And Hell

Since my email rant has seen some public consumption, here it is for all:

Title: On the Bomb

i get heated and upset and argumentative about issues regarding moral equivalence. it saddens and disgusts me when our generation sort of shrugs our shoulders about the past and is unwilling to be proud of people who made enormously difficult decisions and sacrifices that essentially helped free a good portion of the world. not only that, but this notion of moral equivalence suggesting no side was more right or more wrong or that it is somehow impossible to know is totally simple minded. for one, the world is neither black or white, both sides have points of view in any war or conflict....but that alone doesn't prove that no side is right - what it proves is that it is incredibly difficult to see, in haze of reality what the right thing is. the allies did incredibly awful, even evil things during WWII. but they did so because the alternative - living with powerful fascists neighbors was a much greater evil. i admire the resolve of the allied leadership, particularly churhill, fdr, and truman who made incredibly difficult choices, asked for enormous sacrifice, and were able to rally the free world to defend what we now take for granted.

many britons wanted to make a peace with nazi germany in 1940 after they steamrolled france. in their eyes, they could have prevented what lead to essentialy the complete destruction of the european continent. but can you imagine what the world would now look like if that had happened? hitler would have had more time and opportunity to complete his vision of the world and who knows how successful he may have been. churchill understood that the nature of nazi evil was not something that could be compromised with, or negotiated with, and he was willing to fight the nazis until the bitter end. i don't think that choice should be written off as something we can't judge or as just "one point of view." the choice was above all else, courageous and certainly not inevitable.

with respect to the bomb....there are so many issues, some known then and some known only now. there was the strategic choice made by the allies that they would only accept unconditional surrender from japan and germany. what this meant, of course, was an enormous death toll. it meant fire bombing civilian cities and essentially turning both countries into rubble. it was scorched earth warfare. it lead to many of the 50 million deaths of WWII....but it was a choice based upon the outcome of WWI - an armistice - that clearly clearly did not lead to a lasting peace. the allies knew they needed unconditional surrender and complete humiliation of both japan and germany, otherwise the existential threat would continue.

so how was america to get this surrender from a foe who wouldn't quit? japan had clearly lost the war. they were done. but they refused to surrender. they were willing to "make it a generational war," meaning they were willing to sacrifice their entire race - to fight until the last man - because they felt in doing so, they could wipe out a generation of American men - a cost they calculated the Americans would never make. this was their logic and how they planned to preserve the emperor's power and their code of honor.

secondarily, the soviet union was already proving to be trouble...they had the fierced army in the world and were using it to install puppet governments all around eastern europe. they were killing german pows, raping (upwards of 100,000) german women, killing off cossacks and other opponents to communist rule, killing off political opposition in satellite countries. the allies weren't all nice - but were obviously nothing compared to stalin's work camps. it is why many soviet dissidents killed themselves rather than go to the camps. they were using their military might and resolve to retrieve the spoils of war which had taken such an enormous toll on the country.

but with the bomb, America had a tool that made the japanese calculation of a generational war unnecessary. we could annihilate their country and race without the cost to america. it also proved to the soviets that we had resolve (which is something all dictatorships question about democracies and count upon as democracies weakness).

so basically we had three options - 1) invade japan. lose up to 1mil american lives and kill every last japanese resister 2) sue for a peace and try to contain imperial japan 3) use the bomb to see if japan will surrender. to me, it's pretty obvious, given the context of WWII, option 3 was the best. and it did work.

the problem with using the bomb wasn't so much the destruction (had we invaded the death and destruction of japan would have been just as bad, if not worse). the problem was the precedent it set, that a weapon of this magnitude could be used. it is a weapon that is impossible to defend against. a weapon that could not only annihilate countries, but the entire human race. it's like we opened pandora's box and since then every thug and dictator has dreamed of having atomic power, and each year it becomes more and more likely the wrong people will get their hands on one.

today, we see OBL pointing to the US use of the bomb as an example of how evil america is - using the bomb on a civilian population. it's pure propaganda, sure. it's a form of revisionist history. and it's weird to me why so many smart people buy into revisionist history with a clear ideological bent - the ideology of moral equivalence.

the kind of hemming and hawing, well, i see both sides of it, i mean put yourself in the shoes of a japanese civilian, blah, blah, blah. it's bullshit. utter and complete bullshit. because what it does is take smart choices made by courageous people and tries to morph them into something pedestrian. it's the same way i feel when a brilliant movie comes out and some idiot says, "it was boring, or i didn't get it," and tries to bring down something great that someone else has accomplished. it's particularly awful if the person bringing it down recognizes it's great or at least on another plane and tries to bring it down anyway.

all right, i just went a little mad there. i'll stop.