Coming
in September
From AK Press
Featuring Essays by:
Edward Said, Robert Fisk, Michael Neumann, Shahid Alam, Alexander
Cockburn, Uri Avnery, Bill and Kathy Christison and More
Recent
Stories
August
6, 2003
David
Krieger
Remembering Hiroshima and Nagasaki
Stan
Goff
Military Equipment and Pneumonia
August
5, 2003
Uri
Avnery
The Prisoner of Ramallah: Arafat at
74
Forrest
Hylton
Terrorism and Political Trials: the
View from Bolivia
Ray
McGovern
"We Cook Estimates to Go"
David
Morse
Poindexter's Gambit
Edward
Said
Orientallism: 25 Years Later
George
W. Bush
My Resumé So Far
Hammond
Guthrie
It's Incremental, Watson!
Website
of the Day
National Prayer Day
August 4, 2003
Bruce
K. Gagnon
Another Peace Activist Detained by
Airport Cops: My Story
David
Lindorff
Fear-Mongering About Social Security
Mark
Zepezauer
George F. Will: Descent into Self-Parody
James
Plummer
Tracking You Through the Mail
Mickey
Z.
Marriage Insecurity from Sharon to Bush
Bruce
Jackson
News that Isn't News: How the NYT's
Pimps for the White House
August
2 / 3, 2003
Tamara
R. Piety
Nike's Full Court Press Breaks Down
Francis
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My Alma Mater, the University of Chicago, is a Moral Cesspool
David
Vest
Sons of Paleface: Pictures from Death's Other Side
Neve Gordon
Nightlife in Jerusalem
Uri
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Their Master's Voice:
Bush, Blair and Intelligence Snafus
Robert
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Paternalistic Democracy for Iraq
Jerry
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Israel, Yellowcake and the Media
Noah Leavitt
What's Driving the Liberian Bloodbath: Is the US Obligated to
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Landau
The Film Industry: Business and Ideology
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One Big Prison Yard: the Meaning of George Jackson
Thomas
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In the Deep, Deep Rough: Reflections on Augusta
Amadi Ajamu
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Alex Coolman
Who Moved My Soap: Trivializing
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July
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Hull
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Speculation Blues
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July
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The Hidden Costs of the Iraq War
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ND Jayaprakash
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Bush's Top 40 Lies
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Another Botched Raid; Another Massacre
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Julie Hilden Caught on Tape
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True Lies: the Use of Propaganda
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Gore Vidal
The
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Francis Boyle
Impeach
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Click Here
for More Stories.
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August
5, 2003
An
Open Letter to Nicholas Kristof
Japanese
Don't Think They Were Bombed for Their Own Good
By
HUGH SANSOM
You are one of the few journalists I
have seen note the anniversary of the atomic bombings. (Only
marginally less attention than on the 50th anniversary.) But
are you seriously suggesting in your column "Blood
on Our Hands?" that there is a developing consensus
in Japan that the atomic bombing was a good thing, or at least
necessary, and that, because some Japanese see it as justified,
it was justified?
That some Japanese see an after-the-fact
justification for the bombings is not equivalent to saying the
U.S. should have bombed Hiroshima (and Nagasaki, which merits
only the briefest mention in your essay.) Nor does it say anything
of actual American intelligence, motives, etc, at the time. There
can be no doubt that the bombings occurred in a context of revoltingly
racist sentiment towards Japanese (raising the question of whether
the U.S. would have used the bomb against Germany if it had been
ready.) If there is a prevailing view in Japan, it is that the
U.S. still needs to admit that the bombings were morally reprehensible,
even while Japan has yet to fully confront its own atrocities.
There is certainly no suggestion in Japan
(and little in the U.S.) that either Hiroshima or Nagasaki were
military targets. "Hiroshima and Nagasaki were chosen as
targets because of their concentration of activities and population,"
according to the official report of the U.S. Strategic Bombing
Survey. The United States deliberately bombed civilians, something
now recognized internationally -- even by the U.S. -- as a war
crime.
Today, people recognize a distinction
between combatants and non-combatants They did then, too, but
you don't. After the fire-bombing of Dresden, members of Parliament
condemned Air Marshall Harris ("Bomber Harris"). And
after the war, Churchill conceded that the bombing of civilians
had gone too far. (That despite the fact that the British had
faced total loss to the Germans, something that cannot be said
of the United States with respect to the Japanese.)
You seem to concede that even if Hiroshima
was justified, Nagasaki was not. At the least, you equivocate
on this: "The atomic bombings broke this political stalemate...
[plural and ambiguous]" but "We could also have waited
longer before dropping the second bomb...." Are you claiming
the second bombing was necessary, just further down the road.
You must claim this to maintain your case. But the evidence suggests
that the second bombing was planned in advance, in which case
it could not have been a response to a perceived failure of Hiroshima
to have the "necessary" effect.
Your defense of the atomic bombing appears
to amount to nothing more than a reassertion of the standard
American defenses of the past fifty-eight years, with a smattering
of Japanese testimony to make Americans feel better. If there
is an emerging consensus among U.S. historians, there is none
among Japanese. For that matter, what work is your Japanese testimony
intended to do? It doesn't balance, by quantity or quality, the
American accounts.
There are two general features I find
interesting in arguments like yours, whether about Hiroshima
and Nagasaki or Iraq. First is the sudden turn to purely instrumental
reasoning. Moral thought, such as it is in the U.S., routinely
appeals to rights -- the right to property, to life, etc. Rights
are taken to trump the instrumental or utilitarian thinking (especially
of "socialists" and the like). Suddenly, to justify
war, rights fly out the window.
Second is an undercurrent of near-religious
fervor in the defense of American actions. It is taken as axiomatic
that the U.S. acts out of good intentions. Undesirable consequences
are accidental, and ultimately outweighed by good consequences.
Contrary views, especially from "the left" are obviously
false and thus require no substantive response.
In service of this defense of the U.S.,
you do a kind of juggling act with those accounts you accept
and those you challenge. You lump American historians together
as revisionist (and outside the mainstream) while claiming a
consensus has emerged here. So the consensus is revisionist?
Then you take as accepted Japanese accounts which might just
as legitimately be called revisionist. (But why do you say "revisionist"
at all? It's a term now widely and vaguely used to condemn through
guilt by association with actual revisionists about the Holocaust,
or Japanese revisionists about Japan's wartime atrocities.)
I recommend an essay by the late philosopher
John Rawls ("Fifty Years After Hiroshima", Dissent,
1995) -- not one of his great essays, but illuminating on the
ethical issues and reasoning surrounding the bombing.
Finally, I have to ask whether your essay
is intended as an extended metaphor for the war in Iraq? In a
"complex and brutal world," the alternatives to war
were worse than the loss during and following? I took that to
be Bill Keller's line. Is it yours also?
Hugh Sansom
lives in Brooklyn. He can be reached at: sansom@gravitylens.com
Weekend Edition Features for August 2/3, 2003
Tamara
R. Piety
Nike's Full Court Press Breaks Down
Francis
Boyle
My Alma Mater, the University of Chicago, is a Moral Cesspool
David
Vest
Sons of Paleface: Pictures from Death's Other Side
Neve Gordon
Nightlife in Jerusalem
Uri
Avnery
Their Master's Voice:
Bush, Blair and Intelligence Snafus
Robert
Fisk
Paternalistic Democracy for Iraq
Jerry
Kroth
Israel, Yellowcake and the Media
Noah Leavitt
What's Driving the Liberian Bloodbath: Is the US Obligated to
Intervene?
Saul
Landau
The Film Industry: Business and Ideology
Ron Jacobs
One Big Prison Yard: the Meaning of George Jackson
Thomas
Croft
In the Deep, Deep Rough: Reflections on Augusta
Amadi Ajamu
Def Sham: Russell Simmons New Black Leader?
Poets'
Basement
Vega, Witherup, Albert and Fleming
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