"The Japanese were ready to surrender and it wasn't really necessary to hit them with that awful thing." -- President Dwight D. Eisenhower.
DETROIT -- Confronting the truth is difficult in the best of times. During times of war, truth is as much an enemy as the real or perceived foe. President George W. Bush lied to get us into the war in Iraq and his incompetence in planning for the occupation brought us the disaster we are now stuck in. A smooth departure is simply impossible. He refuses to deal with that indisputable fact.
Bush's "mission accomplished" and "bring 'em on" triumphalism gives way to the harsh truth and reality he dare not speak.
"Progress is being made," he bellowed in a speech last month to soldiers at Fort Bragg, N.C. While the commander in chief crowed about his successes, more sober minds pursued and proclaimed truths he doesn't want to hear. A report sponsored by the independent Council on Foreign Relations finds Bush's war plans seriously flawed.
"A dramatic military victory has been overshadowed by chaos and bloodshed in the streets of Baghdad, difficulty in establishing security or providing services, and a deadly insurgency," the report grimly states.
One of the members of the panel that prepared the study was Brent Scowcroft, the national security adviser to President G.H. Bush. Scowcroft and his colleagues found the post-war planning for Iraq woefully inadequate. As a result, the United States is "ill-equipped to address public security, governance and economic demands."
The future for Bush's nation-building experiment is bleak. "The costs, human, military and economic, are high and continue to mount," the report concludes.
The Council on Foreign Relations, by its own definition, is a "nonpartisan organization dedicated to improving the understanding of U.S. foreign policy and international affairs through the free and civil exchange of ideas." George W. Bush wants nothing to do with such a group. The experience, wisdom and insights of the members of the council, and their willingness to objectively review U.S. foreign policy are a threat to Bush's impetuous mind and shortsightedness.
Dwight D. Eisenhower viewed the world as a seasoned realist. While serving as the Supreme Allied Commander in Europe during World War II, he demonstrated great determination, extraordinary diplomatic skills and the patience that marks real leaders. Eisenhower was a masterful planner who defined his objectives and carefully prepared and committed the resources to carry them out. Ike was modest, self-made and principled.
George W. Bush has none of those virtues and traits. In the way he has gotten us into an unnecessary war and his manifestly obvious failure to plan for its aftermath, George W. Bush is truly the anti-Eisenhower.
Eisenhower saw war as a tragic last resort. Bush saw it as his first choice. Eisenhower was introspective, reflective and self-doubting. Bush is glib, self-righteous and dangerously cocky. Eisenhower could also admit mistakes and bear responsibility for them. Bush is incapable of admitting any error. Ike had prepared a statement, which he never had to use, accepting his own responsibility for the failure of the D-Day invasion in Normandy.
Eisenhower led the allies to victory in Europe and a successful and non-violent occupation of Germany. He also spoke out against the use of nuclear weapons and he had the guts to tell his superiors, before the deadly deeds were committed, that dropping atomic bombs on Japanese cities was wrong.
This Saturday, Aug. 6, marks the 60th anniversary of the first atomic bombing at Hiroshima. Three days later, another bomb was dropped over Nagasaki.
Perhaps no event in the history of our nation is more misunderstood and misinterpreted. I know many sincere, honest and decent people who have views and conclusions different from mine. But I believe the evidence shows the nuclear attacks on Japan were wrong and unnecessary.
Bishop Fulton J. Sheen first opened my eyes to the horror of what was done to Japan and how morally unjustifiable it was. I must have been about 11 or 12 years old when I watched the good bishop explaining the issue on his TV show. Sheen was a skilled lecturer and always used a blackboard to explain his points.
As he analyzed the bombings, Bishop Sheen argued that the issue came down to "the ends cannot justify the means." Until that time, I had never thought much about the topic. A few days later, I was at a friend's home and I mentioned to a few adults -- all devout Catholics -- what the bishop had said and that I agreed with him. All hell broke loose. I was pummeled.
"Kid, you don't know what you're talking about!"
"That was the only way we could defeat Japan."
"By dropping the bomb, we saved a million lives."
All these years later, those are still the dominant arguments we hear. But a remarkable book, published 10 years ago, thoroughly examines the military, political and psychological reasons for using the atomic bomb and the lasting implications for our nation and the world.
"Hiroshima in America: Fifty Years of Denial," by Robert Jay Lifton and Greg Mitchell, is a carefully documented and disturbing account of the real events leading to the bombing of Hiroshima, and of the immediate efforts to hide the truth, distort the facts and engage in widespread historical revisionism.
Lifton is a noted psychiatrist who first studied the effects of the atomic bombing on the survivors of Hiroshima. Mitchell is the author of several books and is now the editor of "Editor and Publisher," an important industry journal. Mitchell grew up in Niagara Falls and is a longtime friend of mine.
The book explores the "official narrative" that described the Japanese cities as military targets, and how Secretary of War Henry L. Stimson was hell-bent to use the bomb and did his best to stifle opposition.
After Hitler fell and the Nazis were defeated, the focus of the war turned to Japan. Stimson had to consult with Eisenhower, the liberator of Europe, about his intent to use the atomic bomb in the Pacific.
Stimson made his sales pitch, but Eisenhower didn't buy it. Eisenhower wrote in a memoir, "I had been conscious of a feeling of depression and so I voiced to him my grave misgivings, first on the basis of my belief that Japan was already defeated and that dropping the bomb was completely unnecessary, and second because I thought that our country should avoid shocking world opinion by the use of a weapon whose employment was, I thought, no longer mandatory as a measure to save American lives. It was my belief that Japan was, at that very moment, seeking some way to surrender with a minimum loss of 'face.'"
Stimson did not appreciate Eisenhower's candor. He "was deeply perturbed by my attitude, almost angrily refuting the reasons I gave for my quick conclusions," Eisenhower wrote.
The Soviet Union was now poised to enter the war against Japan, opening another front against the island nation. Most of Japan's major cities and industrial plants were already in ashes following months of incendiary bombings. Japan could not survive without importing resources, especially oil, and a naval blockade was tightening the noose around the neck of the failing empire.
Hiroshima was not, as President Harry Truman claimed, "an important Japanese army base." Nagasaki had even less military significance. The bombs were dropped on central parts of the cities to maximize civilian deaths.
Hiroshima and Nagasaki were among the few Japanese cities not already leveled. Proponents of the move wanted to try the bomb out on real targets. It was a military exercise to see how nuclear terror worked.
Lifton and Mitchell document that Japan was ready to surrender, dismantling the myth that using the bomb averted an invasion that would have cost a million lives.
One of the central reasons for dropping the bomb was to show the Soviets we had these horrible weapons and were ready to use them. Our monopoly on the big bombs lasted just a few years, and the nuclear attacks on Japan triggered a nuclear arms race with the Soviets that was costly and menacing for both sides.
There was little hesitation and scant debate about using the bomb. We had already crossed the moral threshold of targeting civilian populations. The Germans, Japanese, Italians and British did the same.
The Hiroshima bomb killed 90,000 immediately and another 145,000 died within months. In Nagasaki, 40,000 died immediately and 75,000 perished by the end of 1945.
Conventional bombing in Dresden and Tokyo took more lives than in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, but the use of nuclear weapons brought war into an entirely new and terrifying dimension. Once the nuclear genie was out of the bottle, the game became building even more horrible and destructive weapons. It became a status symbol for nations to develop them.
Military censors attempted to keep the lid on information about what the bombs did to people. At first, only images of the physical destruction were permitted. Then, in April of 1946, a 31-year-old Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist and war correspondent arrived in Hiroshima and began interviewing the victims of the bomb.
John Hersey's account, told from the viewpoint of eyewitnesses, was stunning. The "New Yorker" magazine devoted an entire issue to Hersey's 30,000-word story, and readers began to understand the real story. The article was reprinted in book form and became a best-seller. The truth was profoundly disturbing. Many Americans began challenging the official justifications.
Advocates of the bombings mounted a counteroffensive, using historical revisionism to quell the critics. A "Harper's" magazine cover story proclaimed, "Henry L. Stimson Explains Why We Used the Atomic Bomb." The article was, in fact, Stimson's "fixing" the facts to defend his own decisions.
Six decades later, the debate over using the bomb remains highly emotional. Hersey's "Hiroshima" and Lifton and Mitchell's "Hiroshima in America" provide vital insights and information critical in understanding why the issues involved are so difficult for so many to deal with to this day.
Lifton and Mitchell write, "Confronting Hiroshima can be a source of renewal. It can enable us to emerge from nuclear entrapment and rediscover our imaginative capacity on behalf of human good. We can overcome our moral inversion and cease to justify weapons or actions of mass killing."
The lessons of Hiroshima are particularity important when we have in the White House a president who plunged our nation into an unprecedented, pre-emptive war of choice. He used the fear of nuclear weapons and fabricated evidence that Iraq was developing them to justify the war.
Eisenhower would have no part in such folly. He once said, "A preventive war, to my mind, is an impossibility. I don't even listen to anyone seriously that came in and talked about such a thing."
Sadly, the "impossibility" is now a reality in occupied Iraq. The people who planned that war are foolish enough to make even crazier decisions and are more likely to use nuclear weapons than any administration since 1945.
George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, Condoleezza Rice, Karl Rove, Rush Limbaugh, Bill O'Reilly and so many others who trumpeted the march to unnecessary war and still try to justify it, have a common bond that sets them apart from Dwight Eisenhower.
Eisenhower's views were forged from tragic experience. He said, "I hate war as only a soldier who has lived it can, only as one who has seen its brutality, its stupidity."
| Niagara Falls Reporter | www.niagarafallsreporter.com | Aug. 2 2005 |