Congratulations on your teaching gig, Damon, although I will miss seeing your posts in my inbox three days a week.
I might be able to abide conservative handwringing about Hunter Biden if most conservatives had shown equal concern over the far more serious grifting of Trump's three oldest kids, Jared Kushner, and (of course) Trump himself during Trump's reign of error. It's sheer projection on Trump's part to call Joe head of the Biden Crime Family as the evidence of serious crimes stacks up against him. Hunter is certainly an unsavory character, but the GOP's "investigations" into him are simply a distraction technique from the crimes of their likely nominee.
I agree with you about Hunter Biden. Unlike Trump, President Biden has not interfered with any attempts to hold his son accountable for any criminal consequences, and he has kept his distance from the DOJ for this reason. He loves his son, but his son does not occupy political office or any official position in the Biden administration.
The Republicans are obviously going after Hunter Biden to retaliate against Trump’s impeachments, and they don’t want people to recall Trump placed his incompetent daughter and son-in-law into office as presidential advisers, and that Jared was originally denied a security clearance but Trump overrode the decision. Jared also went back and amended his security disclosures several times after omitting relevant information.
Does this mean we will hear less from you on the Bulwark panels? That's what brought me to here and here is what brought me to a paying subscriber. I always learn at least one new thing with every missive. Here I am at 71 and never heard of Unit 731 which just confirms my belief that there is just TOO MUCH HISTORY to worry about sugar-coating it or even deciding which topics must be covered. Instilling an inquisitiveness and love of learning are much more important.
As for Hunter Biden and Comer's "I hope so" when asked if he is able to prove bribery, put the UFO (or is it UAP?) hearings along with massive wastes of time.
Congrats on the teaching gig (and for the glimpse of just how much serious preparation it takes to teach in an effective way––many folks outside of academia have little idea).
I haven't read or thought deeply about the debate around Hiroshima and Nagasaki. But the persuasive last point about the value of restraint is at the heart of why it seems to me like a boundary the US should not have crossed. It made an unthinkable act into a reality. It saved some number of lives of soldiers but broke what was effectively a taboo. Forms matter in war just as in all human activities, and after using that weapon against civilian cities meant that the domain of warfare included what it had never before included: the instant extinction of whole populations, achieved not with an army but with a kind of power heretofore non-human and possessed only by gods.
I don't think it made the US "evil," but I do think that step was taken only because most Americans think the US is historically and morally exceptional and finally not capable of evil––a view that has definitely led to moral atrocities.
I suppose you are aware of the scholars who claim that it was Stalin's intervention -- something FDR bargained for at Yalta and has been much criticized by the right ever since -- not the bombs, which finally forced the Japanese to give in. Under none of these scenarios would Truman have been expected to hold off using the bomb in hopes that the Japanese would just give up, and it is arguable that he might have faced impeachment if it was known that we were taking casualties on a daily basis because he refused to use a weapon we had spent so much time and treasure to produce. Unlike us, Truman didn't have sufficient reliable knowledge of Japan's rulers before he made his decision, and it is a fact that the conventional bombing by LeMay's crew was even more devastating, and hadn't caused them to fold. I don't think that abstaining from use of the bomb was ever in the cards, and if it your sons who were going to storm those beaches, you would not have thought too long or hard on the subject either.
As for the guy with the laptop, under no circumstances am I voting for him for elective office, and that's final.
Given my dad was flying combat missions in the South Pacific in 1945 and very well could have been killed in an invasion of Japan, count me as someone who may not have existed had we not dropped "the bombs". Another argument for dropping the bombs was the cruel impact of the fire bombing raids over Tokyo and other Japanese cities that had comparative casualty rates (but of course not radioactive fallout). We would have killed far more Japanese with our continued bombings in preparation for an invasion. Without the shock and awe of nuclear explosions, the Japanese would have fought to the death.
If there's any real beef to the Hunter Biden mess, I haven't seen it. And I try to pay attention. I will not waste time looking at trash on the level of Gateway Pundit, but I do some pretty broad based digging. Show me something that makes me think Hunter is worse than Donald or Jarvanka, okay? Seriously. This all seems like a deflection of Trump's problems to me. It looks like Hunter is being punished for the law as he broke.
Unlike Stone, Manafort, Bannon, etc. eh? What did that Saudi bone saw guy give Jarad 2 billion for? Billions, with a "B".
Rock 'em Professor Linker. Spot on analysis of criticism leveled at Nolan's Oppenheimer. Even Peggy Noonan attempted the same in last week's WSJ wishing that Nolan's film had dealt with the choice. I commented to Ms Noonan that that would be akin to asking Sophocles to rewrite Antigone and have Creon do some soul searching...We as a country are Antigone/Openheimer and yes Virginia it's a Tragedy with a capitol T and that rhymes with G and that stands for Ancient Greek Tragedy. cf. Aristotle's "Poetics"
Congratulations on your new job, Damon. We'll be all the more grateful for the columns you do find time to write.
The legal and moral way to win a war is to defeat the other side's armed forces. Firebombing 64 (mostly wooden) cities, with hundreds of thousands of civilian casualties, and then killing 150,000-200,000 civilians with an ultra-dangerous new weapon that even many of the scientists who built it believed should never be used, requires an extremely compelling justification. The most common one, the costliness of an invasion, relies on sharply contested estimates of likely deaths -- estimates often produced by the military, not a disinterested party. But why was an invasion necessary? Not to produce a surrender; only to produce an unconditional surrender -- "total compliance and deference ... an clean slate." The argument that a great power is entitled to change a foreign regime, however repugnant, at the cost of hundreds of thousands of civilian lives is one that should have been debated at the time. If it had been, we might have actually been spared several post-World-War II intervententions.
There are other reasons to question the use of the bomb. Why was there no demonstration beforehand to the Japanese? (The answer is that the US command feared it would fail, causing us to lose face.) Did the US drop the bomb partly to intimidate the USSR, as many have suggested? Most troubling of all, was using the bomb a foregone conclusion, whatever the military situation, merely because of bureaucratic inertia, as James Carroll in House of War and John Dower in Cultures of War have suggested? Having spent all that money, the military had to have something to show Congress for it. It's all too plausible; remember Madeleine Albright's immortal comment to Colin Powell: What’s the point of having this superb military that you’re always talking about if we can’t use it?’
Congrats on the Penn gig. I do believe, however, that the average Penn undergrad needs to hear more about the anti-liberalism of the Left (as embodied by, for example, Biden's reinterpreation of Title IX to ban single-sex sports in schools) than she does about "The Reactionary Mind: Anti-Liberalism and the Radical Right". But then I'm guessing Penn Poli Sci has zero desire to have such a course taught. It's a bubble with walls of solid steel.
You've managed to buy into the Official Mythology about the bomb.
The Japanese weren't fazed by the bombs, because three times as many people as the bombs killed had already died in the firebombing missions, including over 100,000 (more than Hiroshima) the night of March 9-10 1945 when Tokyo was bombed. This was followed up three days later by the firebombing of Kobe-Osaka, which killed another 90,000 (more than Nagasaki). Those raids didn't make the Japanese surrender. As with all US "strategic bombing" in World War II, Korea and Vietnam, they added up to a big political zippo. The only times US bombing ever paid off was the campaign against the synthetic oil industry, which VIII AF was dragged to kicking and screaming, which actually turned things around by the fall of 1944 with the Luftwaffe losing 70% of its oil supply and the Panzer running out of gas in the Battle of the Bulge; the other was Operation bingo, the most successful battlefield interdiction campaign, aka The Battle of the Brenner" when bombing cut German supplies to the 10th and 14th armies in Northern Italy by 80% between November 1944-April 1945, leading to the German surrender 10 days after the Allied spring offensive began in April 1945 - the Air Force hates to be reminded of that one, since it involved them helping the Army, which is against Official Air Farce Doctrine.
As to the A-bombs, the day Nagasaki was bombed there was no mention of it in the minutes of the Supreme War Council (which I have read). The sole topic of discussion that day was the intervention of the USSR in the war with the invasion of Manchuria, where there were no defenses since the best units of the Kwantung Army had been transferred to Kyushu to meet the US invasion. The Japanese figured the Russians would take Manchuria and Sakhalin by the end of August. The Soviet plan was to invade Hokkaido in mid-September. There were no defenses in northern Japan, or anywhere else other than Kyushu, and the Red Army would likely have taken Tokyo by mid-October and perhaps all of Honshu before the US invasion in November. The Japanese knew all about what the Soviets had done in Germany after V-E day, and given the century of bad blood between Russia and Japan, they expected the same or worse. The "peace faction" went to Hirohito with this, and that is why the Emperor intervened as he did. Afterwards they of course told us "It was them bombs that did it," making themselves the Big Victim of the Pacific War and letting them off for the Rape of Nanking, the Bataan Death March, Unit 719, the Thai-Burma Railroad, comfort women, the murder of 250,000 Chinese in retribution for the Doolittle Raid, cannibalism of Allied POWs in many instances, and the rest. And the US has based 78 years of foreign policy on the myth we will use a weapon that cannot be used.
People who believe Official American Mythology probably still believe in Santa Claus, the Tooth Fairy and the Easter Bunny.
I have by the way written several books on these issues. All well-reviewed.
Oh, and congratulations on the new position. You definitely have a solid background for that. Be successful!
Congratulations on your return to familiar territory. Like we say in Nigeria, may your "ink never run dry".
I find that it is easy indeed to sit in the comforts we enjoy at the moment, and to simply theorize and speculate about what might have been.
History shows and teaches again and again that, wars and uprisings of any kind upend and destabilize societal order, often with brutal, damaging and long-lasting consequences broadly. Well meaning patriots should instead do well to focus advocacy - especially to younger, impressionable generations - to appreciate and imbibe the time-honoured virtues of non-violent resolution of disputes and disagreements across the spectrum of humanity's shared existence.
I look forward to being a student in your class at Penn, one day soon!
Congratulations on your teaching gig, Damon, although I will miss seeing your posts in my inbox three days a week.
I might be able to abide conservative handwringing about Hunter Biden if most conservatives had shown equal concern over the far more serious grifting of Trump's three oldest kids, Jared Kushner, and (of course) Trump himself during Trump's reign of error. It's sheer projection on Trump's part to call Joe head of the Biden Crime Family as the evidence of serious crimes stacks up against him. Hunter is certainly an unsavory character, but the GOP's "investigations" into him are simply a distraction technique from the crimes of their likely nominee.
I agree with you about Hunter Biden. Unlike Trump, President Biden has not interfered with any attempts to hold his son accountable for any criminal consequences, and he has kept his distance from the DOJ for this reason. He loves his son, but his son does not occupy political office or any official position in the Biden administration.
The Republicans are obviously going after Hunter Biden to retaliate against Trump’s impeachments, and they don’t want people to recall Trump placed his incompetent daughter and son-in-law into office as presidential advisers, and that Jared was originally denied a security clearance but Trump overrode the decision. Jared also went back and amended his security disclosures several times after omitting relevant information.
Congratulations on your new position!
Does this mean we will hear less from you on the Bulwark panels? That's what brought me to here and here is what brought me to a paying subscriber. I always learn at least one new thing with every missive. Here I am at 71 and never heard of Unit 731 which just confirms my belief that there is just TOO MUCH HISTORY to worry about sugar-coating it or even deciding which topics must be covered. Instilling an inquisitiveness and love of learning are much more important.
As for Hunter Biden and Comer's "I hope so" when asked if he is able to prove bribery, put the UFO (or is it UAP?) hearings along with massive wastes of time.
Congrats on the teaching gig (and for the glimpse of just how much serious preparation it takes to teach in an effective way––many folks outside of academia have little idea).
I haven't read or thought deeply about the debate around Hiroshima and Nagasaki. But the persuasive last point about the value of restraint is at the heart of why it seems to me like a boundary the US should not have crossed. It made an unthinkable act into a reality. It saved some number of lives of soldiers but broke what was effectively a taboo. Forms matter in war just as in all human activities, and after using that weapon against civilian cities meant that the domain of warfare included what it had never before included: the instant extinction of whole populations, achieved not with an army but with a kind of power heretofore non-human and possessed only by gods.
I don't think it made the US "evil," but I do think that step was taken only because most Americans think the US is historically and morally exceptional and finally not capable of evil––a view that has definitely led to moral atrocities.
I suppose you are aware of the scholars who claim that it was Stalin's intervention -- something FDR bargained for at Yalta and has been much criticized by the right ever since -- not the bombs, which finally forced the Japanese to give in. Under none of these scenarios would Truman have been expected to hold off using the bomb in hopes that the Japanese would just give up, and it is arguable that he might have faced impeachment if it was known that we were taking casualties on a daily basis because he refused to use a weapon we had spent so much time and treasure to produce. Unlike us, Truman didn't have sufficient reliable knowledge of Japan's rulers before he made his decision, and it is a fact that the conventional bombing by LeMay's crew was even more devastating, and hadn't caused them to fold. I don't think that abstaining from use of the bomb was ever in the cards, and if it your sons who were going to storm those beaches, you would not have thought too long or hard on the subject either.
As for the guy with the laptop, under no circumstances am I voting for him for elective office, and that's final.
Given my dad was flying combat missions in the South Pacific in 1945 and very well could have been killed in an invasion of Japan, count me as someone who may not have existed had we not dropped "the bombs". Another argument for dropping the bombs was the cruel impact of the fire bombing raids over Tokyo and other Japanese cities that had comparative casualty rates (but of course not radioactive fallout). We would have killed far more Japanese with our continued bombings in preparation for an invasion. Without the shock and awe of nuclear explosions, the Japanese would have fought to the death.
If there's any real beef to the Hunter Biden mess, I haven't seen it. And I try to pay attention. I will not waste time looking at trash on the level of Gateway Pundit, but I do some pretty broad based digging. Show me something that makes me think Hunter is worse than Donald or Jarvanka, okay? Seriously. This all seems like a deflection of Trump's problems to me. It looks like Hunter is being punished for the law as he broke.
Unlike Stone, Manafort, Bannon, etc. eh? What did that Saudi bone saw guy give Jarad 2 billion for? Billions, with a "B".
Rock 'em Professor Linker. Spot on analysis of criticism leveled at Nolan's Oppenheimer. Even Peggy Noonan attempted the same in last week's WSJ wishing that Nolan's film had dealt with the choice. I commented to Ms Noonan that that would be akin to asking Sophocles to rewrite Antigone and have Creon do some soul searching...We as a country are Antigone/Openheimer and yes Virginia it's a Tragedy with a capitol T and that rhymes with G and that stands for Ancient Greek Tragedy. cf. Aristotle's "Poetics"
Congratulations on your new job, Damon. We'll be all the more grateful for the columns you do find time to write.
The legal and moral way to win a war is to defeat the other side's armed forces. Firebombing 64 (mostly wooden) cities, with hundreds of thousands of civilian casualties, and then killing 150,000-200,000 civilians with an ultra-dangerous new weapon that even many of the scientists who built it believed should never be used, requires an extremely compelling justification. The most common one, the costliness of an invasion, relies on sharply contested estimates of likely deaths -- estimates often produced by the military, not a disinterested party. But why was an invasion necessary? Not to produce a surrender; only to produce an unconditional surrender -- "total compliance and deference ... an clean slate." The argument that a great power is entitled to change a foreign regime, however repugnant, at the cost of hundreds of thousands of civilian lives is one that should have been debated at the time. If it had been, we might have actually been spared several post-World-War II intervententions.
There are other reasons to question the use of the bomb. Why was there no demonstration beforehand to the Japanese? (The answer is that the US command feared it would fail, causing us to lose face.) Did the US drop the bomb partly to intimidate the USSR, as many have suggested? Most troubling of all, was using the bomb a foregone conclusion, whatever the military situation, merely because of bureaucratic inertia, as James Carroll in House of War and John Dower in Cultures of War have suggested? Having spent all that money, the military had to have something to show Congress for it. It's all too plausible; remember Madeleine Albright's immortal comment to Colin Powell: What’s the point of having this superb military that you’re always talking about if we can’t use it?’
Congrats on the Penn gig. I do believe, however, that the average Penn undergrad needs to hear more about the anti-liberalism of the Left (as embodied by, for example, Biden's reinterpreation of Title IX to ban single-sex sports in schools) than she does about "The Reactionary Mind: Anti-Liberalism and the Radical Right". But then I'm guessing Penn Poli Sci has zero desire to have such a course taught. It's a bubble with walls of solid steel.
You've managed to buy into the Official Mythology about the bomb.
The Japanese weren't fazed by the bombs, because three times as many people as the bombs killed had already died in the firebombing missions, including over 100,000 (more than Hiroshima) the night of March 9-10 1945 when Tokyo was bombed. This was followed up three days later by the firebombing of Kobe-Osaka, which killed another 90,000 (more than Nagasaki). Those raids didn't make the Japanese surrender. As with all US "strategic bombing" in World War II, Korea and Vietnam, they added up to a big political zippo. The only times US bombing ever paid off was the campaign against the synthetic oil industry, which VIII AF was dragged to kicking and screaming, which actually turned things around by the fall of 1944 with the Luftwaffe losing 70% of its oil supply and the Panzer running out of gas in the Battle of the Bulge; the other was Operation bingo, the most successful battlefield interdiction campaign, aka The Battle of the Brenner" when bombing cut German supplies to the 10th and 14th armies in Northern Italy by 80% between November 1944-April 1945, leading to the German surrender 10 days after the Allied spring offensive began in April 1945 - the Air Force hates to be reminded of that one, since it involved them helping the Army, which is against Official Air Farce Doctrine.
As to the A-bombs, the day Nagasaki was bombed there was no mention of it in the minutes of the Supreme War Council (which I have read). The sole topic of discussion that day was the intervention of the USSR in the war with the invasion of Manchuria, where there were no defenses since the best units of the Kwantung Army had been transferred to Kyushu to meet the US invasion. The Japanese figured the Russians would take Manchuria and Sakhalin by the end of August. The Soviet plan was to invade Hokkaido in mid-September. There were no defenses in northern Japan, or anywhere else other than Kyushu, and the Red Army would likely have taken Tokyo by mid-October and perhaps all of Honshu before the US invasion in November. The Japanese knew all about what the Soviets had done in Germany after V-E day, and given the century of bad blood between Russia and Japan, they expected the same or worse. The "peace faction" went to Hirohito with this, and that is why the Emperor intervened as he did. Afterwards they of course told us "It was them bombs that did it," making themselves the Big Victim of the Pacific War and letting them off for the Rape of Nanking, the Bataan Death March, Unit 719, the Thai-Burma Railroad, comfort women, the murder of 250,000 Chinese in retribution for the Doolittle Raid, cannibalism of Allied POWs in many instances, and the rest. And the US has based 78 years of foreign policy on the myth we will use a weapon that cannot be used.
People who believe Official American Mythology probably still believe in Santa Claus, the Tooth Fairy and the Easter Bunny.
I have by the way written several books on these issues. All well-reviewed.
Oh, and congratulations on the new position. You definitely have a solid background for that. Be successful!
Hello Damon.
Congratulations on your return to familiar territory. Like we say in Nigeria, may your "ink never run dry".
I find that it is easy indeed to sit in the comforts we enjoy at the moment, and to simply theorize and speculate about what might have been.
History shows and teaches again and again that, wars and uprisings of any kind upend and destabilize societal order, often with brutal, damaging and long-lasting consequences broadly. Well meaning patriots should instead do well to focus advocacy - especially to younger, impressionable generations - to appreciate and imbibe the time-honoured virtues of non-violent resolution of disputes and disagreements across the spectrum of humanity's shared existence.
I look forward to being a student in your class at Penn, one day soon!