Just to Prove a Point

General Curtis LeMay was a controversial general who served during WWII and was important in the Cold War period as well. His life is an interesting read. I was too young to vote for him in 1968 when he was the American Independent Party vice-presidential running mate of George Wallace. But I did vote for that party in 1972 in my first election—voting for either Nixon or McGovern filled me with horror. (LeMay was not a candidate for that election.)

But LeMay should have filled me with horror. 

LeMay commanded subsequent B-29 Superfortress combat operations against Japan, including massive incendiary attacks on 64 Japanese cities. This included the fire-bombing of Tokyo on March 9–10, 1945, the most destructive bombing raid of the war. For this first attack, LeMay ordered the defensive guns removed from 325 B-29s, loaded each plane with Model E-46 incendiary clusters, magnesium bombs, white phosphorus bombs, and napalm, and ordered the bombers to fly in streams at 5,000 to 9,000 feet over Tokyo.

The first pathfinder airplanes arrived over Tokyo just after midnight on March 10. Following British bombing practice, they marked the target area with a flaming “X.” In a three-hour period, the main bombing force dropped 1,665 tons of incendiary bombs, killing some 100,000 civilians, destroying 250,000 buildings and incinerating 16 square miles (41 km2) of the city. Aircrews at the tail end of the bomber stream reported that the stench of burned human flesh permeated the aircraft over the target.

Lemay was well known for his rather colorful statements over the years. Here are some of them from Brainy Quote: 

Killing Japanese didn’t bother me very much at that time... I suppose if I had lost the war, I would have been tried as a war criminal.

We should bomb Vietnam back into the stone age. 

Every soldier thinks something of the moral aspects of what he is doing. But all war is immoral and if you let that bother you, you’re not a good soldier.

Not exactly what you would call a man of peace. 

So you would expect that he was in favor of the bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki to save millions of American lives. 

The war would have been over in two weeks. . . . The atomic bomb had nothing to do with the end of the war at all.

As for what the bomb was for, you will have to continue reading. 

General Douglas MacArthur was the head of the Pacific front. What was his position? 

MacArthur’s views about the decision to drop the atomic bomb on Hiroshima and Nagasaki were starkly different from what the general public supposed …. When I asked General MacArthur about the decision to drop the bomb, I was surprised to learn he had not even been consulted. What, I asked, would his advice have been? He replied that he saw no military justification for the dropping of the bomb. The war might have ended weeks earlier, he said, if the United States had agreed, as it later did anyway, to the retention of the institution of the emperor.  Norman Cousins Pathology of Power pg 56, 70-71.

(Note that all these quotes are from the Washington Blog’s much longer article on this subject. I highly recommend it. The number of generals, scientists (including Einstein) and members of the government that opposed the use of nuclear weapons was large.) 

My guess is that MacArthur was well known enough that what he thought would have been already known to the “powers that be.”  

The military head of the war in Europe was future president Dwight Eisenhower. He stated this is his memoirs, page 380. 

In [July] 1945… Secretary of War Stimson, visiting my headquarters in Germany, informed me that our government was preparing to drop an atomic bomb on Japan. I was one of those who felt that there were a number of cogent reasons to question the wisdom of such an act. …the Secretary, upon giving me the news of the successful bomb test in New Mexico, and of the plan for using it, asked for my reaction, apparently expecting a vigorous assent.

During his recitation of the relevant facts, 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 secondly 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’. The Secretary was deeply perturbed by my attitude….

Why then was the bomb dropped on two cities that had never been bombed because they lacked military targets of any importance? History.com tells us. 

In the years since the two atomic bombs were dropped on Japan, a number of historians have suggested that the weapons had a two-pronged objective …. It has been suggested that the second objective was to demonstrate the new weapon of mass destruction to the Soviet Union. By August 1945, relations between the Soviet Union and the United States had deteriorated badly. The Potsdam Conference between U.S. President Harry S. Truman, Russian leader Joseph Stalin, and Winston Churchill (before being replaced by Clement Attlee) ended just four days before the bombing of Hiroshima. The meeting was marked by recriminations and suspicion between the Americans and Soviets. Russian armies were occupying most of Eastern Europe. Truman and many of his advisers hoped that the U.S. atomic monopoly might offer diplomatic leverage with the Soviets. In this fashion, the dropping of the atomic bomb on Japan can be seen as the first shot of the Cold War.

If you wonder why I think that America is headed down the wrong path, and has for generations, think on these bombs. 

Over 200,000 were killed, just to prove a point. 

In order to keep my reputation for whimsy here is a short scene from the first direct-to-video music/comedy show, Michael Nesmith’s (yes, he of Monkees fame) Elephant Parts. I actually have this DVD. I used to think the meme, “just to prove a point,” was funny. I am not laughing now. 

Lord, It's Hard To Be Humble

Slavery and God’s Judgment

Steven Martens asked a question in a comment on my most-read blog post this month, Band of Angels (Behold He Comes). It was an interesting enough question that I decided to make another blog entry about slavery. After giving a reference that 4% of the total slaves crossing the ocean were going to America, Steven asked:

My question is: Why would a judgment of God come upon North America and seem to not land upon the countries which ended up owning the 96%?

I have several comments on this. The first is that I doubt the guestimate Steven provides. Just a modest increase in the estimate of slaves transported to America or a modest decrease in the estimate of the total number of slaves shipped would dramatically increase the percentage. Or an increase in the total slaves shipped would decrease the percentage. One would also need to factor in that the slave trade stopped in America relatively early.

But I risk quibbling on this if I am not careful. The 4% estimate of the percentage of slaves that ended up in North America may in fact be too high. The entire slave trade was huge. The death rate for slaves in the Caribbean was quite high and this required constant replacement slaves. Wikipedia estimates it at 1/3 dying in the first year after arrival.

One recurring theme we have all seen in old movies and books from the time was the fear that the slaves had of  being “sold south.” 

Between 1820 and 1860 more than 60 percent of the Upper South’s enslaved population was “sold South.” Covering 25 to 30 miles a day on foot, men, women, and children marched south in large groups called coffles. Former bondsman Charles Ball remembered that slave traders bound the women together with rope. They fastened the men first with chains around their necks and then handcuffed them in pairs.

I am not too confident with this figure of 60% being sold south either, but it was a big fear for the slaves. By selling south I am not meaning that the slaves were exported to the death trap that was the Caribbean. I am meaning that slaves from Virginia were sold south to Georgia. Anyone who has ever been in Georgia knows how horrible that would be! (Note to reader, the beloved editor of the prophecypodcast.com, Pam Dewey, lives in Georgia.) The reality was that this was a much harder life as it involved the establishment of new plantations in new areas. 

Why then was America specially chosen to be punished? It may not have been. The natural consequences of multi-generational slavery had their own reward. Breaking up families to sell them south is a another good example why the American version of slavery was so evil, but not quite as good as the original example of the evils of sex slavery I had in the original post on slavery. “What we sow is what we reap.” Or as Proverbs 6:27-28 tells us. 

Can you build a fire in your lap
    and not burn your pants?
Can you walk barefoot on hot coals
    and not get blisters?

You cannot be involved in multi-generational slavery and not get burned. It is certainly possible that the hand of God in Judgment was laid on the South. This can be true even if others are worse. Here is an example from Isaiah 10:

^1-4 Doom to you who legislate evil,
    who make laws that make victims—

Laws that make misery for the poor,
    that rob my destitute people of dignity,
Exploiting defenseless widows,
    taking advantage of homeless children.
What will you have to say on Judgment Day,
    when Doomsday arrives out of the blue?
Who will you get to help you?
    What good will your money do you?
A sorry sight you’ll be then, huddled with the prisoners,
    or just some corpses stacked in the street.
Even after all this, God is still angry,
    his fist still raised, ready to hit them again.

Assyria was worse than Judah, yet Assyria was used to punish Judah. The next verses tell us that Assyria was "the rod of God's anger." Assyria too will receive judgment at the appropriate time. The North may have been no better than the South or Caribbean slavery worse than American Slavery, it really does not matter because what “goes around comes around.” 

Yes others were worse, but is this a valid point? 2 Corinthians 10:12 tell us:

Of course we shouldn’t dare include ourselves in the same class as those who write their own testimonials, or even to compare ourselves with them! All they are doing, of course, is to measure themselves by their own standards or by comparisons within their own circle, and that doesn’t make for accurate estimation, you may be sure. (Philips) 

Yes, our excuse that the other guy was worse will not be well received on the Day of Judgment. 

If you are a part of the system then you will receive the punishment due to that system, even if your share of the evil is smaller than others. Since it is impossible to entirely remove oneself from the system that I have been calling Babylon, this is not a happy thought. God does not have to do anything. The natural consequences of our own actions are punishment enough. Looking back on my own life, I see that this is so—no divine intervention needed. 

So was the calamity that was the Civil War from God as punishment? I do not know. But I do know that no one can do evil and not have it come back to haunt them. Thanks Steven for reading my blog and posting such an interesting question.  

American Comfort Women

I mentioned the Japanese practice of forced prostitution during World War II in a previous blog entry. Of course the good church-going Americans immediately stopped this practice in occupied Japan after the war. Didn’t they…?

After its surrender, with tacit approval by US occupation authorities, Japan set up a similar “comfort women” system for the Americans.

Newly translated documents show US authorities permitted the official brothel system to operate despite internal reports that women were being coerced into prostitution.

The Americans by then had full knowledge of Japan’s atrocious treatment of women across Asia.

Tens of thousands were employed to provide sex to US troops until March 1946, when Gen Douglas MacArthur ended it.

Of course, most American GIs, being from church-going America were not involved.  

By that time, Tanaka says, more than a quarter of all American GIs in the occupation forces had a sexually transmitted disease.

Those are the ones that got infected. Many more took precautions. These men have been called America’s greatest generation. I think I will withhold that appellation. Obviously every single soldier was not involved in this, but my guess would be most were. 

While MacArthur stopped the practice officially, it obviously continued. 

One reason the extensive American military bases in the Philippines were lost was the effect these bases had on Pilipino women. 

In Olongapo and Angeles in the Philippines, where the U.S. Subic Naval Base and Clark Air Force Base were respectively located (until the withdrawal of U.S. forces in 1992), “[t]here was virtually no industry except the ‘entertainment’ business, with approximately 55,000 registered and unregistered prostitutes and a total of registered 2,182 R&R establishments. By 1985 the U.S. military had become the second largest employer in the Philippines, hiring over 40,000 Filipinos. . . . The sum of their salaries amounted to almost $83 million a year.”

The Americans left behind more than just the buildings they no longer wanted. They left behind other unwanted “things.” 

The withdrawal of U.S. naval bases from the Philippines in 1992 also left behind a legacy of approximately 50,000 Amerasian children in the Philippines, with an estimated 10,000 of them living in Olongapo, which had housed the U.S. Subic Naval Base. The law firm of Cotchett, Illston, and Pitre of Burlingame, California, filed a class action suit against the U.S. government on behalf of Amerasian children left behind in the Philippines in March 1993. The plaintiffs would “ask the federal court to order the Navy to provide funds for the education and medical care of these children until they reach 18 years of age.” The prostitute-mothers of these children and several leading Philippine civic organizations, such as GABRIELA, as well as the Council of Churches, mobilized such legal action.

In this same webpage there was this comment:

i want to find my dad.. can somebody please help me.. my mom wont tell me his name..hes former navy personnel. My mom met him in the philippines while he stationed in olongapo im in america now and ive been searching for him all my life

I was filled with melancholy as I read this comment.

This same book excerpt talks about what became of many of these children. Many Asian countries are prime vacation sites for pedophiles. These children, due to their Caucasian features, are in high demand. 

The American Empire, debauching young women for over 100 years! In fact things are so bad in American Culture that the previous sentence I wrote, if converted to a poster, would probably increase enlistments. 

Let me conclude with a story I heard about an acquaintance who felt the urge to serve his country and joined the Peace Corps. Yes, he felt the urge all right. He told a mutual acquaintance that he had two African women who lived with him while he was there to “help.” I was told by another acquaintance that the practice in one village was to assign one woman to the volunteer in order to keep him from debauching the whole village. The concept of the Peace Corp was a beautiful thing. In practice I wonder how much it has contributed to hatred of America. 

Argo

I thought the movie Argo was worth watching even though it was clearly a propaganda piece to prepare us for the war on Iran. Here is how Wikipedia summarizes the film:

On November 4, 1979, during the Iranian Revolution, a group of young Iranian revolutionaries took over the U.S. embassy in Tehran in retaliation for the country's support of the recently deposed Shah. Although most of the embassy staff are taken as hostages, six evade capture and hide in the home of Canadian ambassador Ken Taylor (Victor Garber). With the escapees' situation kept secret, the State Department begins to explore options for "exfiltrating" them from Iran. CIA specialist Tony Mendez (Ben Affleck), brought in for consultation, points out the fundamental weaknesses in all of the proposals for how to do so, but is at a loss to suggest an alternative until he gets an idea while watching Battle for the Planet of the Apes on TV with his son: create a cover story that the escapees are Canadian filmmakers, scouting "exotic" locations in Iran for a similar film.

Ben Affleck tried very hard to keep the propaganda part of the film under wraps. He begins the film by giving a history of the US’s rather gross interference in Iranian affairs. (He can’t even get that right as he confuses the difference between the parliamentary system of Iran with an elected presidential system.) He must have thought that repeating this history with the obvious corruption and brutality of the US surrogate, the Shah of Iran, would dampen the propaganda nature of the film. He failed in this because ultimately the attitude of the film can be summarized by my paraphrase of one CIA agent in Washington. “The Shah may be a bastard, but he is our bastard.” The dark swarthy Iranians as a stereotype could not be overcome. Even the character of the good Iranian maid could not overcome this stereotype, as the “students” were quite menacing. 

Did Affleck plan a propaganda film? I doubt it. But that is what he made. How can I be certain? The response to the film by the audience tells me it had a great propaganda effect. The applause was rather loud. Another interesting point was the age of the audience. At 58 I was one of the younger members of the audience. While I did not applaud, I did join with the audience in not immediately getting up when the credits rolled. It was a movie that made you think. 

I recommend you see the film. It might even be worth the theatre ticket price—just do not eat the popcorn.