Dresden, Vonnegut, and Terrorism
Terrorism is an illegitimate act of war intentionally targeting civilian non-combatants. It’s wrong when small, relatively weak collections of individuals do it, and it’s wrong when powerful nation states do it. This principle shouldn’t be controversial, but defending it has gotten me into a few arguments with some conservative friends of mine.
I used to defend the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, but not anymore. The Japanese were guilty of war crimes just like the Nazis, but I cannot escape the conclusion that the bombings intentionally targeted civilian non-combatants. That can’t be justified as retribution when old women and young children who had nothing to do with Japanese atrocities or the Emperor’s war machine were incinerated too. They were more than just “collateral damage.” These innocent victims were part of the point, which was to scare the Japanese into unconditional surrender.
Douglas MacArthur and Dwight Eisenhower (not exactly wimps) both disagreed with the decision. MacArthur, the senior commander in the Pacific wasn’t even consulted beforehand and said later it was unnecessary.
The atomic bombs were not unique, however. The advent of carpet bombing, or more appropriately terror bombing, during World War II set the stage for Hiroshima and Nagasaki. They were the logical consequence of total war. The Germans did it to London. The Allies did it to Tokyo and Dresden.
Unlike so-called “anti-war” leftists, I don’t think any of this excuses or justifies modern Islamic terrorism — quite the opposite. The terrorism practiced by nation-states on both sides during World War II and the terrorism practiced today by Muslim fanatics are both very wrong, but very different. Today’s Islamofascists have none of the excuses that the Axis and the Allies could use. There can be no utilitarian theory that Mohamed Atta was actually saving lives by ending a war sooner. He was starting a war.
Today’s terrorists don’t even pretend to need a justification beyond a call to Jihad.
You would think that someone who had witnessed the intentional targeting of civilians during the bombing of Dresden and famously wrote an anti-war novel inspired by it would firmly oppose terrorism of any stripe. However, Kurt Vonnegut apparently thinks that terrorism conducted by underdogs is okay. He recently called what today’s Islamofascist terrorists do “sweet and honorable” and described the terrorists as “very brave people” (hat tip: World Magazine Blog). He marvelled at the “amazing high” that a suicide bomber must feel just before murdering random groups of innocent people.
This sort of swill is nothing new for Vonnegut who said in 2002 that there was too much talk about 9/11 and not enough about “the crooks on Wall Street” whose behavior was more destructive.
Apparently being a hero of the anti-war movement doesn’t prevent you from praising or excusing acts of war, so long as the victims are American or Israeli citizens.
RELATED: Via Michelle Malkin, Chris Matthews tells us that the 9/11 attackers are not evil. If not, Chris, then there is no such thing.
related articles
- Happy Fourth of July (July 4th, 2007)
- Churchill on Islam (July 2nd, 2007)
- Right Words (April 7th, 2007)
- What a jerk! (April 5th, 2007)
- The Multicultural Lie and the Clash of Civilizations (August 22nd, 2006)
November 21st, 2005 at 11:11 pm
Surely the war in Iraq has seen innocent civillians harmed and perhaps even killed from both sides. Putting asside the discussion of whether endangered and harmed innocent civilians are a necessary casualty of war, I wonder if the U.S. would be so eager to wage war if that war would be waged on U.S. soil rather than foreign soil — where everytime a bomb/missie was sent there was a realistic danger of an innocent U.S. citizen being harmed?
November 21st, 2005 at 11:41 pm
The U.S. has not intentionally targeted civillians in Iraq or Afghanistan. If we had, I would have criticized it.
As they say in Parliament, I refer the gentleman to the remarks I made some moments ago:
November 22nd, 2005 at 12:10 am
One man’s terrorism is another man’s freedom fight. While the killing of innocent civilians is never right, how much “collateral damage” is OK in order for us to win the fight? And for what reason? The history books tell us, and there are a few of the old guard who remember, that the Japanese might very well not have surrendered if it weren’t for Hiroshima and Nagasaki. They had a pretty sophisticated plan to invade the Aleutian Islands (they had already made one pass at it) and consequently the US via the northwest when the H-bombs were dropped. Would the US still have the freedoms we have today if we had not caused the Japanese to surrender? I’m not sure, but would we do it again faced with the same threat? I don’t at all agree with Islamic terrorists and their harm to innocents. But I often wonder what it takes for them (or any other under-class) to feel pushed to that point. The French Revolution and the Boshevic (sp?) Revolution are both examples of how an underclass strikes out against a powerful ruling class and, in both instances, killed “innocents” (the ruling class). In those instances, it was within their own country. But with our “global community” it seems that the terrorists are just carrying their borders to another level based on availability. I don’t know that there is any parrellel there except that both the bombing Japan and the Islamic and Pealestinian terrorists bombings, people were/are trying to either preserve a way of life or forge a better life for themselves. I happen to oppose the Islamic terrorists, but if I were Japanese would I have looked at Hiroshima as terrorism?
November 22nd, 2005 at 10:50 pm
I despise that cliche. It is moral relativism applied to the very subject most in need of clarity and truth.
The dichotomy between dropping an atomic bomb or invading Japan is a false one. The unstated and unproven assumption is that unconditional surrender was necessary to preserve American freedom at the end of World War II.
Islamic terrorists are not just the product of an “underclass.” That’s not based on evidence but on the faulty assumptions that economic factors are the root of all evil. They are not. Mohammed Atta and the other 19 hijackers on 9/11 were middle or upper middle class. Bin Laden is a son of privilege and wealth. Take a look at the last few paragraphs of Thomas Sowell’s article on Eric Hoffer:
Islamofascist terrorists shouldn’t be afforded the dignity of assuming that their motives are pure, that they are just trying to make a better life the only way they know how. Millions of people suffer much worse indignities and injustices without murdering random innocents.
This should be a bright line rule. It’s fairly simple: don’t kill innocent people on purpose. This is an objective, neutral principle. It’s not subjective. It doesn’t depend on whether you’re Japanese or American or Arab or Israeli.
November 28th, 2005 at 4:07 pm
You raise some good points to consider and I just want to interject a couple of questions that have been rattling around. What you say here “Contrary to the prevailing assumptions of his time, Eric Hoffer did not believe that revolutionary movements were based on the sufferings of the downtrodden. “Where people toil from sunrise to sunset for a bare living, they nurse no grievances and dream no dreams,†he said. He had spent years living among such people and being one of them,” can be applied as much to the American “revolutionaries” as to any other group. Was their revolution/fight for “self government” any more or less prideful that some of the other groups you mentioned above? I will concede that as far as I know they did not go about purposefully killing innocents. But if their “self rule” depended on it, would they have I wonder? On the other hand, we, the United States DID agree to kill innocents to stop Japan’s advance. I still say that if I were an innocent child in Hiroshima, I would have thought that looked a lot like terrorism. Another thought has to do with who our enemy is. The Bible tells us our fight is not against flesh and blood, but against Satan. In other words, it isn’t an earthly battle but a spiritual one. If we agree with the assumption that the Islamic terrorists are evil and there is no good in them (no pure motives), then they are of the Devil. If that is the case, what is the best way to fight it? With earthly means or with spiritual ones?
November 29th, 2005 at 12:39 am
Still, would the U.S. be so eager to fight a war if that war HAD to be held on U.S. soil?
In consideration of how much physical damage would be done, not too mention the many innocent civilians who would be wounded and/or killed either accidently or intentionally, I wonder how many U.S. citizens would be so eager to support such a war.
Hence, in war we always see the breakdown of the 2nd greatest commandment (love thy neighbor as thyself) because we cannot love our neighbor if we seek to kill our neighbor… Thus the breakdown of the 2nd greatest commandment is then a breakdown of the greatest commandment (Love God) because we cannot love God and hate our neighbor (whom God loves as well).
AND if you say that the greatest commands have nothing to do with this, then you are essentially saying they have nothing to do with real life — a position I am sure no one really wants to stand on.
So what is it going to take? How can we love our neighbors who happen to be radical Muslims when they do not want to love us? It is going to take us to say that we are better than resorting to the ways of the world so we will love you.
WOW! Could that ever work? The world says no but the world is foolish and what is foolish to the world is the redemptive and reconciling reality of God!
November 29th, 2005 at 8:25 am
Left said…
I’m not an innocent child in Hiroshima and I have said that it looked a lot like terrorism. This is my point. We should think about these things in terms of objective, neutral criteria. That means acknowledging when our own country has done wrong, which is why I no longer defend the atomic bombs or the “area bombing” of Tokyo and Dresden.
I don’t think I agree that “there is no good in them.” I simply said we shouldn’t give them the benefit of the doubt that their evil acts have pure motives. Why would we assume that terrorist acts are born of pure motives? People who not only do such unspeakable things on purpose, but also praise acts of terror as good works, pleasing to God, are in a totally different category than Churchill and Truman. We can acknowledge that difference without giving in to relativism.
As to spiritual battles versus physical ones, you’d get in trouble with our friends on the religious left for that one. They have maintained that it is error to make this distinction.
My reaction is that they are not mutually exclusive. Both battles are real and both are important.
December 27th, 2005 at 4:45 pm
Administrator’s Note: The following comment has been edited because it appeared to contain an entire work protected by copyright. In the future, please post links to entire articles hosted elsewhere rather than pasting the whole text here. However, excerpts are welcome.
Twisting Vonnegut’s views on terrorism By Mark Vonnegut | December 27, 2005
FOR THE past month or so it’s been said and repeated that my father supports terrorism. The desire to have it be true is almost palpable. If novelist Kurt Vonnegut supports terrorism, then maybe all critics of the war are on some level proterrorist.
* * *
At no point did he say that blowing yourself up in a crowd of people was a good thing to do. What most outraged his interviewer was Kurt’s disinclination to dismiss the terrorists as mentally ill. He said that suicide bombers believed that they were dying for a just cause and that he imagined they were probably brave people. It was all speculation. Neither he nor his interviewer had any knowledge about suicide bombers or radical Islam. Nowhere in the interview did he say anything in support of terrorism, though I’m quite sure he enjoyed horrifying his interviewer by skating around it. Kurt, every so often, will play with people a little.