Partial Birth Abortion as Contract Killing

Robert Hart's posting here does a fine job of pointing, succinctly, to the lie told and/or believed by too many citizens, about partial birth abortion:

it is painfully obvious that the only reason for Partial Birth Abortion is to complete a contract killing. There is never a medical reason to kill the child.

If a child at 8 months can be delivered and placed into neo-natal care and can survive, why must it be killed simply because the mother wants no baby to survive (even if others would adopt the baby)? If the baby must be delivered in order to save the mother's life, why must he be killed on his way out of the womb and into the daylight and safety?

Isn't it a bit like walking a man on Death Row out of his cell, after feeding him well and keeping him warm for months, into the prison yard, opening the gate, and then, as he puts one foot out into the free world, you execute him with a bullet point blank in the back of the head?

I await the refutations of Rev. Hart's claim from those on the lookout for postings such as this. Isn't what we await in the passage of a so-called Freedom of Choice Act a total ban on interfering with contract killers of babies, among other things? Analyze that.

Comments

[Michael D. Harmon]

There is, sadly, nothing difficult about analyzing this. The point of abortion is to produce a dead baby. Any interference with that goal must and will be stamped out, by any means necessary.

"And they abandoned all the commandments of the Lord their God, and made for themselves metal images of two calves, and they made an Asherah and worshipped all the host of heaven and served Baal. And they burned their sons and daughters as offerings...." (2 Kings 17:17a, ESV)

"And God granted them all for which they had striven; and the heart of a beast in the place of a man's heart was given." (Kipling, "The City of Brass")

[Stuart Koehl]

>>>Isn't it a bit like walking a man on Death Row out of his cell, after feeding him well and keeping him warm for months, into the prison yard, opening the gate, and then, as he puts one foot out into the free world, you execute him with a bullet point blank in the back of the head?<<<

That would be more merciful than the actual procedure.

[Aleksei]

We have a long tradition of sacrificing babies to Ba'al as a `fertility rite,' no? (One) irony is, though, that I'm sure that even the most rabid NARAL supporters would be horrified to hear about those ancient cults.

[Stuart Koehl]

>>>We have a long tradition of sacrificing babies to Ba'al as a `fertility rite,' no? (One) irony is, though, that I'm sure that even the most rabid NARAL supporters would be horrified to hear about those ancient cults.<<<

Don't be too certain. I have frequently interrogated college students on whether there are some things that are categorically wrong. A lot of them either say know, or can't think of any. I suggest human sacrifice, and a few are willing to concede that, but others are very quick to point out that we should not be judging other cultures. It was wrong, they say, for Cortez to eradicate the Aztec religion, even though it was slaughtering upwards of 20,000 people per year and waged constant warfare with neighboring tribes in order to capture the requisite number of victims. In some circles, multi-culty trumps all.

[nemo]

Of course Cortez was wrong. Otherwise how do you justify the preservation of a religion that slaughters upwards of 3000 babies per day and wages constant unchastity to beget the requisite number of victims?

[Stuart Koehl]

>>>Of course Cortez was wrong. Otherwise how do you justify the preservation of a religion that slaughters upwards of 3000 babies per day and wages constant unchastity to beget the requisite number of victims?<<<

Sometimes sarcasm and irony can be too oblique even for my exceptional powers of comprehension and discernment. This is one of those moments.

[W.E.D. Godbold]

Mine are well developed--though perhaps not as acute as Stuart's--and this one passed me by as well.

[Aleksei]

That is, they have to say Cortez was wrong in order to be able to justify what's going on now.

I think.

[Stuart Koehl]

I think they say Cortez was wrong because they--that is, the post-modernists and multiculturalists--are prisoners of their relativism. If all cultures are equally valid, it becomes impossible to condemn any culture for any thing--except, of course, to condemn European culture for its intolerance. That only European culture possesses the kind of introspection necessary to even question to superiority of one's own culture never enters into their minds. That the Aztecs would laugh at the notion that perhaps European civilization was equally valid with their own does not occur to them. That's why they are unable to make a categorical condemnation of human sacrifice. Or, in the immortal words of one undergrad I taught, "Hey, man, that was their thing, you know?"

[Nick]

The only answer I ever get is the Nazi's. They are the universally understood badguy. I then gleefully point out that I'm fine with that "culture" dieing by force.

[Stuart Koehl]

Apparently the Nazis are making a comeback as poor, misunderstood victims. That, at least, is the general gist of Pat Buchanan's book; there have also been in the last decade several volumes making the claim that the Germans were as much victims of the war as anyone, due to the bombing of their cities by the Western allies, and the rape of the eastern provinces by the Red Army. And, of course, the Japanese were just minding their own business when we nuked them for no reason whatsoever.

[Bobby Winters]

>>And, of course, the Japanese were just minding their own business when we nuked them for no reason whatsoever.
<<

We honored Vets at Rotary today. One or two remarked they are set to be shipped out to Japan when the Bomb was dropped. They didn't state their regrets that it was.

[Stuart Koehl]

To quote Paul Fussell's essay, "Thank God for the Atomic Bomb!":

"What did you do in the Great War, Daddy?" The recruiting poster deserves ridicule and contempt, of course, but here its question is embarrassingly relevant, and the problem is one that touches on the dirty little secret of social class in America. Arthur T. Hadley said recently that those for whom the use of the A-bomb was "wrong" seem to be (Page 15) implying "that it would have been better to allow thousands on thousands of American and Japanese infantrymen to die in honest hand-to-hand combat on the beaches than to drop those two bombs." People holding such views, he notes, "do not come from the ranks of society that produce infantrymen or pilots." And there's an eloquence problem: most of those with firsthand experience of the war at its worst were not elaborately educated people. Relatively inarticulate, most have remained silent about what they know. That is, few of those destined to be blown to pieces if the main Japanese islands had been invaded went on to become our most effective men of letters or impressive ethical theorists or professors of contemporary history or of international law. The testimony of experience has tended to come from rough diamonds – James Jones is an example – who went through the war as enlisted men in the infantry or the Marine Corps.

Anticipating objections from those without such ,experience, in his book WWII Jones carefully prepares for his chapter on the A-bombs by detailing the plans already in motion for the infantry assaults on the home islands of Kyushu (thirteen divisions scheduled to land in November 1945) and ultimately Honshu (sixteen divisions scheduled for March 1946). Planners of the invasion assumed that it would require a full year, to November 1946, for the Japanese to be sufficiently worn down by land-combat attrition to surrender. By that time, one million American casualties was the expected price. Jones observes that the forthcoming invasion of Kyushu "was well into its collecting and stockpiling stages before the war ended." (The island of Saipan was designated a main ammunition and supply base for the invasion, and if (Page 16) you go there today you can see some of the assembled stuff still sitting there.) "The assault troops were chosen and already in training," Jones reminds his readers, and he illuminates by the light of experience what this meant:

"What it must have been like to some old-timer buck sergeant or staff sergeant who had been through Guadalcanal or Bougainville or the Philippines, to stand on some beach and watch this huge war machine beginning to stir and move all around him and know that he very likely had survived this far only to fall dead on the dirt of Japan's home islands, hardly bears thinking about."

Another bright enlisted man, this one an experienced marine destined for the assault on Honshu, adds his testimony. Former Pfc. E. B. Sledge, author of the splendid memoir With the Old Breed at Peleliu and Okinawa, noticed at the time that the fighting grew "more vicious the closer we got to Japan," with the carnage of Iwo Jima and Okinawa worse than what had gone before. He points out that
what we had experienced [my emphasis] in fighting the Japs (pardon the expression) on Peleliu and Okinawa caused us to formulate some very definite opinions that the invasion. . . would be a ghastly bloodletting. . . . It would shock the American public and the world. [Every Japanese] soldier, civilian, woman, and child would fight (Page 17) to the death with whatever weapons they had, rifle, grenade, or bamboo spear.

The Japanese pre-invasion patriotic song, "One Hundred Million Souls for the Emperor," says Sledge, "meant just that." Universal national kamikaze was the point. One kamikaze pilot, discouraged by his unit's failure to impede the Americans very much despite the bizarre casualties it caused, wrote before diving his plane onto an American ship, "I see the war situation becoming more desperate. All Japanese must become soldiers and die for the Emperor." Sledge's First Marine Division was to land close to the Yokosuka Naval Base, "one of the most heavily defended sectors of the island." The marines were told, he recalls, that

"due to the strong beach defenses, caves, tunnels, and numerous Jap suicide torpedo boats and manned mines, few Marines in the first five assault waves would get ashore alive – my company was scheduled to be in the first and second waves. The veterans in the outfit felt we had already run out of luck anyway. . . . We viewed the invasion with complete resignation that we would be killed – either on the beach or inland."

And the invasion was going to take place: there's no question about that. It was not theoretical or merely rumored in order to scare the Japanese. By July 10, 1945, the prelanding naval and aerial bombardment of the coast had begun, and the battleships Iowa, Missouri, Wisconsin, and King George V were steaming up and down the coast, softening it up with their sixteen-inch shells.

On the other hand, John Kenneth Galbraith is persuaded that the Japanese would have surrendered surely by November without an invasion. He thinks the A-bombs were unnecessary and unjustified because the war was ending any way. The A-bombs meant, he says, "a difference, at most, of two or three weeks." But at the time, with no indication that surrender was on the way, the kamikazes were sinking American vessels, the Indianapolis was sunk (880 men killed), and Allied casualties were running to over 7,000 per week. "Two or three weeks," says Galbraith. Two weeks more means 14,000 more killed and wounded, three weeks more, 21,000. Those weeks mean the world if you're one of those thousands or related to one of them. During the time between the dropping of the Nagasaki bomb on August 9 and the actual surrender on the fifteenth, the war pursued its accustomed course: on the twelfth of August eight captured American fliers were executed (heads chopped off); the fifty-first United States submarine, Bonefish, was sunk (all aboard drowned); the destroyer Callaghan went down, the seventieth to be sunk, and the Destroyer Escort Underhill was lost. That's a bit 'of what happened in six days of the two or three weeks posited by Galbraith. What did he do in the war? He worked in the Office of Price Administration in Washington. I don't demand that he experience having his ass shot off. I merely note that he didn't.

Likewise, the historian Michael Sherry, author of a recent book on the rise of the American bombing mystique, The Creation of Armageddon, argues that we didn't delay long (Page 19) enough between the test explosion in New Mexico and the mortal explosions in Japan. More delay would have made possible deeper moral considerations and perhaps laudable second thoughts and restraint. "The risks of delaying the bomb's use," he says, "would have been small – not the thousands of casualties expected of invasion but only a few days or weeks of relatively routine operations." While the mass murders represented by these "relatively routine operations" were enacting, Michael Sherry was safe at home. Indeed, when the bombs were dropped he was going on eight months old, in danger only of falling out of his pram. In speaking thus of Galbraith and Sherry, I'm aware of the offensive implications ad hominem. But what's at stake in an infantry assault is so entirely unthinkable to those without the experience of one, or several, or many, even if they possess very wide-ranging imaginations and warm sympathies, that experience is crucial in this case.

In general, the principle is, the farther from the scene of horror, the easier the talk. One young combat naval officer close to the action wrote home in the fall of 1943, just before the marines underwent the agony of Tarawa: "When I read that we will fight the Japs for years if necessary and will sacrifice hundreds of thousands if we must, I always like to check from where he's talking: it's seldom out here." That was Lieutenant (j.g.) John F. Kennedy. And Winston Churchill, with an irony perhaps too broad and easy, noted in Parliament that the people who preferred invasion to A-bombing seemed to have "no intention of proceeding to the Japanese front themselves."

A remoteness from experience like Galbraith's and (Page 20) Sherry's, and a similar rationalistic abstraction from actuality, seem to motivate the reaction of an anonymous reviewer of William Manchester's Goodbye Darkness: A Memoir if the Pacific War for The New York Review of Books. The reviewer naturally dislikes Manchester's still terming the enemy Nips or Japs, but what really shakes him (her?) is this passage of Manchester's:

"After Biak the enemy withdrew to deep caverns. Rooting them out became a bloody business which reached its ultimate horrors in the last months of the war. You think of the lives which would have been lost in an invasion of Japan's home islands – a staggering number of Americans but millions more of Japanese – and you thank God for the atomic bomb."

Thank God for the atom bomb. From this, "one recoils," says the reviewer. One does, doesn't one?

[W.E.D. Godbold]

Hey Stuart,
There were a fair number (probably close to what they were in the general population) of literate folks fighting WWII from what I read of Ambrose and VDH. The paratroopers probably had a higher population of smart and literate folks than an average survey of the American population and they would certainly have been involved in any invasion of the home islands. My son is going through VDH's books and I picked one up the other day (*Ripples of Battle*) and read the horrible account of Okinawa. Hanson says that no sane judgement about the nuking of Japan can be rendered without taking into account the effect that horror had on the soldiers who fought there. The kamikazes came in waves of hundreds of planes and they had at least 4000 more of those folks waiting in the wings for an invasion of Japan (though it's likely they couldn't have gotten people to fly them all). The only alternate course (it seems to me) was to assassinate all the militarists who were running the government, but this wasn't a tractable option.

[Truth Unites... and Divides]

I don't know how this thread evolved from partial birth abortion to war, but I'll add my own turn to this thread by showing one little Christian lady standing bravely against and amidst a GLBT mob of protesters:

Anti proposition 8 protesters harass little old lady.

Any of you brave enough to do what this little old unarmed lady did all by herself?

[Joe Long]

" 'What did you do in the Great War, Daddy?' The recruiting poster deserves ridicule and contempt, of course..."

Frankly, he lost me right there. An truly admirable sentiment, tellingly phrased; what's ridiculous or contemptible about it?

[Joe Long]

"Any of you brave enough to do what this little old unarmed lady did all by herself?"

Wow. I salute her. "What did you do in the war for civilization, Grandma?" She'll have her answer.

It would be most unwise of me, I fear, to walk into a situation like that - "a man's got to know his limitations", after all.

Thank God that reporter was there - which is not an observation I often make.

[Rob G]

**You think of the lives which would have been lost in an invasion of Japan's home islands – a staggering number of Americans but millions more of Japanese – and you thank God for the atomic bomb."**

This sentiment flies in the face of what Fr. Schmemann has written about the idea that persons, each being of infinite value, cannot be totaled or valued numerically. It's impious to say that five people are somehow "worth more" than one person. Do you throw one off the lifeboat to save the other five?

In that same sense, it's impious to approve the deaths of 800,000 noncombatants (total dead in the 2 A-bomb drops, and the Tokyo and Dresden bombings) in order to "save" a potentially greater number. When you do this you make persons into objects, and that is not only impious, it is un-Christian.

Such, however, is the nature of modern science. Ignoring Christ's warning, it only counts its costs after project completion, if at all.

[Stuart Koehl]

>>>Frankly, he lost me right there. An truly admirable sentiment, tellingly phrased; what's ridiculous or contemptible about it?<<<

Just this: if you were a combat infantryman, you either have to lie or say nothing.

[Stuart Koehl]

So, Rob, having been through this several times already, what would you have done?

[Rob G]

That's not my point, Stuart. I'm simply trying to provide an alternative moral viewpoint from which the thing can be looked at. As I said, I'm following Fr. Schmemann here. What would he have done? I don't know. I doubt, however, that he would thank God for the atom bomb, which to me seems both callous and impious.

[W.E.D. Godbold]

The anchor of that newscast ended by saying "There's a lot of hate on both sides." Funny, he must have been seeing something I wasn't. I'm with Joe. I'm afraid my response wouldn't have been temperate or edifying. It's nice to see that those large sodomites (sorry, I'm assuming) aren't afraid to bully a woman half their size.

[W.E.D. Godbold]

Jesus suggested that those who live by the sword die by the sword. Does this apply to individuals only or to nations? I think he was saying this to Peter personally but he also meant to indict the nation of Israel (which later took up pagan Roman means of military force to try to secure "God's" goals--and was destroyed as a result.)

Fast forward a bit: this saying could not reasonably be applied to the United States in 1939. (Our military was paltry: undermanned, undertrained, and with bad equipment) It could reasonably be applied to both 1939 Germany and Japan. They tried to create "liebensraum" and the "Greater Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere" (respectively) by military might. They reaped what they sowed. The atomic bomb saved the lives of those of the nations who did not start the war and did not want it started. But it also saved the lives of Japanese who would have been sacrificed (by their wicked overlords) in an invasion. So why is it inappropriate to thank God for that?

Turning back to the subject of this thread. God is judging our nation for the sin of abortion, at least partially, by the absence of the good things that all 43 million of those aborted babies would have done in their lives. All their contributions to society are blotted out. The love that they had to give will never be experienced (this side of the Resurrection from the Dead), the talents they had are unutilized, the gifts of the Spirit that could have helped soothe the world are now inaccessible to this place that deemed them unworthy to live.

[Rob G]

"So why is it inappropriate to thank God for that?"

To put it starkly, I have a huge moral problem with killing several hundred thousand non-combatants, including women, children, and the elderly, in a sort of exercise of human calculus, then thanking God for the ability to do so after the fact.

By the way, I see "total war" and abortion as two things of a piece when it comes to the modern culture of death.

[Stuart Koehl]

>>>That's not my point, Stuart. I'm simply trying to provide an alternative moral viewpoint from which the thing can be looked at. As I said, I'm following Fr. Schmemann here. What would he have done? I don't know. I doubt, however, that he would thank God for the atom bomb, which to me seems both callous and impious.<<<

You are correct, though Father Alexander never went so far as to attempt to apply his principles to a real-world situation. Orthodoxy recognizes that the fallen nature of the world often leaves us with no good options, only bad and worse ones, all of which imperil our souls. It is for this reason that we pray for our civil authorities and the armed forces, because they are the ones who do have to make those choices, and we pray that theirs are wise ones guided by the Holy Spirit.

In that regard, President Truman and his military and scientific advisors were confronted by a situation that could only be resolved through a choice among evils. I would thank God for the Atomic Bomb because this was the evil choice that actually caused the least death and suffering. Moreover, taking an extended view, I would thank God for the Atomic Bomb because it has done something that all of the Church councils, papal bulls, and the preaching of all the saints could not do--make war between major powers unthinkable. If there has been peace in Europe from 1945 to the present day, it isn't due to the creation of the European Union, or the blathering of the United Nations but the existence of nuclear weapons that simply take the option of continental warfare off the table. It may not be the way it would be done in the Kingdom of God, but the Kingdom is not yet here in its fullness, and we should be glad that the world is not safe for conventional warfare.

[Stuart Koehl]

>>>Jesus suggested that those who live by the sword die by the sword.<<<

Yet he also told his Disciples to sell their cloaks and buy swords. Discuss.

>>>By the way, I see "total war" and abortion as two things of a piece when it comes to the modern culture of death.<<<

"Total War: A theoretical concept, implying the use of all available resources and weapons in war, and the elimination of all distinctions between military and civilian targets. Even Hitler's Germany refrained from using all its available weapons (e.g., nerve agents) and refrained from some success-maximizing measures, such as the execution of unproductive prisoners of war.

The term is propagandistic and literary; strategic discourse uses "central war" for direct combat between nuclear superpowers, and general war for combat between them that includes nuclear weapons."

--Stuart L. Koehl and Edward N.Luttwak, "A Dictionary of Modern War", HarperCollins (New York) 1990.

[GL]

>>>Turning back to the subject of this thread. God is judging our nation for the sin of abortion, at least partially, by the absence of the good things that all 43 million of those aborted babies would have done in their lives. All their contributions to society are blotted out. The love that they had to give will never be experienced (this side of the Resurrection from the Dead), the talents they had are unutilized, the gifts of the Spirit that could have helped soothe the world are now inaccessible to this place that deemed them unworthy to live.<<<

And, as I have said repeatedly, He is also passing judgment on "pro-life" Christians who have sought and are even now seeking to reject what His Word declares in unambiguous terms to be His blessing upon His people by the act of contraception "by the absence of the good things that all [those untold millions who would have been conceived and born] would have done in their lives. All their contributions to society are blotted out. The love that they had to give will never be experienced ([and, since we denied them any existence -- except for those conceived and then killed by the abortifacient properties of many contraceptive -- these would-be brothers and sisters in Christ will not even know] the Resurrection from the Dead), the talents they [would have] had are unutilized, the gifts of the Spirit that could have helped soothe the world are now inaccessible to this place that deemed them unworthy to live."

It is impossible to condemn abortion by this argument without most "pro-life" Christians, myself included, condemning ourselves. Cf. Matthew 7:1-5. If one condemns abortion, it is simply impossible to avoid hypocrisy and not likewise reject contraception. And, of course, as I have already noted, one of the judgments He has passed on us is that the votes of those we denied life might have given us overwhelming majorities in both houses of Congress and staunchly pro-life Presidents who would have placed on the Supreme Court long ago the justices needed to overturn Roe v. Wade. All of us who denied life to others share in the guilt due for the ongoing slaughter of millions of babies. Again, we are, to paraphrase Merlin from That Hideous Strength, "the falsest [humans] of any at this time alive" if we condemn abortion while practicing contraception in order to limit the size of families. The pagan pro-choice advocates are at least consistently honest in their positions as are those pro-life advocates who condemn both abortion and contraception.

May the Lord have mercy on our souls and on our nation for what we have done and may He save us from the temporal and eternal consequences of our sins.

[GL]

Whether he was right to do so, my father thanked God for Truman's decision because he was in training for the amphibious invasion of Japan at the time of its surrender. He believed that had Japan not surrendered, there was a good chance that he would have been on of the multitude of dead lying on a Japanese beach. Likewise, I too thank God for Truman's decision as I would never have been conceived had my father been one of those killed in a conventional attack on the Japanese homeland.

I do understand the arguments against what Truman ordered, but I can hardly be objective in my assessment of whether it was the right thing to do.

[Will Fehringer]

Stuart, what was the rationale for the two bombings? Would just one have been less effective in bringing about surrender? Also what of the notion of a demonstration in the sight of Tojo and Hirohito before attacking Nagasaki and Hiroshima? It seems to me a fair warning in this case would have been appropriate and honorable, and if it led to a quick surrender and the saving of 800,000 Japanese lives, the best outcome of all.

Thanks,
Will

[Will Fehringer]

Stuart, what was the rationale for the two bombings? Would just one have been less effective in bringing about surrender? Also what of the notion of a demonstration in the sight of Tojo and Hirohito before attacking Nagasaki and Hiroshima? It seems to me a fair warning in this case would have been appropriate and honorable, and if it led to a quick surrender and the saving of 800,000 Japanese lives, the best outcome of all.

Thanks,
Will

[Rob G]

Well, of course an advocate of 'total war' is going to call the term propagandistic. One would think you wrote that definition yourself!

Oh wait....

[W.E.D. Godbold]

The Germans and Japanese didn't leave their adversaries a lot of room for non-total war. To wage war with one hand tied behind the back would have been the equivalent of letting the worse societies destroy the better. The guys in charge of the allied nations had a God-given duty to defend their people against the aggressors. (It's facile to say, but the aggressors obviously did not have a God-given mandate to take what they wanted by force.)

It seems to me probable that the spirit that animated Hitler and the Japanese militarists by the end of the war was a demonic one. (As I tell my kids, Satan is highly unoriginal--all his plots *always* end in murder and suicide.)
The only way the bad guys would renounce their demonic aspirations is to completely destroy their means of waging war. It was possible to do this to Germany by means of invasion. After Okinawa, it became apparent that an invasion of the Japanese home islands would be extraordinarily costly for both the Americans but also for the Japanese. The most merciful way of dealing with them was to show them that we had the ability to destroy them without wasting one more American life.

I grant you that this demonstration might have been possible without incinerating two Japanese cities. I do think the carnage in the Pacific War and the ferocity and "inhuman" manner in which the Japanese conducted the defense of their islands made some of the American decision makers jaded about death and destruction. There may also have been something of a desire for revenge. I personally would have liked to see what nuking the top of Mount Fuji would have done to the Japanese psyche (while not killing many Japanese). Perhaps some purely military targets might have presented themselves as a suitable demonstration. But none of us were (a) there and (b) authorized to make that decision. It's easy to second guess, but one ought to at least ponder the situation as it appeared to the guys making it before we condemn them for it (for as much good as it does seeing that they've already been thrown in the queue for judgment by the only one Whose word has real weight in the matter).

[W.E.D. Godbold]

Greg,
I think that there is something to your argument, but unless you believe (like Origen) in pre-incarnate souls, then it seems strange to say that you're depriving someone of life by contraception in the same way that one is deprived of life in an abortion. We know that abortion is killing someone. In the case of contraception, while it is a bad thing, one never knows if any particular conjugal act would have borne fruit at all. But, in principle, I agree with you. We ought to have given more children the opportunity to enter the world.

There's a PJ O'Rourke piece at the Weekly Standard that made me laugh (even while some of it is wrong-headed and ridiculous). Anyway, it contained this quote that resonated with me:

"The real message of the conservative pro-life position is that we're in favor of living. We consider people--with a few obvious exceptions--to be assets. Liberals consider people to be nuisances."

[Rob G]

I've always found it disturbing that one of the cities we chose was Nagasaki, the Japanese city with the largest Christian population.

In any case, I'm sorry, gents, but I just can't accept the morality of intentionally targeting civilians. Since I will not be convinced, I should probably just leave it at that.

[Stuart Koehl]

>>>Stuart, what was the rationale for the two bombings? Would just one have been less effective in bringing about surrender? <<<

After the first nuclear attack on Hiroshima, the United States waited for signs from Japan that they would accept the terms of the Potsdam Declaration. None were forthcoming. in fact, because of our ability to read Japanese diplomatic and military codes, we knew that they not only rejected the opportunity to surrender, they were continuing with their preparations to resist the invasion. Many in the Japanese high command believed that Hiroshima was a fluke, so there was no reason to surrender. The second attack on Nagasaki proved our ability to continue nuclear attacks indefinitely, and this gave Hirohito the opening he needed to make a surrender announcement. Note, however, that even after Nagasaki, a significant number of general staff officers believed that Japan should continue to fight, because Japan had proven it could absorb two nuclear attacks--which in their minds were no worse than the firebombing attacks that began in May 1945.

Nagasaki was something in the way of a bluff on our part--there were no more nuclear bombs on Tinian, and only one more had been completed back in the States. Others were in the pipeline, but all were now being reserved to support the invasion. Being able to read the Japanese communications, U.S. commanders knew that the Japanese were building up their forces behind the selected invasion beaches (there aren't too many on Japan, so guessing where we would go was easy). To negate what would have been Japanese superiority at the point of contact, we planned to drop at least six bombs on or immediately behind the landing beaches, wait seventy two hours for the fallout to settle, and then invade through the ashes. Be grateful we did not have to do that.

>>>Also what of the notion of a demonstration in the sight of Tojo and Hirohito before attacking Nagasaki and Hiroshima?<<<

We only had two bombs. And what if the demo was a dud?

>>>It seems to me a fair warning in this case would have been appropriate and honorable, and if it led to a quick surrender and the saving of 800,000 Japanese lives, the best outcome of all.<<<

All of the cities on the nuclear target list had been spared from conventional bombing (we wanted a virgin target to calibrate the results of the bomb), and for several weeks before the attack, we had dropped leaflets on each city telling the people to leave.

Furthermore, as I explained above, the Japanese did not want to surrender after we bombed Hiroshima; would a demonstration blast have been more effective? There were many who did not want to surrender after two nuclear attacks. Sometimes you have to accept that the enemy does not share your fundamental scale of values.

[Stuart Koehl]

>>>Liberals consider people to be nuisances.<<<

Well, that makes sense. Liberals are in fact nuisances, so it stands to reason they would think all people are like them, therefore all people are nuisances.

[Stuart Koehl]

>>>I've always found it disturbing that one of the cities we chose was Nagasaki, the Japanese city with the largest Christian population.<<<

Better, perhaps, to have bombed Berlin, all of whose population were Christian? This one always seemed excessively lame to me.

>>>In any case, I'm sorry, gents, but I just can't accept the morality of intentionally targeting civilians. Since I will not be convinced, I should probably just leave it at that.<<<

When one is engaged in industrial warfare and the adversary has mobilized the entire population to support the war effort, and all of the enemy's industry has been distributed to household factories (as, in fact, was the case with Japan), and when the enemy has in fact designated the entire adult population as soldiers and begins training them to fight to the last man and woman (even using suicide vests and bamboo staves), just who is a civilian and who is a soldier?

The Japanese themselves made no such distinction. Every Japanese life belonged to the Emperor, and could be sacrificed at his direction. The Japanese in fact planned to put all "useless" mouths to death--the aged, the infirm, infants and children too young to fight--all were to be killed in order that the remaining food would go to sustain those who would fight to the death at the command of the Emperor. In opposing an enemy of that sort, the distinction between soldier and civilian vanishes. And that is one reason why ANYTHING that would prevent an invasion of Japan or a long, drawn-out blockade, should be viewed as a blessing.

[Rob G]

"Better, perhaps, to have bombed Berlin, all of whose population were Christian? This one always seemed excessively lame to me."

Geography is not my strong suit, but last time I checked, Berlin's not a Japanese city.

"just who is a civilian and who is a soldier?"

Again, sorry, but I view this type of question as sophistry. Ratiocinate enough and you can rationalize anything.

[Michael D. Harmon]

Stuart's comments, with which I am in general agreement, lead me to point out that the total death toll in World War II is commonly cited in standard reference works as 100 million people (from all causes). To single out the A-Bomb when guns, bombs, Zyklon B, disease and starvation were far more effective killers seems a bit off the point. War is the evil. But when the alternative is slavery -- along with plenty of death even in the absence of war, as Hitler, Stalin, Mao and Pol Pot have shown us -- war may be the lesser evil.

Which is a long way of saying, "Lord have mercy, Christ have mercy, Lord have mercy."

[Stuart Koehl]

>>>Geography is not my strong suit, but last time I checked, Berlin's not a Japanese city.<<<

The original plan was to use the bomb on Germany. Funny how scientists who got all squeamish about dropping their toy on a Japanese city had no such qualms about nuking the Nazis. Had the Normandy Invasion failed, or the Battle of the Bulge gone more in Hitler's favor, and Germany was still fighting in the summer of 1945, then be sure that we would have dropped the bomb on as many German cities as necessary to get them to quit.

>>>Again, sorry, but I view this type of question as sophistry. Ratiocinate enough and you can rationalize anything.<<<

The man or woman who makes the rifle or the bullet is contributing as much to the war as the man who pulls the trigger. The teenager with the rifle cannot fight if he has no bullets, no beans and no gasoline. On the other hand, the modern industrial nation-state has shown the ability to absorb unbelievable losses in battle and keep on fighting.

If you wish to look for moral culpability, it rightfully belongs at the doors of those who deliberately employ civilians for military production, or who intermingle their military forces with the civilian population. They erase the line between soldier and civilian, and place the latter at risk by making them legitimate targets of war.

[Stuart Koehl]

>>>To single out the A-Bomb when guns, bombs, Zyklon B, disease and starvation were far more effective killers seems a bit off the point. <<<

To further put things into perspective, since the end of World War II, two very simple weapons, the AK-47 and the machete, have killed more people (by perhaps an order of magnitude) than were killed by the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Most of the people killed by the Kalashinkov and the machete were far more innocent than the people working on their little lathe or drill punches in their paper houses in the two Japanese cities.

[Rob G]

You miss my point about Nagasaki, Stuart. Why among Japanese cities was the most 'Christian' one chosen?

On the other issue, I disagree, so there's no point continuing. Very simply, I view bombing civilians in the same way that I view abortion for rape or incest. There may be reasons supporting it, but you just don't do it.

[Truth Unites... and Divides]

I have been engaged in a discussion with an evangelical who makes the proposition that "you can't both faithfully proclaim sola fide and forge working alliances with papists and Mormons. You simply are not faithfully upholding the priority of the gospel if you give space on your web site for a Catholic priest to advocate his moralism without reference to the gospel."

I respectfully differed with him.

My polite disagreement engendered the following response from him:

"Because I would say Mormonism, magisterial Roman Catholicism, and all varieties of modern Judaism represent the very kind of false religions the big-picture spiritual warfare is all about. Those teachings are precisely the sort of ideological strongholds Paul says we are supposed to be tearing down (2 Corinthians 10:5).

As a matter of fact, Rome's denial of the gospel, together with her catalogue of extrabiblical superstitions and manmade doctrines that keep untold millions from trusting Christ alone, strike me as far grosser evils than abortion. That's not to minimize the evil of abortion; but hopefully it puts the wickedness of damning false religion in perspective."[bold-face in the original]

I then wrote back that I disagreed with him that Catholicism is a "far grosser evil" than abortion.

He deleted that comment.

The point: There are some Protestants who don't believe in being co-belligerents with Catholics on the presssing socio-cultural-moral problems of the day because they believe such alliances compromises the Gospel.

I am both disappointed, disheartened, and disturbed to have discovered this attitude among some Protestants.

[Stuart Koehl]

>>>You miss my point about Nagasaki, Stuart. Why among Japanese cities was the most 'Christian' one chosen?<<<

Several reasons. First, Nagasaki was a major Japanese port and shipbuilding center, as well as a major production center for ordnance and munitions (e.g., the Mitsubishi Steel and Armaments Works)-- thus an important and legitimate military target. Second, it had not been bombed at the time that list of potential nuclear targets was compiled. The criteria used to compile the list included:

(1) Larger than three miles in diameter, with important targets in a large urban area
(2) Vulnerable to blast damage, and
(3) Unlikely to be attacked by August 1945.

According to the Target Committee memorandum, "Any small and strictly military objective should be located in a much larger area subject to blast damage in order to avoid undue risks of the weapon being lost due to bad placing of the bomb."

Nagasaki was not, in fact, the designated target on 9 August. Chuck Sweeney's B-29 "Bock's Car" was flying to Kokura, but when it arrived over the target they found 7/10ths cloud cover--beyond the level permissible for a nuclear strike (we wanted to bomb visually for accuracy, and then be able to document the results of the strike). So, running low on fuel, Sweeney headed for Nagasaki, which was the secondary target. When they got there, they also found cloud cover, and had to orbit the city several times (running dangerously low on fuel in the process) before the bombardier found a hole in the clouds large enough to see the designated aim point and bomb visually. Had they not found that hole, Sweeney was prepared to carry the bomb to Okinawa, the only friendly base he could reach with the bomb still aboard. In the event, the bombardier's hasty bomb run resulted in the bomb detonating some 3000 meters northwest of the aimpoint--which ought to tell you something about precision bombing in World War II.

Because the bomb was badly placed, and because the terrain of the city was hilly, the blast damage from the Nagasaki bomb was considerably less than that of the Hiroshima bomb, despite its higher yield (21 kT vs 13 kT), which explains why there were only about 40,000 fatalities at Nagasaki vs. 70,000 at Hiroshima. By way of comparison, the conventional fire bombing of Tokyo in May 1945 killed more than 100,000 people.

>>>Very simply, I view bombing civilians in the same way that I view abortion for rape or incest. There may be reasons supporting it, but you just don't do it.<<<

That's why I would never vote for you for president, and would probably frag you if you became a military officer. You're more concerned with your own rectitude than with your responsibility to the people in your care. You also don't seem able to make proper analogies, since there is very little in common between abortion in cases of rape and incest, and the bombing of civilians in the course of addressing legitimate military targets.

[W.E.D. Godbold]

By the grace of God, Rob has not found himself called either to politics or to military service.

I sometimes think that we (read: me) spend way too much time thinking about things that don't concern us. I made an earlier comment about The Screwtape Letters where I noted that Screwtape counseled Wormwood to get his patient to worry about all sorts of possibilities that he would never really have to deal with instead of focusing on doing well what needed doing at that moment.

It follows then that blogs are tools of Satan.
:-)

[Stuart Koehl]

By the way, would you have felt better if it was Kokura and not Nagasaki? In that case, you would have to ask why fate, or providence, or whomever, caused Kokura to be obscured by clouds, or caused a small hole to open in the clouds over Hiroshima just minutes before Sweeney would have had to turn his plane towards Okinawa. In other words, Nagasaki was either an accident, or chosen by some unseen power.

[Stuart Koehl]

>>>I sometimes think that we (read: me) spend way too much time thinking about things that don't concern us. <<<

I am fortunate that so many things do concern me.

[Rob G]

"You're more concerned with your own rectitude than with your responsibility to the people in your care."

What the...?!! I appear to have suddenly been transferred from Mere Comments to the Psychic Network's blog!

"You also don't seem able to make proper analogies, since there is very little in common between abortion in cases of rape and incest, and the bombing of civilians in the course of addressing legitimate military targets."

Both involve the direct and willful killing of innocents for some perceived greater or proportionally greater "good," either real or imagined. My belief is simply that the direct and willful killing of innocents is wrong, full stop.

"It follows then that blogs are tools of Satan."

I've heard more than one priest say as much.

[DGP]

>>make war between major powers unthinkable.

I've been trying to stay out of this argument, but I observe this is not necessarily the best possible outcome. War may be terrible, but a standoff between major powers can easily prevent humanly intolerable tyrannies or anarchies from meeting their natural end -- invasion by another power exploiting the alienation of the populace or the absence of government. The standoff can make major powers so nervous that lesser purgations can't occur -- or, even if hot wars appear, it can make it impossible to resolve them.

I'd argue that the Cold War caused just these catastrophes, especially in Africa, and contributed to irresolution in the Middle East.

Moreover, as far as the bomb is concerned, a false choice has been offered between (a) A-bombing cities and (b) slogging through a bloody, conventional campaign. Other options might have been (c) A-bombing less densely populated targets, (d) A-bombing *near* a city, (e) launching a conventional campaign pending face-saving negotiations with the Emperor, (f) a Cold War-style containment of Imperial Japan. It is even harder to predict the outcome of these (not necessarily exclusive!) options than the conventional campaign -- harder to predict, which is why these options weren't taken.

[Joe Long]

Stuart: "Just this: if you were a combat infantryman, you either have to lie or say nothing."

Or you could say..."I was a combat infantryman."

[Stuart Koehl]

>>>Both involve the direct and willful killing of innocents for some perceived greater or proportionally greater "good," either real or imagined. <<<

That's pretty much like saying an ass is a man because both are mammals. Let us take apart the analogy: when one procures an abortion because of rape or incest, one is killing an ABSOLUTELY innocent victim for no other reason than the convenience of the woman carrying the child--who, let us all acknowledge, is not a rapist nor guilty of incest. There is a marked disproportionality between the complicity of the victim (none) and the impact on his life (terminal), to say nothing of the difference in the effect on the woman (embarrassment, physical and psychic discomfort) and on the child (death).

Now, look at the situation in the atomic bombings. In the first place, the objective of the attacks was not "to kill civilians", but to end a war that was killing tens of thousands of people every day--most of them ALSO innocent victims (funny, nobody ever brings up what the Japanese were doing in China, the Philippines, Malaya, Burma or the Dutch East Indies). The attacks were directed at major urban areas that were also major military-industrial complexes. Hiroshima was not only a center of the defense industry, it was also the headquarters of the Japanese Second General Army, responsible for the defense of all southern Japan. If that doesn't meet the criteria for military legitimacy, I don't know what does.

As noted, the Japanese government DELIBERATELY turned the entirety of its cities into legitimate military targets by dispersing its defense industries into the very homes of its citizens. It also mustered all citizens over the age of sixteen into a militia, which it was training to defend Japan against the forthcoming invasion. The Japanese, not the Americans, made every Japanese man, woman and child into a legitimate target of war. The Japanese themselves had no compunction against putting to death all of its citizens it did not consider useful to the war effort--such plans were committed to paper, they exist, they would have been implemented had the war continued.

In attacking Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the United States directed overwhelming force at legitimate targets, accepting that in the process, a number of innocent people might be killed or injured. But it also took steps to mitigate that possibility, first through the target selection process, second by giving advance warning and directing people to leave the cities. That is a far different thing from indiscriminately attacking civilians.

Moreover, it is a very different thing from getting an abortion. The primary purpose--the only purpose--of abortion is to kill an unborn child. The reasons for bombing Hiroshima and Nagasaki were complex, but most certainly did not include killing civilians for the sake of killing civilians. Demonstrate the power of the bomb, yes. Destroy Japanese industry and command structure, yes. Kill civilians--only to the extent that those civilians were part and parcel of the Japanese war machine, for which, again, blame the Japanese, not us.

Attempts to create a moral equivalency between the two acts is not only logically and factually erroneous, but is counterproductive because it creates a moral equivalency between abortion--which is never justified--and the bombing of military targets in which civilians are killed--which can be justified depending upon the circumstances (there were women and children on the island of Peenemunde, where the Germans were developing the V-1 and V-2; the British flattened the whole island, killing many of the civilians--justified or not?). If you wanted a better analogy for the atomic bombings, you might have chosen a hysterectomy performed to remove an ectopic pregnancy, or perhaps chemotherapy used to treat a pregnant woman that unfortunately kills her unborn child. If you are absolutely punctilious about protecting the unborn child, then your only alternative is to let the mother die. In the same way, President Truman had the choice between blowing up two cities--legitimate military targets thanks to the Japanese--or letting as many as a million American soldiers, plus several million Japanese soldiers and civilians die in a protracted ground invasion.

Or, to present the third option, Truman could have chosen an extended close blockade of the Home Islands, that would still have resulted in the deaths of several tens of thousands of Americans (blockade required the seizure of Formosa, as well as maintaining battle groups in close proximity to Japan, where they would have been attacked by Kamikazes). This would have resulted in the deaths from starvation and disease of several million Japanese, not to mention all those "useless mouths" the Japanese government would have killed to provide more food for the fighters. Is this your idea of a "more moral" solution? To sit back passively and allow women, children, the elderly, the crippled, the sick, to slowly starve? if you think I am exaggerating what would happen, you need only look at the effect of the British blockade of Germany in World War I--and Germany was a lot more self-sufficient in food than Japan.

So, basically, you're in a quandry, Rob--there are NO good choices, at least there are none that are going to let you get off scot-free. And now you know why our leaders get the big bucks, and why we pray for them in the Liturgy--they get to make this kind of salvation-imperiling decision, so you don't have to do it yourself.

[Stuart Koehl]

>>>Or you could say..."I was a combat infantryman."<<<

Kind of says it all, yet is says nothing to those who don't know.

[Truth Unites... and Divides]

Stuart: "And now you know why our leaders get the big bucks, and why we pray for them in the Liturgy"

Several weeks before the election I watched the movie, "13 Days", for the very first time. It was about the Cuban missile crisis with the Kennedy brothers, Jack and Bobby, and it starred Kevin Costner and Bruce Greenwood.

I was gripped by the drama (even if they took a lot of literary license), and the back-and-forth between the administration and the war-hawkish chiefs over an appropriate U.S. response.

Anyways, the idea of Barack Obama and his Chicago cronies sitting in the White House after watching the movie gives me a strong sense of foreboding. I really feel uncomfortable with Obama overlooking our national security. (Although I do hope that I'm badly wrong about being pessimistic about his presidency.)

P.S. FWIW, I think Stuart's arguments are substantively better than Rob's about Truman's decision to bomb Japan.

[Bill R]

"And now you know why our leaders get the big bucks, and why we pray for them in the Liturgy--they get to make this kind of salvation-imperiling decision, so you don't have to do it yourself."

Amen. But wait--who'd you say was making those decisions now?

[Stuart Koehl]

>>>War may be terrible, but a standoff between major powers can easily prevent humanly intolerable tyrannies or anarchies from meeting their natural end -- invasion by another power exploiting the alienation of the populace or the absence of government. <<<

That is true, but most wars do not take on this manichean coloring, yet are just as bloody and terrible as those that are. Moreover, conventional weapons have reached such a level of destructiveness that even a war fought between modern states without nuclear weapons is really something that you don't want to contemplate. Consider, for example, the military maxim, "To order a city defended is to order it destroyed". Most of Western Europe, indeed, large portions of Korea and even the Middle East, are heavily urbanized, and any war would involve fighting to take or hold cities--in the course of which those cities would be destroyed and a large proportion of their populations either killed, wounded or displaced. There are also the concomitant moral and spiritual upheavals that go with any major war. Just as the Civil War essentially remade the moral and spiritual landscape of the United States, so two World Wars remade Europe (and by extension, the United States) far more than the invention of the Pill ever did. Yet this goes largely unrecognized.

>>>Other options might have been (c) A-bombing less densely populated targets, (d) A-bombing *near* a city, (e) launching a conventional campaign pending face-saving negotiations with the Emperor, (f) a Cold War-style containment of Imperial Japan.<<<

When evaluating alternatives in a contra-factual, "what if?" alternative history scenario, one has to be careful not to assume more knowledge than was available to the protagonists at the time. Two facts to consider--the United States had just three atomic bombs in August 1945. There had been only one test (of a plutonium bomb), and none at all of uranium bomb (it was so simple, they were pretty sure it would work). We knew next to nothing about nuclear explosions and their effects. We did not know if our bombs would work under field conditions. So, the idea of a "shot across the bow"--either bombing a deserted island or some rural area, was just not practical (it was suggested, however, by a few scientists). But, as I noted, what if the bomb was a dud? What if the Japanese were not all that impressed?

We blew one of their cities to smithereens, and in the ensuing three days, the Japanese made not one move towards surrender; indeed, the General Staff was preparing to order martial law to suppress any attempts to surrender (there was even an abortive coup on the eve of the actual surrender, foiled only by an unanticipated blackout that prevented the conspirators from seizing the Emperor and forcing the war to continue).

The idea of bombing a "less densely populated area" would seem to run counter to the notion that all innocent life is sacred. A less densely populated area would not be a militarily valid target, and thus the people there (e.g., school children evacuated from cities) really would be non-combatants. And then again, there were only three bombs.

The idea that there would be "face saving" negotiations after the start of a ground campaign ignores the actual history of the Japanese military, plus four years of American experience fighting the Japanese across the Pacific. Okinawa was widely seen as a "dress rehearsal" for the invasion of the Home Islands, and the Japanese fought for every square inch of that island; casualties among the native Okinawans were appalling.

This option also presumes that the U.S. would succeed in landing on Japan, but that was far from certain. As I said, we were reading the Japanese mail, and were watching their forces build up behind the beaches selected for Operations Coronet/Olympic. Had the invasions continued on schedule, the Japanese would actually have outnumbered us on the day of the invasion (point of reference--we outnumbered the Germans at Omaha Beach by about four-to-one, but barely managed to get ashore).

For this reason, the Combined Chiefs of Staff were already planning the use of nuclear weapons in a tactical role: up to six atomic bombs (all that we would have by late September) would be dropped on and immediately behind the invasion beaches to destroy or disrupt the defenses. Our forces would land seventy-two hours later. Of course, we knew nothing of radiation effects back then, so today we would have several hundred thousand U.S. veterans dead from cancers of all sorts.

And don't think for a second that this option would be easier on the Japanese civilian population. Japan is very densely populated, nowhere moreso than around the good harbors and beaches we (of necessity) had selected as landing zones. Towns, villages, even minor cities--all would have been obliterated, and a much larger area contaminated by nuclear fallout.

Even then, I doubt that the Japanese would have surrendered, and the fighting would have gone on until the entire Japanese command structure had been destroyed. Even with tactical nuclear support, you are looking at a million U.S. and several million Japanese casualties, the vast majority of them civilians.

As for 'containment", that's basically the blockade option, the result of which would have been the slow deaths from starvation and disease of several million Japanese civilians, plus the deaths of several tens of thousands of U.S. troops either taking bases from which to mount the blockade, or on ships struck by Kamikazes while maintaining the blockade.

No good options, only a few less bad ones. If your principal concern is to end the war with the least loss of life, then the bombs look pretty good, especially if you crunch the numbers.

[Stuart Koehl]

>>>Amen. But wait--who'd you say was making those decisions now?<<<

OK--we're screwed.

[DGP]

But if the Japanese were believed to be as determined as you suppose, then neither could it be reliably claimed that bombing two cities should have changed their minds. But it did, which makes one wonder about all these "what if?" scenarios, including those used to justify the bombing -- the notion that millions of others should otherwise have to die.

[labrialumn]

If we hadn't used the atomic bombs, we probably would have had to kill every last Japanese woman and child before they'd surrender. It would have been horrific. The result might have been Soviet domination of -all- of Europe. I'm not too sure about the choice of targets.

Another thought is that if we hadn't used the A-bombs on Japan, there would have been an exchange with the Soviet Union at a later date, possibly over Berlin. Instead of two, there could have been thirty to sixty, and American and Russian cities destroyed, since we didn't have the accuracy to do counter-silo strikes.

Stuart, that is more allied casualties per week from kamikazes than have died total for the entire Iraq war and reconstruction. If people only remembered, or just talked to their parents from time to time!

If nearly every able-bodied American male had experienced shooting or bayoneting Japanese women and children, what sort of effect do you think that would have had on the country in the years and decades after they got home (those that survived, that is). This would be far worse in terms of psychological trauma to the whole country, along with a loss of manhood similar to what England suffered in the Great War.

Rob, that is interesting. Perhaps it is true. But does that then mean that trying to avoid collateral damage with surgical strikes is wrong?

[Stuart Koehl]

>>>But if the Japanese were believed to be as determined as you suppose, then neither could it be reliably claimed that bombing two cities should have changed their minds. But it did, which makes one wonder about all these "what if?" scenarios, including those used to justify the bombing -- the notion that millions of others should otherwise have to die.<<<

There are several excellent books on the last year of the war in the Pacific, the planning for the invasion of Japan, the planning of the Atomic Bomb missions and the machinations behind the Japanese surrender (which, as I noted, was a near-run thing). I most strongly recommend "Codename: Downfall" by Norman Polmar and Thomas Allen, and "Retribution" by Max Hastings. Unlike earlier histories, these have the advantage of declassified U.S. documentation, including intelligence gathered through cryptanalysis.

[Stuart Koehl]

>>>If we hadn't used the atomic bombs, we probably would have had to kill every last Japanese woman and child before they'd surrender.<<<

On Saipan, hundreds if not thousands of Japanese civilians committed suicide by jumping off cliffs rather than surrender to the Americans. Much of this is documented on film, including the horrendous sight of a woman clutching a baby in one arm and holding a toddler by hand in the other, rejecting the outstretched hand of a Marine and jumping into the sea. Sailors on ships offshore reported the bodies floating by for days.

On Okinawa, considered by Japan to be part of its home territory, thousands of civilians committed suicide, but as many, if not more, were simply killed by the Japanese army when they attempted to surrender. For details about what happened on Okinawa, and how it shaped American planning about the invasion of Japan and inspired the use of the Atomic Bombs, see "Tennozan:The Battle of Okinawa and the Atomic Bomb", by George Feifer.

>>>f nearly every able-bodied American male had experienced shooting or bayoneting Japanese women and children, what sort of effect do you think that would have had on the country in the years and decades after they got home (those that survived, that is).<<<

I believe it would have left tens of thousands of veterans pyschologically scarred. I have read reports (with which I do not entire concur) that the high incidence of post traumatic stress disorder in returning Iraq veterans is at least partially due to fighting in an environment where women and children are active combatants.

[Stuart Koehl]

And now, for something completely different. . . .

I will attempt to pull the two divergent threads together.

One of the phoniest and most morally repugnant excuses for allowing abortion--including partial birth abortion--to remain legal in this country is the so-called "seamless garment" theory that all life is equally sacred (who disagrees?) and that it is therefore wrong to give a privileged position to unborn life as long as there is any social injustice in the world, which is a long list that includes war, capital punishment, racism, sexism, ageism, income inequality, pollution, global warming. . .

This failure to make distinctions is either the result of a lack of reasoning skills, or a deliberate attempt to flatten and de-emphasize the categorical difference between abortion and the other forms of injustice elevated to the same plane as abortion. The result is attitude that one cannot even begin to address abortion until all the world's problems have been solved, in effect inaugurating the Kingdom of God in this world--something that will not happen short of the Parousia. This in turn is intended to put anti-abortionists on the moral defensive--"You only care about the unborn, not the living".

Perhaps in some cases, that is true, but in most it is not, because this attitude ignores the one thing that makes abortion different: it is one of those things about which there can be no prudential judgment; it is strictly bi-polar: either you allow abortion or you don't. You can't be satisfied with "just a little" abortion, because the moral effect of abortion is the same for one as for one million, in the first trimester and the third. Prudential judgment applies only with regard to modalities used to effect the end of abortion--and here pro-life types differ strongly. Some will settle for nothing short of a blanket abolition, by fiat if necessary, in one master stroke. Others believe in a more gradual rollback, going after "low-hanging fruit" such as partial birth abortion and parental notification, on which there is broad consensus. Yet others feel the need to lay the groundwork for a democratic resolution to the problem by returning it to the state legislatures, and many also believe that a political or judicial resolution will be ineffectual absent a massive change of heart among the people.

But on the other issue, the scope for prudential judgment is much broader. Yes, poverty should be alleviated, but the definition of poverty is a vague moving target (if the bottom 25% are defined as poor, what does that mean in a country where the bottom 25% have more than upper middle class in most other countries?). One can hate war, but only a radical pacifist eschews it under all circumstances. And as we have seen here, there can be wild disagreements on how best to wage war when it comes. In short, there is much more room for legitimate disagreement about other issues than there is about abortion, because abortion takes place for only one reason--to kill an unwanted human being who has done nothing to deserve that fate. Yes, innocent lives are lost every day, and in war, one must sometimes accept the killing of non-combatants. Seldom, however, do civilized nations condone killing civilians as an end in itself. This was not the objective in the bombing of Germany (not even by the British); this was not the objective of the firebombing of Tokyo, or the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. To see what deliberate killing of civilians is, look to the Nazi extermination policies in Eastern Europe, to the Soviet revenge in East Prussia, to the killing fields of Cambodia, or the holocausts of Bosnia, Kosovo, Rwanda and Sudan, where civilians are targeted because they are civilians, not because they happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time, or running a lathe or press-punch used to make rifles or hand grenades. War can be horrible, and in some instances, indistinguishable from abortion--when the objective is simply to get rid of unwanted people. But one of the legitimate reasons to wage war is to prevent or end that other kind of war. It is silly to think that one kind of abortion can be used to end other kinds of abortion.

So, we come back full circle--partial birth abortion, all abortion, in fact, is a contract killing. Genocidal war may not be, strictly, a "contract killing", but it is murder in the same way that abortion is murder. Confronted by it, we do not have the choice of looking the other way, but can only debate on the best way to bring about its end.

[Rob G]

"Kill civilians--only to the extent that those civilians were part and parcel of the Japanese war machine, for which, again, blame the Japanese, not us."

This is precisely the bit I disagree with. If a nine-year old kid is aiming a gun at me or my daughter with the intent of pulling the trigger, I take him out. I do not, however, throw a grenade at the same kid while he's playing soccer because he's on the "wrong side" or because he may pick up a gun later.

"I think Stuart's arguments are substantively better than Rob's about Truman's decision to bomb Japan."

To a certain mindset, the man who argues from pragmatics will often appear to have a better argument than someone who argues from principle.

"But does that then mean that trying to avoid collateral damage with surgical strikes is wrong?"

I don't think so. To me it is the deliberate targeting of noncombatants that is morally problematic (although I do find the term 'collateral damage' both inapt and callous when speaking of human beings -- like 'human resources', but worse. I'm not faulting you, Labrialumn; I fault the militarists and their dishonest language.)

[W.E.D. Godbold]

The last enemy that will be defeated is death.

[Stuart Koehl]

>>>This is precisely the bit I disagree with. If a nine-year old kid is aiming a gun at me or my daughter with the intent of pulling the trigger, I take him out. I do not, however, throw a grenade at the same kid while he's playing soccer because he's on the "wrong side" or because he may pick up a gun later.<<<

You make it sound so nice, and clean, and clear-cut. This is what Clausewitz would call "War on paper", as opposed to "real War". The fact is, nobody shoots at the boy playing soccer. Or throws a grenade at him (at least, not our people--I can point you to people who do so every day as a matter of course). But the boy cannot be viewed in isolation. He's living in a city where his parents work in the munitions industry, making the gun that perhaps some nine year old kid will some day point at you. And they are doing the work not in a discrete factory in an industrial district of the town, which can be attacked without doing too much damage to the surrounding neighborhoods (though you ought to know that the CEP--circular error probability--for U.S. "precison" bombing in World War II was on the order of 1500 meters). Rather, mom and pop are busily turning out gun barrels or stamping shell casings on little machine tools in their living room--right next to where our hypothetical nine year old plays soccer, right next to the room where he sleeps at night. Are you supposing then, that we should forebear from attacking the city in which mom and pop and countless other moms and pops are actively supporting the enemy war effort because junior might get killed in the process? Who decided to let junior live in a little domestic munitions factory, anyway? You need to think seriously on the implications of your ideas, and please, don't ever volunteer for military service.

>>>To me it is the deliberate targeting of noncombatants that is morally problematic (although I do find the term 'collateral damage' both inapt and callous when speaking of human beings -- like 'human resources', but worse. I'm not faulting you, Labrialumn; I fault the militarists and their dishonest language.)<<<

Actually, if anyone is guilty of dishonest language, it is you. You never bother to define what you mean by "deliberate targeting of noncombatants" and you never give examples. When presented with an actual situation, you do not address the problems or options faced by those who have to make decisions in such situations, but fall back on hollow sloganeering.

I presented you with the actual situation facing American military and political officials in August 1945. I presented you with all the options at their disposal. I evaluated--objectively--the likely outcome of each course of action, all of which would result in significantly higher civilian deaths than the actual course taken. You have failed to respond to any of them, in part, I believe, because there is no proper response, and in part because you just don't want to grapple with the reality of decision-making in wartime.

Even the least violent option I presented--a blockade of Japan, without invasion or even continued strategic bombing--would have killed millions of Japanese civilians from starvation, diseases (and probable euthanasia at the hands of the Japanese military). Why is this a superior alternative to the bomb? Because you don't have to participate actively in their deaths? Does this somehow absolve you of the moral responsibility for them? Who's being dishonest?

[Stuart Koehl]

>>>The last enemy that will be defeated is death.<<<

This is true. But we won't be the ones who do it. On the other hand:

"It is not our part to master all the tides of the world, but to do what is in us for the succor of those years wherein we are set, uprooting evil in the fields that we know, so that those who live after may have clean earth to till. What weather they shall have is not ours to rule."

[Rob G]

Whatever, Stuart. I'm tired of being psychoanalyzed here -- stick to sabre-rattling: you're better at it.

After all the books you've recommended here, I suggest just two in return: get a copy of Wendell Berry's "Life is a Miracle" and "Standing by Words" and read them. You might find that not everyone believes that people are figures on a chessboard or, worse, beads on an abacus.

Peace out.

[Truth Unites... and Divides]

Rob G.: "To a certain mindset, the man who argues from pragmatics will often appear to have a better argument than someone who argues from principle."

My mindset... I'm discovering more about it everyday! (heh, heh)

But seriously, I think you're assuming a wrong inference. The man who argues from pragmatics may, nay oftentimes, is arguing from a pragmatics which is unshakeably rooted in morally solid principles.

"You might find that not everyone believes that people are figures on a chessboard or, worse, beads on an abacus."

C'mon Rob. That's not fair. I know it doesn't hurt Stuart's feelings; he probably sees right through this rhetoric; I'd even hazard a small wager that he sees this petulant parting shot as a concession speech that he's won this all important dispute!

[Rob G]

TUAD -- read Berry and get back to me. I know, I know. He's a pacifist (and I'm not). Doesn't mean he can't have good things to say about this stuff.

"I know it doesn't hurt Stuart's feelings"

Stuart? Feelings? Shouldn't use those two words in such close proximity; might be dangerous. ;-)

[summer]

partial birth abortion so so wrong if you have ever had it i feel bad for you