The ethics of Hiroshima

[Mugwump]

^ So David, if the only way you can assess the quality (ethics ?) of an action is with the benefit of hindsight, how will you know whether any choice before you is ethical, given that you are making it without the benefit of hindsight ?

If you really believe that the Generals who dropped the bomb could have made no other choice, then that is of course ultimately unprovable either way, as no other choice was made. But the records and memoirs of their deliberations is evidence that a choice stood before them, however much you may be predisposed to disbelieve in the concept and therefore nullify the evidence.

i think you are saying that of there is no free will, then there is no ethical question, only one of practical costs and benefits. That is logically true. Since a concept of ethical action is central to the social order, however, it is also why the presumption of free will is essential, unless we can (a) disprove free will ; and (b) then construct a better framework for social life (and i doubt that we will).

[stui magpie]

Don't worry Mugwump, David is going to keep trying to twist the question around until it eventually morphs into one that he can win.

[Wokko]

We thoroughly condemn the London Blitz but shy away from the firebombings of German cities, the nuclear bombings and the absolutely horrendous incendiary attacks on Japanese cities made out of wood and paper. You could add to that the "Rape of Nanking" vs the "Rape of Berlin and Eastern Germany".

Just like the Japanese we prefer to gloss over our role in terrible war crimes, deluding ourselves that they were necessary.

[Tannin]

Depends who you mean by "we", Wokko. I certainly don't. Neither do you.

Meanwhile, David does the opposite of what you say - no crime could could be a proper crime in his view unless we did it. When the Japanese did it, it's just racist propaganda on the part of brainwashed Western historians, not really a crime at all. OK, sly jibes aside now ....

There are huge differences between the various events you use as examples. There is no comparison between the Rape of Nanking and the bombing of Germany. One was unprovoked brutality with no component of self-defence, and almost no military purpose other than the slaughter of foreign civilians because of their race - the Japanese hated the Chinese "race" more than they hated westerners, and hated the racially inferior Koreans more than either. (Which is ironic now that we know through DNA studies that the Japanese are Korean!)

The bombing of Germany, in contrast, was provoked (Germany started the city bombings remember), it had a clear and significant military purpose (to degrade the German war apparatus, and to relieve pressure on the Soviet Union which was doing the lion's share of the on-ground fighting), and although there were exceptions (e.g. Dresden), it was generally aimed at maximising economic and industrial damage rather than simply slaughtering civilians.

The bombing of Germany was in response to bombing by that nation of the homeland (not so Nanking), it was deliberately aimed at achieving military aims (not so Nanking), it was a desperate response to a desperate military situation (not so Nanking), and it was carried out as part of a war for survival against an evil, invasive power (contrast with Nanking where the Japanese were the invaders).

[David]

[Tannin]

^ Well, as a matter of fact, yes. Your off-hand dismissal of the horrendous war crimes of the Japanese back a year or so ago comes immediately to mind. Doubtless, that was the event in the back of my mind when I posted.

(I think it was shortly after our glorious Prime Minister and Flag Waver-in-Chief disgraced himself by, in the course of cronying up to a visiting Japanese big-wig, describing the record of their uniformed butchers as "brave and honourable". Well, he was half-right: they were extraordinarily brave.)

[Tannin]

By the way, I'm surprised that Mugwamp's odd-ball assertion claiming major changes in the ethics of war since 1945 went straight through to the keeper.

It was palpably ill-founded, of course. There have always been conventions about killing non-combatants, often very clear ones, and associated other rules about moral and immoral ways of waging war. Those conventions, however, have always been contested, supported, broken, enforced, obeyed, disobeyed, flouted, modified, discussed, debated, adhered to, and argued over. The conventions of war, in other words, have always existed and always been subject to controversy. They have very seldom been ignored completely, and equally seldom been adhered to in both spirit and practice.

Just to pluck the first few examples which occur to me at random, consider the outrage generated by the ruthless Henry V during the Hundred Years War when he failed to treat captured cities with the proper decency. This demonstrates both that there were well-established rules (otherwise there would have been no outrage when he broke them) and that he did indeed flout them.

Or consider the massive difficulties Wellington had during the Peninsular Campaign: his view was that civilians in captured cities should be respected in all circumstances, his troops took the view that they had every right to rape, steal and destroy any city which had resisted and been conquered. Here we see the last days of the thousand-year-old rule that cities may be sacked if they are taken by siege, but must be respected if they surrender. Taking a fortress by storm was incredibly dangerous and the attacking army could expect heavy casualties if forced to do so: hence cities which surrendered before the final storming of the breech were entitled to be spared. But where do you draw the line? At what point do you declare that a fortress has inflicted excessive casualties on the attackers and can rightfully be sacked? How soon must a fortress surrender to be entitled to mercy? Contested territory once again. People argued over these things for thousands of years before technological changes transformed warfare at (no coincidence!) about the time that Wellington was battling Napoleon.

You can find endless examples of the same sorts of things from the history of the Roman Empire, or indeed pretty much anywhere you care to look for them.

[think positive]

[David]

They didn't not deserve it any more than the people, just every day folk going about their business, across the street from my old man, did. Why don't you care about them? They started it and they would have kept killing

You live In Fairy land, there is evil greedy people out there, and they don't want to negotiate

I don't see how you could possibly construe my condemnation of the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki as nonchalance about the deaths of civilians in Britain. My point here is that all avoidable mass killings of civilians in war constitute instances of serious crimes.

My point is not that the Allies and Japanese should have held hands and sung; but that there were other strategies for winning the war that would not have cost so many civilian lives. I'm happy to have that point argued with, but it deserves something more thoughtful than this kneejerk "that was how it happened so it must have been right" response.

Think outside the box for a bit. Even if you think some show of strength and civilian slaughter was unavoidable, are there different ways it could have been done? A bomb strike on a smaller city? If you could have hypothetically achieved the same effect but saved ten babies' lives or reduced the suffering for a small number of people, wouldn't you give it serious consideration? That would be the non-psychopathic approach, I would have thought.

^ Well, as a matter of fact, yes. Your off-hand dismissal of the horrendous war crimes of the Japanese back a year or so ago comes immediately to mind. Doubtless, that was the event in the back of my mind when I posted.

A quote as evidence, please. I certainly recall you posting about it, but I have no recollection of writing anything that could even be vaguely construed as dismissal.

[Tannin]

[David]

I'd say the same about German soldiers too. I'm not sure that opposing the notion of 'evil' ethnicities makes me an apologist for the Holocaust, but, y'know, interpret as you see fit.

[Tannin]

I also grant you that (regiments of?) the Japanese army seem to have had less regard for civilians' wellbeing than, say, the Americans on the Western front. Though, I think it's a difficult and fraught act to parse that conclusion given the overhanging spectre of the cruel, soulless Jap of WW2 propaganda. Those placards wanted to convince Australians that there was something monstrous; something morally inferior about the Japanese ethnicity itself. If we reject that, as we must, then we are left with the task of looking around at all the ordinary young men we know and realising that it was people like them who raped and slaughtered their way through Nanjing and elsewhere, and that they would do much the same in the same circumstances.

How does that happen? Perhaps a militaristic, racist culture contributed, but I can't help but feel that something much more brutal and traumatising (perhaps a combination of a certain kind of military training and the experience of warfare itself) must have happened to make them like that. Or perhaps we all have that capacity for horrific behaviour if we are sufficiently brainwashed and know we can get away with it. Whatever the case, I could never demonise individual soldiers (be they American, German or Japanese) because I know I might well have done the same in their place.

Red bit: you got that right.

Bold bits: craven apologia downplaying some of the very worst atrocities of all time, committed on a scale never seen in the world before or since (yes, they easily out-Hitlered Hitler), and over a period of many years. You'd be apoplectic if the Americans or the British had done a tenth of that.

You "could never demonise" some of the worst mass-murderers and war criminals this world has ever seen. My case rests.

[David]

Happy for others to judge those posts on their merits. I certainly see no downplaying of the atrocities in question there, though I have seen a lot of apologia for atrocities in this thread.

[stui magpie]

By the way, I'm surprised that Mugwamp's odd-ball assertion claiming major changes in the ethics of war since 1945 went straight through to the keeper.

It was palpably ill-founded, of course. There have always been conventions about killing non-combatants, often very clear ones, and associated other rules about moral and immoral ways of waging war. Those conventions, however, have always been contested, supported, broken, enforced, obeyed, disobeyed, flouted, modified, discussed, debated, adhered to, and argued over. The conventions of war, in other words, have always existed and always been subject to controversy. They have very seldom been ignored completely, and equally seldom been adhered to in both spirit and practice.

Just to pluck the first few examples which occur to me at random, consider the outrage generated by the ruthless Henry V during the Hundred Years War when he failed to treat captured cities with the proper decency. This demonstrates both that there were well-established rules (otherwise there would have been no outrage when he broke them) and that he did indeed flout them.

Or consider the massive difficulties Wellington had during the Peninsular Campaign: his view was that civilians in captured cities should be respected in all circumstances, his troops took the view that they had every right to rape, steal and destroy any city which had resisted and been conquered. Here we see the last days of the thousand-year-old rule that cities may be sacked if they are taken by siege, but must be respected if they surrender. Taking a fortress by storm was incredibly dangerous and the attacking army could expect heavy casualties if forced to do so: hence cities which surrendered before the final storming of the breech were entitled to be spared. But where do you draw the line? At what point do you declare that a fortress has inflicted excessive casualties on the attackers and can rightfully be sacked? How soon must a fortress surrender to be entitled to mercy? Contested territory once again. People argued over these things for thousands of years before technological changes transformed warfare at (no coincidence!) about the time that Wellington was battling Napoleon.

You can find endless examples of the same sorts of things from the history of the Roman Empire, or indeed pretty much anywhere you care to look for them.

From the books I've read, he opinion I've formed is that Japanese culture was almost the opposite, a foe who surrendered had no honour and would be routinely butchered. The soldiers were taught literally death before dishonour. It was like a corruption of the old Bushido code of the samurai.

when culturally, life does not hold any intrinsic special value, you can have an armed forces full of what we would consider sociopaths.

I may have got that utterly wrong, I'm mainly referencing James Clavell.

Back to the decision to bomb, I'm personally comfortable that the decision was made with due consideration of all available facts at the time and that nothing that has come to light in the 70 years since has shown that decision to be wrong.

[Mugwump]

By the way, I'm surprised that Mugwamp's odd-ball assertion claiming major changes in the ethics of war since 1945 went straight through to the keeper.

Odd-ball ? I thought it was one of the least contestable things in my post. As evidence, every side in the second world war bombed civilians as a military tactic, when they could. That alone is powerful evidence that there was a change in the perceived ethics of (European) warfare around that time. The changing views on the use of gas is another case in point, albeit one that involves combatants.

At the time of WW2 aerial bombing at scale was a new technology, and no-one really knew what it could achieve, or even what it was achieving. There were those, like Arthur Harris, who believed that it alone could win the war. Years later, with the fog of war lifted, we recognise that it was probably unnecessary at best, and counter-productive at worst. Hindsight is, however, a very rubbery way to judge the ethics of a decision made at the time. You don't have to be a Kantian scholar to accept that.

I could contest the Henry V question, but by that point we are too far off the point of the thread ! Suffice it to say that the convention of the time was that a resistant city could be sacked, one that surrendered would not. Hence Caen was sacked, Harfleur not. C'est la mort.

I think it is widely understood that the ethics (perhaps "conventions" is a better word) of warfare - against combatants and non-combatants - have changed greatly over time, depending on the issues at stake, the technologies available (and their novelty), the history of the nations involved, etc.