Courtesy of a post at Eaton Rapids Joe's place, I came across this sobering video of deaths by country during and after World War II. It's worth viewing, if only to put the scale of deaths and their relative totals into perspective.
It takes a display like that to bring visual emphasis to what are otherwise merely statistics. We lose sight of the fact that every death is of a human being, a man, woman or child whose life has been untimely snuffed out.
A good example of that grim accounting may be found in the Doolittle Raid on Tokyo in 1942. It had little or no military effect. It was planned and carried out as a propaganda stunt, to demonstrate to the people of the United States that they were, indeed, fighting back, and to the Japanese people that they were not invulnerable. So far, so good . . . but President Roosevelt and US military leaders were warned, repeatedly, by Chiang Kai-Shek and other Chinese leaders that if the US fliers tried to escape to and through China, Japanese reprisals would be savage and merciless. That didn't deter the planners - but proved catastrophically true. It's estimated that up to a quarter of a million Chinese citizens, mostly civilians, were slaughtered by the Japanese as they searched for the fleeing flyers and punished China for giving them shelter. I've often wondered whether those quarter of a million dead would have told us - if they could - that they didn't object to dying for a propaganda stunt. I suspect they minded very much . . . but nobody asked them. They didn't count. They were "chinks". They were "collateral damage". They were merely added to the statistics when the shooting was over.
It's worth thinking about that when we read comments on social media about "wiping out" groups, even entire nations, with whom we disagree over something or other. We're not killing abstract statistics, pins in a map. We're killing human beings - and if it's morally OK for us to do that to others, it's equally morally OK for them to do it to us. Remember the Golden Rule? A version of it appears in every major religion in the world, and every major philosophy of life. "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you" - and don't complain if, after you (or your country) have done something particularly immoral and evil to them, they (or their surviving friends) turn around and do the same thing to you (or your country). Of course, the guilty should be punished: but what about those who are not personally guilty of anything except existing? Do they deserve the same fate?
That's worth pondering.
Peter
Nature, red of tooth and claw.
ReplyDeleteWar can be a form of mass punishment. Right and wrong have no bearing on the matter.
The only group I have personally identified for elimination is the muslims that not only chant 'Death to America', but actually act on that idea. It is written into their 'holy' doctrines to kill all that will not accept their god. I do not need to ponder that any further.
ReplyDeletePropaganda can be necessary. We were nearly defeated by Pearl Harbor and I'm not sure the morale of the workforce could have been sustained without some level of victory.
ReplyDeleteThe death of the Chinese was regrettable. More of a pity that it was Chiang's people that took the brunt of it; I'd be ok if it had been Mao's. We might have ended up with Mao fleeing to Formosa, and a somewhat Capitalist China on the mainland.
You're dabbling in Just War theory. There is the duty of self defence. If someone declares they are intent on murder and takes action to implement it, then their destruction is no sin.
ReplyDeleteProportionality of force and minimisation of harm are important. Very difficult in practice.
Remember that we humans are totally depraved, meaning all our faculties are corrupt, not that everyone is as evil as possible. There are some bowever that are indeed wholly invested and bent on evil.
It is important to remember all the players on this grand chessboard:
* God Almighty in Trinity;
* Lucifer and the third of the angels that followed him in rebellion;
* Archangel Michael and the two thirds ofthe angels that did not fall;
* Elect humanity chosen from before creation tobe the heirs of salvation;
* Non-elect humanity destined for damnation also from before creation.
Note that the means of damnation are the wilful rebellion of angels and men, and the mechansim of salvation is elective vicarious atonement by the Second Person of The Trinity as a genuine born Man in complete agreement, planning and actuation by the whole Godhead. Before the Great White Throne Judgment, God will be provenfully justified in all His working, and all events fully accounted for.
Only this systematic Theology and Eschatology satisfies the laws of logic and justice and the events of history and in each of our individual lives. The implications are enormous.
Yes, each human death is tragic, because we were made in the image of God....this only is what makes a human life valuable. The stakes are eternal.....our enemy, the devil named Lucifer and his followers human and angel, are implacable and ruthless. The question for each of us is.....who are you?
"...Japanese reprisals would be savage and merciless."
ReplyDeleteTo me, this seems to be the heart of the matter - torturing and then killing a quarter million (1000 to 1 ratio) for what could be at most maybe 200-300 aircrew ?
I get your point about the Doolittle Raid but it is worthy to consider that over 35 million Chinese died during the Japanese Occupation and the war, so would 250,000 lives been spared without the Raid or just killed for some other reason?
ReplyDeleteI have a real problem with your analysis of the Doolittle raid.
ReplyDelete1) "After the Doolittle Raid, Japan hastened to expand its defensive perimeter, and public tension from the attack eventually motivated Japan's attempt to seize the U.S. military base on the Midway Islands, west of Hawaii." A move that lead to the destruction of JNF air power.
2)"The consequences of the Doolittle Raid were most severely felt in China: in reprisal for the raid, the Japanese launched the Zhejiang-Jiangxi campaign, killing 250,000 civilians and 70,000 soldiers." The casualties occured because of a Japanese offensive to push push Chinese controlled area beyond bomber range to Japan.
3)Estimated deaths for Chinese in WWII were as high as 20 million of civilian and military. That means a little over 1% of Chinese deaths can be blamed on that mission. What about the other 98.75%?
4) My father served in China during WWII and always said people liked the Americans. They blamed the Japanese for their plight, not the US.
All quotes come from internet sources.
Watching the numbers roll by, sometimes I think "isn't this, like, all of them?". Other times, "what were they doing in the war at all?".
ReplyDeleteDon't Cheer, Robert W. Service:
ReplyDeleteDon't cheer, damn you! Don't cheer!
Silence! Your bitterest tear
Is fulsomely sweet to-day. . . .
Down on your knees and pray.
See, they sing as they go,
Marching row upon row.
Who will be spared to return,
Sombre and starkly stern?
Chaps whom we knew; s0 strange,
Distant and dark with change;
Silent as those they slew,
Something in them dead too.
Who will return this way,
To sing as they sing to-day.
Send to the glut of the guns
Bravest and best of you sons.
Hurl a million to slaughter,
Blood flowing like Thames water;
Pile up pyramid high
Your dead to the anguished sky;
A monument down all time
Of hate and horror and crime.
Weep, rage, pity, curse, fear -
Anything, but . . . don't cheer.
Sow to the ploughing guns
Seed of your splendid sons.
Let your heroic slain
Richly manure the plain.
What will the harvest be?
Unborn of Unborn will see. . . .
Dark is the sky and drear. . . .
For the pity of God don't cheer.
Dark and dread is their way.
Who sing as they march to-day. . . .
Humble your hearts and pray.
ReplyDeleteThe point I'm trying to make in my anonymous post at 0726 is that Japan is to blame, not Doolittle or the US, who merely fought back.
Japan CHOSE to wildly overreact.
I'm going to have call bullshit on you're claim that 'people' like islamo-fascist and demonrats are human. They have made it VERY obvious that they are soulless inhuman monsters put on this Earth by the devil to spread death, misery, and tyranny everywhere they go.
ReplyDeleteLotta bloodthirsty old Boomers who fear the Reaper and live lives of daily increasing pain and decrepitude (nothing wrong with that… it’s all an unavoidable part of life) who want to lash out and kill the odd million or three Over There so that they’ve got something to watch on Fox to distract them from approaching dissolution. Really it’s not very dignified.
ReplyDeleteAbout the only good thing in the comments was that nobody complained that the World’s Most Special People didn’t get their own very special unique most important pile of corpses in the video :P Perspective Matters.
So maybe two A-bombs were partial payback for those Chinese victims of the Imperial war machine, that developed Chem and bio weapons in China or Manchuria, using civilian slaves as test subjects? Or the games of "catch" played with Chinese babies ripped from their mother's womb, tossed from bayonet to bayonet, the Rape of Nanking, and ALL THE OTHER JAPANESE ATROCITIES THEY HAVE NOT AKNOWLEGED, TO THIS DAY, that had no relation to the Doolittle Raid; that were products of JAPANESE xenophobia? As far as I care, Hirohito should have stood trial next to Tojo....I understand why we didn't, it made the Occupation possible without more bloodshed. But the Emperor was as guilty as any member of the Military faction of the Imperial Jap Govt....
ReplyDeleteYou forgot stacked brackets. At the end of all our lives we front up before (((Him))) and give account. Do your diligence and research the matter for yourself.
ReplyDelete