the news we don't hear
Aug. 12th, 2006 02:34 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
miriam_eHere is what is happening in Beirut.
http://www.wagingpeace.org/articles/2006/07/23_Frisk_empire-leaves.htm
It makes me weep.
Who is at fault? We are. We push it under the carpet. We don't look. We let it happen. We think it can't happen here. But it is happening here... slowly, creeping... as we allow our politicians to become more hardened and less responsible, more insanely religious. We have to speak to each other and stop it. Only we can. There is nobody else. If we won't, then we are all doomed.
Lies upon lies are laid down as a dark matting, suffocating, and at times feeling almost impenetrable. It seems hopeless. But that is part of the real enemy. It isn't hopeless. Darkness is shed easily by shining a light. We need to know. We need to undercut the calculated lies and pass on the untold news. We can't let this continue, or it will happen again and again and again. And when it happens here, to us and our children we will only have ourselves to blame.
http://www.wagingpeace.org/articles/2006/07/23_Frisk_empire-leaves.htm
It makes me weep.
Who is at fault? We are. We push it under the carpet. We don't look. We let it happen. We think it can't happen here. But it is happening here... slowly, creeping... as we allow our politicians to become more hardened and less responsible, more insanely religious. We have to speak to each other and stop it. Only we can. There is nobody else. If we won't, then we are all doomed.
Lies upon lies are laid down as a dark matting, suffocating, and at times feeling almost impenetrable. It seems hopeless. But that is part of the real enemy. It isn't hopeless. Darkness is shed easily by shining a light. We need to know. We need to undercut the calculated lies and pass on the untold news. We can't let this continue, or it will happen again and again and again. And when it happens here, to us and our children we will only have ourselves to blame.
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Re: the news we don't hear
Date: 2006-08-16 06:29 am (UTC)Sherman had it right: war is hell.
Yes, I agree some of America's finest young people turned out to be evil. Unfortunately, we don't have a command structure that penalizes anybody but the lowest ranks. What was the highest ranking soldier who's been court-martialed in Iraq? Sergeant? That's shameful and disgusting, and there's no excuse for it.
There is an excuse for Hiroshima and Nagasaki. It isn't the sort of excuse we'd accept today, but given the technology of the times, I think the issue of whether it was better to drop those bombs is definitely open for discussion.
And there isn't any excuse for Nanjing or Bataan. Not then, not when our soldiers do it today.
But wagingpeace.org has quite a bit bad to say about Hiroshima and Nagasaki and nothing whatever to say about Nanjing and Bataan. That's not only unfair, it's twisted and rather disgusting logic.
Besides that, it discounts the possibility of moral action. Start off with the notion that everytning America does is wrong, and you lose the leverage to affect the really despicable acts the Bush administration has permitted (and in some cases ordered) our troops to do. Wagingpeace.org, in its assumption that America is evil denies the possibility of saying one administration is worse than another, and it reduces the chances that the situation will be corrected.
There is a moral difference between necessary action and gratuitous action. It's not a great difference, and in a better world the difference would be smaller still. But there's a difference nonetheless, and ignoring gratuitous evil and harping on necessary evil (and minimizing the necessity) are unhelpful and ultimately useless.
Re: the news we don't hear
Date: 2006-08-17 01:49 am (UTC)I don't think there can really be any excuse made for the bomb on Hiroshima. That is my opinion. There is a chance I could be wrong, but I doubt it. What is surely beyond debate is whether a second nuclear bomb on civilians could ever be justified. One was an enriched uranium bomb, the other was plutonium. It is clear that the second (and in my opinion, also the first) was a ghastly experiment to see the effect of the bombs on live people. It obviously wasn't a signal to submit. One bomb would have done that -- in fact a bomb on an unpopulated, or underpopulated area would have made that point. But the clear desire was to maximise death. If I remember correctly those two cities had previously been spared from conventional bombing raids, specifically for this purpose.
I don't for one minute think that people in USA are intrinsically more evil or more arrogant than anybody else in the world, but put most people in a position of power and they become evil and arrogant. The Japanese thought they were invincible, so did the Germans, so do the christians, so do the moslems.
I consider myself passionately peaceful. Do I think I could become evil, given the circumstances? Possibly. I remember the experiments where ordinary people thought they were torturing people with electric shocks. Some were even willing to administer "lethal" doses under orders. Very few refused. I remember the artificial prison experiment where students were arbitrarily divided into "guards" and "prisoners". It took such an unbelievably short time for ordinary, well educated middle class people to become sadistic monsters that the experiment had to be terminated early. Would I maintain my high moral principles in such circumstances? I like to think so. I hope I never get to find out.
I think the best antidote to that ghoul that dwells in us all is knowledge. WagingPeace goes some way towards that. You're right, Bob, that it needs more data so that readers realise that it is war and power that are the enemy, not specifically the USA or moslems or christians. But WagingPeace can only publish stuff that they have. Maybe you would consider writing something about Nanjing or Bataan to help show how dangerous and extensive the problem is. Remember though, that their major purpose appears to be to discourage nuclear war. Coming at it from that angle might maximise it being published there... perhaps pointing out why people use whatever ghastly weapons are at their disposal if they think they can get away with it... if they feel powerful and "right" then they feel they can justify anything... even nuclear weapons.
Re: the news we don't hear
Date: 2006-08-21 12:02 pm (UTC)I think there can. When one is faced with a choice between tens of thousands of deaths and millions of deaths, one makes the choice that's before them. It is not a pleasant choice, but it's a choice that people of conscience have to step up to.
Should the allies have simply abandoned their insistence on unconditional surrender? Before we can ask that, recall that Russia had just joined the allies in declaring war on Japan, and would have greatly benefitted by ensnaring the Western allies in a long and bloody invasion and occupation of Japan, and might have sown seeds of discord among the other allies and picked up some territory to boot, so the more realistic question is, could the allies have abandoned their insistence on unconditional surrender?
But even if it could have been offered, recall that after their surrender, both Germany and Japan became forces for peace in the world. Can you say that a temporarily defanged Japan would have followed the same course? Can you even say that placing Japan in a situation that was very similar to the situation that faced Germany at the end of the first World War would have had a different effect on Japan in the 1950s and 1960s than it had on Germany in the 1920s and 1930s?
I believe we'll disagree on that, but I certainly wish you peace of heart, and perhaps you're right.