Since the appearance of snippets from the new book by Bob
Woodward and Robert Costa, there has been a great deal of talk about the appropriateness
of General Milley’s back channel communication with the Chinese. He is coming
under criticism for violating the chain of command and civilian control of the
military and suchlike crimes. Assuming the reports are correct, I will just say
that I am enormously relieved that he did what he did.
Almost none of the people going on about this on
television were alive when the United States dropped two small virtually
experimental fission bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki and managed in the blink
of an eye to kill more than 200,000 people. Most of them are not even old
enough to remember the Cuban missile crisis. They talk about the possibility of
a nuclear “exchange” as though they were discussing the swapping of baseball
cards or dinner invitations. A nuclear “exchange” between China and the United
States would probably kill scores of millions of people, not in a generation or
in a year or in a month or in a day but in 20 minutes.
Is there anybody who seriously wants to claim that such a world historical disaster would be preferable to violating the principle of civilian control of the military? I began my long career of political commentary by shouting at anyone who would listen about the dangers of nuclear weapons. In those days my opponents were academics and think tank residents who trotted out what they mistakenly thought were game theoretic arguments to shill for one or another branch of the American military – people like Herman Kahn and Henry Kissinger. I thank the God in whom I do not believe that in the intervening 75 years no other nuclear weapons have been used. I would be happy if on my deathbed I can say the same.
What?..... No comment yet from Ahmed Fares about what the Koran has to say about the US military chain of command?
ReplyDeleteVery disappointing.
It might be useful to note that Trump gutted the civilian chain of command by firing folks who had been approved by the Senate and replaced them with "acting" officers. The firing of SecDef Esper in November, as well as other civilian officers, in the same time period, was a clear indication of an impending coup and Milley's comments on the role of the military over the previous months, the JCS letter in January, and the op-ed by the former SecDefs in January were all confirmations. The fuss over Milley is a red herring.
ReplyDeleteHad Trump had four more years he would have been able to seed the general officer corps with folks more amendable to treason. Given the recent actions of some O-5s, a Republican Senate can't be trusted with any confirmation process.
David,
ReplyDeleteThat comment you just made could be seen as a somewhat bigoted statement. I don't like some of the cancel-culture, myself, but try to be more sensitive in the future please. Everyone needs to be on their toes on the internet these days...
What I meant is that anybody can pull out the cancelling card from the card deck on any of us these days & we all need to be more careful on the internet.
ReplyDeleteDavid Zimmerman,
ReplyDeleteBecause you asked...
If all mankind, jinn, angels, and devils combined their efforts to move or to still a single particle of the universe without His will and choice, they would be unable to. —Al-Ghazali (The Jerusalem Treatise)
Also, God was killing people in large numbers long before nuclear weapons. You know disease comes from God, right? (One cannot be a partial creationist.)
The Black Death (also known as the Pestilence, the Great Mortality or the Plague) was a bubonic plague pandemic occurring in Afro-Eurasia from 1346 to 1353. It is the most fatal pandemic recorded in human history, causing the death of 75–200 million people in Eurasia and North Africa, peaking in Europe from 1347 to 1351.
As for the Qur'an:
Wherever you may be, death will overtake you, even if you are in towers raised high. And if a good thing visits them, they say, 'This is from God'; but if an evil thing visits them, they say, 'This is from thee.' Say: 'Everything is from God.' How is it with this people? They scarcely understand any tiding. —Qur'an 4:78
How many of you read that first sentence in the verse above and didn't think of 9/11? (Not making any claims mind you as it could just be a coincidence). That's the verse that popped into my mind on 9/11. That reminds me of this:
As he witnessed the first detonation of a nuclear weapon on July 16, 1945, a piece of Hindu scripture ran through the mind of Robert Oppenheimer: “Now I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds”. It is, perhaps, the most well-known line from the Bhagavad-Gita, but also the most misunderstood.
Also, could we not start a back and forth again with religion because, like I said before, it can distract from the subject at hand.
As for the subject here, I'm with General Milley on this one. I think he's a hero, not a traitor. I understand the importance of the chain of command, but Trump is seriously messed up, so this is an exceptional case. (I'm Canadian, so this is not a partisan issue with me.)
Why can one not be a partial creationist? It doesn't seem that there is anything less logical about believing that God created the world and allowed it to develop according to certain physical principles than believing that God is the causation of every single thing that continues to happen in the universe.
ReplyDeleteGod created the Black Death? Or maybe a pathogen evolved over time that was then transferred throughout Europe by the actions of human beings engaging in things like war and trade.
Yes (to Jerry), and I'd have to reread some stuff to be sure, but I'm ~95% certain there are multiple versions of theism which take God and the human being to be co-creators. I don't have time to reread this right now, but Hartshorne probably fits that description: "Dipolar Theism" (Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy)
ReplyDeleteThanks, Ahmed, for your kind words in the other thread.
Pardon the digression!
Our discussions Ahmed have shaken my already uncertain beliefs that there might be a God. At least I could hope there was a God such as Jesus described. I can't hope there is a God that would create something like the Black Death. At this point I can only hope you are wrong.
ReplyDeletere: the impossible trinity
ReplyDeleteNo, not the economic one. This one:
Epicurus' trilemma
One of the earliest uses of the trilemma formulation is that of the Greek philosopher Epicurus, rejecting the idea of an omnipotent and omnibenevolent god (as summarised by David Hume):
If God is unable to prevent evil, then he is not all-powerful.
If God is not willing to prevent evil, then he is not all-good.
If God is both willing and able to prevent evil, then why does evil exist?
Although traditionally ascribed to Epicurus and called Epicurus' trilemma, it has been suggested that it may actually be the work of an early skeptic writer, possibly Carneades.
In studies of philosophy, discussions, and debates related to this trilemma are often referred to as being about the problem of evil.
So God cannot be good, all-powerful, and have evil exist. One of these three must go.
As for pathogens evolving, how much further is it from a bacteria to a human, you know, the whole humans are highly evolved accidents thing. Also, what about things like cancer. An all-powerful God can't give us bodies that don't get cancer? Or a world without earthquakes, etc. This is where theodicy hits a brick wall.
Back to my first point, I follow the Times of Israel for my daily Middle East news. They often have interesting articles about things outside of politics. Here's a quote from US Rabbi Yakov Saacks. He begins as follows with selected quotes:
I recently lost my baby sister at the tender age of 48. She died suddenly...
A BESTSELLING BOOK
Take, for example, the book with the same title as this article written by Harold Kushner who lost his son at a young age. The book makes the argument for theistic finitism. He proposes in his book that there is a finite G-d who is benevolent, but not all-powerful to prevent evil. He basically opines that G-d does his best but is limited.
NOT HELPFUL
I firmly disagree with his position and I also think his book is not helpful to say the least. It paints G-d as a nebbish, a joker, inept, incompetent, weak and maladroit (G-d forbid). I realize that there are many people who agree with his premise, but as a Jew and a leader of many in my community, I reject this response completely and emphatically. Why would you believe in a G-d that is a fool?
I once heard a story about a great contemporary Rabbi whom I know personally, Rabbi Manis Friedman. He was approached by a Jewish atheist who attempted to articulate why he does not believe in G-d. After listening to this man for some time, Rabbi Friedman responded, “The G-d you don’t believe in, I don’t believe in either.” In essence, if you are going to emasculate G-d and say that he is incompetent, then why have a G-d at all.
I do not understand my sister’s death. I don’t understand the suffering. I am upset that this occurred but my distress and dismay does not shatter one iota of belief. G-d is much greater than me, and I trust in him, like the great Rabbis of old.
I encourage you to read the whole article: When bad things happen to good people
No. God can be good. God could be all powerful. God could know what will eventually happen at all times. But God could also let the decisions people make work themselves out and allow the consequences of those to stand whether they cause good or evil. That makes just as much sense as your propositions.
ReplyDeleteAnd an earthquake is not evil even if the consequences cause suffering. Nor is cancer in and of itself. Nor is a plague. Evil is confined to what people can have an effect on and decide to do (or not do) and the consequences of their decisions.
So what you've basically described is a clockwork universe where God, after creating the world, lets it run of its own accord, i.e., deism. Here, you destroy free will, and by extension good and evil.
ReplyDeleteLaplace's demon
In the history of science, Laplace's demon was a notable published articulation of causal determinism on a scientific basis by Pierre-Simon Laplace in 1814. According to determinism, if someone (the demon) knows the precise location and momentum of every atom in the universe, their past and future values for any given time are entailed; they can be calculated from the laws of classical mechanics.
Clockwork universe
Laplace's demon
Ahmed,
ReplyDeleteEverything you say might be 100% truthful. The only drawback is the human condition. I conceive a lot of people don't want to hear the truth but only what sounds good. The last sentence I just wrote doesn't sound good, either, so people don't want to hear that too. There will always be a majority who hate the truth. So people have to make a decision about when to speak the truth or when to only say what sounds good. Sometimes even the truth sounds good. But just because people may hate what you're saying doesn't mean that, that is an infallible sign you're speaking the truth. The only truths people mostly agree on are basic truths: i.e. a cooked sweet potato at the store costs 2 bucks, so two cooked sweet potatoes will cost 4 bucks plus tax.
...con.
ReplyDeleteOf course, Ahmed, God wants all of us to speak the truth no matter what, so my advice to you is to keep on speaking the truth no matter what happens.
Below is a link to an interesting article about free will, determinism and the criminal justice system.
ReplyDeletehttps://jgcrimlaw.com/blog/free-will-determinism-and-the-criminal-justice-system/
On the recommendation of my daughter, I started watching an Amazon Prime British series about the legal system in Great Britain, titled SLK. After watching the first episode, I recommend it.
I guess nuclear war is too horrifying a topic for anyone to comment on it. Far better to go off on weird tangents--actually, to call them tangents is too generous.
ReplyDeleteAnyway, I'd be interested to learn who were the ludicrous commentators Prof. W. was referring to. Of course, to try to talk analytically about nuclear weapons/warfare must always verge on the ludicrous even when it's coming from people who are seriously trying to engage with one of humanity's most awful creations. Still, I did appreciate the way Philip Green--was it?--took apart the scholarly discussions of nuclear war. And Bob Scheer's "With enough shovels" was an interesting update on how the scholarly and political ludicrousness continued into another era. And yes, I know that the Australian nuclear submarines aren't supposed to carry nuclear missiles (which anyway they'd likely only be able to fire if the US gave them permission--which is the case with the British missiles), but things are definitely ratcheting up a bit, aren't they?
"i.e., deism. Here, you destroy free will, and by extension good and evil."
ReplyDeleteNot at all Ahmed. Or at least I don't see that.
Anonymous at 10:12, yes the prospect of nuclear war is horrifying. But it is not so tangential to the continuing discussion at least some of us have been engaged in.
Michael Llenos , I have no doubt that Ahmed is speaking truth as he sees it. Nor should you doubt that I have been also.
It is reassuring to see that in a place where such tremendous power is concentrated, there sat someone who obviously had not internalized the "chain of command" like a Pavlovian dog. When I look back into the history of my own country, I learn that this attitude of a military man is a rarity.
ReplyDeleteFortunately, there are military men today who recognize that their superior "does not have both oars on the water".
Meanwhile, as climate change proceeds, the glaciers in the Himalaya and Karakorum ranges are shrinking and three of the five nuclear powers in the region are constructively at war with each other. Living in the West one comes to understand that god is meh but water is what really matters. As the philosopher Thomas Hall pointed out, peace and rain equals prosperity.
ReplyDeleteAmong military leaders who could not only think in military terms, but in humanitarian terms, George C. Marshall stands as a giant. It was he who devised and promoted the Marshall Plan to rebuild Europe after WWII, rather than take advantage of the Allies victory to expand American hegemony over a Europe in ruins, as did the Soviet Union in Eastern Europe. It is unfortunate that his subordinate, General Eisenhower, did not come vigorously to his defense when McCarthy went after Marshall, accusing him of being a Communist.
ReplyDeleteIn terms of standing up to a deranged leader, Gen. Rommel deserves credit for having participated in a conspiracy – too late, perhaps – to assassinate Hitler, and he paid with his life.
We have fortunately also had examples of the reverse, where our political leaders have fired military commanders who challenged civilian control of the military, e.g., President Truman’s firing of Gen. MacArthur, and Pres. Kennedy’s firing of Gen. Walker as commander of the U.S. forces in Europe for indoctrinating his troops with literature of the John Birch Society. The latter incident became the subject of the movie “Seven Days in May,” about an attempted coup in the U.S. by right-wing military officers. Walker was suspected of having participated in a conspiracy to assassinate Pres. Kennedy.
I haven't had time to read most of the comment thread, but it is a historical fact perhaps worth noting that the U.S. fire-bombing of Japanese cities, culminating w the fire-bombing of Tokyo, killed more people, I think, than the nuclear bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, albeit over a more extended period.
ReplyDeleteAnd before AA gets going, I am not making a comment about morality or just-war theory here, simply noting a fact.
LFC,
ReplyDeleteDuly noted.
To Michael Llenos:
ReplyDelete"Cancelling card"! Are you serious?
And BTW Ahmed Fares took the bait.... indicating that the dig directed at him was well targeted.
Thomas Nagel wrote, with regard to the free will vs. determinism, that he changed his mind every time he thought about the problem. I’m in that position with regard to the nuclear bombing of Japan.
ReplyDeleteThe case against it is obvious. The case for it was obvious to most Americans in 1945; it’s much less so today.
I was born in 1938 and some of my earliest memories are about the war: I remember the air raid sirens and the blackouts, the concern my mother had with rationing. (I ruined a new pair of shoes, which were rationed.) I remember the service flags in windows, with a blue star for every member of the family who was serving—and a gold star for those who had been killed.
My father was drafted near the end of the war, since, though he was a father, he was under 30. He never saw action. His brother did, in the Navy in the Pacific. His ship survived suicide bombers. Both of my mother’s brothers were in the Army in Europe; one was wounded, the other killed in the battle for St Lo in Normandy. He was a month shy of his 19th birthday.
I also remember the fear—not just for loved ones in the military, but of U-boats on the East coast.
It was bigotry, but also fear, the led to the incarceration of Japanese Americans (while we had no qualms about putting a general of German descent in command of all the forces in the European Theater).
I note that neither the US nor its allies invented the bombing of civilians. The Germans did it in WWI with Zepplins over London, and then of course, there was the blitz in WWII that hit not just London, but other cities as well, e.g., Coventry. The Germans also had a practice run for WWII in Guernica. The Japanese bombed civilians in Shanghai in the ‘30s.
And I ask myself, what if the bomb had been available before D-Day. How would my mother and her family react to learning, after the war and after the death of my young uncle, that the bomb wasn’t used because it would have killed too many Germans? I’m pretty sure they would have been enraged, and so would I.
But then I have a Nagel moment: John Rawls served in the Pacific; his unit would have been one of those invading Japan had the war continued. Experience at Iwo Jima and Okinawa made pretty clear that it would have been a very bloody business. Instead of having to invade, though, Rawls’ unit was one of the first to arrive for the occupation of Japan. In the course of reaching their destination after landing, they went through Hiroshima. What he saw led him to condemn the bombing.
I go back and forth between those two conflicting visions: imagining that the bomb could have saved my uncle and confronting the fact that someone like Rawls, whose life expectancy would have been short had an invasion occurred, nonetheless condemned the use of the bomb.
The only thing I’m certain of is that I glad I wasn’t the one who had to make the decision to bomb or not to bomb.
FDR was urged by Albert Einstein, who in turn was urged by Leo Szilard, to start a nuclear weapon development program out of concern that the Nazis would develop one first. Intelligence indicated that Nazi Germany was in fact in the process of developing a nuclear weapon. It would have been reckless if FDR had not to authorize a similar program. Imagine if Nazi Germany had developed it first and detonated it over London or Paris.
ReplyDeleteGermany surrendered on May 8, 1945. The Trinity test at Los Alamos was conducted on July 16, 1945. Since Germany had already surrendered, one could argue that the U.S. should have ceased production of the nuclear bomb. But the Japanese resistance at Tanawa, Iwo Jima and Okinawa convinced Truman and his military staff that the U.S. could not justify expending the thousands of lives of U.S. servicemen in a long and brutal effort to conquer the Japanese mainland. Just as in the example David gives, if the bomb had not been used and thousands of American soldiers were killed and maimed in the effort to invade Japan, their families would have condemned Truman for not using the bomb. Some have argued that Truman should have first detonated a nuclear bomb off the coast of Japan, as a display of its power to persuade the Japanese to surrender. However, the Manhattan Project had only enough plutonium to make two bombs, and, notwithstanding the Trinity test, they were not sure it would work. If they attempted a warning detonation off the coast of Japan and it failed, then they would only have had one bomb left to use on the mainland. Japan in fact refused to surrender after the first detonation. If the U.S. had only one bomb left, Japan may still have refused to surrender. Moreover, given the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, Truman and most Americans were not inclined to be sympathetic to the Japanese.
Like David, I feel fortunate that I did not have to make the decision whether or not to use the nuclear weapons to end the war. Truman made the decision and accepted full responsibility for it. I cannot say that it was the wrong or an immoral decision, Prof. Rawls’ disagreement with the decision notwithstanding.
I wonder if Rawls would have had the same noble thoughts if the invasion had actually taken place at the moment he jumped out of the landing craft and saw the men beside him blown to bits by Japanese artillery.
ReplyDeleteIt's very easy to have lofty principles from a safe distance and in a comfortable armchair.
s. wallerstein,
ReplyDeleteThat is the most cogent comment I have ever seen you make.
David Zimmerman,
ReplyDeletePreviously I thought you were wrongly insulting Ahmed because he liked to interpret ideas by way of the Koran. I was just trying to explain to you (and everyone else posting) that insulting someone for their religous beliefs is very dangerous in this "scarlet letter society" that we live in today--no matter if that danger could produce a response at this particular blog or not. I apologize to you if you feel I misunderstood your comments. But I still say no one should be insulted for their religous beliefs.
To Michael Llenos:
ReplyDeleteSir, There is no real need for an apology. [And certainly none for an apology that contains an "if" clause.]
That said, I suppose that I agree with your view that no person should be insulted for his religious beliefs. However, I do not accept the idea that this proscription applies to the content of the religious beliefs themselves. Some religious beliefs are just too ridiculous to go criticized. [Of course, one much choose the occasions for this with care.]
In any event, this is all pretty much irrelevant to the appropriateness or not of my dig at the voluble Ahmed Fares, who demonstrates in his every post that he believes that the Q'uran applies to every political issue under the sun.
Another,
ReplyDeleteWhat a pleasant surprise! I saw your comment in my inbox and as I was opening it, I was imagining what your objection to my comment might be and how I would respond to that objection, but to my delighted amazement, I found that you expressed agreement.
s. wallerstein,
ReplyDeleteHa, Ha! Sorry to cause you so much anxiety.
One other observation. I have been spelling the Muslim holy book "Qu'ran"; David Zimmerman spelled it "Q'uran"; and Ahmed, who I assume is correct, has been spelling it "Qur'an." For now on I will spell it "Qur'an."
What do I know? I too will follow the Fares spelling.
ReplyDeletes. wallerstein
ReplyDeleteThere's a great distance between a landing craft and a comfortable armchair at a safe distance. Rawls, who had already seen combat, was much closer to the former than the latter.
In referring to Rawls, I'm addressing a personal moral decision he made, not his political philosophy.
David Palmeter,
ReplyDeleteSure, but he made the decision from his comfortable armchair at Harvard after the battle was over, when his life and that of his friends in his unit were no longer in danger. We're all heroes after the battle.
David Palmeter,
ReplyDeleteTo s. wallerstein’s shock, I am going to come to his defense on this one.
What he is saying is that, regardless whether Rawls came to his conclusion to disagree with Truman’s decision to drop the bomb while at Harvard, or while he was still in service and observing the destruction at Hiroshima and/or Nagasaki, he came to his decision with the luxury of not having had to be involved in an amphibious assault on the Japanese mainland. Would he have preferred to have been in a landing craft and risked being torn apart by machine gun fire or shrapnel, or seeing his comrades suffer that fate, in order to save the lives of several thousand Japanese civilians? Would you? I know, in all candor, I would not. I would not be willing to sacrifice my life, or that of my fellow brothers in arms, in order to spare Japanese civilians, whose government, after all started the war with us by a sneak attack on Pearl Harbor – notwithstanding that the Japanese civilian population may not have had any say in the matter.
AA,
ReplyDeleteMy recollection is that Rawls made the determination when he was riding in an Army truck going through Hiroshima. Before the war, he had intended to become an Episcopalian minister. He enlisted in the Army and saw action in the Philippines. At some point after the German surrender they were shown some of the first films from the Nazi concentration camps, and shortly after that went to Japan where he saw Hiroshima. He decided that a God who would allow those things to occur is no God he wished to serve, so he became a political philosopher. He was a long way from easy chairs at the time.
Riding in an Army truck after the enemy has surrendered is an easy chair compared to facing enemy fire as you get out of a landing craft or advancing block by block through an enemy city, with suicide bombers, etc.
ReplyDeleteI have to admit that having read or tried to read Rawl's Theory of Justice I find him idealistic, in the worst sense, detached from reality, not someone whom I believe in or who inspires trust in the soundness of his judgments.
Rawls had faced enemy fire. He just didn't have to do so in Japan. It appears to me that you have little or no liking for Rawls or his philosophy. Fair enough. But what does that have to do with position he took as a combat infantryman in 1945?
ReplyDeleteDavid Palmeter,
ReplyDeleteI think I've explained my view, but as I said, Rawls made his statement after the war was over. That is, there was utterly no chance he'd be called upon to put his body in risk in support of his statement.
We have no idea how the real Rawls reacted under enemy fire. Maybe he pissed in his pants and afterwards, made statements like the one you cite above to prove to himself and to the world that he wasn't really a coward. We have no idea.
I'll be impressed by or believe someone who given the option of risking his/her life in real life or letting civilians die, opts to risk their own life. There are such people, but since Rawl's life was no longer in risk when he made his lofty statement, we have no way of knowing if he was one of them or just a simply virtue signaler.
I have only looked rather quickly at this discussion, but Rawls, if I recall correctly, saw a friend being killed by fire basically right next to him. (If someone researches this and finds I'm not quite right, I will of course accept the correction.)
ReplyDeleteRawls wrote a piece about Hiroshima for Dissent magazine in 1995, on the 50th anniv of Hiroshima/Nagasaki. Prob a quick way to get a sense of his thinking on the matter, albeit decades later. Written, as I recall, in his typical, rather formal style. I don't really remember the substance v. well.
We already knew that s.w. doesn't like Rawls. So I don't know why these little contretemps keep happening. I mean, I know why, but they're not that illuminating b.c the positions are already known to people who've been reading this blog for a while.
Actually when I think about Rawls' statement a bit more, it seems just plain infantile.
ReplyDeleteFirst of all, an invasion of Japan wouldn't have just put his own life in risk, it would have also put in risk the lives of his fellow U.S. soldiers. Shouldn't he have thought a bit about them too, their wives and their children?
Second of all, he had no way of knowing nor do we if an invasion of Japan would or would not have cost more lives, of Japanese civilians not to mention U.S. soldiers than dropping the atom bombs. The Japanese would have resisted, it seems clear, in the cities and that would have involved heavy civilian casualties. Think of Stalingrad, of house to house fighting and of the ensuing food shortages (which affect civilians), even outright hunger.
So, all in all, Rawls' statement is simple moral-grandstanding.
s.w.
ReplyDelete"we have no idea how the real Rawls reacted under enemy fire"
Well, we have his own accounts of the matter in oral histories, if i'm not mistaken. He was probably scared, as virtually everyone probably is, except for a few exceptions. Beyond that, speculation about his (supposed) cowardice (or the reverse) I think is unwarranted.
Judgments after the fact are not moral grandstanding, they are moral judgments made after the fact. Period. Unless you think the only people entitled to make moral judgments about war are those whose lives are directly implicated in the decisions at issue.
ReplyDeleteWe spend far too much time quibbling over which actions during military encounters are, or were, justifiable, and far too little time trying to change the structures of our societies that make military conflicts unavoidable in the first place.
ReplyDeleteArundhati Roy: "Once weapons were manufactured to fight wars. Now wars are manufactured to sell weapons."
WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump brushed aside the grisly killing of Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi, saying his death has already been investigated and a Saudi pledge to spend billions of dollars on U.S. military equipment “means something to me.”
https://www.pbs.org/newshour/world/trump-puts-saudi-arms-sales-above-inquiry-into-khashoggi-killing
PARIS — Calling American and Australian behavior “unacceptable between allies and partners,” France announced on Friday that it was recalling its ambassadors to both countries in protest over President Biden’s decision to provide nuclear-powered submarines to Australia.
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/09/17/world/europe/france-ambassador-recall-us-australia.html
Eric,
ReplyDeleteThe following song was written by Buffy St. Marie in the 1960s (probably before your time). You can hear her sing it here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uIN7aqDCE9E
Here is a more current version, with an older Buffy:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j6imjvgJFvM
It does offer the solution to the continuation of wars, but it is not likely to happen in my lifetime, and I doubt it will happen in yours, either.
Universal Soldier
Buffy St. Marie
He is five feet two, and he's six feet four
He fights with missiles and with spears
He is all of thirty-one, and he's only seventeen
He's been a soldier for a thousand years
He's a Catholic, a Hindu, an atheist, a Jain
A Buddhist and a Baptist and a Jew
And he knows, he shouldn't kill
And he knows he always will
Killing you for me my friend, and me for you
And he's fighting for Canada, he's fighting for France
He's fighting for the U.S.A.
And he's fighting for the Russians
And he's fighting for Japan
And he thinks we put an end to war this way
And he's fighting for democracy
He's fighting for the Reds
He says it's for the peace of all
He's the one who must decide
Who's to live and who's to die
And he never sees the writing on the wall.
But without him, how would Hitler have condemned them at Dachau?
Without him Caesar would have stood alone
He's the one who gives his body as a weapon of the war
And without him all this killing can't go on
He's the universal soldier and he really is to blame
His orders come from far away, no more
They come from here and there, and you and me
And brothers, can't you see?
This is not the way we put the end to war
Post-script:
A bit of musical trivia - Buffy St. Marie was also the author of the song “Up Where We Belong,” made famous by Joe Cocker and Jennifer Warnes, and featured in the movie “An Officer and A Gentleman,” starring Richard Gere and Debra Winger. My wife to be and I watched this movie at a drive-in back in 1982. We were married a year later.
LFC,
ReplyDeleteI believe that one doesn't have the right to advocate actions or policies which put the lives of others at risk unless one is willing to accept that same risk oneself and is a position where that willingness to accept that risk is likely to be called upon to act.
You're going to ask me about Hitler and yes, I believe in the case of Hitler calling for military resistance from your armchair was justifiable, but I can't think of other cases off-hand.
That's my personal position and I try to guide my conduct by it. I don't generally advocate for it, although I did above since Rawls is supposedly a great philosopher and I expect or at least I used to expect deeper thought from a great philosopher.
I just realized the irony of the fact that Buffy St. Marie wrote and performed one of that greatest pacifist songs of all time, and then wrote a great song about love and romance, which was used as the theme song of a movie about a man being trained to become a Marine officer. Did she authorize the use of her song about romance to be used in a movie about training Marines? I assume she did.
ReplyDeleteAnother,
ReplyDeleteI have no idea, but if you like Buffy St. Marie, maybe you'll enjoy this song, one of my favorites.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JvA1bKLQtbM
s. wallerstein,
ReplyDeleteThank you for the link.
My first reaction was, Buffy St. Marie had a much more mellifluous voice.
Second, the song “Kill For Peace” was written and performed during the Vietnam War, which I opposed (although I succumbed to circumstances and served in the Army Reserve during the 1970’s).
But, and I believe you would agree, that sometimes the only way to resist the militaristic aggressive policies of some belligerent nations is to kill in order to restore peace, WWII being the prime example.
The only way to eliminate war is for every nation to commit to peace along the lines of Buffy’s song The Universal Soldier. I fear that there will always be one or more nations/factions which will refuse to take and honor the pledge.
Finally, I would agree with you that sometimes the U.S. has been the aggressor, the assassination of President Allende in Chile being a prime example.
I'm being a purist once again. I personally do not advocate for military action except in the case of Hitler. There probably have been situations in the human past which also justify military action, but I don't have a list of them at hand.
ReplyDeleteI'm quite aware that independent of what I do, wars will continue, but I will not participate in them or cheer them on or justify them.
I'm a vegetarian, almost a vegan too. I personally try to avoid participation in the killing of animals. I don't crusade about it, it's my individual position. I have lots of "ethical" principles which I apply to my life and don't particularly expect anyone else to follow and very often I don't even bother telling anyone about them. I put "ethical" between quotation marks because I don't really distinguish between moral principles and principles that I just follow because I'm that way.
As I tried to explain above, Rawls' position, which is an entirely "normal" position, just irritated me because Rawls has the reputation of somehow being especially saintly and wise.
Another,
ReplyDeleteI forgot to add that Allende wasn't assassinated, he committed suicide, although they might have killed him if they had taken him prisoner alive.
OK. Thank you for the correction.
ReplyDeleteAnd yet, the main culprit, Henry Kissinger, is still alive and in relatively good health.
Someone on Twitter found an editorial by Nicholas Kristof from February 2002:
ReplyDeleteOur experience there demostrates that troops can advance humanitarian goals just as much as doctors or aid workers can. By my calculations, our invasion of Afghanistan may end up saving one million lives over the next decade.
Ever since Vietnam, the West has been deeply squeamish about the use of force -- particularly European and American liberals, who are often so horrified by bloodshed involving innocents that they believe nothing can justify it. But Afghanistan shows that guns and bombs can save lives as much as scalpels and IV tubes do.
...
All this underscores a simple truth, and enough time has passed since Vietnam that we should be able to acknowledge it: Military intervention, even if it means lost innocent lives on both sides, can serve the most humanitarian of goals.
"China's defense budget in 2020 was three times that of the UK"
ReplyDeleteYou have to view the chart in the image to fully appreciate what's going on here:
The Guardian
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