One real reason for not trying to kill the Emperor by bomb (quite unlikely to be successful BTW)
was that it would have pretty much insured the death of every allied POW in Japan.
I'm not sure it's a sufficient reason given the rate at which American combatants were dying; but that is a good reason I hadn't considered.
I've seen it also; but can't recall where. It's not "lunatic" at all to think that a big man would exempt city A for sentimental reasons while approving the targetting of city B.
One of the most common equipages of big men is belief that "it's all about me" even though most of them hide that attitude better than our current president.
The firebombing of Tokyo was pretty much over the line as it was. It wasn’t silliness to exempt the Palace grounds.
Japanese persons in Tokyo, in that they were producing war materials and supplies for war fighters, were legitimate targets in a war that Japan clearly started and which Japan stubbornly refused to end. Innocents were unfortunately kept intermixed with them by Japanese leaders who therefore bear all responsibility for their deaths.
Meanwhile, the Emperor’s Palace was probably considered a religious/cultural site of the sort that had throughout the war been declared off-limits except when deemed militarily significant
You (and Marshall and the other war fighters) can't have it both ways. Their argument effectively was that the emperor, as head of state, could not be directly attacked from a moral standpoint and also from a practical standpoint because he was in charge and necessary to negotiate with.
And, in fact, when he got on the radio and said "put down your arms and surrender" virtually every Japanese soldier and sailor did so as meekly as could be.
So. . . he was in charge and could potentially have ended the war at any time had he been willing to risk all. He also could have prevented the war in the first place, or at least died trying to prevent a war being started in his name. He was hence one of a few who were the most guilty persons in Japan with respect to the war.
So, tell me again. Why was Hirohito exempt from attack, guilty as he was and major war asset that he was (being in his person the basis for Japan's very cohesion as a nation) while Japanese 18 year old dupes of the emperor hiding in caves on Iwo Jima were fair game to be rooted out by American 18 year old draftees with flamethrowers at great risk of their lives?
Perhaps my post was less clear than I thought. I think the A Bomb attacks were as moral as any act in the war.
My beef with Marshall (and I don't have a huge beef with him - he was a great man) is that he tolerated the silliness of exempting the emperor's palace from bombing while planning an invasion of Japan that would have gotten tens or hundreds of thousands of GIs killed. And he planned that invasion while the submarine campaign was already starving the Japanese into submission and the air campaign was already systematically destroying Japan city by city at little cost in American lives.
Beyond that I used Marshall as an example of the angels on the heads of pins arguments and positions of so called moralists because he is the perfect example of the behavior of elites in all times.
Yes, he carried out the Marshall Plan; and I'm sure he did a good job of it - namely using other people's money to achieve something arguably worthwhile for which the other people (those whose money Marshall used) should have gotten the peace prize, if anyone.
You really should have read what I wrote before responding at some sort of fifth dimensionsional angle to something I didn't write and don't believe.
For the record, I think ALL of our actions in WW2 that were conducted in furtherance of bringing about the swiftest possible defeat and dissolution of the attacking governments from the moment we were attacked (and declared war on in the case of Germany) were both proportional and moral by any standard that's reasonable to hold.
I was trying to say, and I think I did say fairly coherently, that it was both deeply immoral and in practice stupid to exempt both Hitler and Hirohito from direct attack while mercilessly pounding their less guilty countrymen and women, even though I believe pounding their less guilty countrymen to force their surrender was itself a moral act in that they shared responsibility for the actions of the governments they tolerated and/or supported.
I'm a simple person. I think we should almost never start a war; but when one is started against us we should fight with any and all weapons at our disposal with the almost exclusive goal of minimizing our own casualties.
There is an easy way to tell if one should fight "fair". If there is a referee whose decisions will be unquestionably accepted by both parties to the fight one should fight "fair".
But who am I to argue with the great moralists. After all, they gave George Marshall the Nobel Peace Prize after he helped plan the multi million man draftee army that killed millions of German draftees and bombed the hell out of German cities while the moralists were advising Churchill that assassinating Hitler would be immoral.
George C Marshall: “We are determined that before the sun sets on this terrible struggle, our flag will be recognized throughout the world as a symbol of freedom on the one hand and of overwhelming force on the other.”
Of course, much as we want to gloss over it, Marshall said that as we carried out punitive and terror inducing actions many many orders of magnitude greater than what the Russians did in a surgical manner, so to speak, to send a message to Hezbollah.
Much as we want to deny it there are people in the world who value only their own lives and the lives of their relations, and who will not stop unless you prove to them that you're willing to attack and capable of attacking that which they value.
Our so called "morality" leads inevitably to massive wars fought against the relatively innocent by draftees urged on by leaders who are surrounded by their families and harems and held safe and off limits from attack in their palaces. The fact that there was an Emperor of Japan to treat with at the end of a war which saw us destroy a couple dozen cities is ample proof.
Meanwhile an economist friend just sent me an econometrics update that included the happy news that industrial production dropped lower earlier this year than the low level it reached in 2001. Production is now on the rise; but that seemed rather ominous to me.
In effect we just experienced the second dip of the recession that started in 2000, at least with respect to industrial production which underlies all economic activity and on top of which everything else is just the froth (necessary though it may be) associated with dividing up the hard goods whose production and delivery are the necessary purpose of an economy.
a series of nuclear attacks in the American homeland brought off by an effectively unidentifiable (and therefore un-targetable) sponsor
That one's easy. After each incident terminate the most likely couple of suspects promptly and with extreme prejudice. If the attacks continue after only four or five or ten incidents all of the possible suspects will be gone and the resultant dust in the atmosphere will solve global warming for decades.
But I think several of the suspects down the list from the first couple of eliminatees will help solve the problem if we made a hasty mistake with the first retaliation.
@ fuster:
I'm not sure it's a sufficient reason given the rate at which American combatants were dying; but that is a good reason I hadn't considered.
@ narciso:
Thanks for posting that. The minutes of that meeting are filled with interesting stuff.
@ narciso:
I've seen it also; but can't recall where. It's not "lunatic" at all to think that a big man would exempt city A for sentimental reasons while approving the targetting of city B.
One of the most common equipages of big men is belief that "it's all about me" even though most of them hide that attitude better than our current president.
@ fuster:
Japanese persons in Tokyo, in that they were producing war materials and supplies for war fighters, were legitimate targets in a war that Japan clearly started and which Japan stubbornly refused to end. Innocents were unfortunately kept intermixed with them by Japanese leaders who therefore bear all responsibility for their deaths.
@ CK MacLeod:
You (and Marshall and the other war fighters) can't have it both ways. Their argument effectively was that the emperor, as head of state, could not be directly attacked from a moral standpoint and also from a practical standpoint because he was in charge and necessary to negotiate with.
And, in fact, when he got on the radio and said "put down your arms and surrender" virtually every Japanese soldier and sailor did so as meekly as could be.
So. . . he was in charge and could potentially have ended the war at any time had he been willing to risk all. He also could have prevented the war in the first place, or at least died trying to prevent a war being started in his name. He was hence one of a few who were the most guilty persons in Japan with respect to the war.
So, tell me again. Why was Hirohito exempt from attack, guilty as he was and major war asset that he was (being in his person the basis for Japan's very cohesion as a nation) while Japanese 18 year old dupes of the emperor hiding in caves on Iwo Jima were fair game to be rooted out by American 18 year old draftees with flamethrowers at great risk of their lives?
@ JEM:
Perhaps my post was less clear than I thought. I think the A Bomb attacks were as moral as any act in the war.
My beef with Marshall (and I don't have a huge beef with him - he was a great man) is that he tolerated the silliness of exempting the emperor's palace from bombing while planning an invasion of Japan that would have gotten tens or hundreds of thousands of GIs killed. And he planned that invasion while the submarine campaign was already starving the Japanese into submission and the air campaign was already systematically destroying Japan city by city at little cost in American lives.
Beyond that I used Marshall as an example of the angels on the heads of pins arguments and positions of so called moralists because he is the perfect example of the behavior of elites in all times.
Yes, he carried out the Marshall Plan; and I'm sure he did a good job of it - namely using other people's money to achieve something arguably worthwhile for which the other people (those whose money Marshall used) should have gotten the peace prize, if anyone.
@ fuster:
You really should have read what I wrote before responding at some sort of fifth dimensionsional angle to something I didn't write and don't believe.
For the record, I think ALL of our actions in WW2 that were conducted in furtherance of bringing about the swiftest possible defeat and dissolution of the attacking governments from the moment we were attacked (and declared war on in the case of Germany) were both proportional and moral by any standard that's reasonable to hold.
I was trying to say, and I think I did say fairly coherently, that it was both deeply immoral and in practice stupid to exempt both Hitler and Hirohito from direct attack while mercilessly pounding their less guilty countrymen and women, even though I believe pounding their less guilty countrymen to force their surrender was itself a moral act in that they shared responsibility for the actions of the governments they tolerated and/or supported.
I'm a simple person. I think we should almost never start a war; but when one is started against us we should fight with any and all weapons at our disposal with the almost exclusive goal of minimizing our own casualties.
There is an easy way to tell if one should fight "fair". If there is a referee whose decisions will be unquestionably accepted by both parties to the fight one should fight "fair".
But who am I to argue with the great moralists. After all, they gave George Marshall the Nobel Peace Prize after he helped plan the multi million man draftee army that killed millions of German draftees and bombed the hell out of German cities while the moralists were advising Churchill that assassinating Hitler would be immoral.
@ CK MacLeod:
Of course, much as we want to gloss over it, Marshall said that as we carried out punitive and terror inducing actions many many orders of magnitude greater than what the Russians did in a surgical manner, so to speak, to send a message to Hezbollah.
Much as we want to deny it there are people in the world who value only their own lives and the lives of their relations, and who will not stop unless you prove to them that you're willing to attack and capable of attacking that which they value.
Our so called "morality" leads inevitably to massive wars fought against the relatively innocent by draftees urged on by leaders who are surrounded by their families and harems and held safe and off limits from attack in their palaces. The fact that there was an Emperor of Japan to treat with at the end of a war which saw us destroy a couple dozen cities is ample proof.
Meanwhile an economist friend just sent me an econometrics update that included the happy news that industrial production dropped lower earlier this year than the low level it reached in 2001. Production is now on the rise; but that seemed rather ominous to me.
In effect we just experienced the second dip of the recession that started in 2000, at least with respect to industrial production which underlies all economic activity and on top of which everything else is just the froth (necessary though it may be) associated with dividing up the hard goods whose production and delivery are the necessary purpose of an economy.
Nothing new, of course. I just found and listed Alas Babylon on Amazon. I listed it at a high price so I can read it again.
Actually, it sounds like a pretty interesting book; which is probably an indicator of how sick I am in the head.
Why are we, the most favored and prosperous people in the history of the world, so consumed with interest in potential disasters?
That one's easy. After each incident terminate the most likely couple of suspects promptly and with extreme prejudice. If the attacks continue after only four or five or ten incidents all of the possible suspects will be gone and the resultant dust in the atmosphere will solve global warming for decades.
But I think several of the suspects down the list from the first couple of eliminatees will help solve the problem if we made a hasty mistake with the first retaliation.