History of the Day….
Hiroshima. It is in the news today. I t should be remembered. It should be remembered as an act of war not terrorism. It should be viewed as an end of the war not the beginning of one.
Truman had to take account of this, and dropped the bomb for the reasons he said at the time. Contrary to popular myth, there is no documentary evidence that his military commanders advised him the bomb was unnecessary for Japan was about to surrender. As the historian Wilson Miscamble puts it, Truman “hoped that the bombs would end the war and secure peace with the fewest American casualties, and so they did. Surely he took the action any American president would have undertaken.” Recent Japanese scholarship provides support for this position. Sadao Asada, of Doshisha University, Kyoto, has concluded from analysis of Japanese primary sources that the two bombs enabled the “peace party” within Japan’s cabinet to prevail.
Hiroshima and Nagasaki are often used as a shorthand term for war crimes. That is not how they were judged at the time. Our side did terrible things to avoid a more terrible outcome. The bomb was a deliverance for American troops, for prisoners and slave labourers, for those dying of hunger and maltreatment throughout the Japanese empire – and for Japan itself. One of Japan’s highest wartime officials, Kido Koichi, later testified that in his view the August surrender prevented 20 million Japanese casualties. The destruction of two cities, and the suffering it caused for decades afterwards, cannot but temper our view of the Pacific war. Yet we can conclude with a high degree of probability that abjuring the bomb would have caused greater suffering still. Guardian
Also of note for this blog. Lord Tennyson born 1809. here
8 Responses to “History of the Day….”
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- - August 10, 2007
How do you define terrorism? My understanding is that a violent act purposefully committed against a civilian population in order to achieve political ends is considered terrorism. So how were the nuclear attacks not terrorism?
They were both an act of war AND terrorism. You can still defend the attacks though. Terrorism is a part of war. So are human rights abuses. So are war crimes.
And just to emphasize what I said about you defending the attacks, re-read that last paragraph you quoted. I don’t know enough to agree or disagree with it, but agreeing with it doesn’t mean that the attacks weren’t terrorism. In our black-and-white world of morality, everyone pretends like terrorism is inherently bad. But perhaps Machiavelli needs a little revisiting these days…
My personal opinion is that the bombs were terrifying but not terrorism.
So what definition of terrorism do you subscribe to then?
I like yours to a degree I would add the following. Non aligned to any nation,performing actions not sanctioned by a sovereign entity and therefore criminal in nature. I’ve always grappled with the concept of “one’s man terrorist is another’s freedom fighter”. Some examples to possibly clarify. Hamas is a duly elected entity with sovereign rights/recognition. They are imo no longer terrorists but clearly liable to be viewed as legit combatants. IRA and the various Protestant factions and ALL the other splinter groups. Terrorists. British Army.Not. Afghanistan I would’ve qualified the Mujahadeen as freedom fighters since they embodied a national position of the de facto army of liberation. Does that help ?
That helps, although I think your requirements for terrorism are totally arbitrary and ultimately irrelevant when considering the nature of the violent act itself. A hypothetical:
The US government decides to issue the following statement: “Citizens of Britain, listen carefully. If you do not take up arms against your government within the next 24 hours, we will proceed to bomb your homes continuously, day and night, for two weeks. We will then give you another opportunity to take up arms against your government. If at that point you do not do so, we will invade your country, come into your homes, and rape, torture, and slaughter your wives and children.”
Is that not terrorism?
No. That is one sovereign nation declaring it’s intentions to commit an act against another sovereign nation. Now if it was a group of American citizens running through the Tube tunnels blowing stuff up that’d be terrorism.
As far as my requirements being arbitrary I respectfully disagree. We are of two different schools me thinks. I am very detached in looking at things most of the time. I also absolutely believe “Sovereignty Matters.”(use the search tool in the sidebar on that term/past posts) My positions are not big on humanism and international law. I must state though. I believe sovereign nations have the “right” to commit actions like you pose as hypothetical. They also have an obligation within their sovereignty not to. Likewise sovereign nations have the right to respond and so on.