A-Bomb, Justified .?!

From: Charles Gray cgra

He also cites the poor treatment Philippinos got
by American forces after the Spanish occupation. Bradley says the
Japanese were not doing anything different than Americans
had done in the west.

andwhile there were arguable atrocities by American soldiers, it
should also be noted that this occured during a very ugly guerrilla
war-- but that civilians not-involved in such hostilities were by and
large not simply left alone, but actively aided by the American
authorities.

Two points about this: 1)the atrocities were real and terrible; 2)Americans
were appalled by them _at the time_. The US Senate investigated atrocities in
the Philippines _while the war was going on_ issuing a full report in 1902.
Essentially all attacks on US actions in the Philippines in the decades since
the war have relied on contemporary condemnatory _American_ coverage.
The general American view of the war in the Philippines can be summed up in
this line from William Vaughan Moody's popular poem of the day, "On a Soldier
Fallen in the Philippines":

"Let him never dream that his bullet's scream went wide of its island mark,
Home to the heart of his darling land where she stumbled and sinned in the
dark."

The poem, "The Charge of the Wood Brigade" about the the Massacre of Mount
Dajo, where 600 civilians were
slaughtered by US troops, was written by Rep. John Sharp Williams (D-Miss.) and
read by him in the House of Representatives, in 1906, shortly after the news of
the atrocity reached the US. It contains such stanzas as:

Chased them from everywhere,
Chased them all onward
Into the crater of death,
Drove them -- six hundred!
"Forward, the Wood Brigade;
Spare not a one," he said;
"Shoot all six hundred!"

("Wood" being Leonard Wood)

By the next year Theodore Roosevelt had concluded acquisition of the
Philippines was a mistake. And the US proceded to do good by the Philippines
and prepare it for genuine independence (not some puppet statehood, a la
Manchukuo).

I don't see any of this as comparable to what Japan did. When elements in the
US (principally the "Boston Imperialists") advocated the US become an Empire in
the classic European sense, the US made some tentative movements and then
domestic political resistance aborted the movement. There was no follow-up to
the Spanish-American War--no Franco-American War, no Anglo-American War (both
urged by the BIs)--and the entanglements ensuing from that war in the Caribbean
and Asia, echoing down to the Cuban Missle Crisis, at least, have been the
fodder for US domestic politics ever since, and inform attitudes and
discussions about the US role in the middle east today.

In contrast, Japan's domestic opposition to imperialism seems to have been weak
and obviously ineffective, leading Japan to embark on a monstrous era of savage
conquest ending only when the chickens came home to roost in the form of the
Enola Gay and Bock's Car. And it seems that since the war the Japanese have
not been as soul-searching about their own activities as the Americans have
always been (even extending to the Indian Wars, when it was Custer himself who
said of the red man that it was "cheaper to feed him than fight him").
The relentless, ruthless persecution of the war against Japan by the US is
really an aberration. The more typical US war is a sudden thrust, an
enthusiastic commitment confidently expecting swift resolution and lasting
good. This is followed almost immediately by self-doubt, hesitation, loss of
will. In large part this is due to the fact we are a democracy and opponents
of any war have free reign to express themselves and influence public opinion
and politics. Thus the US has long been a reluctant warrior, fighting only in
coalitions (even if weak ones such as the "Many Flags" program of the Vietnam
era).
However I look at the histories of the two countries, I cannot see moral
equivalence between the actions of America and Japan.



Chris Mark