocity can be justified.'(106)
...
"While the mass media parroted the government line in praising the atomic incinerations, prominent conservatives denounced them as unspeakable war crimes. Felix Morley, constitutional scholar and one of the founders of Human Events, drew attention to the horror of Hiroshima, including the 'thousands of children trapped in the thirty-three schools that were destroyed.' He called on his compatriots to atone for what had been done in their name, and proposed that groups of Americans be sent to Hiroshima, as Germans were sent to witness what had been done in the Nazi camps. The Paulist priest, Father James Gillis, editor of The Catholic World and another stalwart of the Old Right, castigated the bombings as 'the most powerful blow ever delivered against Christian civilization and the moral law.' David Lawrence, conservative owner of U.S. News and World Report, continued to denounce them for years.(
(107) The distinguished conservative philosopher Richard Weaver was revolted by
'[T]he spectacle of young boys fresh out of Kansas and Texas turning nonmilitary Dresden into a holocaust . . . pulverizing ancient shrines like Monte Cassino and Nuremberg, and bringing atomic annihilation to Hiroshima and Nagasaki.'
Weaver considered such atrocities as deeply 'inimical to the foundations on which civilization is built.'(10
Today, self-styled conservatives slander as 'anti-American' anyone who is in the least troubled by Truman’s massacre of so many tens of thousands of Japanese innocents from the air. This shows as well as anything the difference between today’s 'conservatives' and those who once deserved the name.
Leo Szilard was the world-renowned physicist who drafted the original letter to Roosevelt that Einstein signed, instigating the Manhattan Project. In 1960, shortly before his death, Szilard stated another obvious truth:
'If the Germans had dropped atomic bombs on cities instead of us, we would have defined the dropping of atomic bombs on cities as a war crime, and we would have sentenced the Germans who were guilty of this crime to death at Nuremberg and hanged them.'(109)
NOTES
96. Alperovitz, Decision, pp. 320–65. On MacArthur and Eisenhower, see ibid., pp. 352 and 355–56.
97. William D. Leahy, I Was There (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1950), p. 441. Leahy compared the use of the atomic bomb to the treatment of civilians by Genghis Khan, and termed it "not worthy of Christian man." Ibid., p. 442. Curiously, Truman himself supplied the foreword to Leahy’s book. In a private letter written just before he left the White House, Truman referred to the use of the atomic bomb as "murder," stating that the bomb "is far worse than gas and biological warfare because it affects the civilian population and murders them wholesale." Barton J. Bernstein, "Origins of the U.S. Biological Warfare Program," Preventing a Biological Arms Race, Susan Wright, ed. (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1990), p. 9.
...
100. G.E.M. Anscombe, "Mr. Truman’s Degree," in idem, Collected Philosophical Papers, vol. 3, Ethics, Religion and Politics (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1981), pp. 62–71.
101. Anscombe, "Mr. Truman’s Degree," p. 62.
...
103. For some Japanese leaders, another reason for keeping the emperor was as a bulwark against a possible postwar communist takeover. See also Sherwin, A World Destroyed, p. 236: "the [Potsdam] proclamation offered the military die-hards in the Japanese government more ammunition to continue the war than it offered their opponents to end it."
104. Alperovitz, Decision, pp. 44–45.
105. Cf. Bernstein, "Understanding the Atomic Bomb," p. 254: "it does seem very likely, though certainly not definite, that a synergistic combination of guaranteeing the emperor, awaiting Soviet entry, and continuing the siege strategy would have ended the war in time to avoid
the November invasion." Bernstein, an excellent and scrupulously objective scholar, nonetheless disagrees with Alperovitz and the revisionist school on several key points.
106. J.F.C. Fuller, The Second World War, 1939–45: A Strategical and Tactical History (London: Eyre and Spottiswoode, 194, p. 392. Fuller, who was similarly scathing on the terror-bombing of the German cities, characterized the attacks on Hiroshima and Nagasaki as "a type of war that would have disgraced Tamerlane." Cf. Barton J. Bernstein, who concludes, in "Understanding the Atomic Bomb," p. 235:
107. Felix Morley, "The Return to Nothingness," Human Events (August 29, 1945) reprinted in Hiroshima’s Shadow, Kai Bird and Lawrence Lifschultz, eds. (Stony Creek, Conn.: Pamphleteer’s Press, 199, pp. 272–74; James Martin Gillis, "Nothing But Nihilism," The Catholic World, September 1945, reprinted in ibid., pp. 278–80; Alperovitz, Decision, pp. 438–40.
108. Richard M. Weaver, "A Dialectic on Total War," in idem, Visions of Order: The Cultural Crisis of Our Time (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1964), pp. 98–99.
109. Wainstock, Decision, p. 122.
Addendum:
That entire post--citations included--comes from the article by Ralph Raico. My own words ended at "This excellent article demolishes the tired old myths one-by-one[.]"
Thanks, Jon. I know I cited Raico, too, in my go-around.
I believe my all-time favorite insult is being compared to Benedict Arnold. It would be hard to top that one, though there have been some doozies through the years, for sure.
The collection of slanderous, scurrilous lies about my person and supposed methodology that Shawn compiled is, in any event, unparalleled by anyone, ever, in my entire life: on or off the Internet, even including James White. And that is truly SAYING something, believe me.
Shawn utterly refused and spat upon all explanations I tried repeatedly to give; he mocked several apologies, claiming they were insincere, spurned a serious mediation attempt, acted like an ass for months on end, deleted two long, conciliatory letters that could have ended this ridiculous impasse once and for all . . . I've never seen anything like it.
And now, Shawn, your choice is to shut up now and cease your lying in this combox, in which case I'll leave your vapid comments as they are, as an amazing wonder for all to behold. But if you come back with another comment, I will delete ALL of them.
You've already violated blog guidelines as laid out in this post:
http://socrates58.blogspot.com/2...ely-
purely.html
I wrote there:
"But I am under no obligation to suffer fools who want to now use this blog, where legitimate free speech has always been allowed, to try to tear down my character and my apostolate, and even what motivates me to engage in the latter. That is a clear line. It doesn't involve free exchange of ideas (which I supremely honor and value), because there are no ideas or interaction in such posts: it is all insult and attempted character assassination."
Even though this has been violated, I will (call it mercy or foolishness or an extreme affection for free speech) still allow your present comments to stand, but only on condition that you shut up now. I don't have unlimited patience. The choice is yours.
You've been allowed to insult me on my own blog, at length. I continue to refuse to put back on my site our exchanges because they are a disgrace to Catholicism, Christianity, and indeed all intelligent discourse whatsoever.
I just wanted to give my readers a small taste of the sort of worthless rotgut rhetoric that I was subjected to, in the few excerpts I posted.
No one cares. You see how no one is coming after you or defending me. None of your 19 or so regular readers even appeared to pile on. I think most folks think it is a tragedy that it ever happened. Or they think, as I do, that the whole thing was completely unnecessary, if you could only have endured someone daring to vigorously disagree with you.
For more on the Shawn fiasco, see this lengthy comment of 6 June 2008 (and probably subsequent ones in the same thread that will also appear after this writing):
http://www.haloscan.com/comments...?
a=14699#165204
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