Terrorism, Liberal and Conservative
In a recent commentary, I called alleged 19th-century slave insurrectionist Denmark Vesey a “terrorist,” defining that term as the intentional targeting of civilians to advance an objective or agenda. Vesey, who planned to murder every white person in Charleston, South Carolina in 1822, certainly fit this description, and so did President Harry Truman’s dropping of atomic bombs on Japan in 1945, a comparison I readily made. Liberals cursed my portrayal of Vesey, while thanking me for bringing up Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Conservatives cursed my portrayal of Truman, yet thanked me for my recent portrayal of Vesey.
Though they are generally thought of as “bleeding hearts,” I’m never surprised when liberals endorse terrorism. Viewing humanity through the lens of class, race, gender, and other collectivist identities, it’s an easy philosophical leap for liberals to justify mass killing in the name of social justice or “progress.”
In the early to mid-20th century, many American and European liberals were so sympathetic to socialism that they turned a blind eye to communist atrocities against Russia’s civilian population. Writes conservative columnist Joseph Sobran, “The vast and cruel tyranny was claiming millions of lives… Civilization itself was being murdered in Russia, with the vociferous approval of free men in the still-civilized countries to the West.”
Modern, white guilt-driven liberals who would never think of sacrificing their own small children for any progressive cause—including abolishing slavery—still champion Vesey’s plans to slaughter every pale-faced child in Charleston. When defending Vesey, liberals aren’t imagining murdered kids, only black liberation–some even making the class- and race-based case that slave masters’ entire families were equally as guilty as the slave masters. Similarly, when it came to Lenin and Stalin’s Russia, mid 20th-century liberals weren’t imagining famine and genocide, only “workers of the world” uniting. In the name of saving “humanity,” the Left is always prepared to sacrifice plenty of actual humans.
And unfortunately, so are many of today’s conservatives. The most common defense of Truman committing what conservative columnist Pat Buchanan calls “terrorism on a colossal scale,” is that it was done to “save American lives.” But was it?
Wrote Admiral William Leahy, chief of staff to both Franklin Roosevelt and Truman, “It is my opinion that the use of this barbarous weapon at Hiroshima and Nagasaki was of no material assistance in our war against Japan. The Japanese were already defeated and ready to surrender…” Douglas MacArthur’s consultant Norman Cousins wrote, “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.” Dwight Eisenhower told Newsweek in 1963, “the Japanese were ready to surrender and it wasn’t necessary to hit them with that awful thing.” Predicted Leahy, “The lethal possibilities of atomic warfare in the future are frightening. My own feeling was that in being the first to use it, we had adopted an ethical standard common to the barbarians of the Dark Ages. I was not taught to make war in that fashion, and wars cannot be won by destroying women and children.”
Barbarians? Dark ages? Destroying women and children as a method of waging war? These descriptions could easily apply to Al-Qaeda. Unfortunately, Leahy is describing the United States government.
Even if Leahy, MacArthur, and Eisenhower were wrong about the use of atomic weapons, describing Truman’s actions as “terrorist” seems to upset conservatives most, because they’ve long subscribed to the popular narrative that it was just conventional warfare. According to mainstream conservative thinking, “state-sponsored terrorism” seems to be only when Arab nations fund terrorist individuals and could never apply to plain, old war. By this logic, neither Hitler nor Stalin were guilty of “terrorizing” civilian populations because their actions were government edicts.
Ironically, this is the right-wing argument against gun control turned on its head–where liberals insist that deadly force is the prerogative of government and conservatives insist the 2nd amendment reserves this right to individual citizens. Using Truman’s actions as an example, conservatives seem to say that terrorism carried out by individuals is always unwarranted, but terrorism carried out by government is warranted—and in fact, isn’t even “terrorism” at all. Is there any other sphere in which conservatives, quite literally, allow their government to get away with such murder?
Reveling in the excesses of government in the form of militarism hasn’t always been stock conservative thinking, and as late as 1959, William F. Buckley’s National Review could editorialize, “The indefensiblility of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima is becoming a part of the national conservative creed.”
Regardless, for Left or Right, if the definition of terrorism is not the intentional targeting of civilians to advance an objective or agenda—whether committed by Vesey or Truman or anyone else–then what is it? I’ve yet to hear a better definition, and don’t see how that particular evil ceases to become such depending on who’s doing it.
While the use of atomic bombs against Hiroshima and Nagasaki was terrorism, it is notable that the objections that Eisenhower, Leahy, and MacArthur raised concerned military necessity, not a rejection of terrorism as such. Presumably, none of them objected too strongly to the prior use of conventional bombs against civilian targets in Japan and Germany. While these were initially targeted on war industries, the other avowed purpose of such attacks was to break the will of the people to fight. While it may have been militarily necessary to bomb Tokyo with incendiaries, it was every bit as much terrorist as the use of atomic bombs. What becomes apparent here is that the Hiroshima bombing was not qualitatively different from previous bombing raids, but rather marked the point at which many people realized something had gone horribly wrong with the way in which the US was conducting the war.
Don’t forget Dresden.
” “Dwight Eisenhower told Newsweek in 1963, “the Japanese were ready to surrender and it wasn’t necessary to hit them with that awful thing.” ”
That’s easy to say in 1963 with Japan safely on its way to prosperity, not to mention generations of Americans who are alive because a land invasion never occurred. Given the tenacity of WW2 Japan, I just don’t see how anyone can claim with certainty that they were going to surrender.
Let’s say Truman had not used the atomic bomb but continued to soften up Japan with firebombings that killed even more civilians. Would he then be safe in the annals of history?
Seems to me the issue is not the targeting of civilian areas during wartime but rather condeming the use of atomic weapons. While the atomic bombings of Japan can’t be undone, America and the world learned some valueable lessons about the horrors that atomic warfare can unleash. Horrifying that is until new generations of superweapons are unleashed.
When I was stationed in Japan, a friend’s Japanese girlfriend told me her generation was the first to not have effects from the A-bombs. She thought I’d have some kind of sympathy for her people. I didn’t and still don’t. I also asked my Gunny why I was there, when my grandfather won the war 50 years ago.
I’m glad they dropped the bomb. Whether it’s right or wrong, I’m here. Taking the mainland would’ve made Okinawa look like a walk in the park. Anyone who says different has hidden motives or is a fool. Had the decision been up to my grandfather and uncles, the Japanese, Germans, and Italians would’ve been exterminated, every last one of them.
No one gives a hoot what MacArthur said, he’s the same man who ordered his troops to bash in the brains of starving vets in D.C. Once you become a general or admiral, you’re really just another politician.
Let me tell you about the rules of war, like in love, there are none. When the Romans went to war they slaughtered whole nations and sold the surviours into slavery. That’s war. It’s not stinking monopoly.
You’ll not be taking any moral highground or saying one man’s freedom fighter poppy-cock when your family burns alive in JP 5. That’s what all the liberals said when I was in college until their relatives were killed on 9-11. They changed their tune really quick.
Oh, since you love the Japanese so much, why don’t you go visit the Guardian Angels in Fukuoka. They’ll have a good ole time with you.
Everyone is pissed because of these wars without end except you. You’re mad that we actually finished one. What a jerk you are. If the Japanese were ready to surrender why didn’t they do so after the first bomb was dropped?
Tell that Nazi apologist scum Pat B to take a long walk off a short pier. Perhaps he should move to Germany and light fires in the woods on Hitler’s birthday.
The comments presume that unconditional surrender was a necessary war aim, but, of course, that notion is completely false. It is quite likely that the US could have achieved a negotiated peace with the Japanese without the use of the atomic bomb and without any invasion of the mainland. The Japanese high command knew that they were defeated and likely (according to Japanese sources) would have accepted such a peace.
The American insistence upon treating the Japanese as war criminals (whatever that means in the context of a war in which international law as it was understood at the time had been broken by every participant in the war) also entailed the wanton destruction of civilian populations and, at least in Truman’s mind, the use of the atomic bomb against such civilians to save the lives of American soldiers (an obvious violation of the tradition of just war). Given that the US immediately turned around and started shoveling money into Japan, it would have made just as much geo-strategic sense to have negotiate a peace with them before the bomb or any invasion.
Basil Seal wrote:
“The comments presume that unconditional surrender was a necessary war aim… It is quite likely that the US could have achieved a negotiated peace with the Japanese without the use of the atomic bomb and without any invasion of the mainland.”
I agree that this is a possibility but would we (Japan and America) have fared better? Neither victor nor vanquished followed the Treaty of Versailles thereby setting the stage for another conflict. If Japan began to deviate from the terms of a negotiated peace, how would America have enforced the treaty now that her wartime army was disbanded? Enforcing said treaty would not have been a welcome idea after the terrible cost of fighting Japan across the Pacific Ocean.
The concept of “just war” is fiction. The only “just war” is one that never occurs.
It’s worth noting that Vesey’s trial was a joke and the new consensus forming around the Vesey case is that the entire thing was a hoax. Vesey was not the leader of a rebellion plot – in fact there was no rebellion plot at all. Of course the end result of the Vesey scandal was the establishment of The Citadel, an institution created entirely for the purpose of squashing any plots that might form in the future.
The truth is that the Vesey case was an early example of the power elite using an imagined/created threat of terror as a weapon against the citizenry. Liberty was compromised in the name of safety and private wealth was stolen to feed a military beast that was deemed a necessary evil by the so called conservatives of the era.
As it was Truman’s National Security State – and all the “sanctioned” terrorism” that comes from it – is a direct outgrowth of the of the very men that falsely labeled Vesey a “terrorist.” That was their intention after all.
I’m not really sure I get the point. “Liberals” and “conservatives,” to use the terms the author seems to believe make up the entire human race, either approve or look the other way when their champions, or their favorite regimes, or their preferred revolutionaries use “terrorism.” Yeah, and?
What regime or civilizatoin or even trend or tendency hasn’t, at one time or another endorsed “the intentional targeting of civilians to advance an objective or agenda?” Not many, I think. Very, very few questions are put to the test of war, civil or international, or even of violence not rising to the level of war, without at least some actions being taken that fit that description. No violent revolution, no matter how pure, has completely spared civilians. And that includes the American revolution. As in “No quater for Tories!”
Why stop at Truman, Stalin, and slave insurrectionaries? Or even Hitler, Tojo, Mao, and so on. How about the French Revolutionaries in the Vendee? Didn’t Napoleon intentionally kill civilians? As in the “whiff of grapeshot?” And Ceasar in Gaul? Didn’t much of Roman warfare consist of destroying the civilian base their tribal opponents depended on? Same as the US against the native American. And vice versa. And the US against the Vietnamese. And the Vietnamese against each other. How about FDR and Churchill and the indiscriminate bombing of Axis cities? And WWI: submarine warfare on the part of the Germans and a blockade aimed at causing civilian starvation on the part of the British. Same blockading tactics used by the British against Napoleon. And so on and so on, full circle and back.
Ancients and moderns, monarchists and republicans, fascists and communists, Christians, Muslims, Jews, Hindus, Buddhists, Confusians, indigineous religion practitioners, atheists and agnostisc, Arabs and Israelis, Europeans, Asians, and Americans (North, South, and Native), Africans, Australians, and Oceanians, and, yes, liberals and conservatives too. All will support “terrrorism,” as defined above, when and if push comes to shove.. If people are passionate enough to fight, kill and die over something, they are usually passionate enough to break “the rules”in doing so.
A previous poster wrote:
“The concept of ‘just war’ is fiction. The only ‘just war’ is one that never occurs.”
And I agree, if one means “just” as in how it is fought, as opposed to just as in why it is fought. (Jus in bello as opposed to jus ad bellum). Yeah, it is wrong (or “evil,” if you prefer) every time. But,again, so what? What is the appercu here?
A interesting discussion. However, I don’t think either Slave Revolts in the early Nineteeth Century or the first use of Atomic Bombs against the Japanese homeland in WW II tell us much other than definitions are very hard to apply in very special historical contexts. I also am troubled that we feel we must break the world of response to your characterization into conservative and liberal camps. I don’t know that I fit a cookie cutter approach to either but I’m more persuaded that the the slave revolt tactic of killing all whites rises to a flawed definition that than Truman’s action. Nevertheless, bombing of any sort by nation states in a declared war while each action may have moral issues (at best) are tactics to settle the declared conflict. The tactics of non-state groups of all types of violence are either reasonably or unreasonably lawless. While that doesn’t mean they are necessarily terrorist, it does mean that many of their actions can’t be reasonably met by retaliation. For instance, after 9/11 we couldn’t reasonably try to bring down Saudi Arabian (as a key source of the hijackers and financing) commercial aircraft into their commercial or administrative key centers nor was their much in the way of feasible physical targets of Bin Laden’s group. In the case of the Slave revolt, I am more persuaded that it reflects the kind violence that predated the Enlightment. After all, “Kill them all, let God sort them out” was from an early crusade against heresy in France.
While the use of atomic bombs against Hiroshima and Nagasaki was terrorism, it is notable that the objections that Eisenhower, Leahy, and MacArthur raised concerned military necessity, not a rejection of terrorism as such. Presumably, none of them objected too strongly to the prior use of conventional bombs against civilian targets in Japan and Germany. While these were initially targeted on war industries, the other avowed purpose of such attacks was to break the will of the people to fight. While it may have been militarily necessary to bomb Tokyo with incendiaries, it was every bit as much terrorist as the use of atomic bombs. What becomes apparent here is that the Hiroshima bombing was not qualitatively different from previous bombing raids, but rather marked the point at which many people realized something had gone horribly wrong with the way in which the US was conducting the war.