Jonathon Delacour the heart of things

A disagreement or three

Burningbird concluded her post The Debate falters, lying broken in the dust like this:

However, me thinks the debate on the Iraq invasion between us has run its course.

Crikey, Bb! It’s all well and good for you to declare the debate over, but I’m stuck in the middle of a “discourse” with Eric Olsen. And, the way these warbloggers argue, I think I’d have less grief converting my Movable Type templates and all my archives to XHTML 2.0 and CSS 2.1.

But, since I try to finish anything I start, I guess I’ll have to press on. Perhaps the best way to do this is to comment on Olsen’s key statements (which I’ve italicized) in the order he made them.

The museum [in Hiroshima], the city, and the country emphasize peace and conflict resolution not because they don’t feel historical guilt for WWII, but because they do.

The museum and the city emphasize peace because Hiroshima is one of only two cities to have been subjected to an atomic bomb attack.

Odd that Japan emphasizes peace by consistently ranking fourth in its percentage share of world military expenditure (after the USA, Russia, and France but ahead of the UK, Germany, China, and Saudi Arabia).

Japan emphasizes conflict resolution not because of any feelings of historical guilt for WWII but because Japanese decision making has been based for centuries on achieving consensus between conflicting parties.

The town and the museum almost revels in the details of the destruction wrought by the bomb, not out of self-pity, but out of a fundamental sense of sorrow and guilt FOR HAVING BROUGHT THIS DESTRUCTION UPON THEMSELVES. Look carefully at the “message” of the museum…

The “message” of the museum to which Olsen refers—note the artful use of quotation marks—is not actually the message of the museum in any official sense, but an interpretation of the museum’s meaning by a private group of Japanese citizens headed by Miyoko Kono:

The context used in this web page was edited by “The Group to Convey the Spirit of Hiroshima” based on the materials borrowed from Hiroshima Peace Culture Foundation.

The atomic bomb brought bitter remorse, not from those who dropped it, but from those whom it was dropped upon. Why remorse? Because they believe they deserved it.

Actually the atomic bomb brought not bitter remorse but an overwhelming sense of self-pity, as Paul Musgrave rightly noted. And, far from believing they deserved it, the atomic bomb attacks served mainly to reinforce the ninonjinron, the theory of Japanese uniqueness (“We are the only people in the history of the world to have been subjected to atomic bomb attacks.”)

Immediately after the war, MacArthur and the American occupying force found remarkably little resentment in a decimated populace that had only weeks before fought with suicidal zeal for the honor of the emperor.

Against whom, precisely, had the populace fought with suicidal zeal? The B-29’s that were raining fire on every major Japanese city? (Apart from Hiroshima, Kokura, Niigata, and Nagasaki, which had been reserved as atomic bomb targets.) What weapons did they employ in their fight for the honor of the emperor? With what terrifying fanaticism did this civilian population, who were overwhelmingly the victims of the air war against the Japanese home islands, wield their shovels, sandbags, and buckets of water?

And since we didn’t enslave their entire population, or ship their women off to “comfort camps,” or plunder whatever treasure remained in the country, but in fact helped them to rebuild on every front, no opportunity was afforded to transfer any of this guilt onto America.

No rational person would deny America’s magnanimity towards its vanquished foes, but let us not also forget that the United States poured billions of dollars in aid into Japan in order to create a bulwark against Soviet and Chinese communism. One might best characterize America’s behavior as enlightened self-interest—something the Japanese understood all too well.

Olsen summarizes the Japanese attitude towards defeat as

We were all hopped up on the religion of nationalism; we began a war of aggression; we got our asses kicked; we deserved what we got.

All hopped up on the religion of nationalism. Yes, definitely. Somewhat like contemporary America.

We began a war of aggression. Yes, although some would suggest that Roosevelt deftly manouvered the Japanese into a position where it was inevitable that they would attack the United States.

We got our asses kicked. Absolutely.

We deserved what we got. Not in any way at all. Most Japanese have been taught a highly sanitized version of the history of the Pacific War. They have hardly any knowledge of the atrocities committed by Japanese forces in China, Korea, and South East Asia and little interest in revisiting the past. Primarily, as I’ve noted above, a majority of Japanese—who know nothing about the three hundred thousand killed in the American firebombing campaign—see themselves as the unique victims of the atomic bomb attacks.

Well, that’s pretty much it for Olsen’s first post. Next I’ll address his reply to my previous post. After that I’ll explain why, despite what Olsen might have been told by “the hundreds of Japanese from all walks of life,” words count for nothing. Only actions have meaning and, overwhelmingly, Japanese actions are consistent not with guilt and remorse but rather a sense of victimization and self-pity. Finally, I might get around to explaining why I believe that Truman was almost certainly justified in dropping the first atomic bomb (and perhaps had little alternative to dropping the second).

In the meantime, I’d like to suggest an Honor Roll of Warbloggers, which would display next to each name: the warblog URL, the number of years of active military service, and the likelihood of the warblogger’s being called up to fight against Iraq. It is commonly observed by students of military history that civilian enthusiasm for going to war is inversely proportional to the sum of combat experience and eligibility for military service.

Or, as Camille Paglia said in her interview with Andrew Sullivan:

When our best and brightest expect a servant class to shed their blood in the nation’s defense, we’re starting to look like late imperial Rome.

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