Category: History

Commemorating a Major U.S. War Crime

Friday was the anniversary of the U.S. Bombing of Hiroshima during World War II. Monday is the anniversary of its bombing of Nagasaki.

The explosion of the Fat Man atomic device over Nagasaki is pictured. It rose eleven miles into the sky over Ground Zero.

The important thing, though, is that it—together with the Little Boy device that was deployed over Hiroshima—killed approximately 200,000 human beings. And it ended the war with Japan.

It is understandable that many Americans at the time were relieved that the long burden of the bloodiest war in human history could finally be laid down. Many then, as now, saw the use of nuclear weapons against Hiroshima and Nagasaki as a necessary step to preventing even more casualties.

However, some of the blogging being done to commemorate the attack is most unfortunate.

Consider Michael Graham, who wishes his readers a “Happy Peace Through Victory Day.”

Today marks the anniversary of the single greatest act in the cause of peace ever taken by the United States:

Dropping the A-bomb on Hiroshima in 1945.  That one decision, that one device, saved more lives, did more to end war, and created more justice in the world in a single stroke than any other.  It was done by America, for Americans. It saved the lives of hundreds of thousands—if not millions—of American soldiers and sailors.

So, obviously, President Obama’s not too happy about it. . . .

Euroweenie peaceniks and an annoying number of American liberals see the bombing of Hiroshima as a shameful act.  What is it America should be ashamed for—defeating an enemy that declared war on us? Bringing about the end of a fascist empire that killed millions of people, mostly Asians? Preventing the slaughter of the good guys—Americans—by killing the bad guys—the Japanese?

I am not a Euroweenie or a peacenik or a political liberal or even someone opposed to the use of nuclear weapons in principle. I can imagine scenarios in which their use would be justified. I can even deal with the cheeky “Happy Peace Through Victory Day” headline.

But Mr. Graham’s analysis of the situation on a moral level is faulty.

It is true that, by instilling terror in the Japanese government, the use of atomic weapons prevented further and, in all probability, greater casualties on both sides.

Preventing further and greater casualties is a good thing, but as the Catechism reminds us:

The Church and human reason both assert the permanent validity of the moral law during armed conflict. The mere fact that war has regrettably broken out does not mean that everything becomes licit between the warring parties [CCC 2312].

It isn’t just a question of the goal of an action. The goal may be a good one, but the means used to achieve it may be evil. The Catechism states:

Every act of war directed to the indiscriminate destruction of whole cities or vast areas with their inhabitants is a crime against God and man, which merits firm and unequivocal condemnation. A danger of modern warfare is that it provides the opportunity to those who possess modern scientific weapons – especially atomic, biological, or chemical weapons – to commit such crimes [CCC 2314].

The bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki were definitely acts of war directed to the destruction of whole cities or—at least—vast areas with their inhabitants. The only quibbling could be about whether this was “indiscriminate” destruction. Someone might argue (stretching the word “indiscriminate” rather severely and taking it in a sense probably not meant by the Catechism) that they were not indiscriminate attacks in that they were aimed at vital Japanese war resources (munitions factories, troops, etc.) and the only practical way to take out these resources was to use atomic weapons.

Mounting such a case would face a number of problems. One would have to show that Hiroshima and Nagasaki contained such resources (not that difficult to show) and that these resources themselves were proportionate in value to the massive collateral damage that would be inflicted (a much more difficult task) and that there was no other practical way—like a more targeted bombing—to take them out (again a difficult task).

But for purposes of argument, let’s grant all this. Let’s suppose that there were such resources, and that they were proportionate in value to the massive loss of civilian lives and that there was no other way to get rid of them.

Does that absolve the U.S. of guilt in these two bombings?

No.

You can see why in the logic that Mr. Graham used. It stresses the fact that the use of these weapons saved net lives. This was undoubtedly uppermost in the U.S. military planners’ thinking as they faced the possibility of an extremely bloody invasion of Japan in which huge numbers on both sides would die.

But notice what is not being said—either by Mr. Graham or anybody else: “Hiroshima and Nagasaki contained such important war widgets that without those widgets Japan would be unable to prosecute the war. Thus by taking out those military resources we could deprive Japan of its ability to make war.”

Neither is anybody saying something like this: “We needed to scare Japan into surrender by showing them that we could destroy all of their military resources. We needed to make them terrified of losing all their military resources so that, out of a desperate desire to preserve their military resources, they would surrender.”

These are the dogs that didn’t bark, and they are why this line of argument is a dog that won’t hunt.

The reason nobody says these things is that they were not the thinking behind the U.S.‘s actions. The idea was not to end the war through the direct destruction of military resources in these two cities, nor was it to end the war by scaring Japan into thinking we might destroy all of its military resources. It was scaring Japan into surrendering by threatening (explicitly) to do this over and over again and inflict massive damage on the Japanese population. In other words, to make them scared that we would engage in “the indiscriminate destruction of whole cities or vast areas with their inhabitants.”

That means that, even if Hiroshima and Nagasaki had contained military resources that of themselves would have justified the use of atomic weapons (which is very hard to argue), our intention still was not pure. We were still using Japanese civilians as hostages to the war effort, still threatening to kill civilians if Japan did not surrender. That was the message we wanted the Japanese leadership to get—not, “We will take out your military resources if you keep this up,” but, “We will take out big chunks of your population if you keep this up.”

That meant that the U.S. leadership was formally participating in evil. It does not matter if the attacks of Hiroshima and Nagasaki could (through some stretch of the imagination) be justified in themselves. The fact is that they were used to send a message telling the Japanese government that we would kill massive numbers of the military and civilian population, without discrimination. That message is evil, and to knowingly and deliberately send that message is to formally participate in evil.

That made these attacks war crimes.

Now, make no mistake. I’m an American. I’m a fan of the U.S. But love of the United States should not preclude one from being able to look honestly at the mistakes it has committed in the past. Indeed, it is only by looking at and frankly acknowledging the mistakes of the past that we can learn from them. Love of one’s country should impel one to help it not commit such evils.

Racial discrimination? Bad thing. Allowing abortions? Bad thing. Dropping nukes to deliberately kill civilians? Bad thing. Let’s try not to have things like these mar America’s future.

READ ABOUT THE HIROSHIMA AND NAGASAKI BOMBINGS.

What are your thoughts?

I’m Not Sure That I Approve of This Post

History_channel_logo But it's brilliant.

And hilarious.

And disturbing.

And ironic.

And it definitely awakened my inner TV plot-analyzer instincts.

And the author is right. The History Channel really should try to "add artistic verisimilitude to an otherwise bald and unconvincing narrative."

GET THE STORY.

(CHT: Instapundit.)

I also agree with what the author says about Babylon 5 and Doctor Who (mostly).

Is Helen Thomas an Anti-Semite

On May 27, long-time White House correspondent Helen Thomas made remarks that have caused an uproar.

At the time, she was outside the White House, which was hosting a Jewish heritage event. An interviewer asked her if she had any comments on Israel.

Her reply was, “Tell them to get the hell out of Palestine.”

She went on to say that “they” (meaning the Palestinian people) are an occupied people and that Palestine is “their land.”

When asked where Israelis should go, Thomas said that they should “Go home” and went on to identify “home” as “Poland, Germany . . . and America . . . and everywhere else.”

Thomas’s remarks caused an uproar in which many have called her remarks offensive, disgusting, anti-Semitic, hateful, and so forth. Some have been demanding that the White House strip her of her press credentials. Others have suggested that she should be fired from Hearst Newspapers, for which she currently works.

I’d like to look at one characterization of her remarks—that they were anti-Semitic.

Now, don’t get me wrong. I have a long-standing disapproval of Helen Thomas. I don’t like her reporting. She strikes me as excessively partisan, mean, rude, and unpleasant. But if she’s anti-Semitic, I don’t see sufficient evidence of it in this clip.

Watch for yourself and then let’s discuss . . .

There are anti-Semites in the world, but “anti-Semite” is a term that one has to use with caution. After the horrors of the Nazi Holocaust, calling someone an anti-Semite is to throw them in league with the Nazis. It has the emotional punch of calling someone a racist. In fact, anti-Semitism can be seen as a form of racism: racism directed toward Jewish people.

Terms like “anti-Semite” and “racist” are such damning terms that they should only be used when the facts justify them. They should not be tossed around willy-nilly, at whomever you happen to dislike. However convenient they may be for torpedoing your opponent’s reputation, indiscriminate use of these words only cheapens them and takes the focus off the horrors of real anti-Semitism and real racism.

So is Thomas an anti-Semite?

I don’t know. I don’t know her heart (or even her track record of publicly expressed opinions about Jewish people), but I don’t see evidence of anti-Semitism in the clip.

Why do I say that?

Well, for a start, she never even mentions the term “Jew.” Her comments are directed at Israel, which is not synonymous with the Jewish people as a whole. Her problem—at least as she articulates it in the clip—is not with Jewish people in general but with those Jewish people who are present in the modern state of Israel and who, in her view, are oppressing the Palestinian people.

That’s not anti-Semitism. It may by anti-Israelism or anti-Zionism, but it is not racism directed toward the Jewish people.

Her complaint in the vid is of a political and historical nature, not a racial or even a religious one.

She does not display hostility to Jews outside of Israel. If they went to other countries—“Poland, Germany, and America, and everywhere else”—then she would not appear to have a problem.

And note that she includes America in the list of where he wishes the people of Israel would go. It seems she would not mind more Jewish neighbors right here in her own country.

So I’m not seeing evidence for anti-Semitism—hatred (or whatever) of Jewish people as Jewish people. She is expressing—cantankerously (and taking delight in her own cantankerousness)—a historical/political opinion that is common among many people with her background.

For those who may not know, Thomas is a Maronite Catholic [UPDATE: I’ve since run across additional claims that say she is Greek Orthodox, so I’m not sure what is accurate here] whose parents were immigrants from Lebanon (so technically she is a Semite, though ironically not as the term is used in “anti-Semitic,” where “Semite” is improperly treated as a synonym for “Jew”). She was born in 1920 and growing up as a girl and a young woman hundreds of thousands of Jewish people were immigrating to Palestine, with increasingly tense relations between them and the Palestinians. She was a grown woman—age 28—when Israel became an independent state, and subsequently has seen—and felt in a personal way—the subsequent history of pain and violence of the region, including in particular the horrors that have befallen Lebanon on account of its proximity to Israel.

There is another side to that story—the Jewish side. (In fact, there are many sides to this story, including multiple ones within each ethnic group.) But it is understandable if someone like Thomas were to think, “Y’know, things would have been better off if all those immigrants and refugees had never come to Palestine. I wish they’d all go back to their previous homelands.”

Actually deconstructing the state of Israel and returning its citizens to other countries is not something that is presently on the table (though who knows what will happen if Middle Eastern states start getting nukes), and I don’t know that Thomas was literally proposing it. She may well have just been giving voice to an angry wish or fantasy scenario.

But that kind of thing is not uncommon or unexpected. In history people have conflicts, some people lose, and those who lose often harbor such wishes—sometimes for generations. It’s human nature.

Beyond that, the opinions one might reasonably attribute to Thomas on the basis of the clip—that it would be better if the Jewish migration to Palestine had never occurred and the state of Israel had never been founded, that the Palestinians have some kind of still-existing claim to the territory of Israel, and that it would be better if the Israelis migrated to other countries—are opinions which one could reasonably hold.

That’s not to say that they’re right, just that one could reasonably hold them. (I.e., they don’t flatly contradict the clear dictates of reason.) One also can reasonably hold diametrically opposite views. These are subjects of a historical and political nature that people can disagree about.

Were Thomas’ remarks inopportune? As they were made outside of a Jewish heritage celebration, oooooh yes.

Were they phrased with unnecessary cantankerousness? Uh-huh.

Was she foolish to make them? Most definitely.

Should she lose her job or White House credentials over them? One may reasonably hold this opinion.

But was she being anti-Semitic in her remarks? Not from what we see in the clip.

You can hold that Helen Thomas is as hateful, offensive, mean, venomous, outrageous, embarrassing a woman as you wish, but if you want to accuse her of anti-Semitism, you’ll need more than this clip. One can be angry about a historical situation without hating an entire people.

She is clearly an anti-Zionist—and an angry one!—but Zionism and the Jewish people are not the same thing. An angry anti-Zionist is not the same thing as an anti-Semite.

Unless evidence emerges that she hates Jewish people as an entire people (not just those Jewish people she views as occupiers of Palestine), let’s not call her an anti-Semite. It cheapens the word and thus makes it easier for real anti-Semitism to occur.

What are your thoughts?

America’s Secret Crypto-Dance Culture Exposed!

Circle2 A reader writes:

Hi, Jimmy,


You square dance. What is an old brass wagon and why would it circle to the right and left so much?

Let me take a guess at the context in which the reader encountered the old brass wagon . . . it was at a grade school or grade-school aged function.

Taking the first part of the question literally, an old brass wagon would be a wagon that is made out of a copper-zinc alloy and that is endowed with the property of not having been made recently.

It's also an American play party game.

Play parties are something that most people today don't have any knowledge of, but they used to be quite common.

As you may know, some Fundamentalist Christians disapprove of dancing and even the playing of musical instruments–or certain musical instruments, at least in certain contexts.

Well, 200 years ago those kind of views were mainstream in a lot of American Protestantism, and in many communities it was socially taboo to dance. You couldn't find dances to go to anywhere.

Which was a problem because the Internet hadn't yet been invented, and people needed something to do in their free time other than read the Bible (not that they shouldn't have read the Bible, just that they needed to do something in addition to that).

Another problem is that God wired into human nature the desire both to make music and to move to music (i.e., dance). So human nature was compelling people toward doing something that was socially taboo.

Fortunately, human creativity was equal to the occasion, and a solution was found: the play party.

Play parties were, as you'd guess, parties that were held at people's homes (often with the curtains drawn to keep pesky, holier-than-thou neighbors from watching) in which the participants would sing and clap (providing music and a dance beat) and "play" children's "games" (i.e., dances–without the name).

"We can't dance, a'course. Tha'd be wrong. But we have all'a our friends over for a play party and 'play' a bunch a' 'games.'"

Naturally, the dances used at play parties could be very simple (being forced to practice any art form in secrecy is going to have a hindering effect on the development of the art form).

And that's why the Old Brass Wagon that the reader encountered involved so much circling to the left and right. It's a rudimentary dance that is designed for people who don't have extensive dancing experience.

Circle Left and Circle Right are no-teach dance moves. You don't have to engage in lengthy explanations of them. With adults, you just have to say the move and people do it. The most you ever have to say is, "Join hands; Circle to the Left; just walk to the beat of the music"–which is why Circle Left and Circle Right are the first two moves I use when I'm calling for a beginner party. Then I quickly add other moves that I can teach without stopping the music, so people get the most dancing out of the least instruction. (People came to dance, not to hear a lecture.)

Old Brass Wagon is a particular dance set to a particular tune (.pdf) (whose lyrics include the phrase "old brass wagon") that begins with a Circle Left and a Circle Right and then goes into whatever other simple dance moves the leader wants that are within the capability of small children.

It is very simple and very repetitive, and the only context in which you are likely to encounter it today–now that play parties are gone with the wind–is when adults are trying to get children to dance. Hence: grade school or a grade-school aged function. (Or possibly something like a father/daughter or mother/son or all-family dance, where you have a mix of adults and grade-school aged children.)

Old Brass Wagon is thus not something you'd encounter at a typical Modern Western Square Dance. Not only would a western square dancer not have any idea what you were talking about, if you tried to get them to do it they would hate it and would be bored silly in the first 90 seconds. (Modern Western Square Dance is based on rapidly changing, substantially unpredictable choreography and attracts the kind of dancers who crave complexity, whether they realize it or not.)

Also, Old Brass Wagon isn't a square dance. It's a no-partner circle dance . . . as illustrated by the facts that you don't need a partner for it and it's performed in a circle. (You can also do it as a partner circle dance; in the video below, you'll see the kids doing elbow swings with their partners, though partners aren't required for the basic dance.)

It's also cornpone as heck.

Still, it's a survival of America's secret, crypto-dance culture, even if today you won't see it in the movies or on Dancing with the Stars but only in proud-parent YouTube videos.

BTW, another–probably more familiar–play party "game" is Skip to My Lou.

Remembering 9/11

The following is an e-mail I got today from Suzanne Greydanus (who gave me permission to post it and said it was okay to use her name, though I offered to omit it). Her brother, David, died earlier this year of sudden-onset leukemia and at a very young age. In the wake of 9/11 there was a lot of concern about rescue workers breathing in toxic dust from the collapse of the towers, but less attention devoted to the health effects it might have had on others who were there . . . like Suzanne’s brother.

Here’s what she wrote:

My brother was one of the first to get pictures up of the 9/11
attacks — he did it that day.  He got about a zillion hits on this
little slide show in the weeks following.  I believe that the
leukemia that killed him back in May was a result of him breathing in
the toxic dust that day.  So I think about 9/11 in a new way this year.

(Also, I look at all these other folks pictured here and I wonder
about their health too.)


http://westra.com/disaster/

Suz

The Telling Of The Beads

Oldrosary_1

Rosaries have a long and interesting history. They have evolved over the centuries from the earliest days when people used a bowl of loose pebbles to count their prayers to the form in which we have them today. While doing some research on the rosary, I found some interesting links on the history of the rosary.

(For more links than it is possible to include here, I recommend going to Google and searching on key words such as "history rosary.")

  • A blog devoted to early rosaries is titled, appropriately enough, Paternosters. The blogger, Chris Laning, describes the blog as "a journal about historical rosaries, paternosters and other forms of prayer beads, focusing on those in use before 1600 AD [sic]."
  • Laning also maintains a web site devoted to historical rosaries titled Paternoster Row, which is the name of a street in London where a craftsmen guild of rosary makers used to ply their trade (source).
  • Kevin Orlin Johnson has a book on the rosary that looks quite intriguing. It is titled Rosary: Mysteries, Meditations, and the Telling of the Beads.

A few years ago after John Paul II promulgated the luminous mysteries of the rosary, I wrote an article on the subject titled "Light for the World." It is now online at Catholic Answers’ web site.

GET THE ARTICLE.

AND THE SIDEBAR (which has some information on the history of the rosary).

While the rosary is not one of my favorite personal devotions, as a history buff I am fascinated by its history as both a prayer and an art form.

A Meme Of Noble Descent

Familytree

Have you ever been jealous when some friend or acquaintance bragged to you about all the famous and/or noble people he had found hanging from his family tree (so to speak)? No need. Odds are, you too have a notable ancestor hiding among the foliage of your family tree! After all, if it could be true for Brooke Shields, it could be true for anyone.

"Actress Brooke Shields has a pretty impressive pedigree — hanging from her family tree are Catherine de Medici and Lucrezia Borgia, Charlemagne and El Cid, William the Conqueror and King Harold II, vanquished by William at the Battle of Hastings.

"Shields also descends from five popes, a whole mess of early New England settlers, and the royal houses of virtually every European country. She counts Renaissance pundit Niccolo Machiavelli and conquistador Hernando Cortes as ancestors.

What is it about Brooke Shields? Well, nothing special — at least genealogically.

"Even without a documented connection to a notable forebear, experts say, the odds are virtually 100 percent that every person on Earth is descended from one royal personage or another."

GET THE STORY.

(Nod to E-Skojec.com for the link.)

How cool! This, I think, calls for My First Meme:

1. Which famous person would you most like to learn that you are descended from? Pope John Paul II (collaterally, of course). Hey, if Brooke Shields can be descended from five popes, then I can have one of the greatest among them as an indirect ancestor.

2. Which famous person would you hate to learn that you are descended from? Brigham Young. Although with some fifty wives and over fifty known children (source), he’s likely to have a multitude of direct and collateral descendants here in the U.S.

3. If you could be ancestor to any living famous person, who would it be and why? Dan Brown. It would give me the chance to make sure there was some decent Christian catechesis in the family that might have molded him into not writing The Da Vinci Code (or, failing that, at least not writing it as it ended up being written).

4. If you could go back in time and meet any known ancestor(s) of yours, who would it be? Direct and collateral ancestors who fought on both sides of the American Civil War. The old adage that that war tore apart families is quite literally true.

5. Tag five others: My sister, Jimmy, Fr. Stephanos, O.S.B., the Curt Jester, Ten Reasons, and anyone else who wants to play on their own blogs or in the combox.