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The Morality of War
Sideways Mencken asks a valid question about our history (and our future):
Sixty five years ago we fought a war with Japan following their attack on Pearl Harbor. Within a matter of a few months we were burning down Japanese cities. The Japanese of that era favored wood construction and we dropped incendiary bombs. Later, when the technology became available, we dropped atomic bombs.You can argue one way or the other whether there were significant, legitimate military targets in each and every case, but let’s take it as granted that there were. Nevertheless, incendiaries in packed cities full of wood houses, I think we knew what would result. I think we knew the firestorms might suck the oxygen from the lungs of children as well as adults, women as well as men, opponents and supporters of the regime alike.
Fair enough so far?
Question: were we right or wrong to do it?
Well, were we? And did we go too far in Japan or was everything we did appropriate?
5 Responses to “The Morality of War”
For the time – we were right in doing it. That was what the powers did to each other to tear down the will of the people. To reduce the people-resources to make more bombs, make more airplanes. etc, etc, etc.
In short – that is how countries waged war back then. Go back even further in time and countries waged war where the victor took a percentage of the opposing army and population into slavery and land was made part of the empire. To the victor go the spoils.
It was not until after WWII that we decided to no longer deliberately target civilians. When it was finally realized that a countries population was not completely indicative of it’s government’s views. That to prevent war, you rebuild what you helped to destroy, giving the population their normal existence and identity back. So the population will not grow up in despair where an opposing country was the victor.
That was a different age. Right for the time, but that time is no longer.
“interested” is right. People had few illusions about the horrible nature of warfare. This was true of ancient wars where entire populations were enslaved or destroyed if their armies lost, as well as modern warfare where modern airpower could kill tens of thousands in seconds. Things changed a bit after WWII because of the Holocaust, the atomic bomb, and the UN.
This conversation is “nice”; the US is lucky that two oceans seperated us from both Japan and Germany. I wonder how things would have changed if Germany firebombed the east coast. we are hit in one isolated incident (9-11) and many are ready to give up rights for saftey. What would have happened if 9-11 happened to civilians weekly back in the 1940′s. The US is quick to war because we have no memories of the costs of war in the 18 and 19 centuries.
Very thought-provoking post. Here are some of mine.
WWII was what’s known as a Total War. From Wikipedia:
As has been noted, this sort of war (though not on the scale of WWII) has historically been more the rule than the exception.
Interestingly the “total war” concept is exactly what al Qaeda and other terrorists use to justify their attacks on civilians, for in such a war no-one is innocent: simply being a productive member of your enemy’s society is supporting that society’s ability to wage war. Everyone is therefore a legitimate target.
Such justifications being understandably perceived as horrific, the US, and other western nations, have struggled to return to the 18th and 19th century European models of limited warefare: engagement exclusively between trained uniformed armies, soldiers killing soldiers.
It might well be argued that the historical anomally of “limited warefare” actually serves to increase the liklihood of war by limiting public perception of war’s true horror.
And especially in liberal democracies, if people understood that the truer nature of war is ALWAYS total, those nations would be rather more reluctant to wage any war of choice.
Just thinkin’aloud.
Robert McNamara who was a pioneer in bringing statistical analysis to the WWII bombing campaigns said of the Tokyo raids,”Well, it was a war crime. It was one of two war crimes with which I can be charged.”
Freeman Dyson, a leading nuclear physicist, who was a statistian for the RAF during the war:
The Japanese sent signals that they were willing to surrender on the condition that the Emperor not be removed as early as April 1945, 4 months prior to the August uses of the atomic bombs. I think most historians agree that the bombs were dropped with an eye to Moscow and that the war was already over at that point.
I think most military historians agree that the terror bombings had almost no effect on the outcome of the war. Targeted bombings of oil refineries and oil depots had the greatest effect.
I think that the bombing of Dresden, which had no military value, laid naked how far we had come from the days prior to Operation Point Blank. The use of force simply because it was available became an end in itself.