Are executions in the town square less moral than air bombing? Consider the following hypotheticals from the international law of war. Suppose that we have intelligence that some indisputablely legitimate military target is in a certain area, say the commanding general of an army, but we cannot recognize the general himself. In the first situation, the only way of reaching the position is via air strikes on the area, which we can be certain will kill the target but will also kill a certain number of bystanders. In the second situation, we simply cordon off the area and then find and shoot everyone inside.
Under current international law, the first case would not be a war crime but the second case would be. Now there are any number of thoroughly amoral possible reasons for this rule. The first situation looks an awful lot like what the Allies did with strategic bombing in World War II and the second situation looks an awful lot like how the Germans dealt with resistance fighters in World War II. It might not be accidental that most of the current international law of war crimes comes out of the Nuremburg tribunals held by the Allies to try Nazi leaders after World War II. Hence, the rule may simply be a historical memory of victors’ justice.
I wonder, however, if there is any defensible moral position behind the distinction that the rule makes. Is there any moral distinction between harm and suffering caused from afar and harm and suffering caused up close? Is there any distinction between harm and suffering caused by one who is at risk (the plane in theory can be shot down), as opposed to one who is at no risk (no one can get at the execution squad in the town square)?
I don’t claim to have answer’s here, but I do think that the question is an interesting one.
Nate: The distinction I see is twofold between the two scenarios: In scenario one, the _only_ option of getting the “target of opportunity” is an air strike. Legal, yes. But, certain restrictions still have to be followed; i.e. minimize casualties to the greatest extent possible, etc. So…distinction one is the _only_ rationale. Since there are alternatives in #2, i.e. capture all individuals, only shoot those that fire on you, then it is disallowed. The 2nd disction is derivative: the general placed himself in the civilian area. If the civilians don’t kick the general out, and/or leave the area, then they are assuming the risk. Further, the government/general is placing the people at risk; so the guilt belongs to the targeted government/general; not the attacking force; that is, unless distinction one doesn’t apply.
with 1,
Lyle: The its-the-civilians-responsibility-to-give-up-the-general rationale is precisely the one that the Germans invoked with regard to shootings in the town square. The courts at Nuremburg (and Dachau, where lower-level functionaries were tried) were not impressed. Of course, most German executions tended to be simple retaliations rather than a policy of we’ll-shoot-them-all-and-get-our-man.
OK, taking your hypotheticals at their word, in the first situation, there are two alternatives: bomb the area and kill the general, or not bomb the area and allow the general to escape. Therefore, bombing is the least destructive method of accomplishing the objective. In the second situation, if there is sufficient control of the area to execute people with no risk, then there must be a less destructive way to accomplish the objective.
These days there is a strong possibility the general/commander/leader will be in an underground bunker (made of reinforced concrete) rather than out in the open. During the first Gulf War the United States made quite an effort to drop bombs on all the command-and-control centers where Saddam was likely to be. There was one particular site north of Baghdad, at the al-Taji air-base, where they dropped three 2000 lb. bombs and then followed that up later (towards the end of the war) by hitting the same site with two 5000 laser-guided bombs that had been on the drawing-board only a few weeks earlier. Of course assassination of foreign leaders is illegal in the United States …
There was occasionally been some discussion of creating mini-nukes to hit bunkers under the ground. Here’s a 2003 article about the possibility and some of the outrage that arose at the time.
Eric James Stone, you say that “if there is sufficient control of the area to execute people with no risk, then there must be a less destructive way to accomplish the objective.” You’ve surreptitiously added the component of risk to Nate’s hypotheticals. Executioners who took on risk would still be war criminals. Nate is right to invoke “victor’s justice.” Also, it is interesting that rules of war in this instance condone soldiers killing people from afar or by remote-controll, but criminalizes face to face killing.
Miranda PJ,
> You’ve surreptitiously added the component of risk to Nate’s hypotheticals.
I did not add the component of risk. Nate said in his post that execution squads were at no risk:
> as opposed to one who is at no risk (no one can get at the execution squad in the town square)?
The risk that I was refering to was the fact that the civilians lined up for execution in the town square can’t shoot back, while the bomber going to its target can be shot at.
Eric James Stone, Nate’s mention of risk is a possible moral difference between the two hypotheticals, not a factor in the hypothetical legal verdicts discussed in his first paragraph. You’ve shown how Nate made the same mistake you did of surreptitiously bringing risk into the hypotheticals. You haven’t addressed how executioners who took on risk would still be war criminals.
(Semi-related?)
I find it interesting that most Mormons view Captain Moroni as the model and the Anti-Nephi-Lehis as the aberration, rather than the other way around.
OK, Miranda PJ. I’ll reformulate without including the concept of risk.
Note that the first hypothetical tells us that there is no alternative method of achieving the military objective of neutralizing the general. The absence of such an assertion in the second hypothetical means that the possibility of using alternative means is not contrary to the hypothetical.
> In the second situation, we simply cordon off the area and then find and shoot everyone inside.
By the terms of the hypothetical, we know the area can be cordoned off. We also know that everyone inside can be found and shot.
Now, I’m going to make an assumption here. (I’m telling you that so you won’t accuse me of making the assumption surreptitiously.) I’m going to assume that a military force capable of cordoning off an area, finding everyone in that area, and individually shooting the people they find, may be capable of taking those people prisoner. Such an option would achieve the military objective with less loss of life.
Another possibility to consider is that, while it might not be possible to identify the general, it may be possible to exclude some people as suspects. Since the hypothetical general is a male (“we cannot recognize the general himself”), shooting the women in the area is completely unrelated to achieving the military objective.
Basically, since the second hypthetical seems to allow for less destructive ways of achieving the objective than were used, all other things being equal, it is a less moral choice.
Now, if the second hypothetical stated that shooting everyone in the cordoned area was the only way to achieve the objective, then I don’t know what moral distinction can be made without surreptitiously bringing in other concepts.
> I find it interesting that most Mormons view Captain Moroni as the model and the Anti-Nephi-Lehis as the aberration, rather
> than the other way around.
I find it interesting that you find it interesting, as Mormon himself holds up Captain Moroni as a model, and it seems fairly clear that the Anti-Nephi-Lehis were an aberration.
I’m going to assume that a military force capable of cordoning off an area, finding everyone in that area, and individually shooting the people they find, may be capable of taking those people prisoner.
Darn, too bad we didn’t hear back from our politician guest about where Matt Hilton went, he would have loved this discussion.
You are hitting the point where things get sticky. What happens when you can exert enough control to round up and shoot, but not hold? That is where the worst atrocities occur, the same as in torture scenarios.
Of course the real issue is that to exclude hypo one as legitimate, you have to give up on air power and strategic weapons. If you take air power uses to their natural extension, you get to hypo one (and beyond) fairly quickly.
On the other hand, for land combat, you can outlaw hypo two and conduct land combat in the normal fashion for the next thousand years.
Should air power and strategic weapons be outlawed? Good question, but war crimes issues start by assuming that they are normative.
Now, to get to Nate’s real question, what if you know a significant portion of a Nazi officer corps is in a town, so you level the town to get them by bombing it flat — or you bomb a town flat to get the ball bearing factory you know is there but can’t tell where?
I think my Catholic friends would argue (the one’s who aren’t effectively pacifists) that the difference is one’s intent. When one bomb’s, one is acting with the intention of killing the general and the other deaths are side effects. One doesn’t will them.
In hauling out the inhabitants one-by-one, and shooting them, one is willing the death of each individual, while knowing that they are probably innocent.
I think this distinction makes sense. Given a choice between the two, I’d go with the bombing.
And, besides that, I think there is a moral distinction between harm caused from afar and harm caused up close. The more personal the victims, the more intimate (so to speak), the more freighted with moral weight is the doing harm to them. Think, analagously, of the different moral duties we have to, say, the starving child in our neighborhood, and the starving child in Africa.
> And, besides that, I think there is a moral distinction between harm caused from afar and harm caused
> up close.
So an assassin who kills using a sniper rifle with a telescopic sight to kill his victim from hundreds of meters away is more moral than the assassin who places a handgun to his victim’s head?
I’m not sure I see a moral distinction between the two.
I sit back and read this conversation and it occurs to me that if we were discussing any other crime, I doubt we would focus on the point of view of the perpetrator.
Can we please rephrase this to reflect the point of view of the victims? Would you rather live in a town that was mercilessly bombed, or a town where everyone was rounded up in the town square and shot?
Re #4:
Saddam Hussein, as head of the Iraqi military, was a lawful combatant and as such could be targeted without violating the executive order prohibiting assassination.
Re #15
The “point of view of the perpetrator” is almost always important in analyzing crime. Consider two people shot dead; one intentionally shot so the killer could steal his money, the other accidentally shot in a hunting accident. The result for the victim is the same, but the difference between a capital crime and no crime at all is what was inside the shooters’ heads.
Re #12, carpet bombing. I assume you are talking about Dresden. After all the Law of War courses I have taken, taught by both the Army and Air Force, I have no idea why that was not prosecuted as a war crime. That carpet bombing violated nearly every one of the principles of the Law of War that I have learned and that I have taught. I have the same problem with Sherman’s march through Georgia.
The only explanation I can think of is that of victor’s justice. On the other hand, the only reason I can give for Hiroshima and Nagasaki is the proportionality principle: nothing else would have forced the Imperial Army to surrender.
Re #12, carpet bombing. I assume you are talking about Dresden. After all the Law of War courses I have taken, taught by both the Army and Air Force, I have no idea why that was not prosecuted as a war crime. That carpet bombing violated nearly every one of the principles of the Law of War that I have learned and that I have taught. I have the same problem with Sherman’s march through Georgia.
The only explanation I can think of is that of victor’s justice. On the other hand, the only reason I can give for Hiroshima and Nagasaki is the proportionality principle: nothing else would have forced the Imperial Army to surrender.
Yes, I was thinking that Nate was really leading up to that example, so I wanted to get to the issue of what is the difference between dropping a cluster of 5000lb bombs to get a hidden tank and carpet bombing Dresden? At what point does the use of air power or strategic weapons violate the laws of war? At what point should it violate the laws?
Also, with Hiroshima and Nagasaki we gave evacuation warnings and the cities were evacuated, though not responsibly.
I will note that the “catholic” rule, above, is the one that many people intuitively feel and that justifies Dresden, though it is not satisfying to a lawyer.
I cannot think of anything that justifies Dresden–it seems like the allies were in a hurry to end the war and took shortcuts. Also, from my reading of Air Force history it seems like the newly-minted Air Force was trying to impress the other guys (Army, Navy, Marines) that they could fight wars, too.
The biggest difference I find between Dresden and the “bunker buster” bombs is the intent: Command and control centers located in underground bunkers are legitimate targets. They are used by the enemy to prosecute the war. Dresden, on the other hand, was done with no regard to minimizing civilian casualties by focusing on targets with legitimate wartime purposes.
Eric James Stone (#11): I find it interesting that you find it interesting, as Mormon himself holds up Captain Moroni as a model, and it seems fairly clear that the Anti-Nephi-Lehis were an aberration.
Since Mormon himself was a military commander, I’m not surprised he was taken with Captain Moroni’s experience and actions (even so much as to name his own son after him).
I have nothing against Captain Moroni, but I find it interesting that many Latter-day Saints struggle to understand the Anti-Nephi-Lehi story within the context of their own modern political conservatism and willingness to use military power to advance those political ends.
Suggested readings:
* Doctrine and Covenants 98
* Spencer W. Kimball, “The False Gods We Worship,” Ensign, June 1976.
Another thought to ponder:
Let’s imagine the Nazis had managed to develop the atomic bomb. In a last, desperate attempt to win WW2, they drop atomic weapons on Baltimore and Philadelphia, killing 200,000 Americans. They then lose the war when Berlin falls to Russian and American forces.
The Allies would certainly have put the Nazi leaders on trial for crimes against humanity.
American commanders were not put on trial for using atomic weapons on Japan.
Reason?
In a sense, the Nuremberg trials were illegal. That is to say, they were instituted more as Victor’s Justice, than because they had a strong legal foundation. The German leaders were tried by ex post facto indictments, and the judges were part of the victorious powers. The rules of evidence were created by the court, and the judgments rendered were not appealable. However, there was a very strong sense at the time that morality was served and justice was done, regardless of the legality of the situation.
Germany had been a signatory to the Geneva Convention, and as such its leaders could be viewed as having violated legal conventions. Japan, on the other hand, was not a signatory to the Geneva Convention; therefore neither Japan nor its opponents in the war could be viewed as violating the Geneva Convention. The Geneva Convention was essentially utilitarian in nature: we will treat people like so, as long as you agree to treat people like so. However, Japanese war leaders were also tried under the same ex post facto indictments, and were subject to Victors Justice.
War has its own cold, irresistible logic (not saying it is right, just that it is logical). The first is to destroy the enemy’s armed forces, the second is to destroy the enemy’s ability to wage war, and the third is to destroy the enemy’s will to fight. Because in the age of industrialization, industrial production is a means of waging war, acts with the purpose of destroying an enemy’s industrial production have been viewed as a legitimate weapon of war. The third one becomes more problematic, because almost anything can be justified by that. And it is particularly in regard to this third that we have moral arguments about what should or should not have been done.
In hindsight, of course, the use of an atomic weapon is rightfully viewed as horrifying. At the time, however, it was one more step in increasing the firepower in war, and the war had gone on a long time, and millions had died. Those who made the decision to drop the bomb believed it would shorten the war. They were right.
They believed that it would save millions of lives…on this one, there are dissenting opinions, but the consensus seems to be they were right. We cannot know, because it is hypothetical. But they also believed it would save hundreds of thousands of American casualties. On this too, they were right.
Mike Parker,
> but I find it interesting that many Latter-day Saints struggle to understand the Anti-Nephi-Lehi story
> within the context of their own modern political conservatism and willingness to use military power to
> advance those political ends.
I’m a modern political conservative with willingness to use military power to advance those political ends, if by that you mean someone who supports the Iraq war.
And I have no struggle to understand the Anti-Nephi-Lehi story within that context, and I don’t really recall Latter-day Saints with political views similar to mine struggling with it either. Most of the times I’ve seen it brought up, it’s by people like you who think we should be struggling with it.
The people of Anti-Nephi-Lehi, before their conversion, were killers. Because they wanted to show their repentance, they swore an oath not to kill again. But they were most definitely not pacifists. First, we have the fact that they supported the Nephite armies that were defending them. Second, we have the fact that when it looked like the Nephites were in dire need of more combatants, they were willing to break their oaths — and careful readers will notice that the argument against their doing so was not that participating in a war was wrong, but that they were going to break their oath. Third, we have the fact that their sons, who were not under oath, took up arms to defend the Nephites and their own families.
So, if I were a killer who had converted and taken an oath never to kill again, I might struggle with the story of the people of Anti-Nephi-Lehi if I were called upon to defend my country, but since I’m not, I don’t have a problem with it. They were clearly an anomaly in the Book of Mormon because of their particular situation.
Adam’s comment (# 13) troubles me a little. It seems that a proximity approach to morality is less about being good and more about being nice. It is akin to claiming that hunting for meat is somehow less moral than buying meat at the store. In both cases, the animal died; in both cases, the animal’s death was for the sake of the person. The only difference is in the latter case, the person didn’t have to look the animal in the eyes. I don’t think that squeamishness is the best basis for an ethical framework.
I tend to think there is no moral difference between the two situations Nate poses. However, bombing provides a situation where it is easier to deny one’s responsibility for an action, and is therefore troubling on a different level. Technology has made it easier to kill efficiently and with spatial and emotional distance. With a push of a button, a city can be flattened. The distance makes it easy for the bomber to deny responsibility for the act. After all, all s/he did was to press a button. This is much the same for euphamistic terms such as soft targets, collateral damage, etc. Both are attempts to decontextualize the goings on to “ordinary work.”
As a sidenote, I am dubious of applying a legal framework to what is the quintissential extralegal activity. War crimes tribunals, I think, are simply ways of making victor’s justice more palatable for liberal tastes. Again, we hide our actions in technology, technicalities and procedure to avoid taking responsibility for what we are doing.
But maybe this is all just the pomo in me talking.
Mike Parker,
Here’s why LDS hold Capt Moroni as a model:
“Verily, verily, I say unto you, if all men haad been, and were, and ever would be, like unto Moroni, behold, the very powers of hell would have been shaken forever; yea, the devil would never have power over the hearts of the children of men.” Alma 48:17.
Of coures, the man who wrote this (Mormon) was also a military commander, and may have been looking for a model himself. I think it is also important to remember that, earlier in that same chapter, Moroni is described as a man who “did not delight in bloodshed” but took joy in liberty and freedom.
Point #1: There is no “international law” the same way there is law in the state of Michigan. International law operates only when all the participants agree to it. When they don’t agree to it, they must either be coerced into compliance by a stronger participant (like the Balkans), or we have to just sit it out and watch helplessly (like when the Soviet Union crushed Bulgaria).
Point #2: This is not a valid argument against having an international law. The original post speaks of the artificial distinction between bombing vs. rounding up the townspeople and shooting them. But consider this:
Under international law, at least one of the options is illegal. Without international law, BOTH would be legal. So overall, I’m happy there is a Geneva Convention even if it is ineffectual much of the time.
Point #3: I suppose it’s time to point out the flaws in the rationales supporting the dropping of atomic weapons on Japan.
One rationale states: if the US was forced to invade the Japanese mainland, it would have resulted in horrific casualties as the Japanese fought fanatically in self-defense. Dropping the bomb saved the lives of American soldiers.
This argument only works if you assume that we had to invade the mainland. I posit that we didn’t have to invade the mainland. Not invading would have saved American lives just as effectively as the bomb.
The question shifts to the necessity of invasion. At this point in the war, the US had already asked Stalin to join the war against Japan. Russia had not yet mobilized completely, but it was only a matter of time.
In fact, the bombs were dropped only days before Russia was supposed to publicly announce it’s intention to join the US in the fight against Japan. Why not wait a couple days to see what effect Russia’s declaration of war would have on the Japanese leadership? Quite a bit of evidence indicates that the declaration would have caused a surrender.
However, Truman decided not to wait.
Here’s my take on why he didn’t wait:
He was sending a message to Stalin. The Soviet army outnumbered us in Germany almost ten to one. We couldn’t match them on the ground in Europe. Nukes evened the military equation.
Rather than allow Russia to lay a claim to defeating Japan (and demanding a share in post-war Japan). Truman decided to end the whole thing unilaterally. Hiroshima and Nagasaki were warning shots across Stalin’s bow – the first shots of the Cold War.
Perhaps you can justify Hiroshima on those grounds. But personally, I think Nagasaki was inexcusable. The Japanese were already beat.
Are executions in the towns square less moral than air bombing?
Yes.
In hindsight, in retrospect, we were the good guys in WWII, the Nazis were the bad guys. Our dropping the bomb on Japan saved more lives than it took. It ended the war and profited the world.
If the Nazis had dropped the bomb, the war would have ended, but the killing and death and evil of Hitler would have continued.
That’s the difference. Works for me.
“It seems that a proximity approach to morality is less about being good and more about being nice.”
Nope. Just a recognition that the more practically aware of someone’s humanness and personhood a killer is, the greater the evil in killing them.
Thus, the following acts are all evil but the latter are worse than the former:
1. Stealing some money, from a relief fund, with a vague awareness that some abstract person in a distant land will die as a result
2. Stealing some money from a hospital, aware that someone you’ve never met, but whose circumstances will be similar to those in the hospital that you have met, will die as a result.
3. Personally killing a stranger for their money.
4. Personally killing a neighbor or a friend for money.
5. Personally killing a brother, sister, parent, or spouse for money.
Now, the differences between these crimes pales in comparison to the magnitude of the murder itself, but there is a difference. One has to realize that evil has an objective component (murder is murder) and a subjective component.
Very good point, Adam.
Interesting how little the people condemning Truman line up their conclusions with his own reasoning.
Or with the military reasoning.
No one disagrees with the fire raids on Tokyo. They cost less and did more damage per raid than the atomic bombs did. In fact, the military concluded by analysis that nuclear weapons on that scale were a bad investment as strategic weapons and cost effective only against specific military targets. You can pick up a copy of Atomic Weapons in Land Combat — it has been declassified — and get an indepth analysis.
Of course, in hindsight, it is easy to conclude that any specific action was wrong. Heck, it is easy to state that S— kills babies by posting instead of spending the time in charitable work saving children. The logic is just as good, or just as silly as concluding that Nagasaki was inexcusable.
As for Dresden, that is the first of strategic warfare by airpower. A lot of interesting issues there, a lot.
It seems like the logical conclusion from this argument is that a racist is more justified in killing a person of color than any other person because he or she is less practically aware of that person’s humanness. It doesn’t wash. But even if you are right, it seems like there is something uniquely morally problematic with taking an affirmative step to avoid the awareness of the other’s personhood.
Boy, I missed that altogether. On the other hand, could you change the words “more justified” to “less culpable? I don’t like the racist example, but IF a person considered a black person to be less than a person, if that person had been raised to be a racist, wouldn’t the degree of responsibility assigned, ultimately (and God-like), be based upon knowledge, motive, for the crime?
But…after thinking about it, I don’t think your example even applies to what Adam was trying to say. Maybe neither is applicable to your original question. But it’s thought provoking.
Stephen: Lots of people question the fire bombing of Tokyo. There is a non-trivial argument to be made that virtually all strategic bombing of cities in WWII was unjustified. The original theorists of air power had two basic ideas. The first was the precision bombing of key economic assets would cripple the enemy’s ability to fight. Second, the slaughter of civilians would destroy the enemy’s will to fight.
It turns out that the first approach was a bit of mixed bag at best. The technology just wasn’t there for precise strategic bombings and the knowledge of what was necessary to bring the economy to a halt was not really there. As it turned out, economies are very resiliant and can substitute to work around lost assets. The standard of living decreases, but war production continues. Given the amount of destruction inflicted on Germany, its munitions production remind high to the very end.
The case for terror bombing is even weaker. Think of the Nazi fire bombing of London. It did not break the British will to fight. If anything, it unifed the country behind Churchill and the war. Now the total number of civilian deaths caused by the Luftewaffe in the UK was equal to a really good day for the USAAF and the RAF over Germany later in the war, but the same basic result obtained. The German will to fight was not broken.
Hence, it is by no means clear that the carpet bombing of World War II had any strategic advantage that justified its horrific costs. Ironically, it may be the case that the Tokoyo was NOT justified, even if Hiroshima was. (Nagasaki, I agree, seems like horrible overkill.)
If terrorism is unjustified, it seems that neither is terror bombing. But I suspect that finding a war waged with consistent moral principles from war to war or even from event to event is unlikely. That is part of the moral cost of waging war: even when it is justified/unavoidable, it is highly unlikely that it will be waged in a completely moral way.
Nate and Jim make good points about strategic bombing. A further note about the effects of “strategic bombing” on German war production. Albert Speer, in Inside the Third Reich, wrote that production of war materiel continued to increase throughout the war until January or February 1945, when it decreased as areas containing factories were captured by the Allies. The bombing may have required greater effort per unit produced, but the plain conclusion is that all the bombing did no good at all in reducing war production.
I’m surprised by Steven’s comment that nobody disagrees with the fire bombing of Tokyo (and Osaka and Kobe and Nagoya and Yokohama etc. etc.). The firebombing of those cities (and of Dresden and Hamburg) simply moves up the date on which the Allies crossed the line into gross immorality–it wasn’t when a single bomb killed 100,000 on 08/06/1945, but when thousands of pounds of bombs ignited a firestorm in Hamburg in 1943. I don’t believe that the number of bombs you drop to slaughter thousands makes any difference in the moral equation.
Of course, the manner in which the Japanese conducted the war, particularly beginning with the battle for Iwo Jima, reduced the armies there to the grossest barbarity. Japanese troops ceased to maintain a front line, allowing the US forces to pass them, and then rose from their caves/dugouts and shot as many as they could before they were themselves killed. The Japanese would almost never surrender, instead killing as many Americans as possible before themselves being killed. This led to the clearing of caves and dugouts with flamethrowers (can there be a more horrid way to kill a human being?), the widespread shooting of prisoners (better to do it before the enemy pulls a grenade and takes several Americans out along with himself) and battles in which virtually all Japanese casualties were deaths, not simply wounds or captures.
Which makes me wonder why we don’t spend more time “renounc[ing] war and proclaim[ing] peace.”
Which makes me wonder why we don’t spend more time “renounc[ing] war and proclaim[ing] peace.”
Excellent point.
As to the firebombing, guess I’m not current as to the Japanese theater and the approaches taken in second guessing what was done. The changes may well be justified, but many believed that without Nagasaki there would not have been a surrender. All of the “extraneous” effects of a bomb were completed with the first bomb drop. The second one had purely theater applications, aimed purely at forcing surrender, with a great deal of concern of what would happen if we had to drop a third bomb or a fourth …. (given the actual number on hand).
Actually, the US did not have any more bombs on hand. It probably would have been weeks before a new one could be produced. Part of the effect of Nagasaki was to convince the Japanese that Hiroshima was not a one time thing. They didn’t know that the US had no more, and they faced the possibility that they would be destroyed, city by city. Even so, the decision to surrender was not easy for the Japanese, and there was an attempt at a military coup which would continue the war.
Even so, the decision to surrender was not easy for the Japanese, and there was an attempt at a military coup which would continue the war.
Yet, in hindsight, many are convinced that the coup would have failed even without Nagasaki and that there was no will even for a coup to be attempted. Thanks for pointing out the reality.
People forget that Nagasaki did far less damage than one of the nightly raids on Tokyo, and cost us a great deal more.
Anyway, it is always tempting to look at how effective things were in hindsight and then to re-evaluate them, basied on the testimony of people such as Speer — and to conclude that if production increased, it would not have increased more without the bombing. After all, one is certain that production in Dresden just continued to go up.
Ok, I’ve lapsed into sarcasm.
But to go “they had a theory, based on what they knew, and when they were fighting for their lives, that is how they decided to allocate resources, but we are certain they were wrong and their theory was defective, therefor, ex facto, they were immoral” rubs me wrong. What would have been immoral would have been for them not to evaluate what they did and attempt to learn from it afterwards — and we can see policy shifts and decisions made since. Not to say that “fighting for your life” justifies “anything goes.”
Interestingly enough, the anti-bombing arguments force the conclusion that ICBMs would not make a meaningful dent in a country’s ability to make war. One can tell that military planners found that conclusion persuasive. Or not. Consider the resolution of the Berlin crisis and the input of strategic use (or threatened strategic use) of strategic weapons vis a vis the canals. Had the waterways been closed like the highways, the USSR concluded that we really would nuke them and they also concluded that such an event would significantly hamper their ability to conduct a war, so Berlin (airlift and the romance of that aside) continued to receive boat and barge traffic.
But now we are getting far from Nate’s hypo of whether striking a target justifies stripping the cover and who is to be held accountable for how the target hides and what it takes to strike the target — and when is the price too high. A military approach is to blame the target. When the enemy puts weapons on the tops of dikes and hospitals and schools, they have chosen those collateral targets and are guilty of war crimes, not those who strike at the weapons. But maybe not.
But when is the price too high is a completely seperate theme. When is the price too high? I think often we are willing to pay too high a price in the suffering of other people and their deaths.
George Washington had a lot to say on that. As to the second Gulf War, no invasion and gas would still be at a dollar a gallon or so. Our local Albertsons would probably have gotten more kurdish cashiers (we have a refugee resettlement group that places people at the Albertsons as they transition).
I’m not sure any weapon used offensively is ever precise enough.
Stephen,
I think your last statement,” I’m not sure any weapon used offensively is ever precise enough” is a good summation.
The Law of War recognizes that nations will wage war. I think one of the lessons of the Capt Moroni chapters of the Book of Mormon is that nations will wage war. I don’t think either condones war; I believe that they both provide guidelines so when we are in that position, we are warned not to “delight in bloodshed.” That is the difference between Moroni and the commanders he destroyed. They fought and killed because they wanted to, he did because he had to.
One visit to the Holocaust Museum in DC convinced me that WWII was what we had to do.
Ask those who fought in the Pacific against the Japanese, who were dreading an assault on mainland Japan, how they feel about the bomb. Ask their families.
Ask the POW’s in Vietnam how they felt about the bombing, the soldiers fighting there. I wonder how those fighting in Germany felt about bombing.
It’s easy to second guess in our safe little armchairs. I think at the time those who were directing our armies were not evil little men. I think they were doing the best they could with a terrible situation.
Modern nations could avoid all these “collateral damage” issues if they would just agree to settle their differences in a civilized manner, such as individual ritual combat between national leaders.
Schwarzenegger for President in 2008!
annegb — thanks for that dose of common sense. It is easy to forget that to those in the U.S. at the time, this war was not seen as an exercise in good-hearted helpfulness — rather, it was perceived as a very real threat to America and this land of freedom (and Church leaders at the time described it this way).
Eric James Stone (#24) — Thanks for clarifying that. In our soft present, we tend to think of war as evil. Yet war is righteous when it is to defend freedom and there is no other way (and since there is no sure way of knowing when there is no other way, there will, of course, always be disagreement about whether there is no other way and 14 U.N. resolutions are enough).
This string reminds me of the words of Wilfred Owen in “Miners”:
“Comforted years will sit soft-chaired
In rooms of amber;
The years will stretch their hands, well-cheered
By our lifes’ ember.
“The centuries will burn rich loads
With which we groaned,
Whose warmth shall lull their dreaming lids,
While songs are crooned.
But they will not dream of us poor lads
Left in the ground.”
annegb – thanks for that dose of common sense.
Amen.
http://www.web-books.com/Classics/Poetry/Anthology/Kipling/Tommy.htm
http://www.web-books.com/Classics/Poetry/Anthology/Kipling/Recessional.htm
For those who kneel beside us
At altars not Thine own,
Who lack the lights that guide us,
Lord, let their faith atone!
If wrong we did to call them,
By honour bound they came;
Let not Thy Wrath befall them,
But deal to us the blame.
Daniel (#43): In our soft present, we tend to think of war as evil. Yet war is righteous when it is to defend freedom and there is no other way.
There is no scriptural passage to support your assertion. In fact, the scriptures only speak of “righteous war” in one passage, when the Lord himself is the one waging it (Rev. 19:11). And many scriptures speak of righteousness being brought to pass only when people set aside their weapons (e.g., Alma 25:14; Ether 7:27; Moses 7:16).
D&C 98 makes it clear that defensive war is only justified after an enemy has attacked three times and the Lord has specifically given his permission for us to retaliate. Even then the Lord promises to reward us if we still spare him (98:30).
Spencer W. Kimball:
“We are a warlike people, easily distracted from our assignment of preparing for the coming of the Lord. When enemies rise up, we commit vast resources to the fabrication of gods of stone and steel—ships, planes, missiles, fortifications—and depend on them for protection and deliverance. When threatened, we become antienemy instead of pro-kingdom of God; we train a man in the art of war and call him a patriot, thus, in the manner of Satan’s counterfeit of true patriotism, perverting the Savior’s teaching:
“‘Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which despitefully use you, and persecute you; That ye may be the children of your Father which is in heaven.’ (Matt. 5:44–45.)
“We forget that if we are righteous the Lord will either not suffer our enemies to come upon us—and this is the special promise to the inhabitants of the land of the Americas—or he will fight our battles for us….
“What are we to fear when the Lord is with us? Can we not take the Lord at his word and exercise a particle of faith in him? Our assignment is affirmative: to forsake the things of the world as ends in themselves; to leave off idolatry and press forward in faith; to carry the gospel to our enemies, that they might no longer be our enemies.”
(Ensign, June 1976; link)
In this context, almost all war—and certainly the current war in Iraq—is unjustified and immoral.
DyC 98 seems to me to be a law for the church only and not a general law with which to judge the nations.
Mike Parker says that the scriptures condemn participation in almost all war. To the contrary the scriptures condemn being bloddthirsty or “warlike”. Many profets participated in the book of Mormon wars and also in wars in the Old testament. But they didn’t delight in bloodshed and weren’t warlike. A few times the Lord fought their battles for them, but usually the lord helped them and they had to do a lot of the fighting themselves.
And what about the war of Utah. Latter Day Saints fought and destroyed goverment property. (Not legal and probably not moral). I would say that the Lord liberated them, but they were ready to fight and building many things for their defense.
The words of Spencer W. Kimball appear to me to condemn the nations for studying war so much and ignoring the words of the Lord. People still put other things before the Lord.
I believe the words of the modern prophet will help us to discern. “We will do our part” He doesn’t say that war is evil, nor does he say that it is good. He recognizes that we can’t escape it.
I believe all of us consider war to be something bad and wish that it would never be. We feel the same about sickness, death, and a socioeconomic system that promotes disparity in wealth and, some have said in another thread, doesn’t allow mothers to mother in some cases. Nevertheless we are in the world, and these things are, and we have to deal with them. We can’t suppose that war will pass us by because of our distaste for it, or that the people in our countries are so righteouss that the Lord will spare us the sword.
I think it’s interesting how accusations of “looking in hindsight” and “armchair analysts” are always leveled at those who question the popular view of World War II and not at those who support it.
By the way, I was aware that the fire-bombing raids on Tokyo were more destructive than Hiroshima and Nagasaki. I was simply pointing out that the tired old argument of “saving the lives of American soldiers” has received less general scrutiny than it deserves. As I specified, I was only responding to the issue of the use of the atomic bombs, not the other bombing campaigns.
> I think it’s interesting how accusations of “looking in hindsight” and “armchair analysts” are always leveled at
> those who question the popular view of World War II and not at those who support it.
The “popular view” being that it’s a good thing the Allies won the war? Or the idea that Allied leaders were doing what they felt was necessary to win?
Well, there’s a really simple explanation for that phenomenon.
Those who oppose the popular view use hindsight to show that Allied leaders might not have needed to do what they did.
Those who support the popular view don’t need hindsight to argue their position. Their argument is that while Allied leaders made mistakes, they didn’t know they were making mistakes at the time they made them.
As for who’s an armchair analyst, many of us who support the popular view may be sitting in our armchairs, but what we’re supporting are the men actually charged with conducting the war, men with far more experience dealing with war than just about anyone likely to be posting here. We’re ratifying the decisions of Eisenhower, Roosevelt, Truman and more.
For the most part, opponents of the popular view are questioning the decisions of those men. They are free to question, but such questions are forged far from the heated pressures those men were under.
Madera Verde (#46): DyC 98 seems to me to be a law for the church only and not a general law with which to judge the nations.
But since our first allegiance is to God and his kingdom, shouldn’t then the scriptures govern our conduct with relation to the nations, including our own?
Mike Parker says that the scriptures condemn participation in almost all war. To the contrary the scriptures condemn being bloddthirsty or “warlike”.
Really? Here are a few more quotes from modern prophets and apostles:
• David O. McKay: “We see that war is incompatible with Christ’s teachings. The gospel of Jesus Christ is the gospel of peace. War is its antithesis and produces hate. It is vain to attempt to reconcile war with true Christianity.” (Gospel Ideals, p. 285.)
• Brigham Young: “Of one thing I am sure: God never instituted war; God is not the author of confusion or of war; they are the results of the acts of the children of men. Confusion and war necessarily come as the results of the foolish acts and policy of men; but they do not come because God desires they should come. If the people, generally, would turn to the Lord, there would never be any war. Let men turn from their iniquities and sins, and, instead of being covetous and wicked, turn to God and seek to promote peace and happiness throughout the land, and wars would cease. We expect to see the day when swords shall be turned into ploughshares, spears into pruning hooks, and when men shall learn war no more. This is what we want. We are for peace, plenty and happiness to all the human family.” (Journal of Discourses 13:149.)
• Lorenzo Snow: “It is not our business to fight our enemies. There is no man or woman on the face of the earth, but is our brother or our sister. They are the children of God and we are here to bear and forbear with them in their interest and for the glory of God. It is not our business to destroy life. It is not our business to make war upon our enemies. * * * They are our brethren and sisters and God have mercy upon them. That should be our prayer.” (General Conference, October 1899.)
• Bruce R. McConkie: “War is probably the most satanic and evil state of affairs that can or does exist on earth. It is organized and systematic murder, with rapine, robbery, sex immorality and every other evil as a natural attendant. War is of the devil; it is born of lust.” (Mormon Doctrine, p. 825.)
And I have many, many more on file.
The scriptures and the prophets are clear: We may defend ourselves if attacked, but it is not acceptable to go out to war against other nations unless the Lord commands it. Our duty is to live righteously and wait for the Lord to protect us from our enemies.
Amen, Brother Parker. But don’t expect modern Mormons (including many of our leaders) to take the Lord’s counsels on war. War is too addictive and exciting. Many on this blog have already fought this battle and lost. Many of your brothers and sisters here worship a “kick butt” Jesus rather than the Prince of Peace. But hey, the words of the prophets are almost routinely rejected. Its just another testimony of their inspired nature. If they were easily accepted, they wouldn’t be needed. Instead of seeing the Book of Mormon as a testament of Jesus Christ–contrasting his teachings on Zion with the fallen nature of Nephite and Lamanite societies–many of us like to use it more to justify our own political ideologies. Jesus just isn’t practical. Sorry.
Amen, Brother Jimbob. You’ve converted me to renounce war. I’m so proud to be, like you, one of the few truly righteous Mormons — more righteous than some of our leaders, even, and definitely more righteous than many on this blog — for we don’t routinely reject the words of the prophets. Because of our obviously superior understanding, we know that those commenters here who don’t agree with us must like war just because it’s addictive and exciting, rather than because they’ve put any serious thought into the matter. Thank you for showing me how to worship the true Jesus, unlike many on this blog. It is a terrible burden we share, being a righteous minority among so many unrighteous Mormons. It makes me want to find a rameumptom and start praying. Why, if we could only get over this whole pride thing, I’m sure we’d be translated immediately.
That the atomic bombing of Japan saved American lives (and likely resulted in fewer Japanese deaths than an invasion of Japan would have) does not change the fact that war is grossly immoral and the systematic slaughter of civilians a ratcheting up of the immorality of war.
My dad was in a staging area near Marseille in the summer of 1945, expecting orders to go to the Far East. The GI’s expected that if things went well, the war might be over by 1948. If that had happened, tens or hundreds of thousands of American soldiers would have been killed or wounded. So, I’m grateful that the war ended that summer. If it took the atomic bomb to end the war (and that argument could take another 60 years), then I’ll join Paul Fussel in saying thank God for the atomic bomb.
That does not change the fact that the bombing of Japan (whether “conventional” or atomic) killed hundreds of thousands of our brothers and sisters, burned and disfigured thousands more, destroyed their homes, their livelihoods, their hopes. Those weren’t people who had promoted the war, committed the atrocities in Nanking or Manila or elsewhere, who had killed American soldiers and marines on Iwo Jima or Okinawa. They were civilians, trying to keep house and home together during a terrible time, children going to school, trying to learn the 10 kanji they’d been assigned for the week, mothers nursing their colicky infants.
Yes, I’m ever grateful that my dad survived the war–and the odds on his doing that would have dropped substantially had he been part of an invasion of Japan–but his survival came at a terrible price.
Eric, your comment 10 was the right response to Nate’s original question, and your comment 24 was a great response to the blasphemous chestnut that the anti-Nephi-Lehis are pacifists. To the contrary, the anti-Nephi-Lehis were exceptionally righteous and were not under the spell of pacifism’s siren-song.
Mike and Jimbob, war is evil, but remember that it takes but one to make a war. The moral question is what our obligations are to those victimized by war, whether large-scale wars like Saddam’s war against the people of Iraq or the micro-scale wars happening against children in houses in our communities where they are molested and killed. Pacifism teaches that we should disband the military and police forces — that we should sacrifice the flesh of innocents with a prayer to God that he will save the children from their killers — to save pacifists from using force to save the children or other innocents. My hope is that most pacifists would willingly call the police — invoke force and violence — to save their children from violent abusers. (If they would not call the police even when their own child was being tortured by sadists, because they categorically reject force and violence, I would hold them criminally accountable in the deaths of their children.) If they would call the police to save their children from violence, the moral issue is whether pacifists have a moral duty to do for other innocnets what they do for themselves and their children.
Eric James Stone and anngb: The point of ex post moralizing about war is not to demonstrate one’s superior morality vis a vis the past, but to learn from it. No human endeavor is perfect, and certainly nothing as hideosly violent and destructive as human war is perfect. If one cannot criticize and anlyze the past, then it is not really possible to learn anything from it.
Perhaps it would help to distinguish two sorts of moral criticism. You can make statements about the morality of particular individuals. This will require — at least in part — trying to reconstruct their decisions based on what they knew at the time. When making these judgments we ought to be particularlly sensitive to hindsight bias and the like. Alternative, you can make statements about states of affairs in the world. For example, maybe Curtis LaMay and the rest of those who pushed strategic bombing were honestly convinced that war (1) always involved a grisley utilitarian trade off of less death against more death; and (2) that civilian fire bombing would cause less death rather than more death. These beliefs may have been entirely reasonable given what they knew at the time.
However, even if we decide that we cannot morally condemn LaMay, it doesn’t mean that carpet bombing, qua carpet bombing (rather than qua decision made by a person with very imperfect information), was morally justified. To the extent that moral reflection about the past is ultimately a matter not of passing moral judgement on the dead, but of finding principles to guide future action, then it seems to me that we ought to look at the actual effect of particular strategies. If civilian fire bombing does not achieve its stated strategic objective — breaking the enemy’s will to fight — then given the fact that it involves the horrible death of tens of thousands of men, women, and children, we ought not to engage in it. It is worth pointing out, that this seems to be exactly the practical lesson that the U.S. military has drawn from this history. We didn’t carpet bomb Belgrade or Baghdad.
BTW, Speer’s claims — regardless of their bias — don’t put to bed the economic justification for strategic bombing. In the 1930s, German war planners projected a general European war in 1945. Hitler’s decision to invade Poland in 1939 meant that the war came five or six years too early from the point of view of the German General Staff. This meant that the German economy that went to war in 1939 was not fully mobilized for war production, and did not become fully mobilized in the first year or two of the war. This means that German war production was below capacity even as the strategic bombing began. The real empirical question is whether or not munitions production would have increased even faster but for Allied bombing. This is a hard, counter-factual question. At least some of the economic planners — e.g. John Kenneth Galbriath — who helped pick economic targest, however, came to the conclusion that it did not. In a sense, strategic bombing was simply the New Deal gone to war. You took a bunch of economic intellectuals who had staffed the alphabet soup that was supposed to manage the return of America to prosperity through their economic omniscience and gave them the task of systematically destroying an economy. The evidence is pretty good, I believe, that the First New Deal had a negligible economic impact at best and at worst (and more probably) caused the second depression of 1937. I have little difficulty believing that New Deal economic planning was similarlly hapless when it turned its attention to the centrally planned destruction of an economy rather than its regeneration.
Eric, sorry if you took my post as an invitation to a fight or saracasm. Merely wanted to point out the observation that most of us aren’t ready to follow the Lord’s injunction to renounce war and proclaim peace. Most of us in the Church still want to defend war. Sorry if you have a problem with my having a problem with that. Peace.
We all want peace. But what is the appropriate response to someone who comes into your house and abuses your wife and children? The problem I have with turning the other cheek is that it presupposes a sense of justice on the part of another. I believe the Lord wished us to try the other cheek as a way of breaking a cycle of hate and violence, but did not abjure it permanently.
Gandhi and Martin Luther King were in favor of non-violence. It worked, because the society in which they tried it was a society with a basic sense of justice. Gandhi and Martin Luther King would have been murdered by Hitler and Stalin. Should we have let Hitler continue with his overrunning countries and eliminating Jews and other undesirables? Perhaps Jimbobs would have been next on the list.
Well, Seth, others, would you have had it the other way? Do you think we could have won the war otherwise? And would you prefer that history changed and Hitler and Japan won the war? Bet you wouldn’t have the luxury of dissenting here if they had.
Nate, I think I understand, not sure. I don’t think I reject others right to have another opinion, but I don’t agree in this case. War is a fact, a terrible fact, but a fact. Equivocating when you are fighting a war doesn’t accomplish much.
Some equivocation before Dresden would have been a good thing. It seems simply that the bomb planners had run out of other targets, and they hated seeing their “baby,” the strategic bomber forces, used for the dirty business of tactical support of the men on the ground who actually won the war. They were true believers, and convinced throughout the war and well beyond, that they could win the war simply by destroying the enemy’s cities, and they insisted on continuing those efforts (even though the experience of London should have taught them otherwise).
The air force seems to produce people like that–Billy Mitchell, who in fact was right about the vulnerability of naval vessels to attack from the air, being perhaps the first. The latest incarnation were the geniuses who brought us “Shock and Awe”, which the citizens of Baghdad seem to have considered more Shuck and Jive.
You know, I wish we weren’t in Iraq. I think that was a mistake, I think it’s wrong. I hurt for those poor people and for our boys who are fighting what I believe to be an unnecessary war.
My–I don’t know what the word would be–it’s not approval, but whatever, how I feel about the bomb in Japan or the bombing in Germany is only in hindsight, we won, thank God.
I think had I been alive during the second world war, I would have voted against use of the atomic bomb. Go figure.
So far I’ve only seen arguments that following the teachings about Jesus require more of a sacrifice than people seem to be willing to make. I can understand that sentiment. Most of us probably would have taken up swords with Peter rather than allow ourselves to be captured, tortured, and killed. We can’t all be Abinadi. Most of us aren’t as righteous as the People of Ammon. But it doesn’t mean we can just cast off Christ’s teachings because they are too hard to follow. Admitting that one isn’t willing or able to follow a teaching is one thing. Denying that teaching, suggesting that people who follow that teaching should be arrested, and making fun of those people is another. Peace.
Soyde Rive (#56): We all want peace. But what is the appropriate response to someone who comes into your house and abuses your wife and children?
The Prophet Joseph Smith taught, “Any man who will not fight for his wife and children is a coward.” (The Words of Joseph Smith, p. 162.) Joseph Smith was not a pacifist — he did not teach that men should simply lie down when their homes and families are attacked.
However, there is a great deal of difference between defending your family or town against mobocracy, and going out to attack, invade, and occupy another country (especially on the thinnest of evidence that, in the end, turns out to be dead wrong).
More recommended reading: Hugh Nibley, Approaching Zion.
Jimbob, again, you’re wresting the scriptures from their context when you suggest that the People of Ammon (the anti-Nephi-Lehis) were more righteous than those who fought. They weren’t. Eric did a good job of explaining that in Comment 24. I’d appreciate your thoughts on his explanation.
Christ has never asked us to categorically renounce force and violence. Only by reading the scriptures cafeteria-style can such a claim be made — but then you must explain why the scriptures should be read cafeteria-style.
And yes, a parent who refuses to call the police to save their child from torture should be criminally charged.
Jimbob,
This tack was taken by Rob last year, see here. Few found it convincing then.
What you call “Christ’s teachings” are simply your reading of those teachings. And they are obviously not the only acceptable reading. The attempt to claim you have a greater understanding of the Christ’s doctrine of war and peace than Captain Moroni, Alma the Younger, Mormon, Moroni, and a host of other prophets is simply not very compelling. You are welcome to be a complete pacifist if you wish, but it is silly to think that complete pacifism is the only consistent way to understand the gospel. It does not, for example, appear to be the way President Hinckley reads the gospel.
Nate Oman,
If you read my comment again, you’ll notice that I specifically allowed for the fact that leaders at the time made mistakes. And yes, we can learn from them. What I was specifically responding to was the question of why “looking in hindsight” and “armchair analysts” were used to refer to one side of the debate more often than the other.
Jimbob,
> Eric, sorry if you took my post as an invitation to a fight or saracasm.
Yeah, what was I thinking? You made a sarcasm-laden comment that implies many of the readers and commenters here have rejected the prophets and Christ himself, but you had no idea anyone would disagree with you. After all, you’re a pacifist. You would never do anything to provoke anyone.
As far as I can tell, Mike Parker has made his case against war with calmness, reason, and respect for others. You could do worse than follow that example.
Mike, can the morality of fighting for children turn on whether they’re my children? If I fight a jerk who’s torturing a child, my act is morally required if it’s my girl, but morally forbidden if I’d never met her? That can’t be right.
My interpretation of Jesus Christ’s gospel is that sometimes war & violence is the right choice. Sometimes peace, forgiveness or turning the other cheek is the right choice.
Matt,
All your latest exchange with Mike illustrates is that foreign policy must be driven by national interest, not morality.
Now, if you as an individual have a problem with the inhuman way that Saddam Hussein treats his countrymen, you as a moral individual are free to take whatever steps you think right to stop or correct him. Just don’t implicate your country in that moral fight.
Eric, I didn’ t mean to be sarcastic, I’m trying to avoid that. But I was trying to clearly state that in my opinion anyone who defends war (and Matt, I’m not talking about force here, we’re just talking about organized warfare) rather than renouncing it, has indeed rejected Christ’s teachings on the matter (if that takes me outside the rules for commenting here, then I’ll take myself out of the discussion). I can understand you wanting to fight, but I’m not looking for a fight. A discussion maybe, but fightiing on this is pointless.
I agree with those who see the People of Ammon trying to live a higher law, but maybe slipping a bit and may have lost the souls of their children (who went north and weren’t righteous a generation later). Its a tragic story. But we’ve made covenents to follow Christ–not the People of Ammon, Moroni, Mormon, or anyone else in the Book of Mormon. And Christ’s teachings in the D&C are clear. I don’t know how else to read “renounce war” Frank, seems pretty clear to me. But as you’ve pointed out, these arguments have been rejected before. They’ll probably be rejected again. Nobody is convincing anyone here. I’m not about to defend warfare. And some here aren’t about to renounce it. Maybe that’s a sin. Or maybe its just a different reading.
“I don’t know how else to read “renounce war” Frank”
If you try long enough I bet you can come up with another reading of D&C 98:16 that allows for less than complete pacifism in every situation. I would recommend reading how President Hinckley uses the “renounce war” passage from D&C 98 in his talk here.
Then I would think about whether the commandment was specific to the persecution of the Saints in Missouri, or whether it was meant to apply everywhere and at all times and in all situations.
Jimbob: I suspect that you believe that our discussions here are freighted with more moral significance than they in reality can bear. You want people to “renounce war” but what does that actually mean? For all practical purposes I have absolutely no power over questions of war and peace in this country. Would a mental affirmation of the particular proposition that you offer be a morally significant act? Would a refusal to affirm it be a sin?
“But even if you are right, it seems like there is something uniquely morally problematic with taking an affirmative step to avoid the awareness of the other’s personhood.”
Quite right. The moral distinction I’m talking about, if it indeed obtains, is one that’s best not talked about. It holds only to the degree that the principals don’t rely on it.
Mark,
Nowhere did I suggest or imply that decisions of war should be driven by national interest — it would be moral to end the holocaust, or fight the Nazis, or intervene in Rwanda, or disrupt the Baathists — even when our national interest isn’t implicated. It’s the same moral principle that obliges me to intervene when a brute is terrorizing a stranger even though he doesn’t threaten me.
Nor is there any reason I should fight Baathists myself, rather than using a trained military, anymore than I should fight serial killers and thugs alone, rather than calling the trained police I support with my taxes.
Jimbob,
Force and violence are the same thing.
Is there reason to believe that “organized warfare” is any worse than the ad hoc kind? It seems to me that mounting a posse everytime someone is murdered is costly, and that we therefore decided to organize police forces to respond to small acts of violence, and military forces to respond to large acts of violence, to prepare for such contingencies. If each year there were only a few acts of violence deliberately perpetrated against innocents, it would be efficient to have a posse system. Until then it makes sense to have trained, organized professionals that respond to violence.
Frank (#69), you introduce a very dangerous hermeneutic principle when you suggest that we can treat canonized scripture as merely relevant to the time when it was given. As your reference to President Hinckley’s talk shows, it is difficult to use the prophets to justify a blanket pacifist approach to these questions. But do you really want to introduce the “if it doesn’t agree with me, it must have been written for some other time or situation” rule? We already have enough people who are ready to throw out every biblical verse that makes them uncomfortable by chalking it up to faulty translation. I don’t think we need to add one more principle of interpretation that allows us to take difficult things out of scripture, more principles that allow us to remain comfortable when faced with something in scripture that makes us uncomfortable.
The question as to whether “good” Mormons/Christians can and should go to war is as old as time, probably. In the last General Conference, President Packer talked about his struggle when he was drafted into World War II:
When I was 18 years old, I was inducted into the military. While I had no reason to wonder about it before, I became very concerned if it was right for me to go to war. In time, I found my answer in the Book of Mormon:
“They [the Nephites] were not fighting for monarchy nor power but they were fighting for their homes and their liberties, their wives and their children, and their all, yea, for their rites of worship and their church.
“And they were doing that which they felt was the duty which they owed to their God; for the Lord had said unto them, and also unto their fathers, that: Inasmuch as ye are not guilty of the first offense, neither the second, ye shall not suffer yourselves to be slain by the hands of your enemies.
“And again, the Lord has said that: Ye shall defend your families even unto bloodshed. Therefore for this cause were the Nephites contending with the Lamanites, to defend themselves, and their families, and their lands, their country, and their rights, and their religion” (Alma 43:45–47).
Knowing this, I could serve willingly and with honor.”
Why did he bring this topic up? The time the General Authorities have to speak to the entire Church is limited, so there is a reason behind everything they say. My guess is that he is answering the question whether a “good Mormon” can serve in the military in the affirmative. Why do I think that? Because he did not add a disclaimer that those struggling with that question today would get a different answer.
But America’s military today is an all-volunteer force. Maybe he told this story so those who make another decision would not condemn those who choose to fight for not “pursuing peace.”
Jim,
“you introduce a very dangerous hermeneutic principle when you suggest that we can treat canonized scripture as merely relevant to the time when it was given.”
There is no doubt that people can and do abuse this principle all the time. But are you saying it is not true? Or are you saying that we never should do so? We do not follow the Law of Moses because it has been superceded. We do not practice polygamy because it has been superceded. We do follow the ten commandments, though they were given with the Law of Moses. We do not generally kill people as Nephi killed Laban because we feel that what he did was in some way special.
“But do you really want to introduce the ‘if it doesn’t agree with me, it must have been written for some other time or situation’ rule?”
No, I wish to introduce the, “if it doesn’t agree with lots of other scriptures, and the interpretation of modern prophets, I should consider that it may have been written for some other time or situation” rule.
Frank (#75): We do not follow the Law of Moses because it has been superceded. We do not practice polygamy because it has been superceded
True, but in those cases, as in others, we also tend to look for contemporary meanings that we can find in those scriptures. We find ways to re-think them so that they continue to have meaning. I’m hard-pressed to think of scriptures that we simply throw out or ignore because they no longer apply.
Okay, I’m overstating the case: most of us do ignore large parts of the Mosaic law on the grounds that it no longer applies; but I think that is a mistake–not that we should adopt it literally, but that we ought to look to see if its principles have things to teach us. My experience suggests that it has a great deal to teach us, but we don’t put in the work to figure that out. We certainly take that approach with the scriptures pertainining to polygamy, rethinking them in terms that apply to us. Why not do the same for what Section 98 says about war?
It seems to me that your principle remains a dangerous one. All scriptures but those revealed recently were written for another time and another situation. So in every case, we have to take that into account. However, as long as something remains canonized scripture, we have an obligation to try to understand it and what it means to us. Of course that means understanding passages in the context of other scriptures and the teachings of modern prophets, but that is also true of all scripture.
You seem to me too ready just to dismiss that part of the D&C rather than to true to understand what it might mean to us, and I don’t see the grounds for doing so.
I get the feeling that most of the posters here fixated on the mere fact that I was disagreeing with the dropping of the bombs.
Did anyone actually read the premise of my argument?
The dillema between dropping the bomb vs. invading with US soldiers is a false dilemma.
Japan was already beaten, whooped, smashed, etc. by the time US policy makers started debating whether to invade or bomb. The Japanese leadership was already in a receptive mood.
Yet, just about everyone here seems to be assuming that World War II HAD to end with Japan’s UNCONDITIONAL surrender.
Now, why is that?
Jim, I’m not trying to throw out 98:16. I like 98:16. And I was only talking about that verse, where it says “renounce war”, which is what jimbob quoted. I’m saying what you said, we need to read it in light of other things, and understand the context.
It seems quite reasonable that, just because God told the Israelites to wipe out the inhabitants of Israel, that doesn’t mean we should, when given the chance. And just because the saints in 1833 Missouri, faced with those trials, were told to “renounce war” does not mean that no one at any time, in any situation, should ever go to war.
“However, as long as something remains canonized scripture, we have an obligation to try to understand it and what it means to us.”
Yes. What it means to us is often the same as what it meant to those who received it (like, repent!). But not always, and even then there is something we can learn.
Matt,
I should have made myself clear, since you seem to have completely misunderstood my comment.
My point was that we should act only when our national interest is affected, not because we believe that some sovereign power is committing immoral acts upon its people (an altogether disastrous principle upon which to base our foreign policy–name one nation on earth whose affairs we should not intervene in based on that principle). The government which in my lifetime appeared to be the leader in immoral acts committed against its (and neighboring) people was the Soviet Union. But we never intervened, we never invaded. So, perhaps a corollary to the “intervene to stop immorality” principle would be “only if you’re big enough, and they’re weak enough, that you’re sure you can whack them.”
The problem with intervening elsewhere, as so well illustrated by the mess that Iraq has become, is that others almost never are as grateful after we show up as it seems they ought to have been, given the liberation that we have brought them. And then when it turns out that we appear just as immoral as the regime we replaced, then where are we?
Did we fight the Germans in WW2 to stop the Holocaust? No, and to suggest that we did takes a substantial amount of cramming current understanding into 1940’s minds. We fought the Germans because they declared war on us, and we knew that we had to defeat the Germans in order to end the war. We fought the Japanese because they attacked us, not because of the Rape of Nanking or any other atrocities that they had inflicted on the Chinese.
Mark,
I agree that there are many instances where we might choose not to intervene despite numberless victims, but those are pragmatic concerns. We are morally justified to stop atrocities, and perhaps even morally compelled to do what we can to stop them, regardless of the ingratitude that the people might express later. To take ingratitude as dispositive makes parenting (and teaching) a waste of time! And people who maintain that there’s moral equivalence between the treatment of the Iraqi people by the United States and the Baathists are absurd (I’m not suggesting you’re such a person; I take it you’re not).
We didn’t fight Germany to end the holocaust, but to rid the world of an agressive fascist military machine. That was a moral act we knew would benefit our friends far more than ourselves.
I think President Hinckley’s talk is clear — and he specifically says that “NATIONS are justified” in going to war — that one may renounce war and nonetheless go to war with God’s blessing. War is evil, as the quotes mentioned above clearly show, but nonetheless necessary.
I would be very interested to hear Jimbob and Mike Parker’s take on the Revolutionary War — the organized, willful, full-scale war that allows us to have this discussion today. God’s hand was more than present in that war, and He specifically prospered this nation — read 2 Nephi again — in conducting that war. Indeed, God’s imprimatur rests very heavily on that war and on all of the bloodshed that was necessary.
This comes down to a “Captain Moroni vs. Enoch” discussion. Enoch merely taught his people to be righteous and then moved mountains into the way of those coming to destroy Zion. Moroni, on the other hand, not only prepared the people’s minds to be faithful to the Lord their God, but also prepared armaments, fortifications, etc. He also threatened the Lamanite leader that he would come into their lands and destroy them to extinction if they did not withdraw their murderous designs. I don’t think he was bluffing. I posit that Enoch’s approach is the exception rather than the rule — usually God requires us to do all that we can and not “sit on our thrones in a thoughtless stupor,” as Moroni put it.
Freedom really is so valuable that it is worth killing another man and/or men to preserve it –even women and children sometimes, as God illustrated so dramatically with the Children of Israel. Freedom is worth more than that, in fact, since God Himself was willing to end the eternal progression of a third part of His children because of their failure to properly value it (which is infinitely worse than merely ending their mortal sojourn). Freedom by itself is not the great good, however, but only valuable because it is the means by which we can become more like God and work out our own exaltation. And that is more valuable than anything, so the means to that end must be preserved.
Yes, it is possible to renounce war and nonethless fight, recognizing that, as Brigham Young said above, it is only if the people GENERALLY obey Christ that there will be no war. If a few choose to be evil and cause war, sometimes we must respond, as the Nephites were forced to respond when the minority of Gadianton robbers chose to wage war. I wonder what Moroni’s response would have been if the Lamanites had possessed intercontinental ballistic missiles. Perhaps then an “offensive” war could really become “defensive.” I’m struggling with this question myself, so I’d be interested to hear other perspectives.
This is a race to the bottom, as secret combinations, in fact, one great secret combination, seek to cause war for power and gain, not content to let the vast majority of mankind simply live out their lives with their families, as most of them would if given a choice. We are often forced to defend that which is most precious. President Hinckley insinuates very strongly that it is more likely that those who impede a war that seeks to free people from repression will have to answer to God for their opposition. Pacifism seems to be an easy way out, not the other way around. We forget that at times God uses war to free others so that the Gospel can be preached and others can enjoy their chance at the exercise of agency to become like God and achieve exaltation.
Does a nation have a responsibility to help others who want freedom? Does the ethical obligation to help the Central Park jogger extend to nations? And please don’t trot out the “we-didn’t-help-those-in-Rwanda” argument, at least not in the context of arguing against what we have done; we all recognize that just because we can’t do everything doesn’t mean we can’t do something. I am sincerely interested in hearing all of your thoughts directly on this, especially to the extent it hasn’t already been addressed in this post. I feel some serious tension within myself on this point, particularly given George Washington’s prohibition against “entangling alliances.” What are all of your thoughts?
Seth,
Despite the fact that the Japanese were beaten, whupped, smashed, defeated and done for on Iwo Jima and Okinawa, it took several weeks of bloody “mopping up” to end the fighting. The logical inference to be drawn from those two bloody battles was that the Japanese on the home islands would not acknowledge their defeat, but would take months or years of mopping up before they gave up.
Would the entry of the Soviet Union into the war have changed much? In the short term, it seems unlikely. The overwhelming bulk of their military forces were in Europe, they had no navy to speak of, distances in Asia between the Soviet Border and the centers of Japanese power in China were considerable.
Finally, FDR and Churchill had agreed at Casablanca that the Allies would require the unconditional surrender of the Axis powers. The Allies stuck to that statement, however counterproductive it may have turned out, except in the case of Japan. The most notable condition in the Japanese surrender was the retention of the emperor.
Matt,
And my point is that pragmatic concerns, not morality, should be the basis for our foreign policy.
If we choose to “correct” those nations that (1) we think are following immoral policies and (2) we are big enough to beat easily, we very soon begin to look like a bully.
No, I don’t consider the actions of the US military in Iraq to be on the same level as those of Saddam’s regime. But my opinion probably doesn’t matter much. Consider this: if you lived under the oppressive Baathist government, had limits on your freedom to travel or to work or to seek education, but you and your family otherwise kept out of the hands of the regime, but then you or a family member was arrested and held for months incommunicado, subjected to ceaseless interrogations, harsh treatment, a little frat-boy hazing, and so on, which regime would you consider morally superior?
Matt, in #53 you compared pacifists to people who watch their children be molested and killed in front of their eyes, and now you’re getting huffy about the hint of a comparison between American and Baathist rule over Iraq. Strange.
Mark, which regime are you referring to in the second example? It seems like a more apt description of Saddam’s than of the U.S. occupation.
Mark,
I too believe that pragmatic concerns should be the primary basis of our foreign policy. I didn’t say otherwise — I joined the conversation to refute the chestnut about the anti-Nephi-Lehis and the claim that it’s immoral to fight the Baathists.
I’m sure you’re right that families that weren’t harrassed by Saddam but have been harrassed by the United States probably prefer Saddam. There’s probably no small number of Sunnis who fit that description. Most Iraqis, however, are happy to have Saddam gone and will be happy when their country is sufficiently secure that we can leave, too. And we should remember that no small part of the reason for the insecurity in Iraq (the main reason people regret our involvement) is due to our unwillingness to use Saddam’s methods. The fear of “ceaseless interrogations” just doesn’t have the psychological effect of plastic shredders or seeing your children killed.
Hi Jonathan, is this the paragraph in which I seemed huffy?
I don’t see it.
A late response to a point alamojag raised in his comment #18:
Sherman’s march through Georgia? A violation of the laws of war?
The army destroyed farms, railroads, crops and livestock. But they didn’t, to my knowledge, kill civilians. No doubt the “march” caused great suffering, and there may have been some “collateral” damage–people may have been injured or killed in the burning of a barn or house.
My question is, does that sort of destruction of the enemy’s war-making capacity–in this case, transportation and food production–violate the laws of war?
Daniel (#81): I would be very interested to hear Jimbob and Mike Parker’s take on the Revolutionary War – the organized, willful, full-scale war that allows us to have this discussion today. God’s hand was more than present in that war, and He specifically prospered this nation – read 2 Nephi again – in conducting that war. Indeed, God’s imprimatur rests very heavily on that war and on all of the bloodshed that was necessary.
I place a difference — and I think the scriptures do, as well — between “fighting for [our] homes and [our] liberties, [our] wives and [our] children” (Alma 43:45) and a broad, interventionist military policy.
Re-read the Declaration of Independence and you’ll see that the American colonies had suffered greatly under British rule, that their rights had been usurped, and their freedoms taken from them. And here’s the important part: The colonies declared independence, and the British crown brought war upon the colonies. The Revolutionary War was, at its heart, a defensive action taken to secure and protect American freedoms from British military intervention.
Besides the Revolutionary War, if there was a “just” war in which the U.S. has participated, it would be WW2. Vastly overstating the case, we were attacked, and we stepped up to stop a great evil that would have consumed the world.
But WW2 is such an extreme, unique example that it’s not right to compare other wars to it (as the current U.S. President has tried to do with our adventure in Iraq). Beyond WW2, most of the wars in which the U.S. has seen fit to engage itself have been motivated by territory, money, or (most recently) the idea that we are annointed as the World’s Police Force. We keep an enormous standing army “marshaled and disciplined for war” (D&C 87:4) in peacetime. And our behavior toward other countries has branded us a bully among many in countries, and given those who hate us reason to attack us. Whether or not we are a bully — i.e., how we view ourselves — is irrelevant; how others view us — their perception of the U.S. — is relevant.
But I’m getting off on a tangent. The important thing is how D&C 98 (and other scriptures) tells us to behave when attacked. We are told to “renounce war and proclaim peace”, to bear patiently the attacks of others, and to defend ourselves only when all other resources have been exhausted. But most Americans — including many Latter-day Saints — seem to think that a world-spanning military force is good and noble. I disagree with them. (And so did Spencer W. Kimball.)
Mike and jimbob,
I also read Elder Nelson’s talk, “Blessed Are the Peacemakers,” Ensign, Nov. 2002, 39, given while the drums of the Iraq invasion were beating (and apparently the decision to go to war had already been made, but not announced), as a carefully worded but eloquent plea for resolution of that and other conflicts by means other than war.
Seth, I think you’re wrong about the Japanese being ready to surrender, I’m not positive about it, but I think you’re wrong. Everything I’ve read said that they were prepared to fight to the last man, especially if America had the audacity to attack their homeland.
I think it’s getting kind of funny on this post, a lot of people are fighting about peace. Get it? FIGHTING about peace. Some of you sound like you’d smack somebody if they were in the same room with you. Certainly a familiar emotion for me.
DavidH (#90):
I felt the same way when I heard him deliver the address. The Salt Lake Tribune (IIRC) made a big deal about it afterward, claiming that he was speaking officially for the Church and coming out in opposition to invasion. The Church issued a press release clarifying that his talk did not set a specific stance of the Church.
All of this is from memory. I tried looking for a press release on the Church website, but couldn’t find it. If anyone knows where it is, please let me know.
Mark and annegb, your argument about the fanaticism of Japanese soldiers doesn’t hold up.
I am fully aware of the countless acts of suicide, and fanatical desire to die rather than be captured that characterized the Japanese soldiery in the late stages of the war.
But that makes absolutely no difference to what I’m talking about. It wasn’t the typical Japanese soldier that the US had to convince.
The only people we are talking about here are the Japanese military leadership. And they most certainly were willing to negotiate. In fact study of the war shows they were trying to maneuver for a good bargaining position for the last year before the bombs were dropped.
Besides, your theory doesn’t match with the behavior of the Japanese soldiers and citizens on the mainland once the leadership did surrender. Most of them had little information about Hiroshima and Nagasaki (so we can’t argue that they were intimidated by that demonstration). Once the leadership surrendered, the people beneath them gave up without a fight. It was a fairly peaceful occupation. Clearly, the legendary fanaticism of the Japanese soldier didn’t amount to anything unless the leadership remained committed.
Mark you mention the agreement among the allies for unconditional surrender at Casablanca. But you never say why such a radical conclusion was warranted. Why was unconditional surrender the goal in the first place?
Nobody seems willing to answer this.
First of all, Seth, as I pointed out, the Japanese surrender was not unconditional. The Allies permitted the Emperor to remain the head of state. (Would Hitler have been permitted to remain the head of state in Germany?)
Second, you’re right that the Japanese changed from being fanatical suicidal enemies to docile subjects of the US occupation. Compare, for example, the actions of the soldiers and civilians on Saipan, or of the soldiers on Iwo Jima and Okinawa, to the reactions of the Japanese after the surrender when the first US troops landed in Japan. The critical change was the announcement by the emperor that they, the Japanese people, were going to “accept the unacceptable”. Would the “peace party” in the government have been successful in persuading the emperor to do that without the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki? Nobody knows, and nobody can know. Bar bets were invented for the settlement of such questions.
Finally, you ask why unconditional surrender. Well, perhaps you’ll have to raise FDR in a seance and ask him. It seems that the idea sprang from his head during the Casablanca conference without prior discussion with the Joint Chiefs or the Combined Chiefs of Staff or even Churchill himself. We can speculate about the reasons that FDR made unconditional surrender the goal, but, frankly, after January 1943 it was a given. (I suspect a couple of reasons: the lesson of German and Hitler and the negotiated armistice ending WW1 made the Allied leaders unwilling to leave that opening for a future “Hitler,” or ever since U.S. Grant’s memorable reply to Gen. Buckner at Fort Donelson*, the words “unconditional surrender” have had a nice ring in American commanders’ ears.
*
Sir: Yours of this date proposing Armistice, and appointment of Commissioners, to settle terms of Capitulation is just received. No terms except unconditional and immediate surrender can be accepted.
I propose to move immediately upon your works.
I am Sir: very respectfully
Your obt. sevt.
U.S. Grant
Brig. Gen.
Here’s another of my favorites. The best thing about prophets is they usually speak out against the conventional wisdom of the day.
With emphasis added:
———-
First Presidency Statement on Basing of MX Missile, “News of the Church,” Ensign, June 1981, p. 76.
“We have received many inquiries concerning our feelings on the proposed basing of the MX missile system in Utah and Nevada. After assessing in great detail information recently available, and after the most careful and prayerful consideration, we make the following statement, aware of the response our words are likely to evoke from both proponents and opponents of the system.
“First, by way of general observation we repeat our warnings against the terrifying arms race in which the nations of the earth are presently engaged. We deplore in particular the building of vast arsenals of nuclear weaponry. We are advised that there is already enough such weaponry to destroy in large measure our civilization, with consequent suffering and misery of incalculable extent.
* * *
“Our fathers came to this western area to establish a base from which to carry the gospel of peace to the peoples of the earth. It is ironic, and a denial of the very essence of that gospel, that in this same general area there should be constructed a mammoth weapons system potentially capable of destroying much of civilization.
“With the most serious concern over the pressing moral question of possible nuclear conflict, we plead with our national leaders to marshal the genius of the nation to find viable alternatives which will secure at an earlier date and with fewer hazards the protection from possible enemy aggression, which is our common concern.”