BBC Radio 4’s Today Programme five minutes ago in its report on the 60th anniversary of the dropping of The Bomb:
“In the United States there was a steely determination to triumph [in the war] in the Far East by whatever means, at whatever cost.”
03Aug05 — 11
It’s not called lying; it’s called reinterpreting the past in terms of our current understanding of things. So now we know that America is a warmongering threat to global “stability”, and we know that the Eastern culture of the Japanese, by its very fact of being non-Western, was simultaneously far superior to Western culture and in imminent threat of being destroyed by it, it puts rather a new light on things we may have seen differently previously. Do try to keep up!
Oh those obscene American kamakazis.
Everybody knows it was the BBC wot won it. There the constitution is for the wise, the hawks are doves, the Jews are wisely wagging their heads in comfortable shtetls far from Israel, and there is no Power Left in Nightmares. Fi Glover interviewed the kamikazes, worked out the root causes of their suicidal tendencies and everyone laid down their arms and went to sleep dreaming of Gary Lineker.
I don’t see why that quote is either incorrect or pejorative in intention. Fact: Truman did have the cojones to do whatever he thought necessary to win the Pacific war. How was this a bad thing?
(Yes I know he used the big bad bomb, and many people condemn him for it, but the debate around that decision is extremely complex even if, like me, you ultimately conclude it should not have been made, and it has nothing to do with America’s entirely laudable strategic objective of extracting an unconditional surrender from the Japanese empire.)
You know it’s untrue because the US didn’t, for instance, adopt the policy of assassinating the Emperor, using poison gas, building extermination camps, killing prisoners etc. You know it’s pejorative because it’s the Beeb talking about the US and because you infer that it will somehow be used to excuse people who will indeed use “whatever means at whatever cost”, such as suicide-bombing on the tube. Moral equivalence, you see. Liars and, if I may say so, shits.
Dearie, if I were you, I’d have a nice cup of tea and a lie down. Certainly the Americans didn’t do all the things you list. Why should they? Assassinating the emperor would have been counter-productive, building extermination camps and killing prisoners would have been irrelevant, and why piss about with poison gas when you’ve got a couple of small nukes?
“By any means” doesn’t mean you actually have to use every conceivable means that a twisted mind can come up with. Do I think that Truman was a sufficiently decent man that he wouldn’t have done any of those things under any circumstances? Probably. If the survival of the United States had been at issue I wouldn’t bet the farm – he took his responsibilities as President suitably seriously.
Your second sentence explores realms of speculation and paranoia that are beyond my ability to engage with.
Dearime and Chris both have valid points. The quote as such isn’t particularly pejorative if you think determination in wartime is a good thing, which most people would. On the other hand, the BBC comes out with much worse than this all the time. In the current issue of BBC History magazine there is a discussion of the bombing of Japan which contains an out-of-context picture of Afghans amidst blast wreckage, obviously intended to draw a parallel between deliberate targeting of cities in 1945 and current events. (The article does not mention Afghanistan at all.) The BBC rarely lies: where’s the need when you’ve got innuendo?
I don’t myself know whether nuking Hiroshima and Nagasaki was the only viable decision. Horrible deaths, and so many. On the other hand I didn’t have to make the decision, and would be wary of judgments in hindsight. I have read arguments both ways. And we can add the carpet bombing of German cities to that. But then, on the other hand, we can adduce… etc etc.
I do think dearie me has a teensy weensie point. (The fact that you’re paranoid doesn’t mean… oh finish it for yourselves.) That point is picked up by Steve K too. I think there is a kind of half-conscious cumulation of ‘US bad’ vibes going on. I don’t plead for an oppositional chorus of ‘US good’, only for a wee bit of perspective. Not so much of the Great Satan riff perhaps, if only because there are other people humming along with that, and those people are humming all kinds of other tunes too.
I object to the “whatever means, at whatever costs” because it deliberately ignores the debate on the best means to win the war at the lowest cost that took place between all of the Allied commanders (including the British), in order to score a cheap point about American recklessness that is meant to resonate with some characterisations of current American foreign policy. Now it is possible to honestly argue with the decision taken as a result of that debate (although I think allowance should be made for hindsight) but it is not possible to simply pretend the debate never happened, and remain in the realms of honest discussion.
Chris, if one has heard, through much of ones life, the BBC propounding a “moral equivalence” view of the USA vs the USSR, or more parochially, the bigotted Dr Paisley vs the murdering IRA, one does become alert to their tricks.
> If the survival of the United States had been at issue …
… then there might have arisen a steely determination to triumph in the Far East by whatever means, at whatever cost. However, this is totally irrelevant to what the BBC actually said.
> Assassinating the emperor would have been counter-productive
I doubt that. Showing their god to be vulnerable would have severely dented Japanese confidence, to say the least.