Do You Believe In War?

[Alceste]

I'm pretty sure that simply isn't true. My guess is that a young German would be executed if he refused to fight.

Certainly Japanese young men would have been just shot and thrown in a ditch.

So be it. If you renounce your own moral responsibility and free will to another man's agenda, you're already dead.

 

[Vouthon]

I'll look forward to discussing the book with you so

Re the Jewish people I just had a quick flick through said book in which the author makes the point that more Jewish people survived via non violent resistance in Denmark than in other places such as Poland where resistance was violent.

Another crucial point is that if the USA, Britain and other countries had accepted more Jewish refugees fleeing Nazism far less people would have been murdered.

Certainly the Allies are guilty for negligible measures during the war in relation to doing something serious once they learned about Nazi atrocities. The war also provided cover for the genocide, as happened with Turkey's genocide of the Armenians during WW1.

Nonetheless, once the Wannsee conference had decided in 1942 its 'final solution to the Jewish problem', nothing would have stopped them, certainly not peaceful resistance. Had the Allies in 1942 decided to halt the war on all fronts and sign an armistice, Germany would have been in control of a vast European Empire and still conducted the genocide, only this time completing their genocide to the last Jew, Gypsy and others in their territories. Poland would have become extinct as a country and most of the conquered Slavic lands Germanized through the mass starvation plan to kill 50 million Russians and then plant German settlers, with the survivors remaining as slave labour for the farms.

And the world would also have had to have accept Germany being the world's most powerful country under a racialist regime.

Its most difficult and grey, that's my point.

But I look forward to reading your book next week

 

[AmbiguousGuy]

I take that bet.

For better or worse, things simply aren't quite that simple.

OK. I've read a bit about the Japanese military pre-WWII and during the war. By all accounts, their soldiers could be beaten near to death by their own officers. I have to believe that if a young man refused conscription, he would have been executed for that. His family surely would have suffered intense shame and shunning by the community.

I'm not sure why you call that 'simple,' but that's a quibble, I guess.

Edited to add: the crux of the matter is that far too often we let our cultures rely on dehumanization of our supposed "foes", be they British, Nazis, Fascists, Japanese, Iranians, Jews, Muslims or whatever. It seems that it has even become accepted military practice to flat out state that "foreign" lives are not worth as much as "our troops'".

That mentality must be destroyed, for it is bloody, shameful, and honorless.

I'm sure everyone here agrees with that sentiment and with all the Wonderful Idealistic Thoughts posted by the members.

But you haven't answered my direct question: Are you saying that a country should never go to war, no matter the circumstances?

 

[AmbiguousGuy]

Hold on a second - The war 'answer' of FDR and Churchill contributed in large part to a conflict in which 50 or 60 million people died.

Obviously. And Russian resistance to Hitler's invasion contributed to untold deaths. And Washington's resistance to the British contributed to many deaths. And the Union's resistance to Southern succession contributed to massive death and destruction.

Do you think that death is the worst thing that can happen to people?

It is taken as gospel by many that this was a just war and it was unquestionably right.

When Japan attacks your major harbor, destroying much of your navy, it is unquestionably right to declare war on Japan.

Flying aeroplanes into buildings is a bad idea, war is a bad idea - the alternative is non-violence. The exact historical details of how FDR might have non-violently resisted Japan are beyond my capacities.

Yes, it's easy to call FDR wrong when you have no idea what he might have done that would have been right.

My argument is one of principle.

Yes... that's why I find it fairly useless. Sorry.

There are always options.

No there aren't. Not if you can't name them.

 

[AmbiguousGuy]

So be it. If you renounce your own moral responsibility and free will to another man's agenda, you're already dead.

Idealism is wonderful fun, but I find the real world to be much dirtier and more gray.

But if you'd be willing to destroy your own life along with many of your family members for the sake of your ideals, then that's what you'd do. Life moves on.

Do you think you might see things differently if you were a citizen of North Korea right now? I think that if you followed your ideals there, you would be tortured and killed along with all of your extended family before you could get off a complete sentence of idealistic thought.

 

[LuisDantas]

Are you saying that a country should never go to war, no matter the circumstances?

The kind of war that involves actual attempts at killing people?

Sure, I definitely am.

 

[AmbiguousGuy]

The kind of war that involves actual attempts at killing people?

Sure, I definitely am.

Thanks for the direct answer. All I can do is appeal to natural selection. If you would not fight when attacked, your genes will not survive to inform future human populations.

Nothing wrong with that, of course. Life is what it is.

 

[sandandfoam]

When Japan attacks your major harbor, destroying much of your navy, it is unquestionably right to declare war on Japan.



Yes, it's easy to call FDR wrong when you have no idea what he might have done that would have been right.



Yes... that's why I find it fairly useless. Sorry.



No there aren't. Not if you can't name them.

ok 15 minutes on the internet...

I think that FDR should not have pushed the Japanese into war in the first place....

Here's what Chomsky has to say on the subject

With this formulation, however, one moves from the abstract discussion to the context of concrete historical circumstances where there are shades of gray and obscure complex relations between means and ends and uncalculable consequences of actions, and so on and so forth. Formulated in these terms, the advocates of a qualified commitment to nonviolence have a pretty strong case. I think they can claim with very much justice that in almost all real circumstances there is a better way than resort to violence. Let me mention a couple of concrete instances that may shed some light on this question. I read in the Times this morning an interview with Jeanette Rankin, who was the one member of Congress to vote against the declaration of war on December 8, 1941, to the accompaniment of a chorus of boos and hisses. Looking back, though, we can see that the Japanese had very real grievances, and that the United States had quite a significant share of responsibility in those grievances back in 1941. In fact, Japan had rather a more valid case than is customary to admit.
On November 6, 1941, just a month before Pearl Harbor, Japan had offered to eliminate the main major factor that really led to the Pacific war, namely the Closed Door Policy in China. But they did so with one reservation: that they would agree to eliminate the closed door in China, which is what we'd been demanding, only if the same principle were applied throughout the world -- that is, if it were also applied in, say, Latin America, the British Dominions, and so forth. Of course, this was considered too absurd to even elicit a response. And Secretary of State Cordell Hull's answer simply requested once again that they open the closed door in China and he didn't even deign to mention this ridiculous qualification that they had added. Now that qualification was of the essence and had been fought about for the preceding ten years. And it was one of the factors that led to Pearl Harbor and the war. Of course, it was politically impossible after Pearl Harbor for the United States not to declare war; we know how very difficult it is to restrain from striking back, even when you do know that the guilt is distributed. But we're talking about what is legitimate and what is moral, not what is a natural reflex. And the advocates of nonviolence are really saying that we should try to raise ourselves to such a cultural and moral level, both as individuals and as a community, that we would be able to control this reflex.
Now what were the consequences of striking back and what was our own role in creating the situation in which the violence took place? On December 8, we struck back quite blindly, quite unthinkingly, and I'm not at all sure in retrospect that the world is any the better for it. It's quite striking to read the dissenting opinion at the Tokyo tribunal of the one Indian justice who was permitted to take part, and who dissented from the entire proceedings, concluding himself that the only acts in the Pacific War that in any way corresponded to the Nazi atrocities were the dropping of the two atom bombs on Japanese cities. A.J. Muste in 1941-2 predicted that we would adopt the worst features of our adversaries, of the object of our hatred, and that we would replace Japan as a still more ferocious conqueror. And I think it's very difficult to deny the justice of that prediction. So even after Pearl Harbor, I would accept advocacy of nonviolence, not as an absolute moral principle, but as conceivably justified in those particular historical circumstances. In short, there may well have been alternatives to the Pacific War.

source The Legitimacy of Violence as a Political Act?, Noam Chomsky debates with Hannah Arendt, Susan Sontag, <I>et al</I>.

and from US academic Robert Higgs

Ask a typical American how the United States got into World War II, and he will almost certainly tell you that the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor and the Americans fought back. Ask him why the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor, and he will probably need some time to gather his thoughts. He might say that the Japanese were aggressive militarists who wanted to take over the world, or at least the Asia-Pacific part of it. Ask him what the United States did to provoke the Japanese, and he will probably say that the Americans did nothing: we were just minding our own business when the crazy Japanese, completely without justification, mounted a sneak attack on us, catching us totally by surprise in Hawaii on December 7, 1941.
You can’t blame him much. For more than 60 years such beliefs have constituted the generally accepted view among Americans, the one taught in schools and depicted in movies—what “every schoolboy knows.” Unfortunately, this orthodox view is a tissue of misconceptions. Don’t bother to ask the typical American what U.S. economic warfare had to do with provoking the Japanese to mount their attack, because he won’t know. Indeed, he will have no idea what you are talking about.
......Roosevelt and his subordinates knew they were putting Japan in an untenable position and that the Japanese government might well try to escape the stranglehold by going to war. Having broken the Japanese diplomatic code, the Americans knew, among many other things, what Foreign Minister Teijiro Toyoda had communicated to Ambassador Kichisaburo Nomura on July 31: “Commercial and economic relations between Japan and third countries, led by England and the United States, are gradually becoming so horribly strained that we cannot endure it much longer. Consequently, our Empire, to save its very life, must take measures to secure the raw materials of the South Seas.”....
...As Stimson confided to his diary after a meeting of the war cabinet on November 25, “The question was how we should maneuver them [the Japanese] into firing the first shot without allowing too much danger to ourselves.”[5] After the attack, Stimson confessed that “my first feeling was of relief ... that a crisis had come in a way which would unite all our people.[

How U.S. Economic Warfare Provoked Japan&#146;s Attack on Pearl Harbor: Newsroom: The Independent Institute

 

[LuisDantas]

Thanks for the direct answer. All I can do is appeal to natural selection.

Natural selection is what happens when there are no people taking responsibility for the circunstances.

To surrender our future to it is to deny that we can do better than irrational beings.

If you would not fight when attacked, your genes will not survive to inform future human populations.

If my genes can not conceive of alternatives to participating in war, then they are not worth preserving in the first place.

 

[Alceste]

Idealism is wonderful fun, but I find the real world to be much dirtier and more gray.

But if you'd be willing to destroy your own life along with many of your family members for the sake of your ideals, then that's what you'd do. Life moves on.

Do you think you might see things differently if you were a citizen of North Korea right now? I think that if you followed your ideals there, you would be tortured and killed along with all of your extended family before you could get off a complete sentence of idealistic thought.

Probably. Many people in many countries throughout history have risked their own lives to resist brutal authoritarian governments. Better that than risking your life to advance the agenda of a brutal authoritarian government. Those who are "disappeared" as a result of saying "no" to rich ******** know who the real enemy is, and what is truly worth risking your life for.

Before Hitler went after anyone, he went after his own people - academics, critics, uncooperative journalists, and political opponents. You think they died for nothing, or to demonstrate to the rest of us that our human dignity, free will and moral responsibility can be retained even in the face of extreme pressure to become a murdering authoritarian thug?

 

[AmbiguousGuy]

ok 15 minutes on the internet...

I think that FDR should not have pushed the Japanese into war in the first place....

Here's what Chomsky has to say on the subject

source The Legitimacy of Violence as a Political Act?, Noam Chomsky debates with Hannah Arendt, Susan Sontag, <I>et al</I>.

and from US academic Robert Higgs


How U.S. Economic Warfare Provoked Japan’s Attack on Pearl Harbor: Newsroom: The Independent Institute

I've read a lot of history (and consider Chomsky useless as an historical or moral commentator), so I don't come here to be referred to readings. I come to learn whether the other guy has better answers than I have, whether he can argue for his own position compellingly.

I wish you would engage the debate with me, but whatever.

 

[sandandfoam]

I've read a lot of history (and consider Chomsky useless as an historical or moral commentator), so I don't come here to be referred to readings. I come to learn whether the other guy has better answers than I have, whether he can argue for his own position compellingly.

I wish you would engage the debate with me, but whatever.

With respect I am engaging. You asked me what FDR should have done when the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbour- my answer is that he should not have pushed Japan into war in the first place and and I backed it up with sources

 

[AmbiguousGuy]

With respect I am engaging. You asked me what FDR should have done when the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbour- my answer is that he should not have pushed Japan into war in the first place and and I backed it up with sources

Let me say, very clearly, that I am somewhat familiar with 20th-century American history. I'm certainly aware that many people blame FDR for pushing the Japanese Empire toward war. I'm also aware that many other people declare that FDR had no choice in the matter.

I'm not asking the history books. I'm asking you.

Here's a question for you, to try and help you address the actual question I'm asking:

Assume that FDR died on Dec. 6, 1941.

Would Truman have been justified in declaring war on Dec. 8, 1941? If not, what exactly should he have done in place of declaring war?

(He was a marginalized VP, by the way. He had almost no involvement in FDR's decisions.)

 

[AmbiguousGuy]

Natural selection is what happens when there are no people taking responsibility for the circunstances.

Really I can't make sense of that, Luis. My understanding of natural selection is as a process which culls out that life which is unsuccessful.

To surrender our future to it is to deny that we can do better than irrational beings.

I think that declining to defend ourselves when attacked is the very essence of 'surrendering our future.' So I guess we see things differently.

If my genes can not conceive of alternatives to participating in war, then they are not worth preserving in the first place.

Yeah, I think life agrees with you.

 

[sandandfoam]

Let me say, very clearly, that I am somewhat familiar with 20th-century American history. I'm certainly aware that many people blame FDR for pushing the Japanese Empire toward war. I'm also aware that many other people declare that FDR had no choice in the matter.

I'm not asking the history books. I'm asking you.

Here's a question for you, to try and help you address the actual question I'm asking:

Assume that FDR died on Dec. 6, 1941.

Would Truman have been justified in declaring war on Dec. 8, 1941? If not, what exactly should he have done in place of declaring war?

(He was a marginalized VP, by the way. He had almost no involvement in FDR's decisions.)

No he would not have been justified. In your scenario Truman should have contacted the Japanese government and found out what needed to be done to make sure things did not get any further out of hand.

 

[YmirGF]

It's pretty succinct, I confess. See if this is any more intelligible - same concept, more words. You might actually enjoy it.

War Is A Racket, by Major General Smedley Butler, 1935

That strikes me as almost a tragic comedy. Evidence of PTSD before PTSD was recognized?

 

[OneWithoutASecond]

War cannot ever be acceptable or defensible. Because as others said, the killing of innocent civilians is never collateral damage. It is the lowest point in human behaviour. On a par with those sick people who torture defenceless animals.

But then, what does a nation do that is attacked? (I don't claim to have the answers).

Hopefully the above is a historical question, as in present day, the shape of the political world (as ugly as it can be) doesn't tend to include countries invading other countries*

*Accepting some longstanding situations, such as in Tibet but I'm mainly talking about present times, say the last decade.

 

[AmbiguousGuy]

Probably. Many people in many countries throughout history have risked their own lives to resist brutal authoritarian governments.

OK. As I say, if you tried to openly resist the N. Korean govenment -- or even fail to support it with sufficient gusto -- you would be killed. All of your relatives would be put in labor camps and any babies born to them would be born as slaves.

I don't think I could do that to my family, but maybe. Who knows.

Before Hitler went after anyone, he went after his own people - academics, critics, uncooperative journalists, and political opponents. You think they died for nothing, or to demonstrate to the rest of us that our human dignity, free will and moral responsibility can be retained even in the face of extreme pressure to become a murdering authoritarian thug?

Didn't you say that you might have murdered young German soldiers if you had a chance? What's the difference between that and becoming a soldier?

 

[AmbiguousGuy]

No he would not have been justified. In your scenario Truman should have contacted the Japanese government and found out what needed to be done to make sure things did not get any further out of hand.

So you're unaware of the intense (failed) diplomatic efforts leading up to December 7th?

Really, I find your outlook so strange. I wish you'd answered my questions about the Union going to war against the CSA or Washington's immorality for resisting the British.

You've never really read much history, yes?

 

[Alceste]

That strikes me as almost a tragic comedy. Evidence of PTSD before PTSD was recognized?

Evidence of a man who enlisted as a teenage idiot with ethics learned by rote and delusions of immortality finally growing up, perhaps. PTSD? I don't see it in the essay, but it's a perfectly normal psychological consequence of fighting a war and does not impact a man's ability to write a damn good essay in the slightest, so I'm not sure why you mention it.