Today is Sunday, Dec 7th 2014.
Sunday, Dec 7th, 1941 was 73 years ago, today.
On that day, one of the most brutal wars in human history began. It included the murder and torture of hostages by both sides, human wave attacks, specially designed suicide bomb aircraft, indiscriminate targeting of civilians, the internment of civilians in concentration camps, and it ended with the detonation of two nuclear devices, making it the only nuclear war in human history.
There's a lot to be said about the US-Japanese war in the pacific.
But I think today, we ought to listen to what one veteran of that conflict had to say about it, shortly before his death:
Errol Morris: The choice of incendiary bombs, where did that come from?Is our drone war at all proportional to the goals we are trying to achieve?McNamara: I think the issue is not so much incendiary bombs. I think the issue is: in order to win a war should you kill 100,000 people in one night, by firebombing or any other way? LeMay's answer would be clearly "Yes."
"McNamara, do you mean to say that instead of killing 100,000, burning to death 100,000 Japanese civilians in that one night, we should have burned to death a lesser number or none? And then had our soldiers cross the beaches in Tokyo and been slaughtered in the tens of thousands? Is that what you're proposing? Is that moral? Is that wise?"
Why was it necessary to drop the nuclear bomb if LeMay was burning up Japan? And he went on from Tokyo to firebomb other cities. 58% of Yokohama. Yokohama is roughly the size of Cleveland. 58% of Cleveland destroyed. Tokyo is roughly the size of New York. 51% percent of New York destroyed. 99% of the equivalent of Chattanooga, which was Toyama. 40% of the equivalent of Los Angeles, which was Nagoya. This was all done before the dropping of the nuclear bomb, which by the way was dropped by LeMay's command.
Proportionality should be a guideline in war. Killing 50% to 90% of the people of 67 Japanese cities and then bombing them with two nuclear bombs is not proportional, in the minds of some people, to the objectives we were trying to achieve.
I don't fault Truman for dropping the nuclear bomb. The U.S.—Japanese War was one of the most brutal wars in all of human history ? kamikaze pilots, suicide, unbelievable. What one can criticize is that the human race prior to that time ? and today ? has not really grappled with what are, I'll call it, "the rules of war." Was there a rule then that said you shouldn't bomb, shouldn't kill, shouldn't burn to death 100,000 civilians in one night?
LeMay said, "If we'd lost the war, we'd all have been prosecuted as war criminals." And I think he's right. He, and I'd say I, were behaving as war criminals. LeMay recognized that what he was doing would be thought immoral if his side had lost. But what makes it immoral if you lose and not immoral if you win?
Do we even know the end goal of these strikes?
What is our strategy here? What is the purpose of it?
What makes strikes like these immoral if carried out by the Egyptians, but perfectly acceptable if carried out by the United States?
Beyond drones, why are we keeping our nuclear arsenal intact?
The US and Russia are not making nuclear threats, despite the diplomatic tensions over Ukraine and Moldova. Instead that warfare is being fought economically. So why do we hang on to Nuclear weapons that we can't even properly take care of? Why maintain a massive arsenal of weapons that absolutely cannot be used if we wish to survive as a species?
I don't think that we, as a nation, have answered these questions.
And on days like this, when we remember the beginning of a war, when war came "like a thief in the night" to quote one anti-war senator of the 1940s, I think it's important for us to look at the whole picture. I think it's important to ask ourselves where we are going, and what we have learned.