He left out the next part though: "And if those people LIVE, others will DIE!"
I mean, you want to talk about ironic: Consider the atomic bombing of Japan. To the extent that it contributed in any meaningful way whatsoever to avoiding a land invasion of Japanese (American, Soviet, or both) it saved more Japanese lives than died at Hiroshima and Nagasaki combined, to say nothing of the Allied servicemembers staring down the barrel of the Japanese gun.
Then you need to remember there were two bombings of Japan. Was the second one necessary to prevent a land invasion of Japan? Furthermore it seems likely that a combined soviet/american land invasion would have prompted nearly as quick of a surrender as the atomic bombings.
Of course we can play these "what-if" games all day; the people at the time needed to make a decision, and I don't think it was all that bad of a decision with the information they had.
When the use of deadly force is appropriate is the biggest open question in ethics IMO.
Perhaps (there always remains the question of where the Soviets would have found the needed amphibious shipping to make it happen, of course).
But even if we assume it happens, now we have another Korea split into a Communist and non-Communist bloc. Great improvement, no?
You're right about what-if games though... I'm just glad the decision wasn't mine to have to make, especially with those ethical questions still not fully settled even to this day.
Not just conventional bombs, they deliberately burned a hundred thousand innocent people to death. Not nearly enough people know about this atrocity, especially in relation to Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
Thus, instead of potentially losing the lives of soldiers on either side, or possibly losing not that many lives thanks to surrender, they caused massive civilian casualties (a total of up to 240,000 deaths according to Wikipedia), plus plans for seven more after they saw how great the first two were.
Thus, even if you argue that the atomic bombs did save soldiers' lives, they killed far more civilians, and could be argued to be war crimes which did less to encourage a Japanese surrender than Moscow's entrance into the war against Japan.
Well that's a good question you ask yourself, since speculation is just that.
There were certainly elements within the Japanese government that had wished to surrender for a long time, but the government was not in power: The military was. And the military leadership was not going to surrender.
Even after the news came of the Nagasaki bombing (when the Japanese leadership had finally got around to meeting to discuss Hiroshima), the question of whether to surrender (after 2 bombings) came to a 3-3 tie. Emperor Hirohito himself broke the tie in favor for peace.
After recording his surrender announcement for broadcast the next day, elements of the Imperial Japanese Army rebelled, killed the Prime Minister, and invaded the Imperial Palace looking for the recording (which was kept safe by one of Hirohito's advisers at great personal risk). You simply can't try to evaluate 1945 Japan in 2014 Western terms, you have no clue what the thinking was like.
> Thus, even if you argue that the atomic bombs did save soldiers' lives
I'm arguing that they saved Japanese civilian lives. Again, you have no baseline for what WWII was like if you think soldiers were the only ones to die in land combat. Look at the Battle of Okinawa for an example of what the Japanese Army did to the civilians of Okinawa.
And if you want to remove "speculation" from your vocabulary, I recommend Michael Kort's "The Columbia Guide to Hiroshima and the Bomb".
It also discusses how conventional bombs were doing a fine job of systematically destroying the country (and population), waiting would have likely produced the same effect as japan was blockaded and staving, as a show of force a military base would have been just as effective and how "Hiroshima and Nagasaki were chosen as targets because of their concentration of activities and population."
It finishes with "General Douglas MacArthur, Commander of US Army forces in the Pacific, stated on numerous occasions before his death that the atomic bomb was completely unnecessary from a military point of view: "My staff was unanimous in believing that Japan was on the point of collapse and surrender.""
It doesn't seem like there is much to speculate on. However this is a random internet article and could be rather biased.
>elements of the Imperial Japanese Army rebelled, killed the Prime Minister
According to wiki (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ky%C5%ABj%C5%8D_Incident) elements of the navy did rebel, but they were a small minority that did not manage to kill the prim minster despite attempts to do so.
So now ask yourself:
Is it ethically better to use conventional weaponry to kill more people over a longer time? Conventional weaponry was used to firebomb Tokyo in March 1945; more people died in that one series of day/night raids than died in Hiroshima and Nagasaki combined.
And they're saying this was better.
They're also claiming that having a Japan "blockaded and starving" while we waited them out is ethically better.
However difficult it is to precisely target an atom bomb, starvation is even more difficult to use as a weapon (as they're proposing): it doesn't obey rules of engagement, you can't direct at military objectives... hell, it would actually preferentially kill civilians, starting with the weakest, since the military would ensure they received higher rations.
And this is always how this argument devolves: People suggesting things which are actually even more cruel since they find it axiomatic that there is no worse thing you can do to someone than to use a single very big bomb to kill them instead of a million tiny little cumulative cuts.
(Edited to correct the subject proposing the bomb-'em-all argument).
As far as MacArthur, he and his staff were certainly not alone in their estimate of the political situation in Japan. FDR's military aide, Adm. Leahy, also thought that the bomb was unnecessary, as did Adm. Nimitz in Honolulu.
On the other hand, Leahy also thought the bomb would never work (he even used his "expertise in explosives" to support that argument).
And both FDR and Truman had been briefed regarding the two proposed upcoming invasions (of Kyushu and then Honshu) that the American and Japanese casualties would be monumental.
MacArthur was always thought he was the politician as much as he was the general; it's the reason he was fired from his service in the Korean War despite his absolutely brilliant orchestration of the Incheon landings to save the war effort for the U.N.
He's not even wrong in this regard though: Using the atom bomb was not absolutely militarily essential. As your article mentions, we could simply haved starved them all to death instead, like the ethical and noble creatures that we are.
Yeah. Shame that no bomb and no invasion was necessary either, the Japanese were already literally begging to surrender, and they only asked for a few trivial conditions in exchange. It was just a way to live test the bomb on people, send the world a message, and kickstart the cold war to not let the Soviets get any ideas.
Who specifically was begging to surrender?
There were elements within the government willing to surrender, and the "few trivial conditions" they wanted were more or less the terms eventually agreed by the Allies. But they weren't in power.
The elements within the government who were in power had far more than a "few trivial conditions" as their requirements for surrender. E.g.: "Kido [a confidant of the Emperor] proposed [in June 1945] that Japan withdraw from the formerly European colonies it had occupied provided they were granted independence, that Japan disarm provided this not occur under Allied supervision, and that Japan for a time be "content with minimum defense." Kido's proposal did not contemplate Allied occupation of Japan, prosecution of war criminals or substantial change in Japan's system of government."
This was decided before the Potsdam Declaration and before serious overtures to the Soviet Union, and those conditions would have been completely unacceptable to the Allies and to the populations of those Allies (especially given Japanese treatment of Allied POWs).
Even in May 1945 as meetings were taking place among the actual Japanese leadership to discuss the possibility of surrender, the leaders of Japan had to be very careful: "Because anyone openly supporting Japanese surrender risked assassination by zealous army officers, the meetings were closed to anyone except the Big Six, the Emperor, and the Privy Seal."
The Wikipedia article on the surrender of Japan is very enlightening, if you can't be bothered to consult primary sources yourself: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Surrender_of_Japan
That doesn't mean that there aren't limits to what I think is okay, but overall I think the U.S. military is still a net positive for the world, especially because of the security we provide for Europe that has enabled that continent to break its historical cycle of bloodshed and live in relative peace the last half-century. And as a practical matter--I don't think there is any other major country that would be as benevolent as the U.S. has been were it to be on top. Many have proven so (Germany, the U.K., etc).
You're either ignorant or amoral.
edit: eh. I feel like it needs reminding - I realize that in terms of geopolitics there needs to be a superpower. Every century has had a superpower that in all likelihood abused the weaker countries. My issue is with the way OP describes the issue: US being benevolent and great, bringing in fruits to US economy, completely ignoring repercussions worldwide, and OP has absolutely no problem with it.
I'd be interested in discussing parts of the military that aren't related to U.S. imperialism. Care to bring one up?
So, no, history doesn't suggest that. Neither does recent history with 20+ regime changes.
edit: I feel like it needs reminding - I realize that in terms of geopolitics there needs to be a superpower. Every century has had a superpower that in all likelihood abused the weaker countries. My issue is with the way OP describes the issue: US being benevolent and great, bringing in fruits to US economy, completely ignoring repercussions worldwide.
Eh fine. I'm starting to sound self-righteous. My issue with your statement is how absolutely peaceful you are about contributing to war machine. You're implicitly helping the armed forces kill people.
If I remember well, Afghanistan, Irak and Iran are the last places where US overthrew a Shah or a dictator. I don't remember them being a working democracy recently.
By the way, why was there a dictatorship in the first place? Most often because of a colonial past (we're all guilty here, I am French myself). I just want to remind that I see nothing good in a country just overthrowing a dictatorship: What we need is to build economic growth, like the Plan Marshall.
Hmmm, no, this is flat-out wrong.
You've clearly never been in UK, Germany, or France, and yet, you think you have precise insight of the politics of those countries and the world.
The most terrible thing is the inesorable logic of how people develop this sort of thoughts, through growing up in cultural closeness, put together with exposure to militaristic propaganda (note that it's a general remark, not referred specifically to US).
You would have to be living under a rock to ignore the long history of European internal wars, and equally to ignore the fact that European countries have been able to maintain a minimalist approach to defense spending because of the US security umbrella.
[0] Doesn't even have to be equipment. Maintaining databases which are required for a functioning military complex means you're still serving their vision. Their visions as of late are often amoral.
The large system designed to kill targeted groups of people efficiently, when it works as designed, doesn't actually spend much time (if any) actually doing that job. The mere existence of such a force should prevent that from happening (as it absolutely has for the most part). Having said that, there are circumstances when I absolutely expect them to do just that - if an aggressive foreign army were to roll into your hometown tomorrow, you would likely agree.
I realize that to the rest of the world right now we (i.e., the U.S.) are that aggressive foreign army, which is why I say the system is out of line - certain unilateral actions were a misuse of the system. This is why many people see no hypocrisy in 'supporting the troops', but being 'against the war'.
Anyway, not trying to say you are completely wrong and you should feel bad WHY DO YOU HATE AMERICA, just trying to provide some explanation of another viewpoint. As you said, it's about perception and morality - not surprising we end up with different stances.
I can't speak for other militaries, but for the U.S. military the goal is peace, without abject surrender (which is no "peace" at all), and with the "American way of life" and international law.
The means to achieving that goal is the credible deterrent threat that comes from having ways to blow the right things up. Do not conflate the two, right now you are confusing ends with means.
International law - indefinite detention, torture; or killing with drones without due process? Doesn't seem like international law is held in high esteem in the US.
Torture is against international law. Even if you want to quibble about whether Geneva Conventions apply to "unlawful combatants" I think that even non-treaty customary international law would forbid torture.
So I suppose that's why the U.S. abrogated Bush's policies on torture as soon as Obama took office in 2009.
True.
> Even if you want to quibble about whether Geneva Conventions apply to "unlawful combatants" I think that even non-treaty customary international law would forbid torture.
More importantly, it would be against treaty-based international law even if you ignored the Geneva Conventions completely, since it is prohibited by the Convention against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment.
No, that's not correct. The absurdity of this statement is staggering.
If it is nuclear peace, it's because of the Americans as well.
NATO doesn't have nukes, its member nations do. And a nation can't use nukes without being nuked in return (which is why the American extension of their nuclear shield over western Europe is so notable).
Even with that, France and the U.K. both didn't trust the U.S. to actually nuke the U.S.S.R. if push came to shove... would the U.S. really put itself in a position where it might be mutually destroyed just to save France and the U.K.?
Well, that's the same question all the non-nuclear members of NATO would be asking, if "nuclear peace" were the only answer. So apparently it's more than that.
Strength comes from the economy. The ability to defend against tyranny is a product of a strong economy. But American military and banking policy has been ruinously bad for US economic power, and for the long-lead-time things like education that would rebuild the economy's ability to grow at a strong rate.
Many of the previous wannabe #1s (as the US is now), were motivated by ideology ("we're better than you, culturally, religiously, racially, etc"): Spain, Portugal, England, France, Germany, by a power trip (Russia) or by what I could only call sheer insanity (Nazi Germany, USSR). The US is a bit different in this regard since it was always basically a trading nation and this what drove it forward: we don't (usually) want your land or want to convert your people to whatever crazy idea we have, we just want to get (worst case) / buy (best case) your stuff.
That is an entirely different message and as long as it is not abused to much (see Iraq especially), it is a much better approach for the smaller guys.
Ideally I'd want all the countries to be open, democratic, tolerant, free market economies AND equal partners. In practice I'd just want the big guy to not abuse me too much and give me a chance to grow myself.
That's why as a Romanian I'm kind of horrified, for example, by Russia's resurgence. They fail 3 out of 5 those "ideal" criteria completely (open, tolerant, equal). The US fails basically just "equal", the rest might not be awesome but they have passing grades.
Iraq is not an abuse, becasue the abuse is mass murder; and it's not the only one.
There are a few interesting conceptual problems. It's arguable that this approach favours the smaller guys. Who are the smaller guys? The ones surrounding Russia, because they're important for strategic reasons?
Well, true. But we have to exclude the smaller guys who sit on oil reserves, because if they don't agree with giving their oil at a more than fair price, they get the bombs.
Also, we have to exclude various smaller guys which have been supported when it was convenient for various economical reasons, and then have been abandoned to self-implosion after they've been exploited.
So, who's really the smaller guys?
There are several other problems. One that I find very dangerous is that it's not just a matter of getting/buying "somebody else's" stuff. It's also a matter of exporting corporatocracy, which is an alarming direction.
Mind you, US --- Venusuela relations are pretty bad right now, and we certainly want their oil. But the US isn't going to invade Venusuela any time soon. The politics and reasons behind the Iraq and Afghanistan wars are far more complicated than just oil. Otherwise, there'd be a heck of a lot more countries we'd be invading. (Iran, Venesuela, etc. etc.)
There is a good point made here. The US at worst just wants stuff: it doesn't want to prove its superiority over other countries (although there are factions of the Warmongerers who do wish to do that... it seems like politics of war are more practical than the 19th century "Great Game" period).
There's a lot of people hating on the current approach of global politics. But any studied historian will agree: the US is doing a heck of a lot better than Napoleon, the British Empire, Rising Sun Japan, or other historical world powers. Heck, "Corporatocracy" was the standard Asian power from 1600s to the 1800s. The East Indian Trading Company (a corporation) was one of the world powers that conquered India.
We no longer live in an era where corporations are allowed to have standing armies and navies. We no longer live in an era where world powers wage war over the ability to trade Opium for the explicit purpose of weakening a country. (IE: the 1800s Opium Wars).
Perhaps "benevolence" is the wrong word to use to describe America, but its certainly doing its "Super-power duties" better than its historical predecessors.
Americans aren't interested in your land or people, because then they would have to manage them. Dirt-farming peasants in some filthy third-world country can have their crappy lives, as long as the despots that we deal with (and, often, installed) give us a fair price for the goods they take from you.
The 'better approach for the smaller guys' is probably true in your area of the world, where the US hasn't been able to effect serious political change due to proximity towards European and Soviet (now Russian) powers; in South America, on the other hand, the US has been known to help overthrow elected governments in favour of dictators with more favourable relationships (as they also did in Iran, for example); in that case, I think it's much worse for the little guys vs. a well-run occupation.
Monty Python said it pretty well: 'Apart from better sanitation and medicine and education and irrigation and public health and roads and a freshwater system and baths and public order... what have the Romans done for us?'
Meanwhile Canada and Mexico are doing quite fine - those borders have been stable for over 100 years and there's been no major "abuse", as I called it before, that I know of.
Also, arrogance is not a capital offense, discrimination based on it is. From many points of view the US discriminates less than those mentioned previously.
Do you think that represents the will of the people in most of Europe, Australia, New Zealand?
Or, if the above don't work sometime, straight-out help install military dictatorships -- e.g even in the heart of Europe, in the late sixties:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greek_military_junta_of_1967%E2...
It's not like Americans have any greater "responsibility" over their own government.
It sure doesn't work for their best interests -- only for the same private interests and multinationals that also take advantage of Europe (and all post-colonial countries in their sphere of influence).
And it's not like European elites do not benefit from that -- it's just that the majority of those people tends to reside across the Atlantic, and finds it easier and more effective to yield US as their own private economic/diplomatic weapon. For the actual country and the majority of its citizens, they could not care less.
>They can complain while still feeling righteous, brilliant.
Not sure how "feeling righteous" is contradictory with "complaining" (your phrasing seems to imply that).
Your message seems to be: "if you're fucked over by a bully, you don't have the right to complaint, because it's your responsibility to stand up to him".
Well, replace Europeans with black people in the South pre-Civil War. Does that retain the same kind of ring that you intented it to have?
Russia also is spying on everyone (especially true in the Ukraine right now).
So the truth is the truth, as it always has been known. The world spies on each other, very very often.
Unfortunately rayiner is neither, as a look at his comment history makes clear. His morality is just antithetical to yours and mine.
To paraphrase and invert an H.L. Mencken quote, it seems in any dispute between a citizen and the government, it is his instinct to side with the government; he is for all efforts to make men virtuous by law.
My home country is one of them. USSR at some point had stamps where half of our contry was painted in as part of the empire, and rich in resources and strategic as it was there is a fair chance they had invaded us hadn't it been for the Americans. Most of us prefer different degrees of rich as in USA versus everybody equal(ly poor) as in USSR so we are mostly happy.
Understand that I cannot defend everything every American has ever done but on average I'd feel much safer with an American soldier pointing a gun at me than about anyone else.
My point is that it's insulting to call the US benevolent. The difference between US and USSR is that the US prefers a more subtle way of conquering a country, namely, by causing turmoil and overthrowing the government, letting rebel groups run rampant and financing them. It's always easier to overtake strategic resources during anarchy.
Why do you think all the Iran, Ukraine etc civil wars are happening. Because the BRICS countries want to move away from the dollar.
Would you feel the same, on average, if you were a citizen of a South American country, or how about the middle east?
The 'US as malefactor' viewpoint depends on attributing enormous competency to the CIA and similar agencies to start revolutions, but simultaneously ignoring other factors - like the lack of concrete support for the rebels in Syria, notwithstanding the brutality of the Assad regime or widely-accepted evidence of chemical attacks. If the US were actually intent on toppling that regime it has had ample opportunity to advance that goal, but has chosen not to do so. In a larger context, the idea of moving away from the dollar as the reserve currency is often advanced because that would supposedly make it more difficult for the US to import the oil it needs. But there's no record of the US having adjusted its monetary policy in response to swings in oil price, which you would expect if that were the issue; and in any case domestic US oil and gas production is at a historic high and we've started expanding our nuclear fleet again after a 30 year hiatus.
I'm not American either, and I don't see the US as benevolent so much as driven by enlightened self-interest. Where I differ from you is in thinking that US interests aren't dependent on or even advanced by destabilizing other countries, notwithstanding historical US reliance on that strategy.
Obama, who is hardly a hawk, was politically unable to act due to citizens understandable war weariness. Putin has no such restraints.
No need for character sniping. He's a self-described statist, and many here (myself included) have a lot of disagreements with his views, but at least he can justify them better than the average statist (of the "Without a powerful government who will protect the children!" variety).
Read "War is a racket" [1] by General Smedley Butler to see how far back this goes.
It acts in it's own best interests as any other country does or has done. Sometimes those interests align and countries work together, as it is now in most of the western world.
It's also in US interests to maintain military bases in Europe and the Middle East and Asia since two of the worst wars the world has ever seen utterly annihilated those regions and led to the countries there being in no fit state to do it themselves.
It also gives them footholds all over the world for the purposes of expanding territory. Other countries have done this, the US does this, other countries will do it in the future.
The US is far from the worst country out there but let's not start throwing around the word 'benevolent' because it's profoundly untrue.
Being the best of a bad bunch does not make you somehow good.
Undoubtedly the US military is one, if not a major force in the post WWII security, but many other factors have contributed to this, such as Khrouchtchev's policies of co-existence; the emergence of China as a nuclear power that forced Russia to side with the US and the European Union that bound France and Germany economically, making future pan-European wars much less likely.
Lets not also forget the European conflicts since 1945 despite all of the above - Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia; Turkey invading Cyprus; Bosnian war; the Chechen crisis; Kosovo; Russia-Georgia and the Crimea.