Defenders of the indefensible want to say that these were the only choices available. Thus, they say, any objection to this indiscriminate slaughter entails the acceptance of unacceptably massive loss of life for American forces.On a related note, I'm making slow progress through Frederick Taylor's Dresden, and let's just say it's complicated my feelings a great deal. Taylor points out that while Dresden gets a lot of the press, the earlier firebombing of Hamburg (with similar, if somewhat lesser results) in 1943 was just as important, if not more so. In the aftermath of Hamburg's destruction - and the 40,000 dead - the survivors were forced by the Nazis to sign secrecy oaths swearing not to share the details of that city's demise with other Germans. Albert Speer estimated that if the RAF had been able to repeat the "success" of Hamburg 6 times or more, German arms production would have collapsed.
Let's accept, for the sake of argument, that the choices really were this limited -- that these were the only possible ways to achieve Goal X. Does my refusal of Option 2 therefore mean I accept Option 1? No. It means that Goal X cannot be achieved by any acceptable means and therefore Goal X ought not to be pursued.
The complete and unconditional surrender of Japan was not morally, tactically, strategically, economically or politically necessary. It was not necessary for victory....
Or, to paraphrase from that earlier post: You may not both 1) intentionally target and incinerate 140,000 noncombatants and 2) not be a monster.
This example leaves me confused. On the one hand - given the general mayhem and carnage of WWII - the idea of the Allies killing 300,000 civilian deaths and bringing the war to a close in 1943 instead of 1945 is tempting - it would almost certainly spare millions of lives, in a noxious form of calculus. On the other hand, it's also obvious that all things considered, WWII ended pretty well for the Allies as it was - or at least, as good as could be expected. A 1943 end to the war would be unlikely to bring American forces on to the Continent. The most likely outcome would be a still-existing Nazi Germany dominating Europe, or in the "best case" scenario a Soviet Empire that controlled even more of Europe than it did in the real world.
What's clear is that, after Hamburg, the RAF was trying to repeat Hamburg as many times as it could. For better or worse, it only succeeded once more at Dresden. By then (February 1945) it was too late to bring the war to an early close. The reason the RAF switched to attempted mass murder is quite simple: the results of more precise efforts were, quite simply, laughable. Less than 1 out of 5 bombs was making it to within 10 miles of the target area, for a number of reasons. Effectively, the switch to firebombing was an admission of failure, because the RAF couldn't strike at the Nazi war machinery directly.
Which brings us to Lebanon. Josh Marshall wrote today:
I've thought for a while, and considered posting on it, that for all the discussion of how targetted or not targetted Israel's attacks in Lebanon are, there's pretty little discussion of the fact that all of Hizbullah's rockets are intentionally aimed at civilian areas. Every one.This is true, and deserves to be said - my criticisms of the policies of the IDF should in no way be taken for support for Hezbollah. However, we don't grade on a cruve when it comes to these things. Israel's attacks are no more acceptable in light of Hezbollah's than Dresden was in light of the London bombings during the Blitz. "He did it first" is not a mature statement of anything, much less a national security policy.
Moreover, the question of intent really does cut both ways. Hezbollah's ability to hit Israeli citizens lies mainly with WWII-vintage Katyusha rockets, which have short range and basically no accuracy. So while Hezbollah is obviously hoping to kill Israeli civilians, they basically have just that - hope, and possibly prayer. The Katyusha makes up for a bit of this with large numbers, but essentially Hezbollah has to rely on luck.
Israel, meanwhile, is armed with laser- and satellite-guided bombs and missiles, capable of accuracy that Hezbollah would (literally) kill for. And how has the IDF used this potential accuracy? Multiple strikes in heavily built-up civilian areas such as Beirut, as well as legitimate Hezbollah targets in southern Lebanon. One of these methods is a legitimate prosecution of war, the other isn't. Attacks on urban civilian areas are not only politically self-defeating for Israel, they simply carry too high a risk of unacceptably high civilian casualties - a theory that the wars of the last decade have made in to fact.
Or, to put it simply: Hezbollah only manages to kill an Israeli civilian when it gets lucky. The IDF only manages to not kill Lebanese civilians when they get lucky.
Does that meet Fred's test above? I don't think so. If Israel could have achieved its aims without attacking civilian targets all over Lebanon - something I think is obviously the case - then Israel had every moral reason to do so, regardless of Hezbollah's provocations.
1 comment:
About defeating Germany in 1943 or ending the war against Japan without full surrender, I have been thinking about what does it take for a military defeat to become a moral defeat, a moral conversion. After 1945, the Germans themselves renounced the drive that had led to WW1 and to the Nazi aggression, but at the end of the Civil War, the whites of the South devoted all their energies to undoing their defeat. To the extent that nowadays even people in the South whose ancestors fought for the Union (eastern Tennessee for example) identify with the Confederate cause.
Why?
The Arabs have lost decisively every time they attacked Israel, yet they continue to believe in the rightness of their desire to exterminate Israel.
Ending WW2 in 1943 would have been a disaster. Germany would have lost militarily, but Germany militarism might have continued (as it did after WW1). Perhaps the most dedicated German militarists had to die before Germany could turn decisely to peace.
On the other hand, in the US Civil War, most of the white male Southern population did die but the South was defeated but unconvinced.
The atomic bombing of Japan helped abort Japan's moral conversion. The Japanese focused on the one part of the war where they were victims and pretty much ignored the over 10 million Asians (mostly Chinese) they had killed.
Whether the A-bomb was the only way to force Japan to surrender is questionable. The US military had various forecasts of expected casualties from invading the Japanese main islands. One of the estimates was quite low. Remember that most of the Japanese armed forces were in China or elsewhere outside of Japan and could not get back because of US control of the air and seas.
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