Sunday, August 07, 2005
A Passive Act of A-Bombing
Via Anulios, I just came across a great blog, A Bad Christian. As the title implies, it's a site dedicated to the practice of irresponsible Christianity -- the "bad" or "irresponsible" being cheeky synonyms for "liberal." (An astoundingly rich blogroll there, too.)
In a recent post, Brandon (the Bad Christian) tackles the Hiroshima bombing:
I've heard the argument from many people, including people whom I dearly love, that not bombing Hiroshima would (likely) have resulted in an even greater loss of lives -- American lives at that -- and that therefore the bombing was (regrettably, some would add) justifiable. My dad fought in the European theater in World War II, and never once to my knowledge mentioned the possibility that he might have been reassigned to the Pacific. (Not that he ever said much about the war, period.) So maybe I'd feel differently if I were in the shoes of someone whose father had a more direct stake in the short-term course of the war, let alone in the shoes of a Pacific theater veteran.
Maybe. But people really do need to stop and think about this. Regardless of our personal stake in a national decision -- even on a life-and-death issue -- we can still be disgusted by the decision. A spade is a spade: butchering someone we don't know to forestall the (even likely) butchery of someone we do know is no way to solve a problem.
It's not hard to trace a line from August 6, 1945, through all the wars and police actions and acts of terrorism (whoops, I mean extremism) since. And yes, that wasn't the first or even the worst nationally sanctioned act of pre-emptive violence, by the US or by others. But it was the first such act to do in a single instant the Devil's work of civilian butchery on such a large scale.
I've never been able to understand why we had to demonstrate the atomic bomb's power "live," on so many living breathing emoting and (especially) non-combatant targets. If all we needed to do was make a point, why not film the bombing of a fleet of dummy ships? Why not bomb some remote area of Japan, perhaps an island off the coast? If they didn't get the message after the first demonstration, why not simply move the next shot closer in, without repeating the same ghastly "live" exercise? Easy for me to sit here armchair-generaling, I know. But I've never seen sufficient evidence that the crisis was so urgent to justify the solution eventually arrived at.
In a recent post, Brandon (the Bad Christian) tackles the Hiroshima bombing:
As heard as a local news station:Just so. And how refreshing it always is, to see someone sufficiently attuned to the nuances of the English language that alarm bells go off in his head when he hears it being used to weasel away from truth.
"Today the people of Hiroshima commemorate the 60th anniversary of the day the atomic bomb was dropped."
Two words: "was dropped." Now, that's fuckin' dishonest. Perhaps, it's not politically correct, but the verb 'was dropped' shirks some serious fucking responsibility.
We dropped the bomb. The government of the United States of America decided that, well, 'you've gotta crack a few eggs to make an omelet.' We decided that a few [hundred] thousand Japanese lives were 'collateral damage.' We, with the force of atoms and gravity, became a world superpower.
I've heard the argument from many people, including people whom I dearly love, that not bombing Hiroshima would (likely) have resulted in an even greater loss of lives -- American lives at that -- and that therefore the bombing was (regrettably, some would add) justifiable. My dad fought in the European theater in World War II, and never once to my knowledge mentioned the possibility that he might have been reassigned to the Pacific. (Not that he ever said much about the war, period.) So maybe I'd feel differently if I were in the shoes of someone whose father had a more direct stake in the short-term course of the war, let alone in the shoes of a Pacific theater veteran.
Maybe. But people really do need to stop and think about this. Regardless of our personal stake in a national decision -- even on a life-and-death issue -- we can still be disgusted by the decision. A spade is a spade: butchering someone we don't know to forestall the (even likely) butchery of someone we do know is no way to solve a problem.
It's not hard to trace a line from August 6, 1945, through all the wars and police actions and acts of terrorism (whoops, I mean extremism) since. And yes, that wasn't the first or even the worst nationally sanctioned act of pre-emptive violence, by the US or by others. But it was the first such act to do in a single instant the Devil's work of civilian butchery on such a large scale.
I've never been able to understand why we had to demonstrate the atomic bomb's power "live," on so many living breathing emoting and (especially) non-combatant targets. If all we needed to do was make a point, why not film the bombing of a fleet of dummy ships? Why not bomb some remote area of Japan, perhaps an island off the coast? If they didn't get the message after the first demonstration, why not simply move the next shot closer in, without repeating the same ghastly "live" exercise? Easy for me to sit here armchair-generaling, I know. But I've never seen sufficient evidence that the crisis was so urgent to justify the solution eventually arrived at.
