War: Net loss or net profit?
According to Chomsky, investements in social projects generate if not more but at least the same kind of presperity as investements in military. He asserts that investements in social projects tend to raise the level of political awareness of public and that leads to challenging of the power structure that wants to maintain the status quo and existing class structure. This makes military investement a much safer option as well as allowing tax dollars to go to research that results in new technological advancements that then are turned over to corporations. The existing corporate structure of US would benefit from this without facing a challenge. This is only one reason and not a total analysis of the mentality of military spending and or warmongering.

Atomic Bomb
I read an article recentley that asserts that the atomic bomb has been rendered useless since it has not been used in the last 60 years. The hints about using some kind of nuclear weapon in the event of an attack on Iran, would revive this weapon again as a viable weapon and greatly enhance the US's ability to persue global dominance.

Leo,
I caught the last ten or so minutes of your show on KPFT this morning.
You said something that I would like to have called in and commented on but it was too late as you had callers you couldn't get to already, so as you suggested, here I am making a comment that I hope you'll read.
What you said was (paraphrasing), "I am against killing civilians in wars. That should be avoided (at all costs?)."
A sentiment probably shared by the vast vast majority of Americans; however, like many ideas that on the face look so good become absolutely worthless when applied to reality.
In short, how are you going to fight a war and not kill civilians at all? No, let's go farther down that road, when fighting an enemy that wears no uniforms, deliberately uses civilians as screens for their combat, and counts on huge civilian casualties to help them wage their propaganda wars in our liberal media, how are you going to conduct your defenseive efforts, your prosecution of the war and avoid killing civilians?
How do you avoid killing civilians who actively support what their leaders have led them to believe and willingly give shelter and material support to these non-uniformed combatants when they themselves never make an attempt to reject or expel those combatants when they were still "potential" combatants (in other words when the preparations for combat were still in the planning and strategic stages)? You might try to tell me that the civilians did not know this was going on, so were unaware until the rockets started flying and the bombs dropping. Should you be of that persuasion, please see me when you want some ocean front property, I have some excellent selections in New Mexico.
Bombing Dresden, yes it killed a lot of civilians, innocent....well we could debate that. However, I can't help but speculate that those same civilians in previous years were gleeful and excited when their government announced that it had repeatedly hit London and other English cities with its rockets and killed many civilians while destroying a staggering amount of property. Suppose those Dresden civilians shrank in horror when hearing that their troops had slaughtered thousands of Jews in suppressing the Warsaw Ghetto.
Dropping the A-bomb on Hiroshima and Nagasaki was a terrible demonstration of martial superiority and killed a lot of people. But, if you don't know of and understand the Japanese way of making war as they demonstrated in WWII then you will go on foolishly calling it "unnecessary". Digging a whole nation of fanatics out of that rocky mountainous island chain would have been madness, and fight they would to any intelligent observer and historian that is a given. They would have fought long after any hope of repelling an invader.
So now I know of this website, I will check back in periodically just to see if you have an answer for me on the avoidance of killing civilians.
Oh, one last thing. What is a progressive as it applies to a political of social philosophy? I listen to KPFT and read things like Mother Jones and it seems to me to be the same old socialist/communist dogma in a familiar package with a new name. Am I missing something?
George

Leo,loved your show today!!

What amazes me about war is how victims become perpetrators-how victim peoples use their own history of suffering to justify abusing others in the same way.

I am talking about Israelis here (what's it two generations from Nazi victims to Nazi-like themselves?) but not just them.The Pilgrims did it too.So did we after 9-11.

And nobody can figure this out? Lack of empathy or lack of imagination?

to George,
My name is Samuel Davis.

On Hiroshima and Nagasaki

First: I would like to say that dropping the first atomic bomb was not a show of strength nor superiority it was a bluff. They had only TWO (2) bombs to drop.

Second: I would like to ask you a question that noone that supports this act can seem to answer. Who's lives was worth more: the Japanese children both born and unborn alike or the American servicemen? Dropping the bomb was unnessessary because they were already beaten. Japan is an island not a continent. They have no natural resources of their own so when they were beaten back to their island This Nation could have fought a war of attrition on them if they wanted. This would have taken more time and yes it would have taken more American Serviceman's Lives but again I ask who's life is more important, a Japanese child's born or not or an American serviceman? Dropping this bomb on civilian, not military targets was and still is murder.

It is easy to justify the dropping of the first atomic bomb the hard thing to do is admit a mistake even if it is long since past.

Samuel Samuel Samuel,

"First: I would like to say that dropping the first atomic bomb was not a show of strength nor superiority it was a bluff. They had only TWO (2) bombs to drop."

And in your world that means that the USA was incapable of producing a third or fourth or fifth, or as many as it took? Tsk Tsk. Shallow thinking my frind. They knew how to do it, they knew it worked and they knew it was devastating, just how long do you think it would have taken them to make the next one? That's the problem with you progressives, your thinking is always regressive and stagnant, no hope or projection for the future. Progress, change, innovation, it always happens and it always creates inequalities.

"Who's lives was worth more: the Japanese children both born and unborn alike or the American servicemen?"

To a Japanese mother, father, relative, friend, and possibly you the obvious answer is of course the Japanese child's life. But to me an American with relatives in uniform and in the pacific arena (some killed by Japanese) the obvious answer is the American serviceman's life. It is all perspective, isn't it?

I am sorry but I can make no moral distinction between the death of a child or the death of an adult, nor can I assign an special importance to the death of child that I can not assign to the death of an adult. I personally believe such attempts are both artificial and very pretentious on the part of those making such claims. Does an adult feel less terror or pain than a child? Does an adult have less potential for mankind's benefit than a child: and if your answer is in the positive, at what point in the adult life does that cutoff come? You might say Grandma Moses hung around a long time as an adult to show her potential.

What concrete evidence would you offer to support a claim that a small child of one is more important to mankind than, say, and adult of twentyfive?

"They have no natural resources of their own so when they were beaten back to their island."

Really? No natural resources. If your interpretation is correct than how did they exist for those centuries when they deliberatly isolated themselves from the world and internally focused their attention socially and politically. Centuries only broken in the end by the USA Navy in forcfully intruding (argue the right or wrong of that and I won't cause I neither support no condemn it) and "opening" Japan to trade. In actual fact the Japanese are very resourceful (ask Ford or GenMtrs) and they had enough ability to live and fight for a very long time on just their own production. Did you know that they were actually using charcoal to power their automobiles by the end of WWII? The only attrition that would have counted would have been in resupplying their munitions and even that could have been done well enough to keep the killing going a long long time. I was in Japan in 1968 when a Japanese soldier came out of the jungle in Guam (a duty station I had just left in 1967) and gave himself up. Just how much in the way of natural resources did he have and yet still exist? True his resistance would have been meaningless yet there he was. Now Guam is small compared to the Japanese chain of islands.

"Dropping this bomb on civilian, not military targets was and still is murder."

It was war, Japan was still engaed in fulltime wartime activities with support of its military and civilian population and both Hiroshima and Nagasaki had manufacturing facilities that were producing military arms and support. The fact that they were encapsuled in the city was unfortunate but not the fault of USA military tactical planners. Japanese warmakers are responsible for the deaths of Japanese civilians.

I lived in Japan for three years, 1967 to 1970, lived among them, played sports with and against them, taught them, learned from them, learned to appreciate their culture in ways most foreign devils never do, and I would not have wished having to dig them out of their island and subdue them on anyone.

Hindsight is so wonderful and assailing people who had to make decisions about life and death when it was happening to them and their loved ones is so easy from 61 years distant, yet so foolish. Why does it fall to the left to do that exercise. Perhaps the word foolish is the key.

Come back to Earth Samuel. Life and nature can't be dictated by you and me, we have to accept the changes, the turmoil, the tribulation, the devastation, the wonderfulness, the impartiality, and total "don't give a shit about humanity" additude exhibited by Morther Nature.

Did you know Samuel, that you can offer zero evidence that Mother Nature considers humans of more worth than cockroaches? We are insignificant in Mother Nature's scheme of things. Yet the egos of people like Al Gore have no boundaries. "We humans are just so important that we must be causing all of Mother nature's problems." We rank right there next to the cockroach on Nature's scale.

We have to take what comes and make the best of it and if that means bombing Dresden after experiencing gleeful devastation from the Nazi war machine, so be it. If it means dropping some big ones on Japan after experiencing their way of making war, then so be it

In summation please tell me how much terror a grandma of 90 feels when weighed against the terror of a one year old when both are being ripped asunder, and give me moral guidance about how one is more important than the other. To whom is the one more precious than the other? The mother? The son or daughter? Tell me.

I missed that in life 101.

Hello George,

Thank you for answering my comment.

No, I am aware that they could have made another one. The question is how long would it have taken? If it was not a bluff what would have happened if they did not surrender then? You see they only had enough materials to make two bombs at their lab at the time. It would have taken some time to build another. The materials were not safe and they knew that, they lost a scientist while building it.

No it is not all perspective. That is a cop-out. It is either right or it is wrong. That child Japanese or not is not trying to kill anyone, both the Japanese and American servicemen are. In a war that makes the soldiers a target, not the child. The solider has a weapon to fight with, the child does not. I make a moral distinction between trying to kill someone trying to kill me verses someone not.

Both the adult and child have equal importance. The adult is the present, the child the future. Your right, it would be pretentious to make the claim that one life (a child) is more important than another (the adult). The moral distinction is why they died. You see the soilder has a choice to fight and the child does not. The soilder has at least in theory a fighting chance the child does not. Killing a child to stop a war is a cowards way out.

The Japaneese have no coal nor any oil. Even if they did they would have run out very quickly. (These natural resources were and still are vital to war. If you do not have them the war is over.) They are an island. They import most of their "resources". Yes they grew some food and they had an industry but they had few if any metals to mine out of the ground. It does not suprise me that they could run cars on charcoal but I ask you how much did they have? They invented the first guided missle, the kamikazi piolits, but this had one drawback, They Did Not Come Back. The Japaneese were beaten back, America won, Before the Bomb Was Droped.

Guam Soilder
Was he fighting or hiding in the jungle? Resources are everywhere on this planet, not all of them will help you fight a war. Throw an apple at someone with a rifle and lets see who will win.

America did not destroy those cities to destroy a "military factory", We droped those bombs to end a war that was already over. The Japanese warmakers are not the only ones responsable for the deaths, EVERY LEADER MILITARY AND NOT ARE RESPONSABLE FOR THE DEATHS OF ALL IN THE WAR. THEY MADE THE CHOICES WHICH TOOK LIVES, JUST OR NOT.

I wish I could have had you experiances. I would have learned alot as well. There is one thing though that I think you should understand, when invading someones home or nation, expect the fight of your life, no matter who THEY are.

Why would you call reflecting on ones past foolish? I would call it wise to look to the past because if you do not how will you change your mistakes? There is a saying: Learn from the past, Look to the future.

I am on this Earth every day of my life. Your right that we cannot dictate life and nature but we can control ourselves. War is not nature, it is controled by mankind, us. War is selffishness, greed, hate, vengence and so on, these are forces of man, controled by man. When you are angery with someone you do not have to hit them. That is a choice.

Did you know that "Mother Nature" dose not exist as you describe IT. It is a life cycle, not a life force or form, it has no inteligence. It makes NO CHOICES. Everything has a purpose in this Earth wether man or insect energy or matter. As far as what man can do, it turns out more than you realize and also less. We can destroy life on this planet if we so choose, but we can not create it no matter what we do.

"We have to take what comes and make the best of it" I agree whole heartedly with, but bombing anyone is not make anything better for anyone. All that happen there is that "bombing" is making it worse for EVERYONE.

Who is more important? None. That is not the quiestion. Who is the valid target in a war is the question CHILD or SERVICEMAN?

For the record, I make no claim of being liberal, progressive, conserivitive or centrest. I believe that all these philosophies have thier truths as well as falsehoods.

Have a Good Day all.
Samuel Davis

I stand with Samuel Davis. Sad that George missed the 101 class. I was in Japan during parts of 56 & 57. I was a pilot. I was taught how to drop the A-Bomb from low altitude. At one time the USA had the power to control the atomic.bombs but lacked the foresight or the will to do so. George didn't explain why it would have been necessary for the USA to invade Japan. Or for the government reps to attack Waco. We are waiting for the agreed upon facts,to develop alternatives, to select solutions to explain the benefits of WAR for the USA or any country. Economic benefits. War is excellent business for many USA firms because USA is the largest arms dealer of the world. . It is important to control the supply of oil if free markets concepts fail. Social benefits. Does war improve the quality of life of those killed & that of their families? Or of those doing the killing?? The current "war", wars of choice, was the choice of the USA to spend $400 to $1,000 billion of limited resources to improve the quality of life for those living in the USA, Afghanistan, Iraq... Do YOU feel safer?? Are YOU receiving an acceptable return on your tax dollar investment & a low interest rate on the funds borrowed? The expected benefits of "war" was more important than international laws, treaties, good will, Christian values.... & justifies the killing. Why should YOUR God bless USA?? Explain what is wrong with discussions, criticizing govt leadership & policy credibility when the facts presented don't check out, don't add up, & when the leadership refuses to WALK THE TALK. Peace with justice. Make it a good day. Mike Hammer

George,
I can not find any logic, any visible thread or an ounce of evicence in anything you said. To carry on a discussion or dialoge, one must adhere to some philosophy or set of beliefs, the merits of which then can be argued.
You don't seem to believe in any agreed upon set of social standards or moral ones, other than the belief that it is a dog eat dog world out there.

War: Net loss or net profit?

Net loss no matter how it adds up.

Wars will never be profitable because they destroy economies, infrastructures, land and nations. The only point of wars is to imposes ones will on another nation or to just totally annihilate said nation at Whatever the Cost. Companies can make some money on a war, but this will only be for as long as the war last, and the longer the war last the worse the economies of all waring nations become. Look at our war on terror, look at how much it is costing Our Nation to fight it. If War was truly profitable you would see corporations like War-Mart, GWM (General War Machines), and GEW (General Electronic Warfare). Every "Military" corporation has a "Civilian" application because War is not Profitable. Once you bomb a nation to oblivion what is left to bomb? Gun and bullet makers do not rely on the military for its sales but the general public (the mass market).

The reason for "Military Investment" is to make the US a "Strong Man" (a bully). Spartan was feared because it was a military might, as was Rome as well. Rome would come into a nation, put on a "show of force" and then the said nation would give up without a fight. The same happens now. Corporation can benefit from the technology developed but only if they can put it in the Civilian Market. This is not always easy because once you put it there, it will spread all over the world and then Our Nation would loose its advantage. (During the cold war with the USSR the Russians would buy our cheap electronic games, gut them and make military equipment with them.)

Victims Become Peretrators:

This does not just happen in war, it happens with indiviual people as well. I befrended someone a while ago that lost a friend to a murderer. Since this happened he became a strong supporter of the death penalty. As far as I can tell, he was seeking revenge on all murders because since they were murders it was ok to do this, this is how he justified his beliefs. As far as I have seen fear and hatred will cause this to happen as well.

Lack of empathy or lack of immagination? Lack of Empathy. Most have no empathy for their enemy.

Samuel Davis

To All,

I want to thank each of you for your comments. Your willingness to carry on this discussion is helping to make this site a container for important ideas.

Here is my position on the atomic bomb vis a vis Hiroshima and Nagasaki:

The key "cornerstone" of rules-based warfare, as I said on the show the other day, is a ban on both intentional and "unmindful" killing of civilians. The meaning of intentionality is clear. Mindfulness means that one cannot put out of mind the presence of civilians in a battlefield either.

If one's war aims cannot avoid intentional and unmindful civilian deaths, then what must change are the war aims, not the rules. In the case of the atomic bomb, US war aims were the complete and unconditional surrender of Japan. If the Japanese were not willing to grant unconditional surrender, and the US could not obtain it short of destruction of Japanese civilians through both conventional and atomic bombing, then it was incumbent upon the US to either (a) seek a surrender short of unconditional, or (b) seek unconditional surrender through different means, including the use (and presumed sacrifice) of American soldiers on the Japanese main islands against Japanese combatants (but not civilians).

A nation does not have the right to kill civilians in order to protect its own soldiers in pursuit of a war aim, but this is exactly what the US (and many other countries) pursued during WWII. I therefore believe that US air operations in Japan were criminal in that they were tantamount to the murder of over a million innocents.

Most disturbing to me is the citation of Pearl Harbor by many Americans as justification for those crimes. The attack on Pearl Harbor, according to the rules of war, was a "legal" attack by one military upon another. There was nothing in that attack that should have conjured retaliation in the form of civilian attacks.

Leo Gold

Well hello Leo, Samuel, Mike Hammer and now Margie!
Interesting responses.
Leo,
Here is my original question, still unanswered, and very appropriate vis-a-vis any combat between uniformed armies and ununiformed guerillas or terrorist be they Viet Cong or Hezbollah.

"What you said was (paraphrasing), "I am against killing civilians in wars. That should be avoided (at all costs?)."
A sentiment probably shared by the vast vast majority of Americans; however, like many ideas that on the face look so good become absolutely worthless when applied to reality.
In short, how are you going to fight a war and not kill civilians at all? No, let's go farther down that road, when fighting an enemy that wears no uniforms, deliberately uses civilians as screens for their combat, and counts on huge civilian casualties to help them wage their propaganda wars in our liberal media, how are you going to conduct your defenseive efforts, your prosecution of the war and avoid killing civilians?"

It is a noble concept not killing civilians and only killing combatants, but how are you going to do that since Mao taught guerillas to "swim in the ocean of people like a fish" and it has been found to be a very effective manner of fighting? How do you turn that "noble concept" into a workable reality? Answer that and you have stepped to the head of the class of human history.

Can you deny that is exactly what Hezbollah is doing? It leaves Isreal with the option of suffering the casualties while the perpertrators escape and then the Isrealis must wait until they decide to attack again and so identify themselves, or to go after them and create the climate where Hezbollah fighters are isolated from a populace no longer willing to be near them or to let them "swim" among them. I don't have that answer, nor do you I suspect. However, I am willing to give you the benfit of doubt, tell me please.

Margie,

George,
"I can not find any logic, any visible thread or an ounce of evicence in anything you said. To carry on a discussion or dialoge, one must adhere to some philosophy or set of beliefs, the merits of which then can be argued.
You don't seem to believe in any agreed upon set of social standards or moral ones, other than the belief that it is a dog eat dog world out there.
Aug 5 | Margie"
Surprise me again, Margie. You have no foundation from which to fathom me.
Here is your problem, Margie. "According to Chomsky, investements(SIC) in social projects generate if not more but at least the same kind of presperity(SIC) as investements(SIC) in military."
You come from an enculturation that believes Chomsky has some value as an intellect beyond being a drumbeater for Karl Marx. I hate to burst your bubble but Chomsky doesn't know beans about business or the marketplace, his view is distorted through that lens of Das Kapital and the Communist Manifesto, and there isn't anyone in this world more stupid about markets than a communist. That is why communism failed so dramatically, just as socialism eventually fails so finally.
Margie, you and I come from different worlds. The huge difference between you and I is that as a socialist/progressive/liberal/democrat/communist you see the theory and formulate the world to fit it, and I as a free individual see the world and formulate theories to fit that. Guess which of us most closely adheres to the natural world in our theories....clue...it isn't you. I am an ignorant mid-Texas ranch boy and I forgot more about how to do business, capitalism, and markets than Chomsky will ever know. But, you see I forgive you as I know just how bad public schools and the nation's college/university system has become as a breeding ground for socialism/communism. (Oh, Margie, did you know that according to research I recently read, Brother Chomsky is heavily invested in that "Stock Market" he so avidly hates? Yep, He takes all those speaking fees you gullibles give him and puts them into routine capitalist investments. What a guy)
Another huge difference between you and I is that I would willingly leave all socialist/communist alone, but you won't leave me alone. You are perfectly comfortable with using the government to come after me, it is the nature of socialism/communism that makes this judgment of mine true. Yes, I am judgmental, absolutely, not politically correct either.
Margie, it is a dog eat dog world. Your dreams and wishes change you not the world. It is a dog eat dog world because nature doesn't care and doesn't dictate; and, if there really is a God then he seems to pretty much leave us alone to work it out as we see fit, now doesn't he? Consequently until mankind actually does rise above the level of the animal then it is better to be the alpha male than a position lower in the pack. For myself as one who only wants to be left alone as a free individual I'll go with the alpha male idea because then all choices are mine.

Mike Hammer,
"At one time the USA had the power to control the atomic.bombs but lacked the foresight or the will to do so."
I am not sure what you're saying here. You are a little too vague. If you meant controlling the secrets of manufacturing an A-bomb then you're living in a dream world. Once ours made its boom the world knew it was possible and several other nations were already working on the problem. Our government was so riddled with Soviet spies that no secret was safe so after the war the details were passed to the Soviet Union, hey hey hey cat's out of the bag! And, BTW, the socialist/communist of that time screamed and protested that there were no spies, it was all just made up accusations. Well we know for certain now, thanks to the KGB files, don't we? So Mike how did the USA exactly control the A-bomb or lose control of it?
"Does war improve the quality of life of those killed(probably not, LOL) & that of their families?"
"Or for the government reps to attack Waco." Man, don't know how this subject was breeched but we are lock step in agreement on this one and I am probably far more of a radical about this than you are.
Actually Mike, outside of agreeing with Samuel (no surprise) you didn't really contribute very much except for disconnected ramble. I am glad Samuel has you on his side.

Speaking of Samuel,
let's go back for one moment in our discussion. Here is a quote from you original critque of me.
"First: I would like to say that dropping the first atomic bomb was not a show of strength nor superiority it was a bluff. They had only TWO (2) bombs to drop."
I think it is worthwhile to agree on what a bluff is. Do you play poker? Bluffing is the art of making others think you have something you do not.
I stood at ground zero in Hiroshima in 1968, and I have to tell you, Samuel, it wasn't a bluff! That was a straight flush. I never got to Nagasaki, but I would imagine my reaction would have been the same.
Now to you and Leo, yes both Hiroshim and Nagasaki had targets of military value, meaning plants that manufactured war materials. You can distort history to fit your theories all you want but they were there. Now if civilian casualties and deaths was the goal alone then Tokyo would be have a better choice, or instad of Hiroshima then the city of Gifu would have been ideal. Gifu sits along a river deep in a mountain valley. It had a population as large or larger than Hiroshim, and the devastation would have been evn worse because the blast would have funneled up and down the valley causing many more deaths than those at Hiroshima. Choices such as that exist all over Japan. If killing people was the object then Hiroshima and Nagasaki were not the best choices. Logic? Military manufacture contained in both cities. Why not Tokyo, because the intelligence assessment was that the Emperor was not the driving force for war and it was best he be left alive.
But, let's address the other aspect of the bluff claim. Yes they used their materials to build the two, but Samuel, are you of the opinion that further production of weapons grade Uranium ceased while the building of the two went on? The third bomb, I assure you, would have taken a small fraction of the time to produce than the first two. Then the fourth, the fifth, etc. etc.
All of the research and experimentation had been done, to repeat the process was then merely a matter of production.
In 1987 I invented a hand tool to be used in the carpet and upholstery cleaning business. I first saw what I wanted in my imagination, then spent some time refining what I was thinking about. Then I sat down and did some preliminary drawings. Convinced that it would work, I then bought cheap materials from which to make a prototype. the prototype was built and tested. From the imagined vision to the testing took about two weeks. My first commerical grade copy for the market took exactly three days after the successful test. Why? It was simply a matter of production and materials were available at my nearest supply house. All I needed was a welder of stainless steel to do the cutting of the pipe and welding it to my design.
So how long do you think it would have taken the USA to produce bomb number three if it had been necessary? Who knows, even I will admit that I have no way of knowing if they would have dropped number three. What was recorded as history later could very easily not been what would have actually taken place if forced to make the decision on a number three when it was in their possession and ready to use.
My relation of the Guam soldier was in support of what I thought was clear in my post. Our difference is that you view "resources" in an incomplete manner. I was trying to show you that the fanatic devotion of the Japanese soldier, coupled with the anecdote about using charcoal to power an internal combustion engine indicated that the most valuable resource a nation has is its people, not its things.
The resource the Japanese had so much of was its devoted, hard working, itelligent, and fanatical people.
To further that understanding on your part, reflect on just how much oil/fuel was consumed by the Viet Cong and the NVA in transporting massive quantities of goods by bicycle over the Ho Chi Min trail. Resourceful people can give you a real pain in the ass and make even kick it it you assume that they are (or were) helpless.

I assumed that from the words I used that I am fully aware that there is no "Mother" nature, only nature. I would have thought my characterization of the total impartiality of mature might have given you a clue. But that doesn't change the meat of what I said in any way.

"America did not destroy those cities to destroy a "military factory", We droped those bombs to end a war that was already over."
As I said before, easy to say from 61 years distance. As long as Japan had the resource of people and soldiers willing to fight, to resist, and to come back at the first opportunity then the war was not over. The Japanese were defeated when they understood that the strength against them was just too overwhelming....and that was the result the A-bombs brought to the equation.

"I wish I could have had you experiances. I would have learned alot as well. There is one thing though that I think you should understand, when invading someones home or nation, expect the fight of your life, no matter who THEY are." You go from arguing that the Japanese were defeated to this quote arguing that they would have given the USA the fight of its "life".

"No it is not all perspective. That is a cop-out. It is either right or it is wrong. That child Japanese or not is not trying to kill anyone, both the Japanese and American servicemen are. In a war that makes the soldiers a target, not the child. The solider has a weapon to fight with, the child does not. I make a moral distinction between trying to kill someone trying to kill me verses someone not."
My question to you here is this (and it is the same one I posed to Leo) when the one trying to kill you is using the child as a shield (and the Viet Cong did, and Hezbollah does) what do you do?
I would summarize from your end of the conversation that you have never been a military man nor are you very well versed in military history. When a man is drafted (impressed into slavery) by his country and all of his fellow citizens approve, trained, placed into a combat situation, and told either fight or we shoot you for desertion or deriliction of duty.....well, Samuel, it kind of limits his choices wouldn't you say? I know that there were and are many soldiers in combat that would rather not be there but can find no honorable way out.

I am sorry Samuel, you have your perspective and I have mine.

"For the record, I make no claim of being liberal, progressive, conserivitive or centrest. I believe that all these philosophies have thier truths as well as falsehoods." Uh-huh, yeah. Let's talk about that ocean front property of mine in Bisbee, Arizona. LOL

I am weary of this. If Leo or any of the rest of you have an answer to my first question at the beginning of this post, please send it. If not, Bye Bye, enjoyed it.
George

George,

Nothing in your comments directed specifically to me, that I can see, applies to the specific example of conventional and atomic bombs in Japan. This was not a case of the US fighting "on the ground" among a civilian population. This was a case of the US air force dropping bombs on civilian centers, indiscriminately. Please do not give me "munitions factories" comments, either. It is well documented that the vast majority of attacks were to terrorize the population. Robert McNamara, who was a planner of this activity, admits as much in "The Fog of War." "Had we lost," he said, "we would have been tried as war criminals."

As I say, the conduct of war by a moral society requires prohibition against civilian casualties. You can throw out all of the examples you want. My answer will not change, nor will victory be unachievable by it.

Hi Leo,

Robert McNamara planned the bombings in WWII to terrorize civilians? Curious, my sources say he was a high level executive with Ford Moter Co. during WWII.

"Nothing in your comments directed specifically to me, that I can see, applies to the specific example of conventional and atomic bombs in Japan."

Actually all my comments were directed to you and your idea of avoiding civilian deaths at all costs, even if it means leaving your enemy alive to attack you another time. There is a theme woven through all my comments, I am sorry I am not good enough at writing so as to have you see that and understand it. It must be my fault.

Leo, I agree with you that killing noncombatants (civilians) is not a good thing. Babies, adults, or grannies it makes no difference, it is not a good thing. I never want to be one who has to make the choice of shooting through a civilian screen to get to the man who is shooting at me to kill me. I freely admit that I do not know what I would do, and will not until such a time comes. However, should I know that the man shooting at me is using his own relatives as screens.....well that would make my decision a little easier.

I just want to know how you take that ideal and apply it to the real world of war.

As I pointed out in particular to Samuel, people are the most important resource a nation has. I spent three years in Japan, I am a reader, studier, and observer and always have been. I also was in a position to learn a lot about pre-WWII Japanese history and one thing came through over and over and that is that the people were fanatical supporters of their military, especially with its early successes. Propaganda and tightly controlled media kept them from learning the truth about the losses. They were no less fanatical in the spring of 1945 than they were in the spring of 1940.

We will just continue to disagree on the importance of the dropping of the A-bombs. For the sake of my uncles and Dad I am glad that they did not have to invade a still hostile Japan.

As for changing your mind, pshaw, my boy, I long ago learned that Zig Ziglar is right. One does not change the mind of anyone, one can only continue putting new information in from of them until they change their own mind.

Now some lessons come hard and some lessons come easy, I pray yours come easy and with no great personal pain.

Last word on war and the involvement of both Isreal and the USA in conflicts.

After the UN mandate in 1948, war was brought to the new nation Isreal by the combined armies of the several Arab nations. If you go back to look at the nation created by that mandate I believe you will see that the West Bank was part of that nation Isreal. They lost it during the war. Is it any wonder that they kept it when they retook it in later wars? Everything since then has been dictated by that initial hatred and attack and will not cease until either the hatred is gone or one side or the other is totally vanquished. Isreal has only gone on the offensive first one time, other than the 1973 conflict Isreal waited to be attacked before responding. the 1973 preemptive strike was in response to the massing of troops and armor on her borders by her Arab neighbors and with clear attack coming. I know because I was in Rota, Spain on assigned duty providing intelligence information for upline massaging. The evidence was there. Isreal stuck first and in my opinion rightfully so.

Now, who was the USA at war with on September the 10th, 2001?

Last word. How much did your heart bleed and how vocal were you about it when Clinton was bombing Serbia back to the stoneage with high level indiscriminate bombing? How many civilians and noncombatants were killed in that exercise?

Been nice chatting with you folks. I know nothing has been settled and no one's mind has been changed. But most important my question goes unanswered. As it must. You and I Leo are natural products of a natural world, and as Samuel and I finally agreed nature just ignores ideals and squashes humans and cockroaches alike when it is time and there isn't a damn thing we can do about that. Peace will finally come and your ideals realized when we humans become unnatural.

George,

Thank you for posting your ideas to the forum.

Leo Gold

Talking about war, I want to begin with the bad rap nonviolent resistance received at the hands of the translators of the King James version of the Bible. Walter Wink, a Christian theologian, has written about the words, “Resist not evil,” as spoken by Jesus in the fifth chapter of Matthew. “Resist not evil” would have been more accurately translated as resist not evil with violence but resist evil using the oppression to make a fool of the oppressor.
In the fifth chapter of Matthew in the King James version of the Bible, Jesus’ recommendation for nonviolent resistance sounds like the making of a doormat. To put the verses in context – the most onerous social problem in first century Palestine was indebtedness. The wealthy of the Empire sought ways to avoid taxes. The best way was to buy land. But the lands were ancestral, and the poor didn’t want to sell. So the rich jacked up interest rates—25 to 250 percent. When the poor couldn’t repay, first their moveable property was seized, then their lands, and finally the very clothes on their backs.
Since the poor could not win in court, Jesus recommended that when the outer garment was demanded, hand over the undergarment as well. The poor man is stark naked! Now that took some balls! Huh? In Israel, nakedness brought shame not on the naked party, but on the one viewing his nakedness. (See the story of Noah, Genesis 9.) Jesus is not asking those already defrauded of their possessions to submit to further indignity. He is enjoining them to guerrilla theater.
Imagine the debtor walking out of the court in his birthday suit. “WHAT HAPPENED?” “ That creditor got all my clothes.” People come pouring out of the streets and alleys and join the little procession to his home. It will be a while before creditors in that village take a poor man to court! But, of course, the Powers That Be are shrewd, and within weeks new laws will be in place making nakedness in court punishable by fines or incarceration. So the poor need to keep inventing new forms of resistance. Jesus advocates a kind of Aikido, where the momentum of the oppressor is used to throw the oppressor and make him the laughing stock of the community.
This message, is a practical, strategic measure for empowering the oppressed by providing a hint of how to take on the entire system to unmask essential cruelty and to burlesque pretensions to justice, law, and order.

The middle east is beyond my imagination’s skill for using such nonviolent resistance, but once upon a time……especially if the weaker of the two had had some skill in the method, an outrageous, fearless nature, and had used it with compassion and humor.

At the beginning of the WWII, Hitler was bombing entire cities, and most of the world saw that as evil. By the end of the war, the Allied forces were burning entire cities to the ground in Germany and Japan with no regard for civilian population. That war ended with Hiroshima and Nagasaki

Osama bin Laden bombed the World Trade Center with airplanes full of jet fuel. We answered with shock and awe for the city of Baghdad. We continue to spend billions every year, some of it on an entire new generation of whiz-bang nuclear weapons believing they will keep us safe and help us reach our objectives.

Together, we and our opponents have conjured up a lethal fantasy in which grown up folk engage in childlike wishful thinking. Unless someone becomes more realistic, every proud swagger from one side will elicit a prouder swagger from the other side. President Bush told the enemy to bring it on because we’re tough. He was answered with videos of executions. We tortured. They suicide bombed.

World War I was the last war in which the casualties and the dead came primarily from contesting armies. In the First World War roughly 90 percent of those killed were soldiers. It is now conventional to put the proportion of civilian casualties somewhere in the region of 75 percent.
Shock and awe is an easy knee jerk response, but tit for tat has never been a long-term solution. Tit for tat has not brought Israel peace, nor will it bring us security. Today the gifts of technology have made life better and have given us the choice to destroy the world or to save it. Somehow our technology has grown bigger than our wisdom.

General Douglas McArthur advocated for the abolition of war saying its destruction of both friend and foe rendered it useless as a method to settle international disputes.

President Eisenhower said,
“Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, is a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed. This world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children...This is not a way of life at all, in any true sense. Under the cloud of threatening war, it is humanity hanging from a cross of iron.” I ask how many Mozarts and Einsteins are now dead of collateral damage? Or will never develop because resources are lost on making war, rather than on making life better?
What valuable treasures have we lost?

My favorite Gandhi quote reminds us that just because our behavior is habitual does not mean it is natural. Thousands of people through centuries of time have passed down tons of misunderstandings and hatreds. It is time for the children to ask questions. When they come of a certain age, I would advise them to throw into the wastebasket every value their parents, teachers, peers, business, entertainment, whatever aspect of their lives has taught them. Next pull out each value and subject it to examination as needed to determine the effectiveness of that value in improving life for self and Other. Those that prove their value keep on file to use as needed or to reexamine as change happens. The rest of them are to put in the trash on the curb. We are a nation that gives more respect to our forefathers and 2000 years ago than attention to the world as it is today. Change is coming faster and faster.

I am superficially aware that as much as I love my keyboard and the ease of cut, delete, paste and all its other capabilities, it is made of elements harmful if carelessly discarded. There is so much that it is difficult to hold all the bad stuff that goes with the good stuff and make effective decisions. In such a tumultuous time thick with fear, where does someone find the strength and courage to be a clown of mythic wisdom?

I end with the Golden Rule. All the major wisdom traditions have a version of it. I prefer the negative approach of refusing to give to another that which would give me pain if I received it. I heard that the death of the children is a necessary sacrifice to achieve the objective of peace with total disbelief and horror. We have come from seeing Hitler’s bombing of villages as evil to joining him and then declaring the children to be a necessary sacrifice. Did Hitler win? What is next? The other side may be hiding among the civilians, but we are dropping the bombs. What does it take to see that war is an ineffective strategy loosed upon the world?
I am a member of no religion and do not believe in personal immortality; of course, I have know way of knowing that to be true. I do have a dream of a day of understanding that all being is connected and what impacts a piece impacts the whole, and what impacts the whole, impacts each piece. I have no expectation of virgins or mansions or any other such rewards for doing the best I can for myself and the rest of the universe. I do not dream of perfection where all meanness and suffering are absent but where the problems of a piece are a problem of the whole to work with through understanding, compassion, support, and resources. There will still be birth and death. However, the world will have a soft gentle patience and joy in the experience of the paradox of the bad on one end and the good on the other and transforming that paradox into something beyond it day after day after day. In this world from everyone whom much has been given, much is required; and from the one to whom much has been entrusted, even more is demanded. Luke 12:48. Impossible? Worth imagining…

to Jo Benson,
Best comment on the subject of war and its futility and the moronic defense of killing civilians.

I agree with Joe Benson and stand with you.

JO BENSON: Tell Leo to post the time & place YOU want to speak or march & I will be there. Mike