It’s the surest topic to start a fight in my house and demonstrates two things, IMO. First, nationalism is something most folks take to quite willingly. And second, it’s easy to create an impression of superiority among people anywhere.
If I even suggest the United States played a bigger role in defeating Nazi Germany than the Soviet Union in my house, I’m met with a rapid fire series of questions: Who planted the first flag on the Reichstag? How many Americans were killed in WWII? Do you know what happened in Leningrad? blah, blah, blah (I’m really asking for trouble, you have no idea).
The truth of the matter is, I don’t know who played the bigger role. I always assumed our role was more important because that was the focus of the history I was taught. And the same is true for my partner in reverse.
Sixty years later, this debate stills rages:
President Bush has branded the former Soviet domination of eastern Europe one of “the greatest wrongs of history”.
Speaking in Latvia to mark 60 years since the end of WWII in Europe, Mr Bush also acknowledged the US role in the division of Europe after the war.
In Moscow, President Putin stressed Russians had been liberators.
[…]
Russia sees itself as the main power which helped bring freedom to Europe, defeating the Nazis at an enormous human cost.
“The world has never known such heroism,” he said.
“Our people not only defended their homeland, they liberated 11 European countries.”
Personally, I think Putin loses this one because the debate is really no longer about who planted the first flag in the Reichstag. It’s about whose country is better representing “freedom” today. The fact that I haven’t moved to Russia (and that sound you hear is a book flung across the room hitting my fat head) suggests I’m right…but I want to have a pleasant evening at home tonight, so I’ll let other people pick up the debate from here.
I don’t know who’s more responsible for defeating the Nazis, but give the Russians their due. According to the google cite, the median estimate of total war dead for the USSR is 20 mil.; the median estimate for total US dead is 300,000. We’re talking about a couple orders of magnitude here.
yes, by all means let’s give the USSR its due.
But, man, it’s hard to choke out even a pro forma “thanks” when Putin says things like this:
“Our people not only defended their homeland, they liberated 11 European countries.”
Well, I would say that the Soviets could have defeated the Nazis on their own. The scale of warfare on the Eastern Front was staggering compared to tiddly-wink battles like Alamein. There was actually no need for Normandy other than to prevent the Soviets from taking over Western Europe.
praktike–
you mean “liberating” Western Europe.
Well, Answers.com tells me 80% of the German was effort was on the Eastern Front, so Russia has a fairly good claim to being the designated winner.
I don’t think it really matters who played a bigger role. There was more than enough glory to go around. And while I the Russians didn’t liberate anyone as I understand the term, I suspect that Soviet occupation was better than Nazi, at least in the countries outside the former Soviet Union.
Anyway, I think the second debate is a little besides the point. Why all these sour grapes when they should be celebrating the victory over Nazism? It seems a little tone-deaf to criticize the Russians just at the moment.
I’m reading a biography of the Mitford sisters and it’s remarkable how this debate mirrors the debate during the 1920s and 1930s regarding the relative merits and/or evils of Nazism and Soviet Communism.
The Mitford’s, of course, conducted the debate in the shallowest and callowest of terms, kind of Evelyn Waugh (a family friend, not surprisingly) meets Monty Python’s Ministry of Silly Walks meets Bertie and Jeeves conniving against Himmler’s advances toward Bertie’s girlfriend’s eastern front.
Putin has a country to run. What’s the big surprise that he demagogues a little nationalism in the attempt.
Would chaos be better?
Yes, World War II could not have been won without the nationalism of Soviet soldiers. And, the U.S. soldier would not have given his all if the stakes had been the
future choice between MacDonalds and Burger King.
Wendy’s? Maybe.
Well, what do the German’s say?
I largely agree with mac that this sort argument seems beside the point when remembering the victory. Still, I do think Russia played a larger role than the US, though I’m dubious of praktike’s claim that they could have won by themselves.
Credit for victory is not zero-sum. As your high school coach explained, everyone contributes. It wasn’t even just the US and the Soviets. What about the British role? Can anyone say that it did not matter at the margin, which after all is what counts?
“I largely agree with mac that this sort argument seems beside the point when remembering the victory.”
Yes. But as someone who has expressed grave doubts about Bush’s real commitment to spreading democracy, I have to give him credit for his willingness to irritate Putin on this score.
After all, his commitment to democracy usually ends exactly at the border of our most expedient non-democratic allies–he has heaped praise on such model democracies as Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, etc., and that is why he has so little credibility on this issue throughout the world.
If Bush were *not* saying something like this right now, I would probably take it as further evidence of how little he really values democracy–so I suppose I ought to give him a little bit of credit.
Now, if he were willing to promote democracy even when it conflicts with something he really *cares* about, e.g. cutting taxes for the super-wealthy, then I would be completely persuaded.
From the full text of the speech:
The President is speaking in Riga–hardly the place where one would expect a warm reception to anything resembling praise of the Soviet Union. That colors the tone of the speech a lot.
Still, I find it interesting that Bush calls the agreement at Yalta one of the greatest wrongs in history. Is he claiming we should have gone to war with Russia then and there (as Patton wanted)? It sounds like more than a bit of a reach. All of our allies had a great deal of rebuilding to do. I’m not convinced that we could have gone it alone against the Russian army. Plus, had we done it, it would have cost a great deal, and our current economic domination is largely a result of the head-start we had on all of the European countries who had to regroup and rebuild while we could grab as much market share as possible. Had we extended the war we could very well have quashed our own economic recovery while Europe rebuilt itself, resulting in a much closer balance of economic power between the US and Europe.
And as for the greatest wrongs for which we need to apologize, I think that given the circumstances and what could be done, the two biggest and most easily avoidable evils in the closing days of the war would have to be the firebombing of Dresden and the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. All three were completely unnecessary. I’m not sure the same can be said of the unfortunate decision at Yalta.
Just a few thoughts. I trust any historians on the board can correct any incorrect assumptions here.
The Ruskies.
No eastern front, no Normandie, conceivably no england!
Nah, if Hitler hadn’t invaded Russia, he still would have had to develop a fleet to invade England. That would have taken till around 1944 at the earliest. That’s assuming that Stalin wouldn’t have invaded Germany in the meantime.
This is a silly argument. Of course more Germans soldiers died fighting Russians, but what would the result have been if Germany had not been fighting the Americans and Brits in Africa and then Europe? And, more to the point, what would Russia have done without US war material.
It’s a silly debate because in a collaborative enterprise — even where allies are more like co-belligerents — everyone’s responsible.
We all won, the only question is who paid the most: China. Or is it Russia? Maybe Poland? It’s not the US . . .
I can’t agree that bombing Hiroshima is in the same category as either Nagasaki or Dresden. Sure the victims are just as dead, and the majority of people involkved just as innocent. But there had to bee a live demonstration of the atomic bomb, and it had to be a city. I don’t think anything else would have ended the war so quickly.
Nagasaki I’m less sure of. Maybe a second demonstration was needed. Regarding Dresden, I have no doubt at all. Remove that attack, and nothing changes at all in the trajectory of the war. Nothing in Brelin, nothing along the Rhine, nothing in Eastern Germany (or wherever the Red army was by then). Nothing was demonstrated in Dresden: no lesson was intended or learned. Just death.
There were iirc, 1-2 german divisions in north africa with few tanks and very little supplies. This is dwarfed by the armies which clashed on the eastern front. We had roughly 8 million men and women in uniform during WW II. Without Russia, we would have had to quadruple that number at least, simply to field similar forces to what the Germans could deploy.
Russia could probably have won the war on it’s own if it continued recieving supplies from the US. Lend-Lease motorized the Russian army, allowing russian factories to concentrate on pumping out T-34’s and fighters. After the German attack at Kursk failed in ’43, the German position was pretty much untenable.
Considering what the people thought at the time, the bombing of Nagasaki and Hiroshima were completely necessary. Estimates for casualties from an invasion ranged from 500,000-1 million in US casualties alone. Those two nukes probably saved more japanese lives than they took.
The bombing of Dresden was one of the reasons that the head of the UK’s bomber command was the only high level wartime leader of England to not get knighted after the war.
“Well, I would say that the Soviets could have defeated the Nazis on their own”
Oh, don’t be such a twit.
– The presence of the US in England kept 1,000,000 German troops away from the Eastern front.
– Massive material support from the US to the USSR
– The USAF shredded German infrastructure and industry.
Take away any *one* of those things and the Germans would have defeated the USSR.
On the other hand, the US could have defeated Germany even had the USSR remained a Nazi-aligned noncombatant. By the simple expedient of nuking German cities until they gave up.
I am in the column that the USSR could have won the war on their own against Germany. The only time German commitments elsewhere made a difference was in 1941 and somewhat in 1942, but at those times the other commitments were not that great. By 1943, the Germans had very little chance (unless they had developed an A-Bomb) whether or not the other Allies were involved. Clearly, US and English involvement eased the burden on the Russians, but they could have shouldered it alone at an even greater catastrophic cost. By 1944, most of the German army was in the East, and it was utterly crushed by the Russians that year. And it wasn’t just a matter of numbers (the Russians vastly outnumbered the Germans in all categories of men and equipment) — Russian equipment was rugged and Russian leadership and fighting ability was dogged and tough.
Lend-lease was useful to the Russians but hardly critical. Despite the large amount of tonnage shipped, it was puny in comparison to Russian production (including trucks, though the Russians loved American trucks and jeeps). Shipment of strategic metals was probably the most useful thing, along with basic vehicles. Allied strategic bombing had very little impact on German industrial production. Its primary effect was to wear out the Luftwaffe, and pin down large segments in Germany. Allied tactical bombing and interdiction of transportation had a far greater impact on the German war effort. Pinning dowen the Luftwaffe in Germany was very important (the Russians had air supremacy in the East by 1944 largely due to this), but by 1944, the combined US and USSR plane production was probably 10 times that of Germany anyway. By 1944, the Germans enjoyed very few advantages in equipment, or to the extent that they produced better equipment, it was at such a greater cost than US/USSR equipment that the superior equipment did not offset the numerical disadvantage.
German sweeping successes early in the war was primarily due to doctrinal superiority, but their enemies learned quickly. That advantage was largely gone by 1943.
Edward–
Books flying here, too. We’re just one big happy family!
I say it was a team effort. The rape of Eastern Germany after the Soviets invaded, however, wasn’t.
And by “rape of Eastern Germany”, I mean rape of Eastern German women.
And by “rape of Eastern Germany”, I mean rape of Eastern German women.
Payback is a bitch!
It’s silly to even contemplate the “what if” of Hitler not going to war against the Soviets. Hitler hated the Russians and saw the lands to the east as his growing room. The Germans should have never had the early successes they did in 1941 and even ’42 until Stalingrad. But undoubtedly Eastern Europe suffered more in World War II than Western Europe. Most of the blood was shed there. The true toll will probably never be known. There is little doubt that the Soviet Union understated its death toll by at least 10 million, but of course of lot of the death toll was because they really didn’t care much about reducing casulties.
“what would the result have been if Germany had not been fighting the Americans and Brits in Africa and then Europe?”
The Russians would still have won. North Africa was a sideshow. Seriously. Hitler never gave Rommel the resources he needed, and the Italians sucked. The Eastern Front was the thing. Russia moved basically its entire war industry east of the Volga, came out with the T-34, stopped the Germans at Stalingrad and destroyed the 6th Army … and the rest, as they say, was history.
Well, what do the German’s say?
“Wait, what are you talking about? Germany invaded Poland in 1939 and…”
“We were invited. Punch vas served. Check vit Poland.”
– Family Guy
On the other hand, the US could have defeated Germany even had the USSR remained a Nazi-aligned noncombatant. By the simple expedient of nuking German cities until they gave up.
A truly viable strategy in 1939…
Don Quijote
Re: your 10:54 comment, your website may only be 38% evil, but you’re pushing 100% personally.
Agreed, crionna.
I was crossing my fingers hoping it was a tasteless joke and therefore not worthy of comment. But since everyone else is throwing their hats in the ring: me too, crionna and Slarti.
I don’t think we had all that much plutonium to go around, either.
Perhaps a more interesting question is simply to concede that the Russian sacrifices and victories were truly massive, and ask – would they have survived and overcome the first (truly devastating) Nazi onslaught, or would the government have simply ceded the country West of the Volga in 1942 were Stalin not maintaining his murderous grip on the army and what remained of the country? This is not an apologetic for Stalin or Stalinism, but I do wonder, in this connection, how history would have been different if the Soviets had fallen apart, and Hitler had been able to send most of those 8 million troops, including his best armor and infantry and the vast bulk of his tactical airforce, back to France to await the Allies. History is full of such uncomfortable questions.
Oh, and DQ – you are an ass.
But since everyone else is throwing their hats in the ring: me too, crionna and Slarti.
You know, I’m going to go out on a limb here and say that while DQ’s comment was an extremely harsh way of putting it, the boo-hooing about the depredations of the Red Army does seem to ignore a bit of contemporary history.
The behavior of Soviet troops in Germany toward civilians was often outrageous, even bestial — but no less outrageous and bestial was the behavior of the Einsatztruppen on the way eastward. What would be the bounds of our rage against an enemy who had slaughtered millions of us so casually?
Retaliation against the innocent is never justified, but let’s not pretend that these atrocities happened in a vacuum.
This is not an apologetic for Stalin or Stalinism, but I do wonder, in this connection, how history would have been different if the Soviets had fallen apart, and Hitler had been able to send most of those 8 million troops, including his best armor and infantry and the vast bulk of his tactical airforce, back to France to await the Allies.
One of the reasons that I don’t generally get involved in these type of counterfactual questions concerning the Eastern Front is that it’s impossible to extricate the situation from the men who created it. Hitler and Stalin are the Eastern Front war in a way that no other war has ever been; to ask what might have happened is thus either cunning way to attempt to mindread the two psychotics or a complete waste of time.
The short answer is: there may be history there, Jim, but it’s not history as we know it.
Retaliation against the innocent is never justified, but let’s not pretend that these atrocities happened in a vacuum.
Nobody is pretending any such thing, but the Red Army’s retaliatory fury of murder and rape deserves better than smug cant about how “payback’s a bitch.”
As an example, your own description served quite well – DQ apparently was not up to such an effort, and preferred for reasons unknown, to posture hard and play the tough guy. He’s an ass.
Retaliation against the innocent is never justified, but let’s not pretend that these atrocities happened in a vacuum.
For my part, the problem isn’t that the Einstazgruppen didn’t deserve what was coming to them, it’s that what came didn’t stick merely to them — or even primarily to them. Bluntly, the Einsatzgruppen weren’t the ones getting raped. I understand, in many ways, the fury of the Red Army’s march to the west; that’s different from making snide jokes about it on an open forum.
Or, what st just said.
As for this:
What would be the bounds of our rage against an enemy who had slaughtered millions of us so casually?
Do you really have to ask? Do you really want to ask?
Hitler and Stalin are the Eastern Front war in a way that no other war has ever been
I don’t know about this; certainly Hitler was not the first European tyrant to charge headlong east into the steppes; not even the first German tyrant to do so. Neither were Hitler’s reasons for doing so particularly unique to him, though he cloaked them in rhetoric about racial superiority and leibensraum. While surely the specific historical moment belongs to them, it does not take much mindreading to examine the accounts of the period and gauge just how close Hitler came, and just how extreme were the measures taken by Stalin to keep fighting (for example, moving entire armament and airplane factories hundreds of miles using men and horses).
Well, never mind. It may be that we have different ideas of what constitutes a waste of time.
Anyone else find it a bit rich to compare Yalta to Molotov-Ribbentrop?
It’s not like Bush doesn’t know about making alliances of convenience with brutal dictators. He’s often done it when the necessity wasn’t nearly as great as was the WW2 alliance with Stalin.
Don Quijote
Re: your 10:54 comment, your website may only be 38% evil, but you’re pushing 100% personally.
Posted by: crionna | May 7, 2005 11:47 PM
Agreed, crionna.
Posted by: Slartibartfast | May 8, 2005 12:02 AM
I was crossing my fingers hoping it was a tasteless joke and therefore not worthy of comment. But since everyone else is throwing their hats in the ring: me too, crionna and Slarti.
I can’t help but be amused by you deep concern for a bunch of dead germans who supported the most violent & repressive regime in the twentieth century. A regime that had no problem killing 6 million jews (men, women & children), a regime that started a war of aggression that killed tens of millions of people, a regime that set the standard for industrial inhumanity.
This is even more humor in that this concern is coming from citizens of what is now the single most aggressive country in the world, one that is now in the process of destroying another country and killing it’s citizens by the truck load.
Being a nice guy, I won’t mention the estimated three million that the US killed in Vietnam, nor the legacy of agent Orange on the citizens of said country.
But I just did!
Are you afraid that payback is in your future?
PS. I can’t be 100% evil, I never voted for Shrub.
Okay, Don Quijote goes on my list of people worth ignoring; if he or she makes a good point, I can catch it quoted or wait for someone less endorsing of revenge to make it.
As to the question in the topic, I’ll side with those saying “the Soviets, plus help from everyone else”. That seems to me to most fully capture the situation. The Eastern Front was necessary in a way that the Western Front wasn’t, but the Allies’ efforts in the west at a minimum helped hasten things along, and led to a better life for those west of the Elbe.
Anyone else find it a bit rich to compare Yalta to Molotov-Ribbentrop?
Bush is taking any opportunity he can to paint FDR badly. It’s sad
Bush is taking any opportunity he can to paint FDR badly. It’s sad
And you are surprised on account of ?
Okay, Don Quijote goes on my list of people worth ignoring; if he or she makes a good point, I can catch it quoted or wait for someone less endorsing of revenge to make it.
Wasn’t revenge one of the motivating factors used by Shrub and his war monguers to sell the Operation Iraqi Liberation?
After all what’s the difference between one Arab and another (Iraqi, Saudi, Syrian what’s the difference)? Quite a bit as we are suddenly discovering!
Not sure I’m qualified to comment on who won the war, but right now I’m halfway through Enemy at the Gates: The Battle for Stalingrad by William Craig, and I gotta say that there was nothing comparable in the west comparable to the Russian war effort. Put me in the column who say that the Soviets (not the Russians) would have probably been able to deal with the Germans alone.
dpu: Read Beevor’s Stalingrad when you’re done, if you haven’t already. There’s something about Beevor’s matter-of-fact tone that makes the descriptions even more intense.
And DQ? *plonk*
Concerning dq’s tasteless and possibly amoral statement, there is a question about the responsibility of ordinary people for the actions of their leaders. I have long contended it is part of the strategy of the right, in the project of alienating voters from their government, to allow ordinary grunts and citizens to distance themselves absolutely from bad wars and atrocities, even when they are the tools and agents. Lindley England is so deeply bewildered and resentful that the judge won’t accept a guilty plea. Course dim Lindley was just following her immediate superior, who was some kind of insane rogue outlier, as determined by the acquital of the whole chain of command.
I don’t blame her. It is hard to determine the rules here. The Russian troops are individually responsible for the rapes and atrocties on the way west, well, of course they are. But the German people and troops, who benefited in many ways from the aggressive wars, are in no way responsible for the crimes of Hitler who had their enthusiastic support for a decade.
1) It’s “Lynndie”, bob.
2) I don’t understand your second paragraph. Of course the German people and troops bear some responsibility for Hitler’s crimes. Some, however, bear more than others. Responsibility is neither zero-sum, binaristic nor Manichean — there’s enough of it to go around as need be — so the real question is whether the punishment fit the crime. In the case of Lynndie England, I don’t think it did; in the case of the Soviet march to the west and their depredations, I’m sure it didn’t.
Re DQ
Maybe it’s just me, but I don’t think we should tolerate somebody in our midst, who is openly legitimizing rape as a form of retributive justice, ridiculing and dehumanizing the victims and excusing the perpetrators.
btw, this book review might be of interest to some
Bush is taking any opportunity he can to paint FDR badly
“Now there are some who would like to rewrite history — revisionist historians is what I like to call them.”
W
btw, this book review might be of interest to some
I read the first couple of chapters of Berlin in an airport bookstore a few years back but never had the chance to (*cough*buy or*cough*) finish it. It’s on my list for this summer, however.
Maybe it’s just me, but I don’t think we should tolerate somebody in our midst, who is openly legitimizing rape as a form of retributive justice, ridiculing and dehumanizing the victims and excusing the perpetrators.<\i>
I do none of the above, I just observe and state the obvious.
My mother was born in France in 1940, my grand father spent the war in Germany as a prisoner of war and came back from the experience a broken man, so you’ll have to excuse me if I have very little sympathy for the WWII era Germans!
(1) Amateur WW2 buff that I am, count me in the “Russia could have won” column. I do think a negotiated peace might’ve been more likely had, say, Britain gone with Halifax & folded in 1940. The Germans would’ve invaded, been beaten back, and it would’ve been the same bloody mess, but Stalin might’ve come to terms, assuming Hitler wasn’t too crazy to take them (big “if”).
(2) DQ’s tastelessness aside, I concur with Bob McManus above; the responsibility of civilian populations for the deeds of their governments is a big question, and if anyone’s seen a good book or journal article on the topic, please post its citation. The topic has plenty of relevance today: if the people of Iraq wouldn’t liberate themselves from Saddam, was it legit for us to do it for them? Cf. Romania & Ceaucescu (sp?).
The last 20 years or so of research have, I think, pretty well exploded the myth of Nazi Germany as the perfect Big Brother totalitarian state. The entire SS couldn’t have put down a general German revolt against the Nazis. Among the reasons such a revolt didn’t happen, one must include near the top the fact that most Germans either favored Hitler or didn’t think stopping his crimes was worth any skin off their backs.
If I join Hitler in invading Russia, participate in some slaughters of Jews and of Russian peasants, butcher some prisoners, survive the war, & come home to find the Russians raped and murdered my family, exactly how much moral indignation am I entitled to?
There should be room for a 100 different Ph.D. dissertations on how to begin to answer such questions in detail.
I agree with both the statements that what DQ said was tasteless, and the statement that payback is a bitch. I would probably feel more sympathy for the Germans in question if they hadn’t elected Hitler. Judgement can be a harsh thing.
As for the original question…there are two questions really, “who was more important in defeating Nazi Germany, the Russians or the rest of the world put together?” and, “could the Russians have defeated the Germans on their own?”.
On question 1, the Russians were the decisive factor. That is pretty undeniable. On question 2, the Russians could probably have defeated the Germans on their own, it can’t be denied that whatever tiny contribution the other Allies made helped.
The other question would be, “Did the UK hold back, and convince the US to hold back the Western offensive while waiting on two enemies to destroy each other? Did millions of Russians die while waiting for the help promised to them year after year”?
Yep.
Anderson: & come home to find the Russians raped and murdered my family, exactly how much moral indignation am I entitled to?
Not picking on Anderson particularly, he’s just the last comment I read on this topic, but, you know: When a woman or a child is raped, it’s really not the men of her family who are the primary ones injured.
Don Q’s comment in response to Slartibartfast is possibly the most offensive in this whole thread on that topic – whatever else can be said of women in Nazi Germany, they did not commit rape when invading Russia, nor, I suspect, did they urge their husbands/fathers/sons to do so.
DonQ: I do none of the above, I just observe and state the obvious.
Were we in the same room, I would ask you to leave it. As we’re not, I’m formally giving you warning that unless you apologize, I’m going to ask the ObWing administration to ban you.
Anderson–
“If I join Hitler in invading Russia…& find the Russians raped and murdered my family, exactly how much moral indignation am I entitled to?”
At least in my case, to understand what I found offensive about DQ’s original remark it is more useful to ask how much moral indignation your *family* is entitled to.
To treat the rape and murder of civilians as a transaction between the soldiers of one nation and the soldiers of another nation is to leave out something rather important, sc. the civilians involved. It is *their* suffering which is profaned by saying that it is a “payback” for the sins of their co-national soldiers.
Sorry, Jesurgislac–I wrote my 1:02 before seeing your 12:56. Agreed, and seconded.
1. There is moral responsibility and there is legal responsibility–or to be more precise, the type of responsibility that justified the state or a private party or another country in retaliating against you. They are separate levels.
I have a responsibility as an American citizen to do what I can to stop my government from torturing people. It does not follow that if I fail to meet that responsibility, or if I do my best but fail to succeed in stopping the government, that a terrorist is entitled to blow me up at the mall. I don’t care if it’s someone who was held at Guantanamo personally.
2. Just because they collectively could have revolted without getting killed doesn’t mean that they individually could have done so. Moreover, you don’t actually know what an individual German did. It could be Oskar Schindler’s wife you’re raping. Not at all likely, but it’s possible. You just don’t know. You’ve made yourself judge, jury, and executioner.
3. Phrasing the question this way stacks the deck:
“If I join Hitler in invading Russia, participate in some slaughters of Jews and of Russian peasants, butcher some prisoners, survive the war, & come home to find the Russians raped and murdered my family, exactly how much moral indignation am I entitled to?”
Maybe you’re not entitled to moral indignation. It does not follow that your wife and children are not entitled to moral indignation. Treason shall work no corruption of blood, as I am fond of saying. Maybe KSM has no right to complain about his kids being taken hostage given that he has participated in the murder of other people’s children–but, that doesn’t mean his kids have no right to complain.
4. I have more sympathy for acts of retaliation that carry some element of incapacitation–e.g., the expulsion of the Sudeten Germans from Czechoslovakia. Rape and torture do not prevent anyone from harming you. They inflict pain for the sake of inflicting pain.
5. It is always worse to commit a crime against the innocent than against the guilty, but very rarely is a crime not a crime because it is committed against a bad person. (Killing in wartime or self-defense is a different question–it’s not that your enemy is morally bad, it’s that he’s trying to kill you too.) This goes for countries too at some level…I bet most of us regard the firebombing of Dresden as not-as-wrong as if we just up and firebombed London tomorrow, but it was still wrong.
6. I tend to find criminal law full of useful analogies for thinking about wartime morality. The analogy here is: if you commit homicide in revenge against someone who has recently assaulted, raped or murdered a relative of yours, the charge is downgraded from murder to voluntary manslaughter. The circumstances may mitigate the crime but they do not erase it.
Needless to say, if you go and rape another man’s wife because he raped yours–it does nothing to mitigate your sentence.
(cross-posted, obviously.)
You can put me in the hitherto under-represented rape is never ‘understandable’ group. People did we really let a thread on the importance of Russia devolve into seriously questioning whether rape campaigns are understandable or justifiable as a response to war crimes? Seriously? This is just disgusting.
To treat the rape and murder of civilians as a transaction between the soldiers of one nation and the soldiers of another nation is to leave out something rather important, sc. the civilians involved.
Oh, did the Nazis take into consideration the civilians involved when they invaded Russia?
I think you are missing the point here. Payback is, undeniably, a bitch.
Sebastian’s right…I’ve gotten so used to trying to respond dispassionately to collective guilt arguments that it’s become a habit, but the first “what the hell is wrong with you” reaction to our one man far-left-equivalent-of-LGF-section (whoops–two man) is better in a lot of ways.
felixrayman–
I think it is you who miss the point. You still seem to think that one can “pay back” the war crimes of soldiers by abusing civilians. This is only slightly less irrelevant and addled than if one were to think we could have “paid back” the Japanese for Pearl Harbor by firebombing Dubuque. (Or avenged 9/11 by invading Iraq, but don’t get me started).
Nothing in my post could plausibly be construed as offering exculpation of the Nazi soldiers’ war-crimes and abuses. I don’t see why you think that is relevant, unless you are continuing to make the mistake of thinking that the rape of civilians is justified by the crimes committed by their co-national soldiers. It is not.
You still seem to think that one can “pay back” the war crimes of soldiers by abusing civilians.
Abuse of civilans was returned with more of the same. That was payback. Are you denying that it was a bitch?
The entire SS couldn’t have put down a general German revolt against the Nazis.
How many regimes has that ever been true of, though? I can’t think of a single one off-hand where a despot’s Praetorian Guard (or whatever the correct term for his personal paramilitary organization is) could have put down a popular insurrection.* The key to despotic rule is always control of the army; and I don’t think there are any disputes that the Wehrmacht could have crushed anything short of total rebellion with little difficulty.
* Presuming there’s a distinction between the army-at-large and the dictator’s personal troops, which AFAIK there invariably is.
Among the reasons such a revolt didn’t happen, one must include near the top the fact that most Germans either favored Hitler or didn’t think stopping his crimes was worth any skin off their backs.
Or, more pointedly, that resistance would literally cost them the skin off their backs. [See, e.g., Mauthausen.] Don’t confuse current knowledge with contemporary understanding.
Felixrayman-
Russia would not have triumphed without the massive economic aid provided by the US. The US sent both money, heavy factory equiptment, and managment experts over to the USSR early in the war to upgrade their factories. This resulted in the Soviets being able to mobilize 105 % of their economy and direct it toward the war. The US on the other hand dedicated roughly 50% of their output to it.
Also, there was really no possibility of a major landing in Europe anytime prior to mid-1944. There were insufficient dedicated landing craft available, and there were not enough troops available to exploit any such landing. Any landing in France before 1944 would simply have resulted in the slaughter of the invading force.
Also, there was really no possibility of a major landing in Europe anytime prior to mid-1944. There were insufficient dedicated landing craft available, and there were not enough troops available to exploit any such landing. Any landing in France before 1944 would simply have resulted in the slaughter of the invading force.
That could be true I guess. Wasn’t what they told Stalin, now was it? Why not?
Pulitzer Prize winner Rick Atkinson, in his book An Army At Dawn notes that re: the Africa campaign The result was what Josef Goebbels called a “second Stalingrad”; after Tunisia, the tide of war rolled one way: toward Berlin.
I read the book and while the US wanted to get on with the assault of Europe immediately, the Brits pushed for Africa first for a number of reasons, amphibious vehicle availability and the greenness of US troops are two of many reasons it made sense.
felixrayman: I think you are missing the point here. Payback is, undeniably, a bitch.
Oh, for heaven’s sake. I never thought I’d have to complain about two people who are supposedly on my “side”, but anyone believe that it’s appropriate for soldiers to rape “enemy civilians” because the soldiers of the enemy raped “their” women, and describes this as “payback” is not on my side.
Jes: …but anyone believe that it’s appropriate for soldiers to rape “enemy civilians” because the soldiers of the enemy raped “their” women, and describes this as “payback” is not on my side.
I seem to have missed where anyone has described rape (or for that matter “payback”) as appropriate behavior.
Well, I didn’t look at this thread before, since I really don’t know enough about the military/economic history of WW2 to know. But now that I have, let me just echo what Katherine said (all of it.) And I can’t believe felix and Don Q are still arguing as though raping someone’s wife or daughter is just ‘payback’ for the fact that that person raped your wife or daughter. I wouldn’t have thought the point that this doesn’t involve only the soldiers’ interests needed to be made at all, but it has been, many times, and why it doesn’t seem to have sunk in, I can’t imagine.
Unlike Jes, though, I never imagined I wouldn’t have to complain about people on my side. In my experience, while sometimes one side or another attracts more than its share of jerks and idiots, no side is immune. (I do not mean this sentence to imply that I think anyone here is (acting like) a jerk or an idiot. Or, for that matter, that I don’t.)
Felixrayman-
Well, both FDR and Churchill knew that they had to keep Stalin in the war. The USSR signing a separate peace would have doomed the rest of the war effort in the west. Stalin could have signed a treaty if he wished in 1943 which would have left germany significantly weakened, but still intact.
So, FDR and Churchill pledged to Stalin that they would open up a second front as soon as possible. In the meantime they sent invasion forces against N. Africa and later Italy. Possibly the biggest reassurance to Stalin was the bombing campaign, which he apparently loved. I could see that sort of indiscriminate slaughter appealing to Stalin quite a bit.
but anyone believe that it’s appropriate
Well, you lost me on the appropriate part. Don’t know what I said that made you think that was my stance.
Atrocities by the Germans made atrocities by the Russians more likely. This is an assertion that can be agreed with or disagreed with. And payback is a bitch. This is an assertion that is pretty hard to disagree with, to the point that of all the posts attacking the original poster of the assertion, none has disagreed with the factual content therein. If hilzoy or Katherine would like to argue that the atrocities of the Germans were no factor whatsoever in the consequent behavior of the Russians, they can feel free to make that argument, or they can feel free to spew random insults, burn straw men, etc. That’s all fine, though I do not see what purpose it serves.
As for taking sides…that’s silliness.
Oddly enough the original point stands uncontested, no one is as of yet asserting that payback is not a bitch.
So, FDR and Churchill pledged to Stalin that they would open up a second front as soon as possible.
If I remember my history correctly, they repeatedly pledged to take specific actions, then reneged. I have remember incorrectly before, though…
Resorting to the concept of “payback”, in my view, distorts the question. Hard men with callous contempt for human life commit acts such as rape, torture, and murder; and total war produces such men. Indeed, I think just keeping any kind of moral sanity in the horrific meat grinder of the Russian-German war rates as major heroism. I find it difficult to imagine how anyone could survive the Russian Front (physically or psychologically) without developing a hardness and contempt for human life. That so many soldiers kept (or reclaimed) their humanity says a lot about human resilience.
I measure the effects of total war with the quote from Nicholas Monsarrat; his writings reveal a decent person, but in his notes from the convoy battles in the Atlantic, published as H. M. Corvette, he speaks casually of the possibility that the U-boats kept “a Pole or a Jew” to fire out a torpedo tube in the hope of escaping by fooling the attacking surface ships into thinking they had sunk. Total war produces this casual brutality, in thought and, too often, in action.
We take for granted the idea that victims have the right to do what it takes to survive; I think we should (from our safe distance) consider the possibility that young men conscripted and flung into the meat grinder of total war also count as victims with that right. In any case, whatever moral judgments we reach, we can hardly expect to change the reality that soldiers who survive to the end of an utterly pitiless war will by definition have formed the attitudes and attributes necessary to survive. If you find those attribute unpleasant, if you prefer to live with people who do not consider justice and decency either idealistic dreams or bad jokes, then avoid total war. Don’t rely on the threat of it, don’t elect leaders who promise it, and express the appropriate contempt for people who advocate it.
If monsters fight that kind of war, it probably happens because war (or that kind of war) makes monsters.
Two points:
First, one Russian historian (name forgotten) said that in the Second World War “The British gave time, the Americans gave money, the Russians gave blood.” Sums it up rather well. Without any of the three the war would have been lost.
Second, it’s probably true that only Stalin (in the sense of a totalitarian war economy) could have won against Germany, given the state Russia was in in 1941-2. But, of course, it was Stalin’s fault that Russia was in that condition in the first place; occupying Poland and thus removing a buffer state between the Reich and the USSR; trusting Hitler right up to the invasion; killing most of his own army high command and paralysing the army with obsolete tactics; showing such brutality in the Ukraine that the Germans were welcomed there as liberators… The man was a disaster. If he had actually been a paid agent of the Nazis, it’s difficult to think of anything he would have done differently between 1938 and 1942.
Hilzoy: Unlike Jes, though, I never imagined I wouldn’t have to complain about people on my side. In my experience, while sometimes one side or another attracts more than its share of jerks and idiots, no side is immune.
Maybe, but this degree of “not on my side”? Arguing that when women on one side are raped by soldiers on the other side, it’s just “payback” when women on the other side are raped as revenge? That’s the kind of justification I expect to see when of the kind of people who defend Abu Ghraib – “payback’s a bitch”, right?
That’s the kind of justification I expect to see when of the kind of people who defend Abu Ghraib – “payback’s a bitch”, right?
One of these days, American Soldiers are going to be captured by insugents in Iraq, How do you think those insurgents will treat the Americans?
Considering Abu Graib, the amount of civilian casualties and the total disregard for Iraqi life that we have shown, I would not want to be that American! And when you go whining to the world about the treatment of US soldiers by Iraqis, the world will shrug it’s shoulders and tell you that Payback is a bitch.
This is only slightly less irrelevant and addled than if one were to think we could have “paid back” the Japanese for Pearl Harbor by firebombing Dubuque. (Or avenged 9/11 by invading Iraq, but don’t get me started).
No we just firebombed Tokyo, and Nuked Hiroshima & Nagasaky? How many dead civilians did we cause?
As for Iraq, well that was one of the ways it was sold to the American Public, who in turn reelected the liars who sold the war under false premises.
I’ve gotten so used to trying to respond dispassionately to collective guilt arguments that it’s become a habit
And yes, Katherine there is such a thing as National guilt, you, I and every single American are responsible for the actions of our goverment! When we let the Goverment torture people, invade defenseless countries or finance Death Squads, we US citizens are responsible. It is done with our money and in our name!
Of interest may be this article It gives the quote that Ajay has for the three contributions to victory as being Stalin’s.
And Don, I find that using exclamation points is the point where one might think about taking a walk around the internet.
Don Q: One of these days, American Soldiers are going to be captured by insugents in Iraq, How do you think those insurgents will treat the Americans?
That’s a different situation. The situation you were implicitly defending by your comment “payback’s a bitch” with regard to Soviet soldiers raping German woman, is equivalent to an Iraqi insurgent raping (for example) Katherine or Hilzoy. That’s why your comment disgusted me: you were implicitly advocating revenge of atrocities committed by soldiers against “their” women. Do I need to explain why that’s offensive? Exactly as offensive as people arguing that Arabs “deserve” to be tortured because of “9/11” – they too are making the argument that “payback’s a bitch” and ignoring the point that the “payback” is against people who had not done the harm for which revenge is being taken.
Please, apologize. Or at least, quit digging.
DQ, Felixrayman, just in case English is not your first language, the phrase “payback is a bitch” typically carries a strong connotation of justification. Basically, it’s saying “you got what you deserved, so stop whining.”
That is why people are having a hard time believing you when you say that you are not trying to justify the atrocities committed in the Soviet conquest of Germany.
I must add my displeasure with the “payback is a bitch” notion. It does connote a deserved fate, and as such in this context is really distasteful.
Lots of interesting responses. I wish I hadn’t framed my example so that the family was raped and then *murdered*, since that left only the survivor’s “moral indignation” to be considered.
But what I think I was trying to get at is this: how much of the culpability for the Russians’ atrocities is on the Russians, and how much on the Germans? You surprise-attack a supposed ally, you behave with the utmost brutality, frankly proposing to murder or enslave the entire population, and then the war turns against you, the “underhumans” enter Germany … and you expected what?
So I would argue that, to a considerable extent at least, the Germans’ support of Hitler and of aggressive war made them culpable for much or most of what befell them. How does this apply to little 6-mo.-old Hans whom Russian soldiers used for bayonet practice? Obviously he did nothing to deserve this; but his parents may have, and little Lizaveta didn’t deserve to be burned to death, or shot with her parents, etc.
My overall point was that I’m not sure our ordinary moral categories really help much with such questions. Katherine’s well-thought-out response does not change my mind on that. In a sense, Americans *are* responsible for Abu Ghraib & extraordinary renditions. Unless this isn’t a democracy any more? If my family were blown up by someone whose family was killed in an American bomb raid, I’d be angry, but part of that anger would be at my own government. I would have a difficult time explaining to the perpetrator that the killing of *his* family was a morally useful act whereas killing *mine* was reprehensible and wrong.
And even though Nazi Germany wasn’t a democracy, its crimes were sufficiently egregious that (I’ll argue) the population had a moral duty to revolt.
Individual Germans resisted to some extent or other, which makes it all the more terrible that some of them were doubtless incinerated at Hamburg, Dresden, etc. Yet it’s clear that the great majority of Germans found Hitler either admirable or tolerable. “National guilt” is a really blunt instrument. This is yet another argument against getting into wars in the 1st place.
(Btw, “national responsibility” is also the only way I’ve ever been able to halfway justify Hiroshima, Tokyo, Hamburg et al. Possibly they shouldn’t be justified in the first place ….)
“One of these days, American Soldiers are going to be captured by insugents in Iraq, How do you think those insurgents will treat the Americans?
Considering Abu Graib, the amount of civilian casualties and the total disregard for Iraqi life that we have shown, I would not want to be that American! And when you go whining to the world about the treatment of US soldiers by Iraqis, the world will shrug it’s shoulders and tell you that Payback is a bitch.”
Considering how Islamists and the insurgents (to the extent that they are different I both with including both) treated civilians when captured even before Abu Graib, I can’t worry about payback hurting too much. But the analogy is poor anyway. The rape scenario involves raping what was by definition non-soldiers as some kind of collective guilt (German women deserve to be raped because they were German) or in a social concept where women are merely an extension of men (German men deserve to have the women they own raped just like the women us Russians owned were raped).
As noted above, the concept of “payback” routinely has a strong element of deserving it behind it that is totally inappropriate and morally perverted.
Er, while I follow what you’re trying to say, there’s a real difference between saying “X, who committed atrocities, is less entitled to complain when Y commits atrocities that impinge on X,” and “Because X committed atrocities, atrocities that impinge on X are less wrong — Y is in a sense entitled to commit such atrocities.” Everyone who’s jumping on you is hearing you say the second — and they’re right to jump on you for it, it’s a horrible position to take. “An eye for an eye leaves everyone blind,” as the man said.
If what you mean is something more like the first: “I don’t want to hear German nationalists complain about the crimes the Red Army committed against Germany, given that Germany committed equal or greater crimes against Russia. Nonetheless, the Red Army soldiers who raped and murdered, and the generals who allowed or ordered it to happen, are criminals in exactly the same way as the Germans who committed or allowed similar atrocities,” then I think you might be able to calm down the conversation by rephrasing a little.
Sorry, that was to Anderson and felixrayman.
The winning of WWII was a team effort with Russia playing the part of Kobe and US was Shak. Or maybe the other way. Anyway, things would have gotten thornier if the Germans had managed to capture the Soviet Union’s oil fields in the south. I know that Sgt Schultz would much prefer to suffer indignities at the hands of Col Hogan than have to go to the Eastern Front. If German dread is a metric we have to give the nod the Soviet Union.
I pulled up the comments box and was going to wade into this, as an argumentative challenge, to see if in some sense the “is” in Don Quixote’s original thought is merely the result of a certain type of eye surveying the spectacle of human nature, but like an exasperated Sancho Panza, I got into the convoluted waters to about ankle depth, rolled my eyes, and quickly made my retreat back to shore.
My shoes were missing.
Violence begets violence, incivility begets incivility.
Lowlife, I think the Russians were Shaq. 🙂 Or maybe it’s more of a Michael Jordan v. Scottie Pippen thing. Except, of course, that after the game Scottie & Michael each moved in with half the Western conference team, and Michael held them hostage in their own home, while Scottie was a polite & extremely helpful house guest.
“One of these days, American Soldiers are going to be captured by insugents in Iraq, How do you think those insurgents will treat the Americans?”
I don’t know where you’ve been, but Zarqawi has brutalized and tortured and beheaded or otherwise murdered a number of innocent civilians since well before Abu Ghraib. It’s not “payback” if he’d do it as readily to Margaret Hassan as Charles Graner.
“And yes, Katherine there is such a thing as National guilt, you, I and every single American are responsible for the actions of our goverment! When we let the Goverment torture people, invade defenseless countries or finance Death Squads, we US citizens are responsible. It is done with our money and in our name!”
Which I said, in the very same comment you responded to. However, “collective guilt” connotes not only shared moral responsibility, but shared criminal culpability that justify collective retaliation even against civilians. It has led countries into disaster over and over and over and over again.
Compare the histories of Zimbabwe and South Africa since the beginning of majority rule. Compare the treatment of East Germany and West Germany after World War II.
And, you know, I actually am trying to do something about it. And there are few things that are LESS helpful in that effort than American citizens using the same things I am trying to stop to argue that the innocent people murdered on September 11 had it coming to them. It makes a “right v. wrong” argument into an “Us v. Them” argument, and of course people are going to choose Us over Them if it is phrased that way–I certainly would. But that’s not really the choice here.
It’s probably a good thing that I haven’t RTFC above, well , not all of them, but seeing where this has gone I want to weigh in on the collective guilt thing, it’s a topic I’ve given quite some thought to for a long time now.
Before that however, the Soviets were the primary actors in the defeat of the Nazis.
Now, I categorically reject notions of collective or national guilt. That’s an absolute for moral arguments attempting to assign blame for the actions of states, governments, armies, militias, etc. In fact I pretty much see such arguments as beneath contempt. There is a definite logical progression and connection between such thinking and genocide. (See, among other texts Michael Sells, A Bridge Betrayed). The evidence for this is overwhelming.
My personal take on this involves a critique of language and its marked tendency to make generalization easy over and against contextualization. I won’t elaborate here.
At the same time, as an American by accident of birth, I do feel personally some measure of responsibility and guilt over the atrocities being perpetrated in my name in the Middle East, (as I did for similar atrocities committed with American aid or acquiescence in S and C America, S Africa in the 80’s and Turkey in the 90’s as well as far too many other places).
I think that responsibility is real and that it is a good thing. But I categorically reject it as a basis for a moral argument demanding “payback,” retribution, vengeance, or what have you.
There is a quote from William S. Burroughs (who really saw this all too clearly) that I read so long ago and for years now I’ve been trying to track it down. It went something along the lines of how our American creature comforts, cheap gas, coffee, etc, was possible only with the enslavement of millions, and the torture and murder of countless hundreds of thousands.
Yet that doesn’t make the terror attacks on the WTC justifiable, it doesn’t make the three thousand murdered that day “little Eichmanns” (as an aside I might well be the only person here who not only knew who Ward Churchill before the latest brouhaha but also have a number of his books on my sagging shelves), though it might make them “little good Germans.” Certainly I feel now, post-Abu Ghraib and post-confirmation of AG Gonzales that is the case. But that in no way justifies killing. Justice does not call out for that.
It is important to use precision in language in such discussions. “Understandable” =/= “Justifiable”
I regard that as pretty much fundamental here. Anyone who doesn’t find the mass raping by the Red Army of German women after the conquest of Berlin understandable has little or no knowledge of the war on the Eastern Front, or the fact that the Russians prior to entering Berlin liberated a number of concentration and death camps. On the other hand anyone who makes the claim that same was justifiable on that account is going to get an argument from me among others.
“though it might make them “little good Germans.” Certainly I feel now, post-Abu Ghraib and post-confirmation of AG Gonzales that is the case.”
No, it doesn’t. None of us any idea how any of the people murdered that day would have reacted had they made it out alive. Some of them would have tolerated Abu Ghraib and some of them would not have. In what proportion, who knows. The fact that they were American isn’t much basis for even an educated guess. The fact that they were New Yorkers–or at least from the NY suburbs–might be more revelant; so might their job titles and salary; so might the fact that they would have likely encountered people from other countries all the time & not seen them as members of another species. (I visited the WTC once as a kid, and I remember my mom trying to keep me from whining on line by counting the number of languages I heard spoken in the lobby.) In the end though none of us is very useful; we can’t know either what proportion would have reacted what way or which individuals would have, because they were murdered several years before.
If you murdered 3000 New Yorkers today (or insert geographical location here) you would once again have no idea at all how they reacted to Abu Ghraib & the various torture allegations. For all you know, the attorneys from the ACLU or the Center for Constitutional Rights might have been in blast radius.
“Understandable” tends to confuse the issue because it has two separate connotations: one is “excusable” and the other is something more like “empirically more likely.” I agree with the latter connotation but not the former connotation.
Seb: As noted above, the concept of “payback” routinely has a strong element of deserving it behind it that is totally inappropriate and morally perverted.
I’m not sure whether or not this says what you actually mean, but since I agree with it, I’ll run with it.
Dictionary.com:
Since we aren’t talking about financial return here, I would suggest that we are talking about a synonym for vengeance or retribution, both of which have a definite punitive quality. While there is a certain equitability in the concept, (You poured a martini on my laptop therefore I will pour scotch into your dvd player — You frogs don’t support our war therefore we will boycott your products — Saddam is a bad man therefore we punish the Iraqi’s with economic sanctions — you pushed me first!), I don’t find the concept of doing something wrong to match another’s (perceived) wrongdoing fits my concept of justice, or to be a just act. Payback, or the eye for an eye philosophy, does indeed have “a strong element of deserving it” (at least as perceived by the one doing the payback), but at least according to my standards it is also “totally inappropriate and morally perverted.” To my way of thnking, payback is a pejorative, reflecting poorly on the one who engages in it.
gee, I may actually have agreed with a conservative….
Well, payback is a bitch. Of that we can all agree. Also true is that we can all expect that the payee probably had nothing to do with the initial outrage and that the circle will be unbroken. I didn’t take DQ’s comment to be more than expressed anxiety over American sins and in those anxieties I share. But it is kinda cold not to regret the excesses of Soviet troops. Just like it’s kinda cold not to regret the deaths of tens (hundreds?) of thousands of Iraqi deaths in Bush’s escapade in Iraq. I’ve made similarly cold summations of war’s unhappy results in justifiing Hiroshima and Dresden. I’m sure that I was wrong. But death and destruction is what war is. You don’t serve war as an entree and then neglect the side dishes of rape and torture and murder. I’d like to know how we can put people into extreme situations without expecting them to behave – extremely? It’s beyond my understanding how some people can attack DQ for his/her comments yet support this administration’s policies in the Middle East.
Katherine:
I think in part you’re misreading me. But the litany of atrocities, of crimes, murder, and torture do not begin with Abu Ghraib or even Gitmo, they go back decades. Also you’re getting a little too hung up on my specific example, one which I would never have chosen but for its prominence in recent debate, and now regret having done so- the remarks about other nationalities are nit-picking in this context (though I do agree with your specific arguments and have made them myself) and don’t address what I was trying to raise in using it.
“Understandable” only confuses the issue because it is wilfully so confused. The whole push-back and character assassination on anyone who discussed “root-causes” is part of this.
Understandable simply means that one can account for the behavior as going back to certain causes (historical, psychological, etc.) and has nothing to do with it being justifiable or excusable. I think it is very important to resist this blurring, it serves a cause, an ignoble one at that. Otherwise one is left in the realm of the irrational, in which notions of collective guilt seem eminently reasonable.
LJ— Nice link. That picture of Dresden and the figure of 600,000 German civilian deaths puts some things in perspective, since it is ten times the total civilian casualties that Britain suffered for the entire war. The attack on Dresden inflicted roughly half the total of British civilian casualties in one attack on the Germans.
And–slightly off topic again–to my earlier mention of Hiroshima, Chris P’s and others’ oft repeated figure that the bombing saved the lives of upwards of 1,000,000 US soldiers who were predicted to be lost in an invasion of Japan…
According to the NAPF timeline:
The Japanese were already prepared to sue for peace and were willing to surrended so long as the Allies promised to spare the life of the emperor. Truman would not accept a conditional surrender. We dropped the bomb and killed “Some 90,000 to 100,000 persons”, mostly civilians, in order to ensure an unconditional surrender after which we spared the life of the Emperor. We killed more civilians with those two bombs than our generals estimated military casualties (not deaths) for an invasion.
The common reasons cited for the dropping of the atomic bombs are myths and retroactive justifications. So much of what has been written and accepted is coming uraveled under current scholarship. And, no doubt, the same will hold true of much of what is written about current events as well.
Nous is right about LJ’s link. The money quote belongs to Stalin. In defeating the Nazis, “England provided the time, America provided the money, and Russia provided the blood.”
Barry–as a matter of linguistics, understandable DOES have both connotations, I have used it in both connotations myself in everyday conversations about family arguments, and your listeners can honestly and in good faith think you mean “excusable” even if you honestly and in good faith don’t.
As for the rest of it, my main point was not that 9/11 happened before Abu Ghraib but that if you randomly select a group of 3000 people out of hundreds of millions, you have little or no idea what they thought or tried to do about various wrongs committed by their country. In light of that “good Germans” is really offensive and I’m going to lose my temper if you repeat that characterization. You. don’t. know.
nous_athanatos,
You might be interested Doug Long’s page that has the debate on H-Japan about the atomic bombing of Japan, prompted by Gar Alperovitz’s book. Really fascinating stuff.
I have to disagree with you about the potential of US losses in Japan. In Okinawa, 1/3rd of the Okinawan invasion force were casualties, and the kamikaze campaign, had it been used for the home islands, may have unleashed a terrible toll. It was also estimated that the invasion forces would not have any numeric advantage over the Japanese, in large part because the suitable beaches for a landing in Kyushu are limited. I also believe that Marshall’s calculations were based on the idea of using atomic weapons (the US was slated to have 7 by November of 1945) to soften up the beaches, which obviously ignores the effects of radiation.
This link discusses the invasion of Kyushu and specifically mentions Marshall’s estimates.
As you note, nothing has (or probably ever will be) settled. That’s why I prefer to go back to 1920 and imagine avoiding the war altogether.
“Understandable simply means that one can account for the behavior as going back to certain causes (historical, psychological, etc.) and has nothing to do with it being justifiable or excusable.”
I don’t buy it in this context. Almost anything can be ‘understandable’ in that meaning. Even Hitler or Stalin are understandable in those terms. Understandable vs. completely mysterious is rarely the subtext of these conversations.
Whenever someone is talking about the morality of a situation and uses the term ‘understandable’ he is either very likely to be mistaken for partially excusing the act in question or is actually partially excusing it. In a probability sense the term may be correct, but in the payback is a bitch sense there is definitely a strong subtext of commentary on deserving what was done. If that isn’t intended, you should be aware that using the term is going to project something you don’t want. Pairing ‘understandable’ in the context of a discussion about the payback comment really makes it look like you are using understandable in the excuse-making sense.
“Whenever someone is talking about the morality of a situation and uses the term ‘understandable’ he is either very likely to be mistaken for partially excusing the act in question”
Especially by those who misread, or hold opposing political views.
“or is actually partially excusing it.”
Or is being mindread.
DQ, Felixrayman, just in case English is not your first language, the phrase “payback is a bitch” typically carries a strong connotation of justification. Basically, it’s saying “you got what you deserved, so stop whining.”
Actually the Germans did not get what they deserved, they deserved far worse, and had there not been a cold war with the Soviet Union, they would have gotten far worse.
“Actually the Germans did not get what they deserved, they deserved far worse, ”
Oh no, DQ; you are being far too polite and circumspect.
What you *really* mean is that you condone the abuse, murder, and rape of innocent civilians.
It has become clear that this “payback” phrase is just a way to hide one’s approving apologetics behind an appearance of stating the mere objective facts. And now that the “payback” phrase has been set aside, we can see the apologists more clearly for what they are: people who are justifying war-crimes, and saying that more of them should have been committed.
The posting rules say:
“we don’t ban for ideological reasons (unless you’re a Nazi or something equally vile) ”
Equality of vileness can be hard to measure. But the repeated and adamant justification of the Soviet war-crimes against German civilians is certainly coming within range.
One thing that isn’t mentioned much in the discussions re: the decision to use nukes on Japan was that Stalin’s forces had been freed up to intervene in the Pacific war, and the USSR had been promised a number of concessions in Asia if they aided in the defeat of Japan. As Japan was obviously already teetering on defeat, and Stalin was mobilizing troops, the US leadership felt that they needed to hurry the process along somewhat, as the USSR was already being identified as a threat, and a Soviet presence in the Pacific would be undesireable. And it should be remembered that there were a large number of fanatics in the Japanese Imperial Army that wanted the entire nation to commit suicide rather than surrender, so the surrender process could have taken quite a long time.
Ah. I somehow skipped over the part where you expressed regret about talking about 9/11 victims specifically. Sorry.
One last thing. Yom Hashoah, Holocaust rememberance day, was last week. Eric Muller wrote a post about a great uncle and aunt of his who were killed in a Nazi death camp. There are photographs of the deportation from the city of Wurzburg–carefully recorded by the German authorities–though he cannot make out his relatives individually. There is also apparently a video, which has been lost. Muller says that it is not impossible that it will turn out, and posts some pictures that a reader sent him, which the reader’s father talk when he was an ambulance driver serving the units that liberated Dachau.
The final words of the first half of Muller’s post (the photos are quite graphic so he put most of them below the fold) are:
“May such horror never befall any people again.”
In the Jewish tradition, and as always I could be screwing this up, you are commanded to say the Kaddish only for one month when a child, a sibling or a spouse dies, but you are commanded to say it for eleven months when a parent dies. This is odd to many people today: the death of a spouse is thought to be at least as devastating as the death of a parent and generally more so, and the death of a child is worst of all.
It only makes sense, I think, when you combine it with the view that the Kaddish actually helps to “elevate the souls of the dead” from Gehenna (which is called “the Jewish name for hell” but it’s really a lot more like the Christian idea of purgatory than the Christian idea of hell.) Since parents are more responsible for the acts of their children than children are for the acts of their parents, or spouses or siblings are for each others actions, it makes sense that the children’s saying of Kaddish would have the most effect.
I do not believe, literally, that saying the Kaddish for people after they die gets them out of purgatory and into heaven faster. I am simply agnostic about the existence of an afterlife. But there is a way that we all live after our deaths: in the bodies of our children, and in the minds and memories of all those who knew us and to a lesser extent, those who know about us.
I think the story that saying the Kaddish elevates the souls of the dead out of gehenna is metaphor. It is not literally true, but it illustrates something true: we have obligations to the dead. We have an obligation to remember them, to remember them honestly but while also honoring their memory, and to use make good things instead of bad things out of that memory.
We view it as good to bring flowers to your relative’s grave & to take your children there, to sit shiva and say Kaddish for them. We view it as evil to descrate someone’s grave.
Well, I believe that to use the Holocaust to justify or excuse the rape of millions of German women, or 9/11 to justify Abu Ghraib or extraordinary rendition, or Abu Ghraib to justify or excuse some future atrocities by Zarqawi, entirely apart the harm it does to the living, dishonors and harms the dead as surely as desecrating their graves. And to use those things to work to try to prevent such horror from ever befalling any people again–in Sbrenica or Rwanda or Darfur–honors the dead as surely as saying Kaddish for one’s relatives. I don’t believe that you can lift someone from purgatory to heaven by saying Kaddish for them, but we would not be able to honor the memories of James Madison and Thomas Jefferson as we do if not for the efforts of Abraham Lincoln, Frederick Douglass and every union soldier and abolitionist newspaper writer who helped to end slavery.
So that is part of why we have a collective moral responsibility for our countries actions even if they happened before we were born. But it is also part of why the idea of collective guilt justifying retaliation against civilians is so very wrong.
Felixrayman-
The only promise I could see them reneging on was that there was a tentative pledge to attempt a landing in ’43. This fell through after the debacle at Dieppe, in which a primarily canadian commando mission was thrown back into the sea.
Nous Athanatos-
That timeline is reliant on the estimates for a single island campaign, without factoring in historical loss levels of other campaigns.
The estimates of 500,000 to 1 Million casualties were arrived at by looking at loss levels in Saipan and Okinawa and extrapolating from that. According to that breakdown, by the way, the invasion would have resulted in roughly 2.5 million japanese dead.
The complaining about the demand for unconditional surrender completely contradicts the only war aims which united the allied powers. Without unconditional surrender as a goal, none of the powers would have trusted the others to continue fighting to the end of the war. The only way to secure the Japanese surrender without the atom bomb or invasion would have required negotiated surrender. That simply would have allowed another ‘stab in the back’ legend to be born.
Don. You have consistently implied that citizens of any major Wester nation which has done Bad Things deserve to be killed or tortured, regardless of their personal feelings about this. You have expressed satisfaction at 9/11 on repeated threads. You have also let slip that you are an American.
Simple question: Do you deserve to be raped? Tortured? Killed? I am not implying that you should be or wishing you any harm, since I don’t have the same moral calculus you do. But I want to know how twisted your mind really is.
I usually jump into these sorts of arguments when I see them, but fortunately for me I’ve only encountered this one long after it started. There are the seeds of an interesting discussion about responsibility for war crimes and how it should be distributed, but that’s not going to happen in this thread.
BTW, it’s fairly common for Americans, including liberals, to describe Hiroshima as payback. Which is what is unintentionally amusing about the outrage over Ward Churchill’s assinine remarks about 9/11.
Twentieth Century Atlas – Death Tolls
One last thing: this is a transliteration and a translation of the final two lines of the Mourner’s Kaddish.
“Y’hay shlomo rabbo min sh’mayo, v’chayim alaynu v’al kol Yisroel; v’imru Omein.
Oseh sholom bimromov, hu ya’aseh shalom alaynu, v’al kol Yisroel; v’imru Omein.”
“May there be abundant peace from heaven, and life, for us and for all Israel; and say, Amen.
He who makes peace in His high heavens, may He make peace for us and for all Israel; and say, Amen.”
These are the last two lines of the prayer that Jews are commanded to say out loud, standing in a group of ten or more adults, at the funeral of a close relative, for a month after a child, sister, brother, husband, or wife dies, for eleven months after a mother or father dies, and on the anniversary of their deaths–the prayer that is a part of every Jewish service I have ever been to except for weddings. This isn’t some holdover tradition from the days before the destruction of the temple. It is a tradition that developed during the diaspora, during centuries of persecution and murder and pogroms. I couldn’t guess how many times those lines have been recited in honor of someone who was murdered for being Jewish, but it’s got to have been well into the millions.
Spoke too soon. I guess it might be possible to salvage something out of this thread, looking at Katherine’s post and a few others.
One thing I’d point out–it’s all very well to say Don Q’s attitude is vile and I do think it’s vile to excuse rape (if that’s what he’s doing), but I think the attitude that one good atrocity deserves another is extremely widespread, in the US and maybe everywhere else. You can maybe get one person banned at this website, but it might be better to attempt to change his mind. Think of it as practice for the real world.
DQ–nice list.
“That’s 35,000,000 deaths which can probably be blamed on Hitler to one extent or another.”
If your position now is that it was *Hitler* who deserved abuse, murder, and worse, I won’t get in your way. All that earlier stuff about saying that the families of soldiers deserved it–maybe that was just a slip of the tongue on your part.
If your position now is that it was *Hitler* who deserved abuse, murder, and worse, I won’t get in your way. All that earlier stuff about saying that the families of soldiers deserved it–maybe that was just a slip of the tongue on your part.
Hitler deserved every thing he got and then some, but Hitler didn’t pick up a six shooter, loaded it up and go out and personaly shoot 35 million people. The German people put Hitler in power and followed his orders and eagerly went along with the program.
Don,
would you answer carpeicthus’s question then? Because of atrocities American soliders have committed, do you, personally, deserve to be murdered or raped?
LJ— thanks for the Doug Long link. Interesting reading that will keep me from papers. re:the Marshall numbers…agree that those are early estimates for a short window, but given the Japanese were already looking for some way to end things and had made overtures…again, the debate cannot be settled.
Chris P—“by the way, the invasion would have resulted in roughly 2.5 million japanese dead.”
True, but then this comes down to a question of means and meaning. Civilian deaths in Iraq versus victims of terror in the World Trade Center. Who is an appropriate target? How do you compare deaths in a combat zone to calculated attacks against largely civilian targets chosen for their symbolic value? I am not claiming to have any easy answers on this. I just find it hard to simply write off Hiroshima as necessary with no attempt to look at these other factors.
2+U— The soviet factor was huge in the decision, and largely goes unmentioned in what passes for discussion of the bombing. I think the decision to bomb has to be read in context with the start of the cold war and the need to send a message to Stalin. The argument lies in how you weight all these factors.
“do you, personally, deserve to be murdered or raped?”
I would add: does your wife, child, sibling or best friend deserve it?
Don. You have consistently implied that citizens of any major Wester nation which has done Bad Things deserve to be killed or tortured, regardless of their personal feelings about this. You have expressed satisfaction at 9/11 on repeated threads. You have also let slip that you are an American.
And I am also a former Marine.
In a Democracy, citizens are responsible for the actions of the State. In 2004, if you didn’t vote, I must assume that you are happy with the way the US is being run, if you voted for Bush, I must assume that you agree with his torture policies and his illegal war. Now looking at the numbers, 50% of the population didn’t bother to vote & 25% voted for Bush, so therefor 75% of the population approved of what is going on.
I see it more as Karma, the US has done many bad things over the years, and sooner or later the price for such bad things has to be paid.
Simple question: Do you deserve to be raped? Tortured? Killed?
No more than the Iraqis who got sent to Abu Grahib, or the ones who got bombed out of their houses, or the ones who got killed at checkpoints set in their country by an occupying army, or the Salvadorans who got killed by our right wing death squads, or the Chilean who were disappeared by our puppet goverment, or the campesinos who were killed by the Contras, our very own terrorist organization.
Italics off.
There’s an inconsistency then Don.
You argued that the Germans who should have risen up against Hitler deserved far worse than they got after WWII, but you’re not rising up against your government, despite your list of wrongs it has committed. Would an Iraqi whose home was bombed and children were killed by the US be right to kill you…YOU, personally, for that act? And if not, why not?
Don Q, if that last paragraph is what you believe, you are really, really not doing a very successful job conveying it.
. Karma isn’t a justification for human behavior. If DQ is trying to suggest that certain kinds of behavior are likely to provoke certain kinds behavior in response, then he is right. However, that doesn’t excuse or justify the response; it only demonstrates the inevitablity of human fraility.
Would an Iraqi whose home was bombed and children were killed by the US be right to kill you…YOU, personally, for that act? And if not, why not?
It would be a bad choice on his part there are far worthier targets, but yes he would be justified.
It would be a bad choice on his part there are far worthier targets, but yes he would be justified.
OK, then, there are worthier targets and less worthy targets. A bit of distinction they might consider before choosing who to retaliate against.
Moving on.
If the Russians were rolling through Germany, do you think they stopped to interview their targets to determine who was worthier than whom?
If not, should they have? By suggesting there are degrees of worthiness for this retaliation, clearly overall justice would be better served if the most worthy were the recipients, no?
God, DQ, you are one of the best arguments for pacifism that I have ever encountered. When does the violence stop? If your country killed them, so it is ok for them to kill you, can your friends and relatives now justly kill them?
If the Russians were rolling through Germany, do you think they stopped to interview their targets to determine who was worthier than whom?
If not, should they have? By suggesting there are degrees of worthiness for this retaliation, clearly overall justice would be better served if the most worthy were the recipients, no?
After having seen their comrades get blown away on the battlefields of Eastern Europe, their countrymen slauthered like pigs, their country being raped and pillaged, I doubt they gave a damn about justice. There was a bill due and it was going to be paid in full.
God, DQ, you are one of the best arguments for pacifism that I have ever encountered. When does the violence stop? If your country killed them, so it is ok for them to kill you, can your friends and relatives now justly kill them?
Never! we have ten thousand year of history and I doubt that you can find more than a handfull of years in which there was no war.
Yes, and they will. It’s human nature.
Which is why I am opposed to most wars.
If the Russians were rolling through Germany, do you think they stopped to interview their targets to determine who was worthier than whom?
If the Germans had done so, would the Russians have been more or less likely to? Lily said it best, “certain kinds of behavior are likely to provoke certain kinds [of] behavior in response”.
There was a bill due and it was going to be paid in full.
Then why did you make the distinction that you were a less worthy target than others? If there’s a bill due, why should that Iraqi make such a distinction?
But, Felix,I also said that the provocation did not excuse the behavior.
hint to the answer to my last question DQ…it’s in your last comment
Then why did you make the distinction that you were a less worthy target than others? If there’s a bill due, why should that Iraqi make such a distinct
I did not say he should, just said that I would appreciate it if he would.
actually you said “It would be a bad choice on his part.”
There is a judgment in that statement. As provided, one would be forgiven for assuming that it’s a judgment you feel is worth the Iraqi’s consideration. Otherwise, why provide it.
Now you note that you would appreciate it if he understood the difference…which step back a half step, but still implies he would be attempting to make a right out of two (one at least partially so) wrongs.
And if you feel that at least partially he’d be wrong to kill you, one would assume your surviving loved ones might as well, no?
DQ: Now we’ve established that some people are justified in killing and/or torturing you because they were victimized by American policies.
Second question: What portion of the world do you feel is justified to kill and/or torture you because they have been victimized by America? El Salvadorans? Probably. Japanese? Native Americans? African-Americans? Poor people? Veterans? Some guy who got an unjust parking ticket?
This is the kind of list you might want to make before you leave the house, otherwise interactions withpeople could be confusing.
“Sorry, man, didn’t mean to bump into you.”
“It’s OK, feel free to torture me to death while you’re at it. Have a nice day!”
And then there’s parts of me that could legitimately torture and kill other parts, because my English ancestors were not very nice to my Irish ancestors. The German end of my gene pool could probably be legitimately drained and scrubbed by any Russian.
My French ancestors probably did something bad, too, but at least they’re properly contrite.
Plus, the potential for civil war (with inevitable, serial retributions until everyone is dead) gets rather large when you consider how many Russians the Russians killed.
Nous is I think too optimistic about Japan’s willingness to surrender; I find Richard Frank’s Downfall to be very persuasive. Some sort of shock was essential to force the army & navy to back down and accept the emperor’s decision for surrender. We could have concentrated on rail lines & starved the Japanese into surrender, & perhaps we should have rather than use the Bomb, but given the mutual moral race to the bottom, nuking Hiroshima seemed perfectly logical. We killed more people in Tokyo, with which Frank opens his book.
I continue to think that it’s difficult to put as much moral blame on the Russians’ atrocities as on the Germans’ (excluding the Holocaust as unparalleled). Perhaps the analogy is to a vendetta between two clans, which begins when the German clan sneak-attacks the Russian clan, killing many innocents. The innocent victims killed in the Russian counter-attack are, by definition, “innocent” and not deserving of what they suffer. On the other hand, the allocation of fault can’t be 100% against the Russians, unless we’re prepared to adopt “turn the other cheek” on an implausible scale. (Cf. Machiavelli on Christianity’s incompatibility with government.)
If Hitler bore much of the responsibility for what befell the Germans in 1945 …
and if the Germans bore much of the responsibility for Hitler’s staying in power …
then the Germans bore much of the responsibility for what befell them in 1945. Right? Not right?
What seems to bother some commenters is the implication that this hits home—that Americans, those killed on 9/11 or future victims who may include ourselves, may bear some of the culpability for America’s actions abroad.
I do think that, if most Americans accepted that principle, we would see a very different foreign policy. Shielded by our oceans, wealth, & military power, we have luxuries in exerting force that other countries don’t. It would be odd, given human nature, if these luxuries *didn’t* lead us into immoral acts as a nation that other countries with less power and closer neighbors have to think more carefully about.
Slarti: And then there’s parts of me that could legitimately torture and kill other parts
You think you’ve got it bad? Parts of me can legitimately exile other parts of me into far-distant foreign lands and use the territory for sheep-farming. Ouch.
Some sort of shock was essential to force the army & navy to back down and accept the emperor’s decision for surrender.
And even with that, there was an eleventh-hour coup attempt that seized parts of the Palace grounds and attempted to confiscate the Emperor’s recorded surrender announcement.
Just so, Phillip. As I understand it, had we possessed only one A-bomb, the Japanese might not’ve surrendered even after Hiroshima.
Now, I do think the Russian entry into the war crushed many of their desperate hopes, and while bombing Nagasaki the next day did push them over the edge, they might’ve gone over anyway, given a few days to ponder.
But, little-known fact, there was no separate command to drop each A-bomb; we sent them out & said “when the weather’s good, go for it.” After having firebombed practically every other Japanese city, there seemed no especial reason to act all sensitive about the new bombs.
(IIRC, the government didn’t have any specific, concrete sense of what the effects of radiation would be; they just saw it as an entire bombing raid in a small package. Would be interested in any article, etc. that goes into the chain of communication on this point b/t the scientists & the government.)
Plus, the potential for civil war (with inevitable, serial retributions until everyone is dead) gets rather large when you consider how many Russians the Russians killed.
Ever heard of Chechnya? Among others…
“What seems to bother some commenters is the implication that this hits home—that Americans, those killed on 9/11 or future victims who may include ourselves, may bear some of the culpability for America’s actions abroad.”
a) Wrong. Actually what bothers me is that it is the EXACT SAME LOGIC that justifies some of our worst actions abroad. Al Qaeda is going to try to kill us anyway, and there is little danger of most Americans arguing that we should just suck it up. The danger is that Americans will turn Don Quijote’s arguments to justify retaliation against innocent Muslims and Arabs and South Asians for acts of terrorism they did not commit.
Change some proper nouns around, and DQ’s argument would receive plenty of approval at LGF.
b) Committing atrocities against someone can diminish their capacity to tell right from wrong. In that sense it makes retaliatory atrocities more likely, and more excusable to the extent that diminished capacity is an excuse. But:
c) if you are an adult and you are not clinically insane you retain some capacity. There are Joe Darbys as well as Lynndie England’s out there, Nelson Mandelas as well as Robert Mugabe’s, and plenty of people have survived unimaginable atrocities who, while they are probably never the same, do manage to get through the day without raping civilians.
c) to the extent that your capacity for moral judgment is diminished–it may lessen our willingness to weigh your soul and determine that the scale tips in the direction, “evil”, but it does nothing to justify your actions or lessen the harm they do to others.
Think of it like the insanity defense. Finding someone “not guilty by reason of insanity” is not a finding that a crime has not occurred. And most people who participate in wartime atrocities have a much lesser degree of diminished capacity.
e) This MUST be analyzed in terms of the individual rather than the group. Self-defense can require actions taken against groups, and groups can have an obligation to compensate the victims of previous crimes committed by members of the group, and it might be useful to make generalizations about the guilt of groups for the purposes of historical analysis, but collective violent punishment is illegitimate, wrong, and when it is made a matter of state policy or when it is tolerated by the state, it generally ends in disaster.
f) Sins of omission and sins of comission are both sins, but they are different sorts of things and it is generally a bad idea to violently (I count imprisonment as violent) punish sins of omission.
g) It’s not like there’s a given amount of guilt for World War II and we’re doing an addition problem about it. When you hire a hit man to commit a murder, the state prosecutes both you and your hit man. If I murder your child in cold blood and you murder mine in cold blood three years later–I bear some responsibility for both murders, but the primary responsibility for the second murder is yours. Jack Ruby presumably wouldn’t have shot Lee Harvey Oswald if Oswald hadn’t shot JFK, but this doesn’t mean that Ruby’s not a murderer. In the Abu Omar Ali case–if the government charges of conspiracy with Al Qaeda are true, the fact that he’s a U.S. citizen makes his actions morally worse. If his charges of torture are true, the fact that he’s a U.S. citizen makes the government’s actions morally worse. The same fact doesn’t mitigate one crime and exacerbate the other; it exacerbates both of them.
Slarti–my Irish English French Catholic Jewish German Polish Austrian Romanian kids are going to be so, so, so screwed.
(a) Wrong. Actually what bothers me is that it is the EXACT SAME LOGIC that justifies some of our worst actions abroad. Al Qaeda is going to try to kill us anyway, and there is little danger of most Americans arguing that we should just suck it up. The danger is that Americans will turn Don Quijote’s arguments to justify retaliation against innocent Muslims and Arabs and South Asians for acts of terrorism they did not commit.
Change some proper nouns around, and DQ’s argument would receive plenty of approval at LGF.
Katherine is quite right to worry about what could be justified by such arguments, but I don’t think the al-Qaeda example is a good one, because al-Q. is not a state; there are no citizens of al-Q. Am I being obtuse?
b) Committing atrocities against someone can diminish their capacity to tell right from wrong. In that sense it makes retaliatory atrocities more likely, and more excusable to the extent that diminished capacity is an excuse. But:
c) if you are an adult and you are not clinically insane you retain some capacity. There are Joe Darbys as well as Lynndie England’s out there, Nelson Mandelas as well as Robert Mugabe’s, and plenty of people have survived unimaginable atrocities who, while they are probably never the same, do manage to get through the day without raping civilians.
I don’t think I’ve argued that the Russian soldiers who committed atrocities weren’t blameworthy. Many modern armies have court-martialed & even executed their own soldiers for committing atrocities on enemy civilians. I’m suggesting, as a hypothesis worth exploring, that to the extent civilians are responsible for their state’s wicked actions, they bear some of the responsibility for what’s done against them in retribution. Retributive justice is primitive & objectionable in many respects, & I don’t subscribe to it personally, but it has its defenders.
c) to the extent that your capacity for moral judgment is diminished–it may lessen our willingness to weigh your soul and determine that the scale tips in the direction, “evil”, but it does nothing to justify your actions or lessen the harm they do to others.
Think of it like the insanity defense. Finding someone “not guilty by reason of insanity” is not a finding that a crime has not occurred. And most people who participate in wartime atrocities have a much lesser degree of diminished capacity.
Agreed.
e) This MUST be analyzed in terms of the individual rather than the group. Self-defense can require actions taken against groups, and groups can have an obligation to compensate the victims of previous crimes committed by members of the group, and it might be useful to make generalizations about the guilt of groups for the purposes of historical analysis, but collective violent punishment is illegitimate, wrong, and when it is made a matter of state policy or when it is tolerated by the state, it generally ends in disaster.
I’m willing to accept this as a thesis, but I observe that we didn’t fight WW2 on this principle. And to the extent that we’ve blown up the home of just about everyone who lived in Fallujah, for example, “collective violent punishment” appears to continue to be U.S. policy.
(And what about the British blockade in WW1, which effectively targeted civilians &, IIRC, led indirectly to many civilian deaths? Not “violent,” but if innocents die either way, the distinction seems irrelevant.)
If Katherine’s position is correct, and I think it may well be, then do we have to admit that the U.S. committed war crimes in bombing Hamburg, Dresden, Tokyo, Hiroshima, etc.? and perhaps in destroying Fallujah as well? Bolded because I suspect that the answer is “yes.”
The Germans and Japanese have had a checkered record (oops, it rhymes) in addressing their criminal deeds of state, but if firebombing civilian populations is a war crime, then the U.S. is far behind the Ger./Jap. efforts.
f) Sins of omission and sins of comission are both sins, but they are different sorts of things and it is generally a bad idea to violently (I count imprisonment as violent) punish sins of omission.
Right again, though I observe that omission/commission are subject to logic-chopping. Is a German who works in a munitions factory & doesn’t oppose his regime committing a sin of omission? commission? both? neither?
g) It’s not like there’s a given amount of guilt for World War II and we’re doing an addition problem about it. When you hire a hit man to commit a murder, the state prosecutes both you and your hit man. If I murder your child in cold blood and you murder mine in cold blood three years later–I bear some responsibility for both murders, but the primary responsibility for the second murder is yours.
The second example is interesting to me, because the law would treat both crimes equally, but we might suspect that a jury might punish Murderer # 2 less than # 1. The question I guess is, is that a flawed moral intuition, or not?
Thanks to K. for responding so thoughtfully to comments that may not deserve so much thought. Still, I hope I’ve suggested that if K.’s is the coherent & correct position, then the U.S.’s history is in need of some serious reevaluation.
“Katherine is quite right to worry about what could be justified by such arguments, but I don’t think the al-Qaeda example is a good one, because al-Q. is not a state; there are no citizens of al-Q. Am I being obtuse?”
Probably, because human beings think of people in groups, and ‘state’ isn’t the only group possible. Al Qaeda doesn’t have to be a state or a state actor in order to be viewed (correctly or incorrectly) as acting on the behalf of another group.
Anderson–collective violence may be justified because you need to incapacitate the people trying to kill you or drive them out of the city, and you cannot separate out the insurgents from the civilians or the innocent from the guilty. May. But to the extent that you are motivated by revenge or punishment, rather than by self-defense, defense of another, or something akin to the necessity defense, it MUST be individualized.
With the blockade I think there’s a self defense argument. With Fallujah’s there’s some self defense argument or a defense of another argument. With the deliberate targetting of German and Japanese cities during WW2, you’re talking about something like a necessity defense: not doing so would have led to even more deaths for one reason or another, or at least that’s what Truman reasonably believed. I can’t evaluate the empirical claims in all those cases,so I am going to reserve judgment on whether those things can be justified, and say: if they are justified, it is not as collective punishments for the Holocaust and the Rape of Nanking.
DQ: Now we’ve established that some people are justified in killing and/or torturing you because they were victimized by American policies.
that’s me and you!
Second question: What portion of the world do you feel is justified to kill and/or torture you because they have been victimized by America? El Salvadorans? Probably. Japanese? Native Americans? African-Americans? Poor people? Veterans? Some guy who got an unjust parking ticket?
What countries do I feel ahve a legitimate beef with the US. Here is a short list.
Iranians (1953 Mosadeq)
Vietnamese (1960’s)
Cambodia (1970’s)
Guatemala (1950’s Arbenz)
Nicaragua (1980’s)
Salvadorians (1980’s)
Greece ( 1960’s)
Chile (1973)
Iraq (2002 – present)
Granada (1980’s)
Panama (1990’s)
Had any of these countries done anything to harm the US other than attempt to run their affairs in a fashion we didn’t care for?
I would love to see someone justify any of these Foreign Policies using any other criteria than realpolitik.
“”Katherine is quite right to worry about what could be justified by such arguments, but I don’t think the al-Qaeda example is a good one, because al-Q. is not a state; there are no citizens of al-Q. Am I being obtuse?”
Well, yeah, kind of. First, people who are willing to tolerate the rape of women and the deaths of childrens for their husbands’ or fathers’ crimes, are probably not going to be dissuaded by political theory. You just define the group as “Arabs” or “Muslims” or “Them” rather than Al Qaeda. Or you just assume that everyone suspected or accused of being in Al Qaeda actually is in Al Qaeda–collective guilt is all about presuming individual guilt without evidence for it.
Second, what could be justified? As if this is all hypothetical?!?
In 2004, if you didn’t vote, I must assume that you are happy with the way the US is being run,
This, I just wanted to point out, is an idiotic statement. There are legitimate game-theoretical reasons under which a person dissatisfied with the direction of the country nevertheless feels that not voting is a more legitimate course than voting for either of two people who he does not want to win. (I did vote in 2004. The candidate for whom I voted did not win.)
Also, Katherine stole my joke about my future theoretical Polish-Russian-Slovak-Austrian-Irish-French-German kids.
Don Q–you seem to be just amazingly incapable of comprehending what people are actually arguing to you.
Please, get this through your head: I don’t have to believe that a U.S. policy was justified or excusable to believe that it does not justify or excuse my own rape.
I don’t have to believe that 9/11 or Zarqawi’s various atrocities were justified or excusable to believe that they do not justify extraoardinary rendition or excuse Abu Ghraib.
It’s really a very, very, very easy concept to understand. But once someone throws it away, it seems there is no convincing him otherwise.
Katherine,
The difference between you and I is that you believe that you should be shielded from the consequence of the actions of your goverment and I don’t.
ie. you believe that it is unethical for an Iraqi to set up a car bomb on wall street that will kil US civilians, I just believe that’s inevitable that it will happen and that the victims had it coming.
Now your going to tell me that I am a monster that has no ethics, to which I’ll just observe that I haven’t seen to many Americans losing sleep over the civilians corpse that we have been strewing all over the Iraqi landscape.
War is hell, which is why you should do everything you can to prevent it, but it is totally immoral and amoral, it has no rules, there are no good guys and thinking of it as a morality play the way you seem to be doing is a waste of time. You either win or you lose…
And in Iraq, we will probably lose, but then not to many colonial have been won by the coloniser in the last fifty years.
Anderson—Nous is I think too optimistic about Japan’s willingness to surrender
Quite possibly. I don’t pretend to be an expert on the subject, or even thoroughly read. What I had read suggested that we were closer to a surrender than some other sources would argue.
That said, I maintain that the US public as a whole seems awfully willing to rewrite difficult moral decisions as heroic and absolutely correct and then move on. I’ve read too much Arendt to think this is a good trait. Given that, I will always argue the contra on these issues.
(1) On being obtuse:
Probably, because human beings think of people in groups, and ‘state’ isn’t the only group possible. Al Qaeda doesn’t have to be a state or a state actor in order to be viewed (correctly or incorrectly) as acting on the behalf of another group.
Maybe we’re talking past each other? My point is that states, and only states, are “allowed” to declare war on other states, FBOW. Al-Qaeda are criminals, not war criminals. I’m trying, not very successfully, to think about a moral problem within the context of war.
Well, yeah, kind of. First, people who are willing to tolerate the rape of women and the deaths of childrens for their husbands’ or fathers’ crimes, are probably not going to be dissuaded by political theory. You just define the group as “Arabs” or “Muslims” or “Them” rather than Al Qaeda. Or you just assume that everyone suspected or accused of being in Al Qaeda actually is in Al Qaeda–collective guilt is all about presuming individual guilt without evidence for it.
Second, what could be justified? As if this is all hypothetical?!?
K. is concerned with LGF & rednecks, it seems to me; I’m trying to pose a (hopefully) more sophisticated question. No one of any good will whatsoever, I think, could justify attacks on “Muslims” due to 9/11. I want to ask whether and why civilian populations of aggressor nations may be legitimate targets of violence in war. Because we did in fact treat them as such in WW2.
(2) Collective violence & collective victims:
Anderson–collective violence may be justified because you need to incapacitate the people trying to kill you or drive them out of the city, and you cannot separate out the insurgents from the civilians or the innocent from the guilty. May. But to the extent that you are motivated by revenge or punishment, rather than by self-defense, defense of another, or something akin to the necessity defense, it MUST be individualized.
I’ll read a lot into “may”; I suspect, for instance, that we could have done other things with Fallujah besides blow it up. And as for revenge & punishment, again, I’m not exculpating Russian atrocities; I’m suggesting that, as K. said, guilt isn’t a limited sum, and that “Germany” (whatever that is) may have been responsible to some degree for what the German people suffered.
With the blockade I think there’s a self defense argument.
This would take us too far afield, but a blockade is going to kill babies, the old, etc., which is not any kind of “self-defense” in my book.
With Fallujah’s there’s some self defense argument or a defense of another argument. With the deliberate targetting of German and Japanese cities during WW2, you’re talking about something like a necessity defense: not doing so would have led to even more deaths for one reason or another, or at least that’s what Truman reasonably believed. I can’t evaluate the empirical claims in all those cases,so I am going to reserve judgment on whether those things can be justified, and say: if they are justified, it is not as collective punishments for the Holocaust and the Rape of Nanking.
Well, reserving judgment takes all the fun out of blogging, I must say … 😉 I don’t myself think that the fire raids can be justified on terms like “we can get good results by incinerating women & children,” or that anyone could reasonably have thought so at the time.
So let me bow out, w/ thanks to Sebastian & Katherine. The justification of Allied city bombing has bothered me for years now, & this thread has been another step in the direction of deciding it can’t in fact *be* justified. Many thanks.
That said, I maintain that the US public as a whole seems awfully willing to rewrite difficult moral decisions as heroic and absolutely correct and then move on. I’ve read too much Arendt to think this is a good trait. Given that, I will always argue the contra on these issues.
Well said, Nous. I think this applies to my concern about the fire raids. I am struck that, 60 years later, there’s no consensus that they were wrong, and have spent some time wondering whether the opposite consensus has some justification. Without some notion of civilian responsibility, I don’t think there is one. Katherine et al. are persuasive that there’s no such valid notion.
For anyone annoyed that I’m condemning the military uses of the fire raids, here’s a thought-experiment: WW2 scientists partially harness the Angel of Death & can push a button that will kill every firstborn child in Germany under the age of ten, with repeated presses killing the 2dborn, etc. Such a terrible blow will surely help to collapse Germany’s will to resist, saving countless Allied lives, etc. Should they push the button, or not?
—Now that I think about it, the unconscious choice of the Angel of Death metaphor suggests something about the presence of this collective responsibility notion in the Old Testament; not a fight I care to get into, but hey, it’s a fact; so I’ll let it stand.
Anderson–It’s not just LGF, it also seems to be the White House & a majority of the House and Senate. They don’t argue in favor of collective guilt–well, most of them–but their policies make them same presumption of guilt.
Nous Athanos-
I’m not saying that other factors should be ignored. However, these other facts do not countervail the evidence that was available to people that had to make the decision at the time. Also, examination after the war seems to have backed up a great deal of the fears. Post war investigation revealed hundreds of jet powered suicide planes and suicide mini-subs that were being held back for the main invasion.
World War II is considered a total war mainly because civilian populations were included in the war effort far more intricatly than ever before. One result of this, is that the Civilian population was targeted in response. IIRC, Hiroshima and Nagasaki both contained several war related industries.
If you would like to read a really interesting book about how Race factored into the pacific war, I would recommend War Without Mercy, by John Dower. The book helps explain why explicit area bombing was more acceptable in the pacific, whereas bombing targets in the west were always described as being factories or military targets.
Ethics according to Don Quijote: If your preferred candidate for President loses the election, you deserve to get murdered by Iraqi terrorists’ car bombs.
Beautiful. Just beautiful.
To align, kinda, with DQ, it seems to me that recent history is full of Victor’s Justice. The victors make the rules, and the rules require finding the losers guilty of war crimes.
Now, part of the problem with complaining about Victor’s Justice is that it commits the fallacy of tu quoque: you did it too.
So, for example, Bomber Harris was a war criminal. Does that relieve any of the Nazis of their moral culpability? No, but.
But? Yes, but. But by whitewashing our own culpability, we give legitimacy to the argument that we are not interested in punishing the war crimes, we are simply interested in punishing the losers for the crime of having lost.
DQ fundamentally makes a very simple point. There are no innocents in war. The very concept of “war crime” is a sop to our conscience, because the victor’s guilty generals never stand trial.
One can make this point re the Israeli/Palestinian conflict. It is easy for those with superior firepower to make rules that support the way they fight. So the Israelis are, in theory, not guilty of war crimes when they launch missiles into crowded neighborhoods, because the specific intent is to kill a terrorist. Civilian casualties are simply an unfortunate side effect. Since i’m not fighting that war, it’s easy to rock back in my chairt and recognize that the Palestinians could easily have a very different view as to whether or not notions of specific intent distinguish conduct which is a war crime from conduct which is not.
We Americans are accumulating a serious blood debt, which is unlikely to be paid off in our lifetime. But even though we have two great oceans to protect us, we cannot continue to commit the war crimes of Gitmo and Abu Ghraib without expecting payback.
So when a Shiite car bomb explodes in San Diego, will we have deserved it? No. But. But when you cry havoc, and let lose the dogs of war, you have to expect the enemy to fight back anyway he can.
Please, have mercy and stop dragging this out. I sense a desperate hope that if you frame your questions and outrage in some particular way, DQ will recant and explain what he really meant and we’ll all laugh off the misunderstanding and share a Coke and a smile. Except you won’t, because DQ has made it explicitly clear in no uncertain terms whatsoever that he believes that in some kind of bizarre arbitrary moral calculus my family is deserving of being killed and raped, as are you all, and perverseley as is he himself (Christians have nothing on him for guilt-fetishizing.).
Given that continued interaction is not going to change any of this, can we just move on to ignoring or banning DQ? It was a good thread before that. Also, please don’t succumb to the temptation of exhibiting outrage as a means of experiencing moral righteousness. I know it feels good, but it makes the thread really long.
I want to second Anderson‘s recommendation of Dower. I also found very interesting Gerald Horne’s _Race War: White Supremacy and the Japanese Attack on the British Empire_, though some have taken it as presenting an excuse for Japan’s invasion of Asia. (I don’t, mind you)
I should add that I’m of the school that what is done is done and we should do our best to know all of the facts and opinions that were floating around so that we can do our best to avoid it in the future.
Just one quick comment, then I’ll let the thread go out (or not), sidereal. And it’s Biblical.
Anderson’s question about the angel of death image sent me scuttling back to 1 Samuel 15, where my memory was proved horribly correct. Saul, the first king of Israel, is cast out of god’s sight for not obeying this order:
Where did Saul go wrong? He smote the Amalekites, slew all the humans (except the king, who was taken as prisoner), but brought back the livestock.
For that failure to exterminate all life from the Amalek settlement (or tribe, or whatever it was), God throws a hissy fit, withdraws from Saul, chooses a new king, and starts a civil war within Israel.
Here’s hoping we can do better.
LJ-
Do you happen to know the name of the sequel he wrote? I’ve heard of it, but I can’t seem to find the title.
BTW, that was my recommendation. 🙂 Unless I missed him recommending it earlier, and just made an ass out of myself.
I thought I add a few factual notes about the atomic bombing of Japan. Of the many fine books on this subject, I strongly recommend Richard Rhodes The Making of the Atomic Bomb; it is simultaneously the best written, most comprehensive and engaging book on this subject on all levels.
The decision to deploy the bombs, the manner of deploying the bombs and the selection of cities to be bombed was carefully thought out at the highest level of civilian command. Probably the most interesting fact was the Secretary of War Henry Stimson’s decision overriding the military’s desire to target Kyoto instead of Hiroshima.
This analysis included an understanding of the likely radiological effects of the bomb — they had the Trinty site to inform them of the fallout associated with the bomb. Someone above asked for a cite on this — here is one; its hair-raising.
The bombs were set for air-bursts which significantly reduces fall-out, but I am not certain if this was intentional (my recollection is that other reasons dictated this decision).
For too long a period of time post-war, the US military blatantly lied about the radiation effect on Japanese victims. Wolcott recently linked to this historical atrocity; the NY Times journalist won a Pulitzer for falsely reporting the military falsehoods about radiation effects (and who was simultaneously taking a paycheck from the military to hype its story — so much for learning from history).
The decision to employ the bomb was a barbaric act arguably justified as a means to end a barbaric war. I have personally come to the conclusion that its use was justified, but it is a question that should always be debated as it brings to mind the essential barbaric nature of all war, and that decent people commit barbarity in the name of war.
But it is worth noting that the same rationale was initially given for strategic bombing of cities with conventional weaponry. It is now broadly agreed that the Dresden or Hamburg bombings or the Tokyo firebombings were needless acts of barbarity, but they were partially justified at the time as hopefully breaking the will of the enemy to resist further (though even Dresden does not merit this fig leaf rationale).
The atomic bombings, therefore, get less condemnation because they did in fact end the war and perversely save lives. Would opinions be the same had the military coup in Japan, attempted on the eve of the surrender, succeeded; and the emperor’s surrender message was therefore never heard by the Japanese people, such that the war continued?
I detect three strains in this discussion: genuine horror at Soviet atrocities during the overthrow of nazi Germany; an expressed, possibly genuine indifference to those atrocities, and unease at sitting in judgment at this distance and in our current circumstances. The Soviet soldiers who reached Berlin had survived horrors that we can only imagine. I don’t think it dishonours the victims of Soviet rape and murder to acknowlege the circumstances and the part they played in bringing about the behaviour of Soviet soldiers.
You can’t have a nice total war. Total war entails injustice and plain horror; if it repels, disgusts, and terrifies us, then so it should.
Chris P
Sorry about that! Not sure how I did that.
Dower’s latest is _ Embracing Defeat: Japan in the Wake of the World War II_ Also an excellent read.
sidereal, true the thread is long, but thought provoking.
During the first Gulf war, Cal Thomas wrote a column advocating using tactical nuclear weapons against the Iraqi army. He asked, “… what is the moral difference between a 2,000-pound bomb that kills a few hundred combatants and a tactical nuclear device that might kill 2,000 or more?” This was after a 2,000 pound bomb dropped on a bunker in Iraq killed the civilians taking refuge there.
As chance would have it, his column appeared shortly before the ground war got under way and the Iraqi army was surrendering by the thousands, to anyone they could find including CNN camera crews. I vividly recall surrendering Iraqi soldiers praising George H. W. Bush.
I was shocked both by Mr. Thomas’ apparent ignorance of the power of nuclear weapons and the callousness of his column and I posted an impassioned rebuttal on alt.desert-storm.
Anderson’s “Angel of Death” above brought this back to mind — at the end of what I wrote I asked, “suppose you faced an enemy army of say 100,000 soldiers … Suppose you had a magic wand which you could wave to cause all 100,000 enemy soldiers to die on the spot. No casualties to your own side, no “collateral damage” to property or civilians. Would you ever be justified in using such a weapon?”
Perhaps “yes” is a valid answer considering dmbeaster’s and others’ mention of the justification for ending a barbaric war. The weight of the decision to use atomic weapons in WWII has always seemed greater than anything I have the wisdom or experience to criticize.
Thinking today, though, about the real dangers we face and the power of the weapons we possess, I have to ask myself, what is the right action for me to take now? Lily wrote, “God, DQ, you are one of the best arguments for pacifism that I have ever encountered.” Following the logic, I feel I personally have to do more than I have done so far.
Getting back on topic:
I always assumed our role was more important because that was the focus of the history I was taught. And the same is true for my partner in reverse.
Oddly enough, the focus of my history of WWII was on what Britain did to win the war… 😉
Katherine: It’s not like there’s a given amount of guilt for World War II and we’re doing an addition problem about it.
In the spirit of this remark, I’d like to repeat something I said up-thread because it’s a vitally important point that seems to be getting lost nowadays. I’ll whack it in bold, that’s how important I think it is:
Responsibility is neither zero-sum, binaristic nor Manichean — there’s enough of it to go around as need be.
Please, have mercy and stop dragging this out. I sense a desperate hope that if you frame your questions and outrage in some particular way, DQ will recant and explain what he really meant and we’ll all laugh off the misunderstanding and share a Coke and a smile. Except you won’t, because DQ has made it explicitly clear in no uncertain terms whatsoever that he believes that in some kind of bizarre arbitrary moral calculus my family is deserving of being killed and raped, as are you all, and perverseley as is he himself (Christians have nothing on him for guilt-fetishizing.).
Thanks, and I should add that not only does he think that Americans deserve to be killed and rpaed, but he thinks they deserve to be killed and raped en masse. After all, the original comment was regarding the mass raped of East German women by Soviet soldiers, and that a direct analogy was drawn between this and “payback” for Iraq/Abu Ghraib. In other words, DQ thinks that the Arabs would be justified in commiting something like genocide against Americans.
So, how does everyone here feel about that? The mass murder of Americans is what is being proposed as just restribution.
So, DQ: Should your fellow countrymen be rounded up and shot, or should gas chambers be used? Maybe beheading? Would you help line them up maybe? Or just stand by and point out the houses where Republicans live?
o, DQ: Should your fellow countrymen be rounded up and shot, or should gas chambers be used? Maybe beheading? Would you help line them up maybe? Or just stand by and point out the houses where Republicans live?
I don’t get to make that dection. I just observe that a tab is being run and that someone is going to have to pay the bill. If we are lucky, we’ll get off cheap or scott free, as we did in Vietnam, Cambodia and many other places!
War is easy when you fight it on someone else’s real estate and your cities are not firebombed, your civilians starved, women raped, etc…
Wow, if there was an award for “most successful threadjack,” DQ would win in a walk.
– Hosea 8:7
Surely this is the true point behind DQ’s idiot bluster, and a noncontroversial point at that.
Getting back on topic:
Thank you!!!
I’ve been convinced that the USSR played a larger role in defeating the Nazis. If I hear the list of Eastern Europeans they took away from the Nazis one more time, I’ll be able to pen a Broadway Musical about it…(though, what rhymes with Bulgaria?).
The thing is, it’s not exactly “liberating” a nation if you don’t leave, now is it? (Here comes the other list…the countries that the US still has bases.)
Vulgaria?
Angry a?
Malaria?
Hysteria?
Listeria?
Of course, there is is this op-ed in the NYTimes today:
How Russia Lost World War II
(and now I’m heading into the witness relocation program…)
[Enter the Iron Curtain as represented by a jackbooted kick-line of hirsute, frowning steroidal women.]
st, you’re hired!!!
I’m sure teenage rape victims would probably disagree with you. As would the rest, come to think of it.
Well, instead of torturing himself with a hot poker because The Man is keeping him down, DQ is instead torturing logic to the breaking point. He doesn’t have the courage of what, for lack of a better term, we will call convictions, so the only think left is to point and laugh.
Die, foul italics!
And that was “thing.”
Apropos of this topic, an interesting book review in today’s WaPo:
Awesome quote Phil.
The rhetoric is definitely key toward making murder seem a good thing. We watched “Hotel Rwanda” last night (yes, I’m way behind in my movies) and as angry as it made me to think the US was so lame in response, the person I most wanted to crawl through the TV and strangle was the radio announcer who kept labelling the Tutsis “coachroaches” and worse.
Rhetoric is key. When the opposition begins to paint you as “other” you had better watch your back.
” When the opposition begins to paint you as “other” you had better watch your back.”
Exactly. That’s what makes the “other faith” stuff raise hackles.
Exactly. That’s what makes the “other faith” stuff raise hackles.
You’re preaching to the converted here Dantheman. 😉
We watched “Hotel Rwanda” That’s on my list too, but have you seen Sometimes in April? It is told from the perspective of that radio announcer’s brother, a moderate Hutu army officer married to a Tutsi woman. He looks back on the murderous events as he decides whether or not to visit his brother during his trial for war crimes.
but have you seen Sometimes in April?
Not yet, but many thanks for the tip.
The radio announcer was tried for war crimes? How very just!!! What happened to him?
I watched the trailer for Sometimes in April, Crionna…it looks amazing. I didn’t like the way the filmmaker sneaked in a dig at “Hotel Rwanda” (noting that he didn’t want to make a “black Schindler’s List“), but I guess there is something to that critique.
Ya know, I can’t remember, and neither can my wife. I honestly think that they may not have said… I know that it was a fictionalized account, based on real players. It was very good.
I saw it the other day on PBS. There was a discussion afterward that included Paul Wolfowitz…
If anyone wants to help a school student with some interesting info on hitler staying in power by wednesday i would be most thankfull. Rvsp
ta
G
It’s good to know the grand old internet tradition of students asking other people to do their homework is still there.
i guess the question would still be, had the red army been able to defeat germany if the nazis were not figthing a three-front war, normandy, italy and the eastern front…
the german army was formidable…it was a matter of time before it could defeat the british, it could have defeated the americans and it could have defeated the soviets. remember it defeated what many considered was one of the strongest armies in France that time in just a matter of weeks…even with the help of the British
but the rules of logic simply states that there’s just too many enemies to fight and so little time…