The Hard Question

In an odd way, the most outrageous of Jeremiah Wright's statements are also the easiest ones for an Obama supporter to deal with -- it's clear enough that Obama doesn't believe those things, and rightly so. The difficult problem of Jeremiah Wright is really with his less outrageous statements, with things like "We bombed Hiroshima, we bombed Nagasaki and we nuked far more than the thousands in New York and the Pentagon, and we never batted an eye." This is too hot for US Presidential politics, and I certainly don't think it makes sense to think of 9/11 as justified divine retribution for Nagasaki, but the attempted puncturing of the cult of American self-righteousness here is spot-on.

You just can't say those sorts of things! Or of course you can easily say them on your blog, or even in your lefty magazine article, but when you step into the practical political arena in the United States, you enter the Self-Righteousness Zone where loving your country entails a staggering level of obtuseness. I hope Barack Obama does have some qualms about America's WWII-era habit of directly targeting Japanese and German civilians for massive violence, and as a political realist I also hope he never needs to speak serious about them in public until sometime in the 2020s.

National Archives Photo of Nagasaki

Comments

I don't think Wright was stepping into the "practical political arena" when he was addressing his congregation from the pulpit in 2001.

Posted by Adam | March 24, 2008 1:29 PM

I hope Barack Obama does have some qualms about America's WWII-era habit of directly targeting Japanese and German civilians for massive violence...

Spoken like someone who fails to comprehend the enormous amount of regretable violence that all sides inflicted on each other (and in the case of the Soviet Union, itself) during World War II.

It was not us who declared "Totaler Krieg", may I remind you.

Posted by calipygian | March 24, 2008 1:33 PM

1) We shouldn't avert our eyes from the Japanese women and children burned alive by our napalm and atomic bombings in WWII. General Curtis LeMay himself said it was fortunate that the US won the war --else he would have been tried as a war criminal.

2) On the other hand, when you have lost tens of thousands of your country's soldiers to bloody
battles, it is hard to avoid doing ANYTHING that will make the enemy surrender and save the lives of your remaining troops. If I was Truman, I would not have asked my Pacific Marines and soldiers to die horrible deaths just to assuage the moral qualms of those who had not been within 500 miles of a battlefield.

3) It is hypocritical to speak of the Laws of War -- although the military push for such Laws in order to put some limits on the carnage. But no national leader accepts any constraints if his country's back is to the wall.

4) The REAL CRIME lies in forcing a war when there's a way to avoid it -- i.e., in forcing war when your nation's survival is not at stake and when you are not being attacked.

5) The Fake Patriots in the Republican Party don't see the crime in fucking people in the Middle East until those people are willing to commit suicide just to strike back at us in some way. That's why George the WHore and the Republicans have to lie unceasing to maintain their story -- and to avoid the country looking at the GUILT they bear for provoking Sept 11.

6) Maybe our enemy is not just Al Qaeda. Maybe it's also the smooth, bland traitors among us who are trying to drag this country into a bloody, unnecessary war with 1 Billion Muslims just for the sake of money.

Maybe it's people who are willing to spend $35 per gallon of Middle Eastern gasoline on military attacks -- but spend nothing to develop alternative energy sources.

Because the recently retired CEO of Exxon --who collected $400 MILLION in compensation -- didn't give campaign donations for support of alternative energy sources.

Posted by Don Williams | March 24, 2008 1:38 PM

Wow, good for you, Matt. You've got guts.

(And how nice of calipygian to provide us with an example of the staggering moral obtuseness you're talking about.)

Posted by lemuel pitkin | March 24, 2008 1:38 PM

Oh yeah? Well at least we weren't quite as bad as the Nazis!

Posted by Hey, I'm calipygian! | March 24, 2008 1:39 PM

Confronting "Thou Shall Not Kill" is not easy when facing the realities of war. Yet rationalizing murder will always remain, and with it a blatant religious hypocrisy. The modern world, especially our politics, requires us to ignore this hypocrisy, yet priests, pastors and rabbis find occassion to remind us of God's commandment.

So, we let our pastors, priests and Rabbis remind us of it from time-to-time, and we nod along, but then we immediately retreat into denial, lest we admit the horror of our own complicity, and our own hypocrisy.

Posted by AKBY | March 24, 2008 1:44 PM

The REAL CRIME lies in forcing a war when there's a way to avoid it -- i.e., in forcing war when your nation's survival is not at stake and when you are not being attacked.

Hey, Don Williams found a nut!

Not many people today rememebr that the first charge in the Nuremberg Trials was waging aggressive war...

Posted by lemuel pitkin | March 24, 2008 1:47 PM

As others pointed out, Hiroshima and Nagasaki weren't as horrible of a crime as firebombing Tokyo. It was a wooden city, and it was burned. More people died in that operation than Hiroshima and Nagasaki combined, but the atomic bombs were the greater sin? Perhaps I am knitpicking or splitting hairs, but why criticize one form of bombing or another. If we are to go by civilian casualties, then aren't all bombings immoral? Then how are we to win wars without bombing? This is all too polemical.

Posted by freddiemac | March 24, 2008 1:54 PM

2030 would be a lot safer!

Posted by Richard | March 24, 2008 1:54 PM

Isn't even that part of the sermon meant to be a paraphrasing of what Ambassador Peck was stating on Fox News? It's not clear to me that this has ever really been fleshed out.

Posted by Jake | March 24, 2008 2:03 PM

...but when you step into the practical political arena in the United States, you enter the Self-Righteousness Zone where loving your country entails a staggering level of obtuseness.

Matt,

This is a great line from a great post. Keep up the good work.

Surely, saying "God damn America" is no more batty than the ritual invocations of "God bless America". Admittedly, the latter is infinitely more politically correct than the former.

Posted by Jim W | March 24, 2008 2:05 PM

Before someone comes in with the definitive talking point

"But more lives were saved than if we had a ground war in Tokyo!"

let me point out that by the point of a ground invasion, Japan was cut off from all resources, and most importantly, oil. The military machine was dead, and the economy had ground to a halt. Cars were running off of vegetable mush. We could have offered surrender and simply waited.

Posted by Seebach | March 24, 2008 2:05 PM

It's worth pointing out that in the 1940s, 1950s and 1960s many, many conservatives were critical of the firebombing of German and Japanese cities and the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. You can see this in the back issues of National Review, Human Events and elsewhere. The atomic bomb was seen by many anti-interventionist conservatives as part of the evil of the warfare/welfare state.

The conservative stance against these things changed only when mainstream conservatives merged with Cold War liberals (i.e. the neo-conservatives) in the early 1970s.

Another forgotten aspect of intellectual history...

Posted by Jeet Heer | March 24, 2008 2:06 PM

The US has given up on strategic bombing of the sort you'd see in WWII. I remember a quote from Schwartzkopf during Desert Storm. He said "We could kill a hundred thousand people in Baghdad, but we didn't." So there may be people that still retrospectively approve of US and British bombing campaigns during WWII, but they would never advocate those policies today.

In the peace museum in Hiroshima, there is guest book you can sign after the tour. All the infamous relics from the bombing are there, including the stone step with a shadow burned into it, and the watch that stopped at the moment of the bombing. And at the end, you can sign the guest book. Don Williams would put "USA #1 USA #1" in the comment next to his signature.

Posted by mts | March 24, 2008 2:08 PM

Two things.

1. Jake is correct that Wright was working from the words of Peck.

2. Wright never said that 9/11 was divine retribution. That territory has been staked out by the Hagee's of the world.

It is interesting that Wright has since come out and said he was wrong to use the GD America phrases, that that is not something for any human to call for, that the damning is a decision best left up to God.

And speaking from the pulpit is hardly stepping into the political arena.

Posted by john m | March 24, 2008 2:09 PM

And speaking from the pulpit is hardly stepping into the political arena.

Really?

Posted by AKBY | March 24, 2008 2:12 PM

Hiroshima and Nagasaki were horrible, but a previous poster did point out that there were all varieties of atrocities committed by all sides and the Imperial Japanese were not exempt.

Remember the Rape of Nanking and Unit 731 are two prominent examples.

Posted by Jack | March 24, 2008 2:18 PM

It's worth pointing out that Hitler started the conflicts that led to WWII in Europe because he wanted to kill millions of Slavs and Jews in eastern Europe so that Germany would have "living room." The Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor in response to American policies intended to discourage them from continuing their war of aggression in China, which had cost millions of lives and would consume millions more.

Hitler refused to surrender until Germany had been annihilated, well, because he was Hitler. The Japanese high command refused to surrender because they did not wish to admit that they had led Japan down the road to utter destruction.

Osama bin Laden attacked the U.S. because we had troops stationed in Saudi Arabia, at the invitation (sometimes reluctant) of the Saudi government. I'm sorry, but the parallelism is not obvious to me.

Posted by Alan Vanneman | March 24, 2008 2:20 PM

Jeet Heer and Seebach are correct, and in fact most of Truman's military advisors including Eisenhower were opposed to the bombing precisely because the viewed it as militarily unnecessary, as Japan was already suing for peace at that point.

Really, the only point of dropping the bomb was so Truman could send a message to the world (particularly the Soviet Union) that he was tough. Feel free to argue the merits of that reason (personally I find it unjustifiable), but let's not pretend that the war against Japan wasn't already effectively over.

Posted by Hunter H. | March 24, 2008 2:21 PM

That's an interesting triple jump you're performing there, freddiemac:

Comparing different types of bombing is wrong.

All bombings are immoral.

Let's bomb away regardless,
because we need to win wars.

This "war is hell - fire at will" argument is very popular, but wholly disregards the venerable tradition of thinking about "jus in bello", which has been around for more than two thousand years and is currently codified in a number of international treaties.

Posted by novakant | March 24, 2008 2:24 PM

Clearly for a black Presidential candidate to be successful, he will have to be a perfect human being, or, just the opposite, a Republican like Thomas.

Obama candidacy underestimated the lengths the white establishment to go to thwart the attempts of a black man to be the President. If Rev. Wright did not exist, he would have been invented for this purpose.

This is the prism from which the current state of the Obama candidacy should be looked at. To look at it any other way is to contribute to what Wright was complaining about.

Posted by gregor | March 24, 2008 2:35 PM

Those of you arguing that the war in Japan was essentially over and that the atomic bombs were unnecessary just don't know your history. Japan would not have surrendered otherwise. They were prepared to fight to the death, and an invasion would have cost millions of lives, theirs and ours. It's not pleasant to think about, but those two bombs saved lives.

My suggestion: talk to someone who was fighting in the arena. My grandfather was there.

Posted by confronting nonsense | March 24, 2008 2:44 PM

My suggestion: talk to someone who was fighting in the arena. My grandfather was there.

I've heard this issue argued both ways, and it seems like something that would require a lot of research to determine and even then the answer would not be determinate.

But this ask someone who was there approach is just stupid. A footsoldier may give you some insight into the psychological trama that was fighting in Okinawa, but it provides no actual insight into the internal dynamics of the Japanese economy, society and polity. Let's be a little more serious and a little less sanctimonious and melodramatic.

Posted by mpowell | March 24, 2008 2:51 PM

Hiroshima and Nagasaki were horrible, but a previous poster did point out that there were all varieties of atrocities committed by all sides and the Imperial Japanese were not exempt.

Remember the Rape of Nanking and Unit 731 are two prominent examples.

I hope nobody's defending Imperial Japan, which was an exceptionally aggressive, brutal, and criminal regime. But answering a question about the morality of American actions by referring to the crimes of an evil regime inspires a race to the bottom.

Just because the atomic bombings were wrong doesn't mean we couldn't have done much worse without being as bad as the Imperial Japanese or the Nazis. I think that civilized societies, or societies that aspire to be civilized, should judge themselves by their own standards, not by comparing themselves favorably to absolute depravity.

Posted by JB | March 24, 2008 2:51 PM

confronting nonsense, Japan reached out to the Soviets to see if it would be possible to negotiate a peace with the US. Just google "japanese surrender" or check out the wikipedia page (with sites). They'd been considering some kind of surrender/peace settlement since early 1945 at least, and the US had cracked the Japanese code so the US knew more or less what Japan was considering.

Talking to someone who fought in the arena would give you a better idea of what it was like to fight in the arena. It wouldn't necessarily give you a better idea of what the Japanese ministers were discussing, or what their diplomatic messages to the USSR said about surrender.

Posted by Pesto | March 24, 2008 3:07 PM

Sigh

Matt, you should really try to read some history instead of skimming the left wing cliff's notes version. Consider the situation President Truman found himself in in mid 1945:

-- The invasion of Iwo Jima had been a nightmare
-- The invasion of Okinawa was worse, with the added scenes of Japanese civilians hurling themselves (and their children) off cliffs rather than surrender

After that - and the horrendous losses from the Kamikaze attacks - the invasion of Japan looms. He's looking at millions of dead - soldiers and Japanese civilians.

There's one possible alternative: a weapon so awful that it might just get the Japanese to surrender without requiring that invasion. So he does the logical thing, and tries it.

After Nagasaki, the Japanese Empereor decides that enough is enough - but not all of his advisers agree. A coup attempt comes within one loyal (to the Emperor) officer of succeeding - and that's after the annihilation of 2 cities.

60 some odd years later, Matt sits in his office with a latte and questions whether it all made sense. Take a few minutes, and put yourself in Truman's place. What would you have done? I seriously doubt, in the summer of 1945, whether you would have done anything terribly different.

To the matter of firebombing throughout the earlier part of the war? Again, you have to view that in context. The leaders (on all sides) had no evidence from previous conflicts to work from. The theory they had was that terror bombing would sap the will of the enemy to resist. You can call it immoral all you want, but the theory was that such sapping of will would shorten the war. That turned out to not be correct, but they did not know that then.

Posted by James Robertson | March 24, 2008 3:20 PM

I'm curious. For those here talking about the immorality of bombing Japan:
If we had had the atom bomb before the war with Hitler was over, would it have been right to use it on a German city?
My answer: Unequivocally yes. It would have killed many thousands, even hundreds of thousands. But perhaps it would have stopped German perpretration of the war, and would have stopped the Holocaust. While Hitler would not have surrendered, those in command of his armies might have, and German civilians would have thrown in the towel much earlier.

Posted by hmmm | March 24, 2008 3:32 PM

Given that we didn't take advantage of the available options for mitigating the Holocaust--e.g., bombing the rail lines leading to Auschwitz, accepting Jewish refugees, etc.--I don't think it's fair to create a counter-factual in which the only thing standing between Hitler and the annihilation of European Jewry is an American atom bomb attack on Berlin.

In any case, we launched bombing raids on German cities that, in their total destructive effect and in the total number of civilians killed, were worse than Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Those attacks killed 600,000 civilians, including about 100,000 children, and left millions homeless, but there's scant evidence that they shortened the war.

Also, while I take the points that desperate times call for desperate measures, and that Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan were exceptionally dangerous and evil enemies, I'm wary of this argument, which has now been made a couple times in quick succession in this thread, that terrorism is only immoral if it doesn't work.

Posted by JB | March 24, 2008 3:43 PM

My answer: Unequivocally yes.

They would never have detonated an atomic bomb in the middle of Europe - too close culturally and racially.

And of course throwing the atomic bomb was a war crime, since the indiscriminate killing of civilians is a war crime. The bombings of cities like Tokyo, Hamburg, Dresden and Pforzheim were also war crimes, since the technology wasn't very capable of distinguishing between military and civilian targets and some areas and cities bombed didn't have any military value at all.

If you are willing to indiscriminately kill a large number of civilians in order to achieve your war aims, you're a sick bastard and a supporter of war crimes.

Posted by novakant | March 24, 2008 4:03 PM

Well, one very basic difference is that we were in a multi-year actual war with Japan when we bombed their cities.

With Mohammed Atta and his friends? Not so much.

I often find myself shaking my head when reading liberals finding the latest example of moral equivalence.

Posted by Chris | March 24, 2008 4:14 PM

"If you are willing to indiscriminately kill a large number of civilians in order to achieve your war aims, you're a sick bastard and a supporter of war crimes."

Even ending the Holocaust (if it were feasible)? Who's the sick bastard?

FDR, Churchill - they were all war criminals according to you idiots.

Posted by anonnonanon | March 24, 2008 4:23 PM

There is a conflating of two separate debates on this issue: whether killing substantial numbers of civilians is ever justified and whether Japan would have surrendered without an invasion of the island. I think killing civilians, even intentionally, is more justified than some, in a war where lots of civilians are dying anyhow. Plus, between American military and Japanese civilians, I've never understood why it's morally preferable to let more Americans die.

But even in this case, killing civilians is obviously only justified unless it's pretty likely to aid the war effort. In this case, Dresden is harder to justify than Hiroshima, in my opinion.

On the other hand, starting a war is likely to kill lots of civilians and shouldn't be undertaken unless it's really justified b/c otherwise you're just killing people for no reason. And that's why starting the Iraq war was worse than Dresden or Hiroshima. If a war of choice can be justified, you have to make a powerful case that the long term result will be beneficial, not just roll the dice.

Posted by mpowell | March 24, 2008 4:37 PM

Two wrongs don't make a Wright, er, right.

Posted by Jake | March 24, 2008 4:52 PM

(And how nice of calipygian to provide us with an example of the staggering moral obtuseness you're talking about.)

Posted by lemuel pitkin

Yes, because starving millions of Japanese in a blockade of the islands would have been MUCH better. Or invading the islands with a million or two US troops expected to take 20 percent or more casualties based on the experience in Okinawa and Iwo Jima would have been much less morally obtuse.

Read a little history - Japanese surrender wasn't a given and the Japanese military nearly deposed the Emporer after he made his "the war has not turned out necessarily to our advantage" speech.

Morally obtuse my ass.

Posted by calipygian | March 24, 2008 5:03 PM

Chris,

"Liberals"?

Was Elizabeth Anscombe a liberal? Pope Paul VI called the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki 'butchery of untold magnitude', was he a liberal too? (I wouldn't call him a _conservative_, but not a liberal either).

Posted by Hector | March 24, 2008 5:27 PM

See, this is how chimps think: make a mistake (creating the state), then make more mistakes (let the states get run by assholes who try to take over a region or the world) - then, TA-DAH! We'll solve the problem by starting a war and kill a few million of the morons who allowed us to make these mistakes in the first place!

Morons.

There is never a valid reason to start a war. NEVER. You could try assassinating someone, you could even try nuking the capital city of a state and getting rid of their entire government first (and that might start a war, indeed). But deliberately start a WAR to get rid of a given state? Get a fucking clue.

It's NEVER done for that reason. EVER. Not in human history. Not in WWII. Not EVER. It's done for over-arching political and economic reasons. Always. Everything else is just an excuse.

Which isn't to say there aren't morons in and out of the state and pundits who believe that crap.

But it's not real.

Iraq had nothing really to do with Saddam Hussein, despite Powell's bullshit about "national interests" or that Hussein was a "bad guy".

As for Japan's surrender - they were beaten. That's it. You could have blockaded the islands for the next twenty years, and even if they never surrendered, who would have cared? The bomb was not necessary. Whether Truman believed it was necessary is another matter. I don't care what some nitwit politician believes.

On the other hand, from a radical Transhumanist position, I really don't give a rat's ass how many chimps get wasted (with certain exceptions and an eye to maintaining technological progress, of course). Just more chimps I don't have to deal with.

Posted by Richard Steven Hack | March 24, 2008 5:32 PM

The above poster is right. If you dont nuke Japan, then at a bare minimum you have to seal off the island and create an embargo, which surely would have led to the starvation of many millions of civilians and children.

And then 50 years later we'd have people starting threads blasting the US for not attempting to find a more rapid solution to end the war.

Posted by joe blow | March 24, 2008 5:36 PM

Jeet Heer and Hector are right, by the way. Early critics of the atomic bombings included Herbert Hoover, Bishop Fulton Sheen, Dwight Eisenhower, and Richard Weaver. I don't know if Robert Taft ever weighed in on the issue, but if he did, I suspect he would have been against it. Liberal/leftist politicians and magazines, including The Nation and The New Republic, were in favor of the bombing at the time.

Posted by James Kabala | March 24, 2008 5:41 PM

Jeet Heer and Hector are right, by the way. Early critics of the atomic bombings included Herbert Hoover, Bishop Fulton Sheen, Dwight Eisenhower, and Richard Weaver. I don't know if Robert Taft ever weighed in on the issue, but if he did, I suspect he would have been against it. Liberal/leftist politicians and magazines, including The Nation and The New Republic, were in favor of the bombing at the time.

Posted by James Kabala | March 24, 2008 5:41 PM

So dropping nukes on other countries and killing innocent civilians can be justified in the minds of some people? wow...

Posted by JoAnn | March 24, 2008 5:45 PM

If you've lost a war, as Japan has, and then you're embargoed, and your state still doesn't surrender, or even if the whole population supports not surrendering, then they essentially are committing suicide.

So a blockade of a defeated nation to enforce a surrender is hardly the same as dropping a nuke.

If fact, it's likely that even the blockade would not be necessary. By all accounts, the reason the Japanese refused to surrender is because the US did not guarantee the security of the Emperor. That should have been an easy call for the US to make if that was the only problem. I'm not familiar with the history of the surrender, but I doubt the war would have gone on much longer regardless, if the Japanese economy could no longer support it. So compared to a nuclear attack, clearly there was a better solution.

You can't simply declare that it was a nuclear attack versus an invasion. That is conventional military thinking. Other solutions could have been found. Even if Japan never surrendered, as long as they could be prevented from prosecuting the war, it would have been irrelevant whether they surrendered. That need for a "surrender", too, is conventional thinking. Buying time to change the situation in favor of ending the war would have been sufficient.

Posted by Richard Steven Hack | March 24, 2008 5:59 PM

Surely, saying "God damn America" is no more batty than the ritual invocations of "God bless America". Admittedly, the latter is infinitely more politically correct than the former.
Posted by Jim W

Except for the fact you are just another asshole practicing moral equivalency. Seeing no difference between asking your neighbors and countrymen be blessed, vs. asking they be damned.
***************
let me point out that by the point of a ground invasion, Japan was cut off from all resources, and most importantly, oil. The military machine was dead, and the economy had ground to a halt. Cars were running off of vegetable mush. We could have offered surrender and simply waited.
Posted by Seebach

Bullshit. The Japanese were feverishly working to duplicate their huge attrition tactics of Okinawa and Saipan on the Japanese mainland. Civilians were organized into brigades with interlocking fields of machinegun fire, the countryside was being littered with trenches to stop or slow down armor. Brigades of children and women were being trained throughout Japan to charge US troops with sharpened bamboo stakes and all the old 98 Mausers they had in stock. Ammo factories were running non-stop and foodstuffs diverted from starving masses to make explosives.

The US predicted 400,000 casualties in Operation Olympia, just the 1st phase of invasion. Negotiations to end the war were conditional on amnesty for most depredations of the Japs. That was unacceptable to the US.

The firebombings had not caused the demoralization that the bombings in Germany had finally accomplished by early 1945, but Japanese seeing the roasted cities no longer believed that they could win. Just maybe prevent total conquest. The A-Bombs and the lie we had dozens more ready to be dropped put an end to that fantasy. Though in truth if the Japs had slowed conquest by ground invasion, we would have had another 6 bombs in 6 months and 24 or so in a years time and they would have been dropped if that is what it took to avoid another million American casualties.

*****************
So dropping nukes on other countries and killing innocent civilians can be justified in the minds of some people? wow...
Posted by JoAnn

Ignorant twats like yourself do not understand that soldiers are not "guilty".

A civilian who involuntarily or voluntarily puts on a uniform to serve his country does not cheapen his life to insignificance by that act, or become guilty of a crime - compared to enemy civilians life's value or moral standing.

No more than civilians that build and nourish a mass war machine are "innocent" when it comes to the context of total war.

Nor are some clueless twats aware that we have had a nuclear deterrent for 60 years that is predicated on being used - dropped on "innocent enemy civilians" if they send their military out and do unacceptably dumb shit like send the 5 million man 100,000 tank Cold War Red Army through the Fulda gap to kill millions in the West to conquer it, if they nuked our forces or ally's cities, if a nation used WMD other than nukes - like nerve gas, smallpox virus, ebola, anthrax on us..

Inflicting serious harm and tribulation on civilians at the end of a war, once they lose the ability of their military to protect them and yet do not surrender, is the last step towards real victory in history's wars..It is done, many argue it must be done for the citizens of an enemy nation to truly accept they are defeated and not just shift into guerilla war by civilians.

Posted by chris ford | March 24, 2008 6:21 PM

Mr. Ford,

I see no reason why God should feel inclined to bless a country that was reponsible for slavery, genocide against Native Americans, the Vietnam War, a century of neocolonialism throughout Latin America, invading countries that never did a thing to harm us, propping up despots and terrorists from Nicaragua to Chile, and elevating greed and selfishness to moral principles.

'God bless America', indeed.

And yes, the people like you who still defend our foreign policy interventions in Latin America on behalf of scum like Thieu, Castillo Armas and the Nicaraguan Contras are eminently guilty of a moral crime, if not a legal one. The good Reverend Wright is perhaps a bit intemperate in his rhetoric, but in every way a better man than people like you.

Posted by Hector | March 24, 2008 6:28 PM

"The use of the atomic bomb, with its indiscriminate killing of women and children, revolts my soul." Herbert Hoover, Republican, President of the United States 1929-1933.

Posted by Jeet Heer | March 24, 2008 6:40 PM

I must reluctantly agree with Mr. Ford here relative to the use of the nuclear bomb on Japan. Everybody seems to forget that Japan started the war by their sneak attack on Pearl Harbor. If we want to get biblical, Japan sowed the wind at Pearl Harbor and reaped the whirlwind at Hiroshima. To quote General Sherman, war is all hell and can't be civilized. There is no glory in war. War is nothing but butchery.

Posted by SLC | March 24, 2008 6:48 PM

President JoAnn, the Japanese military junta will not surrender. We are preparing Operation Olympic, the invasion of Japan. The initial invasion will involve a million US troops and we expect 50 percent of them to be killed or wounded in the first three months of the invasion. Based on our experience on Iwo Jima, Guam, Saipan and Okinawa, we expect the Japanese civilian population to resort to guerilla warfare.

Plan B, President JoAnn, is to continue unrestricted submarine warfare against Japanese shipping. We have already bombed 97 of Japan's 100 largest cities to rubble, so at this point we are making said rubble bounce. Despite this, the Japanese military leadership is not prepared to surrender and we expect a quarter to a half of the Japanese population to starve to death within a year.

Or, we have these new super weapons the likes of which have never been used before. We expect up to half a million people to die with their use, but, their use may convince the Japanese leadership to surrender.

The choice is yours, President JoAnn.

Choose wisely.

Posted by calipygian | March 24, 2008 6:58 PM

Here's a "was there" story that may illuminate things: My Japanese literature teacher was a school student in Tokyo at the end of WWII. His school principal told the students that if the Americans won, all the girls would be raped and all the boys would be castrated.

Yes, they would have fought. And a country under blockade feeds its soldiers first. Those asking for the Japanese to have been "starved out" are asking for literally millions of additional deaths, concentrated among children and the elderly.

And for those who entertain the comforting fantasy of "they were planning to surrender" -- this was the diplomatic corps, which had realized the hopelessness of the conflict since it had begun (in some cases, before). They didn't hold the power and what they planned was purely in the realm of fantasy. The people with the power were the military, and the only person who could put them in their place was the Emperor. And as noted above, even after the two atomic bombings, the military fanatics very nearly succeeded in fighting on.

Posted by sunsin | March 24, 2008 7:36 PM

Hector - I see no reason why God should feel inclined to bless a country that was reponsible for "blah-blah-blah".

Name a perfect country.

Name another country you wish to "god-damn" other than the country you hate...

Hector - (Americans) are eminently guilty of a moral crime, if not a legal one. The good Reverend Wright is perhaps a bit intemperate in his rhetoric, but in every way a better man than people like you.

Hector, piss off. And don't think for a minute your dissent is patriotic, or that other Americans really would die to simply defend your "freedom of speech" to tear it down. You are the shit our system has to accept along with the good.

Posted by chris ford | March 24, 2008 7:43 PM

Calipygian, you forgot (or perhaps didn't know about) Plan C:

Begin unrestricted chemical and biological warfare against crops, animals, and people in Japan.

The preparations were in place. It would have been perfectly legal, since the US was not at the time signatory to treaties restricting this type of attack, and Japan had used chemical and biological agents against America's ally China.

It would not have been a good idea, in my opinion (particularly the biological side, which could easily have gotten out of control). It would have killed far more people than was necessary. But if the US had been interested in genocide on the Japanese people, it would have been an easy and obvious choice. And since the corpses it would have produced would have been somewhat more photogenic than those produced by atomic explosions, President Joan and her shallow-minded ilk might not have objected so much.

Posted by sunsin | March 24, 2008 7:49 PM

"Secretary of War Stimson, visiting my headquarters in Germany, informed me that our government was preparing to drop an atomic bomb on Japan. I was one of those who felt that there were a number of cogent reasons to question the wisdom of such an act. ...the Secretary, upon giving me the news of the successful bomb test in New Mexico, and of the plan for using it, asked for my reaction, apparently expecting a vigorous assent."

"During his recitation of the relevant facts, I had been conscious of a feeling of depression and so I voiced to him my grave misgivings, first on the basis of my belief that Japan was already defeated and that dropping the bomb was completely unnecessary, and secondly because I thought that our country should avoid shocking world opinion by the use of a weapon whose employment was, I thought, no longer mandatory as a measure to save American lives. It was my belief that Japan was, at that very moment, seeking some way to surrender with a minimum loss of 'face'. The Secretary was deeply perturbed by my attitude..."

Dwight Eisenhower, Republican, President of the United States 1953-1961.

Why do people here think they know more about military matters than Eisenhower?

Posted by Jeet Heer | March 24, 2008 8:03 PM

SLC: I must reluctantly agree with Mr. Ford here relative to the use of the nuclear bomb on Japan. Everybody seems to forget that Japan started the war by their sneak attack on Pearl Harbor.

I'll keep this handy for when terrorists nuke Chicago for the US invasion of Iraq.

Posted by 23456 | March 24, 2008 8:06 PM

Mr. Ford,

I forgot, I'm talking to someone who defends the Vietnam war. The little kids burning from the napalm and the tiger cages were all worth it to impose capitalism on the Vietnamese, huh?

I don't want God to damn America, but I do want Americans to realize and strive to make up for their social sins. And that means recognizing that we are responsible for a great amount of evil in the world today. We are responsible for the rapacious ravaging of the natural environment, for contructing a capitalist system based on greed and self-interest, a decadent popular culture, a foreign policy based on imposing neocolonialism on Latin America and Southeast Asia, and that's not even considering our history of slavery, segregation and genocide which was substantially worse than most of the Spanish and Portuguese New World states. Yes, I think that our influence on the world for the last few decades has been much more malign than benevolent.

No, I don't claim to be patriotic. I believe that in such a flawed, corrupt and neo-Babylonian society that is the United States, my more important loyalties are to justice, charity, and truth, and to the Christian socialist ideal commonwealth that I envision, rather than to 'The United States'. I pity you if you don't feel the same way.

I reject, root and branch, capitalism, liberal democracy, individualism and the rest of the premises on which the United States was based. Americans are good people, for the most part, but the political and economic system of the USA is one that I believe is fundamentally wrong, and it would be wrong for me for ask God to bless it. I don't agree with Reverend Wright in his rhetoric, but in his call for America to repent of her crimes, I can hear the voice of justice and morality, while the voice of people like you all I hear is greed, pride, base self-interest and racism. I'm afraid that to be called 'shit' by people like you is something of a compliment.

Posted by Hector | March 24, 2008 8:26 PM

"Those of you arguing that the war in Japan was essentially over and that the atomic bombs were unnecessary just don't know your history. Japan would not have surrendered otherwise. They were prepared to fight to the death, and an invasion would have cost millions of lives, theirs and ours. It's not pleasant to think about, but those two bombs saved lives."

Our own intelligence operatives had intercepted Japanese military communications showing the Japanese were willing to surrender as long as they could keep the Emperor. Truman thought it was a good idea, but when the Allies released their joint statement calling for unconditional surrender, this was ignored (most likely by Stalin but maybe Churchill). We let them keep Emperor Hirohito anyway, so the whole exercise of saying we would only take unconditional surrender, dropping Fat Man and Little Boy, killing hundreds of thousands and then letting them keep Hirohito was a farce. Stalin had pledged to enter the war against Japan the week that the bombs were dropped, suggesting it was more about trying to prevent Soviet expansion and showing American power to Stalin than about Japan.

Posted by Reality Man | March 24, 2008 8:27 PM

Saving face for the perps of the Nanking Massacre, the creators of Unit 731, etc. is VERY important. More people died at bayonet point in Nanking in 1937 than died at Hiroshima and Nagasaki combined and the unconditional surrender of a regime that would commit that kind of atrocity was important.

And as for using the bomb as a demonstration against Stalin:

Given Order 227, the wholesale deportation of the entire population of Chechnya (400,000 people), a significant number of which died in railroad boxcars spending a month forgotten for a month at a railyard while on their way to Kazakhstan, the Ukrainian Golodomor of the 1930s (up to 8 million deaths) and Stalin's track record in post-war Europe, was a demonstration of the power of the atom bomb really a BAD thing?

Posted by calipygian | March 24, 2008 8:36 PM

"Stalin had pledged to enter the war against Japan the week that the bombs were dropped, suggesting it was more about trying to prevent Soviet expansion and showing American power to Stalin than about Japan."

Why would you have a problem with this as a secondary motive?

"Our own intelligence operatives had intercepted Japanese military communications showing the Japanese were willing to surrender as long as they could keep the Emperor."

I love how this keeps being repeated as if it should have meant anything to a commander in chief. A surrender is by definition a public act. If I don't tell you I've surrendered, I shouldn't expect you to act as if I have, even if you read an e-mail where I told a third party I wanted to. Especially not if I'm still firing my gun at you.

This "Mars Attacks" mentality would render a country defenseless against enemy propaganda. If you're running the country, all your enemy has to do is start rumors of peace to get you to lay down your arms.

Posted by John S. | March 24, 2008 8:48 PM

Saving face for the perps of the Nanking Massacre, the creators of Unit 731, etc. is VERY important. More people died at bayonet point in Nanking in 1937 than died at Hiroshima and Nagasaki combined and the unconditional surrender of a regime that would commit that kind of atrocity was important.

Again, I don't think anyone is arguing against the atomic bombings on the grounds that Imperial Japan wasn't an evil regime, guilty of terrible crimes. I agree that the Rape of Nanking was worse than the atomic bombings. And, obviously, civilians have to accept at least some responsibility for the actions of their government.

That said, the civilians in Hiroshima and Nagasaki weren't responsible for the Rape of Nanking. The argument that all civilians are guilty of the crimes committed by their government, and that it is therefore moral and legal to kill civilians, is explicitly rejected by the US military and the US government, but explicitly embraced by terrorist organizations including al Qaeda.

I've taken a side in this thread against the atomic bombings but I actually think it's a very close call. However, you're on firmer ground making your stand on the pragmatic/historical point that the bombings may have actually saved Japanese and/or American lives. Once you start arguing that it was America's right or obligation to avenge Japanese atrocities by killing Japanese women and children you put yourself in very unsavory company.

Posted by JB | March 24, 2008 8:57 PM

The a-historical notion that Japan's military was willing to concede flies in the face of all the actual facts. The military was willing to fight on after the two bombs were dropped. It was only the intervention of the emperor (and even then, an abortive coup nearly succeeded) who was able to bring the military to heel.

Absent those bombs, the alternative was a bloody invasion. And no, I don't care what Eisenhower said - he was mostly unaware of the pacific theater at the time.

Posted by James Robertson | March 24, 2008 9:36 PM

"And no, I don't care what Eisenhower said - he was mostly unaware of the pacific theater at the time."

Okay, if you don't care about what Eisenhower thought because he wasn't in the Pacific Theater at the time, what about Douglas MacArthur.

Here's a summary:

"Norman Cousins was a consultant to General MacArthur during the American occupation of Japan. Cousins writes of his conversations with MacArthur, 'MacArthur's views about the decision to drop the atomic bomb on Hiroshima and Nagasaki were starkly different from what the general public supposed." He continues, "When I asked General MacArthur about the decision to drop the bomb, I was surprised to learn he had not even been consulted. What, I asked, would his advice have been? He replied that he saw no military justification for the dropping of the bomb. The war might have ended weeks earlier, he said, if the United States had agreed, as it later did anyway, to the retention of the institution of the emperor.'"

Source: Norman Cousins, The Pathology of Power, pg. 65, 70-71.

http://www.doug-long.com/quotes.htm

Posted by Jeet Heer | March 24, 2008 10:12 PM

Re Jeet Heer

This is the same Douglas MacArthur who confidently told President Truman during the Korean War that he could approach the Yalu River without fear of intervention by the Chinese Communists.

Posted by SLC | March 24, 2008 10:45 PM

The above poster is right. If you dont nuke Japan, then at a bare minimum you have to seal off the island and create an embargo, which surely would have led to the starvation of many millions of civilians and children.

So, why not have an embargo of things like oil and metal, but allow food and medical supplies through?

Also, for those who are happy to kill mass numbers of civilians in the name of possibly stopping a war faster, simple question: why didn't we at least demonstrate the power of nuclear bombs on a purely military target first, to see what Japan's reaction would be? And if you insist that only the destruction of cities could have a sufficiently devastating effect (based on your no doubt exhaustive research on the psychology of 1940s Japanese leaders) why not drop leaflets on Hiroshima and Nagasaki a week or two in advance, to warn them to get because their cities were targeted to be destroyed? Or do you feel certain that Japanese leaders wouldn't have surrendered if we were leveling their cities one after another but allowing the inhabitants time to escape?

Posted by Jesse M. | March 24, 2008 10:51 PM

Re 23456

Excuse me. Mr. 23456 is forgetting something. The Japanese launched a sneak attack on Pearl Harbor without any warning. The US invasion of Iraq was no surprise and was telegraphed at least 6 months in advance with the Government of Iraq informed of its imminence and also informed what would be required to avert the operation. One can agree or disagree with the adventure in Iraq but the notion that there was some parallel with Pearl Harbor is piffle.

Posted by SLC | March 24, 2008 11:00 PM

Circa 1945, agreement to retain the Emperor was not something the Allies were going to agree to prior to a capitulation. You can wish that were so all you want, but it doesn't make it so. The fact remains that the Japanese military was interested in fighting on even after the bombs fell.

Posted by James Robertson | March 24, 2008 11:15 PM

And since the Japanese were defeated, what the Japanese military was interested in was not materially significant.

Blockade the country, sink their shipping. It's over. If they don't surrender, the starvation of their citizens is on the heads of state of Japan, or on the citizens themselves if they support that state, not the US.

And that situation is entirely different from the so-called "sanctions" against Iraq, which deliberately targeted the Iraqi population in an attempt to get them to overthrow Saddam. It had little effect on the Iraqi state itself.

So don't even think about trying that comparison.

Posted by Richard Steven Hack | March 25, 2008 1:12 AM

"I love how this keeps being repeated as if it should have meant anything to a commander in chief. A surrender is by definition a public act. If I don't tell you I've surrendered, I shouldn't expect you to act as if I have, even if you read an e-mail where I told a third party I wanted to. Especially not if I'm still firing my gun at you.

This "Mars Attacks" mentality would render a country defenseless against enemy propaganda. If you're running the country, all your enemy has to do is start rumors of peace to get you to lay down your arms.

Posted by John S. | March 24, 2008 8:48 PM"

Except this wasn't enemy propaganda. This was intra-Japanese military communications between the top brass that we intercepted. Did I say they had surrendered? No. What the intelligence said was that the Japanese military was willing to surrender if they could keep the emperor, but as long as we required unconditional surrender, they would fight. Considering that we let them keep the emperor after all of that, we have to wonder what the whole point of nuking them in the first place is if instead we could have just said "surrender and you can keep Hirohito." If they did surrender, we could have had the MacArthur administration, the peace constitution, etc. If they didn't, we could start nuking actual military targets. I wouldn't care if we dropped 20 A-bombs on Japanese targets if those were legitimate military targets. However, dropping them on civilian populations was just sick.

Posted by Reality Man | March 25, 2008 3:06 AM

@Richard Steven Hack

May I remind you that Japan still occupied most of Eastern China at the time of the bombings, so it was not completely defeated. The bombings at the very least ended the SINO-JAPANESE WAR WHICH WAS GOING ON SINCE 1933.

Everything has to be viewed in a larger context. Yes, a lot of terrible decisions were made, but it was in an environment where some people were in a state of war for most of their lives.

Posted by Jack | March 25, 2008 3:11 AM

Rev. Wright -- who has been criminally maligned by the media, if you view his entire sermons -- would be on firmer ground indicting the U.S. for mass murder, directly or by proxy, in Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, Chile, Guatemela, Nicaragua, El Salvador, Angola, Mozambique, Indonesia, Iraq, etc. ad nauseam, than Japan. (He did mention Panama.)

While Hiroshima and Nagasaki brought a truly evil empire to an end -- with much less loss of life than the alternatives of invasion or blockade -- these other countries never attacked or threatened us. Their only crime was trying to free themselves from our domination (Arbenz, Allende) or becoming inconveient to their CIA sponsors (Noriega, Saddam).

Posted by Eric | March 25, 2008 4:03 AM

@JB

Just because the atomic bombings were wrong doesn't mean we couldn't have done much worse without being as bad as the Imperial Japanese or the Nazis. I think that civilized societies, or societies that aspire to be civilized, should judge themselves by their own standards, not by comparing themselves favorably to absolute depravity.

But once again, in the context of the situation how can anyone speak of standards? It was a global low point in morality, with already most if not all of the laws of warfare broken.

And just by the postings on this blog, it seems the Allied leaders who made the decision to bomb would have been violating somebody's standards no matter what. Because everyone wants an end to war and everyone wants to save lives, but those aren't always mutually inclusive.

Posted by Jack | March 25, 2008 4:12 AM

The American people never confront the truth about anything. It's been that way from Day 1 and it'll never change. That's why a Newt Gingrich can disparage Obama's speech as "disapointing and shameful". Why Hannity and O'Reilly can lick their lips and chomp their gums sell outrage over Rev. Wright's comments from here to eternity.

Now, on the bright side- a healthy number of voters really care more about their economic woes and if they have loved ones who've served in Iraq- they care more about that than Obama's pastor problem. McCain is a 71 year old white fella a little hazy about Al-Queda and Iran and he wants War and more War! and he don't give a damn or have a clue about what people are going through. Can Obama still win in November? This isn't 1972 and he's not McGovern. It's not 1988 and he's not Dukakis. And, it's not 2004 and he's a better candidate than Kerry. I say he can.

Posted by Trevor | March 25, 2008 4:23 AM

The Japanese armies in China, once cut off from re-supply from Japan by US submarines, would eventually have been forced to surrender as well. Or they would have eventually been defeated by US and Chinese forces.

Irrelevant to the overall issue.

Posted by Richard Steven Hack | March 25, 2008 5:15 AM

If they didn't, we could start nuking actual military targets. I wouldn't care if we dropped 20 A-bombs on Japanese targets if those were legitimate military targets. However, dropping them on civilian populations was just sick.
Posted by Reality Man

You're pretty ignorant, or perhaps we should say just ignorant based on the excreble American media and "dumbed down to black underclass academic level to pass with minimum effort" public schools.

Pacifists so ill-educated, indulge their fetish in "noble enemy civilians lives", both that the A-bombings had no military value and the life of an enemy civilian is far more sacrosanct and valuable than an American soldiers...

Both cities were targeted as prelude to invasion of the Southern Island group, for their military targets - which - given Japanese custom, were located with no zoning plans, in civilian areas...

Unlike a few of the 97 firebombed cities, which had no direct military use, but were bombed anyways for circuitous reasons - food and rice for the military and factory workers...etc..

Hiroshima was headquarters for the 2nd General Army, which was the force the US would face in Operation Olympic. The Bomb wiped out the 2nd Army Command. Mazda had its factories there, just as they do now...but back then they were cranking out thousands of rifles and machine guns for civilian groups being organized to kill the US invaders. In the harbor were Hiroshima's critical port facilities (operated by precious innocent civilians ) that supplied 1/3rd the war material shipping on the Inland sea Japan used to deadly effect. Out in Hiroshima harbor was Japan's poison gas factory (also operated by precious innocent civilians) supplying the mustard, Lewisite, and phosgene gases used on Chinese, as well as "boutique" gases made to order for Unit 731 experiments. Hiroshima was also a major war material trans-shipment point to inland-made explosives in warehouses where precious innocent civilians stocked up the bombs and rations for Japan's Armies.

Hiroshima? The center of Mitsubishi Heavy Industries. Japans greatest Zaibatsu.

Planes, torpedos, tanks, artillery, shipbuilding - Mitsubishi did it all, and Nagasaki was it's heart and origin. It was targeted for Mitsubishi Steel and Arms works complex and the Mitsubishi Torpedo factory, which is why the bombs landed between the two war materials complexes inland and behind hills that shielded the heart of the City and most the population from blast and fire effects. The Mitsubishi plants and all the innocent civilians making torpedoes and artillery were toast, though. As were 5 army bases around the Mitsubishi sites. And rendered the key Port inoperable because all rail and electricity to the Port was severed by the bomb blast.

Posted by chris ford | March 25, 2008 6:37 AM

I love this theory:

Blockade the country, sink their shipping. It's over. If they don't surrender, the starvation of their citizens is on the heads of state of Japan, or on the citizens themselves if they support that state, not the US.

By 1945, the American public was tired of the war - which was also a factor in the decision. You can wish that Truman would have ordered an indefinite blockade, but - in the face of the kinds of kamikaze attacks that would have generated, and the endless drip, drip, drip of casualties, it simply would not have been sustainable.

Truman needed to end the war, and he needed to end it as quickly as was possible.

Posted by James Robertson | March 25, 2008 6:52 AM

Eric,

Very true. Reverend Wright has indeed been criminally maligned by the mass media. The record of our country's behavior in Nicaragua, Guatemala, El Salvador, the Dominican Republic, Chile, Vietnam, Laos, and many other countries certainly does qualify as mass murder, and Rev. Wright should have said so. It's hard for me to think of a single U.S. intervention in the third world since the Korean War which was morally defensible. An evil empire, indeed.

Reality Man,

I agree, using the bombs on military targets would have been entirely different thing.

Posted by Hector | March 25, 2008 10:08 AM

Hector,
In your opinion, did the Sandanistas commit mass murder in Nicaragua?
How about the North Vietnamese (before we became deeply involved)?

Posted by curious | March 25, 2008 1:13 PM

Curious,

No.

Posted by Hector | March 25, 2008 1:38 PM

chris ford wrote:
You're pretty ignorant, or perhaps we should say just ignorant based on the excreble American media and "dumbed down to black underclass academic level to pass with minimum effort" public schools.

Pacifists so ill-educated, indulge their fetish in "noble enemy civilians lives", both that the A-bombings had no military value and the life of an enemy civilian is far more sacrosanct and valuable than an American soldiers...

So I take it you reject the centuries-old Just War concept, and think that Bin Laden's bombing of the WTC was morally no worse than his bombing of the USS Cole? Of course, it doesn't seem like you have any actual moral arguments against the "Just War" philosophy, just sneering contempt for those "pacifists" who have a "fetish" for "noble enemy civilian lives" (one can almost hear the sneer).

Oh, and I liked how you managed to slip in a wholly irrelevant note about blaming the "black underclass" for "dumbed-down" US education. You stay classy, chris ford!

In the harbor were Hiroshima's critical port facilities (operated by precious innocent civilians ) that supplied 1/3rd the war material shipping on the Inland sea Japan used to deadly effect. Out in Hiroshima harbor was Japan's poison gas factory (also operated by precious innocent civilians) supplying the mustard, Lewisite, and phosgene gases used on Chinese, as well as "boutique" gases made to order for Unit 731 experiments.

More sneering references to "precious" civilian lives in place of argument. So I suppose you think the "Just War" philosophy says that even civilians working at jobs directly related to military weaponry should be spared at all costs? You're pretty ignorant, or perhaps we should say just ignorant based on the complete lack of emphasis on philosophy in modern schools and in the media. Perhaps you should look over this article discussing the Just War philosophy's position on killing civilians, which says:

Why do Just War theorists argue that civilians are entitled to immunity from harm? The answer is a complex one but it rests upon the claim that only those capable of harming others can be denied protection of their right to life. Soldiers forfeit this right once they take up arms and become dangerous to combatants and civilians on the other side. By contrast, civilians who are not capable of harming others must be treated as innocent in wartime. Walzer argues that, 'The relevant distinction is...between those who make what soldiers need to fight, and those who make what they need to live, like all the rest of us'.7 Attacking munitions factories where civilians work is permissible but attacking their homes is prohibited.8 Civilians only lose their immunity from attack whenever they 'are actually engaged in activities threatening and harmful to their enemies'.9 On this basis, Walzer was highly critical of U.S. targeting of Iraq's power generating facilities during the Persian Gulf War. It is estimated that these strikes resulted in the deaths of as many as 100,000 Iraqi civilians through the loss of water, power and sewage facilities.10

Posted by Jesse M. | March 25, 2008 5:17 PM

Re: It is estimated that these strikes resulted in the deaths of as many as 100,000 Iraqi civilians through the loss of water, power and sewage facilities

I find that hard to credit. Hurricane Katrina trashed the power grid in New Orleans and Missippissi, and Wilma did the same in S. Florida, and Ivan likewise in Pensacola the year before. How many people died as a result of that?
Probably there were some deaths (and more illnesses) as a result, but not of that magnitude.

Posted by JonF | March 26, 2008 7:23 AM

Re JonF's comment "Re: It is estimated that these strikes resulted in the deaths of as many as 100,000 Iraqi civilians through the loss of water, power and sewage facilities

I find that hard to credit. Hurricane Katrina trashed the power grid in New Orleans and Missippissi, and Wilma did the same in S. Florida, and Ivan likewise in Pensacola the year before. How many people died as a result of that? "
------------
Several differences:
1) New Orleans had the rest of the country providing succor --Iraq had no one
2) Iraq is a desert -- with the polluted Euphrates being the only water source
3) Water treatment plants were targeted as well as power plants

The US Aid Group "Physicans for Human Rights " warned the US Government is 1991 that its plans were likely to increase the Iraqi infant mortality rate by 67,000 PER YEAR.

The Red Cross confirmed in 1999 that the death toll among young children had more than doubled in the 1990s due to polluted water and malnutrition. See
http://www.icrc.org/Web/eng/siteeng0.nsf/iwpList74/4BBFCEC7FF4B7A3CC1256B66005E0FB6#a1.

See also http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iraq_sanctions#Infant_and_child_death_rates

As I've noted, Bin Laden cited the deaths of 600,000 Iraqi children from US sanctions as one of the three main grievances justifying an Al Qaeda war on the USA.

Posted by Don Williams | March 26, 2008 8:51 AM