Days of Infamy- Hiroshima and Nagasaki August 6 through 9 1945.

August 7, 9:58 AMSandusky County Politics ExaminerMichael Stahl

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“Politics is the womb in which war develops.” Karl von Clausewitz

If you are given to poignancy, to pre-nihilistic introspection, you might have given a few moments somber thought, and just fear, to the calamity that occurred in these first few days of August 64 years ago. It was then that, on two separate occasions, small groups of men took off willingly on missions designed to extinguish the lives of tens of thousands of unarmed and undefended human beings. These men succeeded, and in their success brought forth a human terror greater than the most fearsome metaphysical deity. They proved that Man had the full measure of the destructive power of God.

There is no sense in arguing the moral justifications of such an act-the mind cannot properly grasp the true nature of the destruction wrought, and as such to excuse is folly, and to damn is needless. Yet many still do, sheathed in the ever present sophisticated modern political canard known as “finger-pointing”. This is nothing more than the ridicule of contrary viewpoints in order to avoid a true discussion. Those who do so are engaging in anti-intellectualism and a uniquely modern form of apostasy.

Rather than engage in folly or needless harrumphing, it seems better to engage in learning. For while little can be learned by assigning blame for the tragedy of 1945-or indeed all of WWII-something can be learned from the modern reaction. In the Kozak article, it is bluntly, and rather ham-handedly, proposed that somehow an opinion other than the author's about the above mentioned extermination of over 100,000 people (instantly, and an unknown number from fallout, etc), is a psychological test, and that it determines, by insinuation, how “patriotic” one is. Or something.

Think about this-no matter what you think of the bombings-should an event that hideous, that cataclysmic, that devastating, go unquestioned? The author seems to be saying, surreptitiously, that to question, or outright damn, even the most blatantly callous act of the state is a heresy. An abomination before the modern, amoral, God-the State.

What becomes even more interesting is the odd juxtaposition of political mercenaries when it comes to issues such as these. Unless it is the act of a current democrat regime, one can count upon the “right” to support the actions of the state. A quick glance at the comments in the Kozak article bears this out. But why? It makes no sense whatsoever, particularly in this case. Truman, the man who ordered the bombing, was from the political left, as was Roosevelt. How can it be “leftist” to decry the actions of “leftists” and “rightist” to defend the actions of “leftists”? That is, of course, without the aid of lithium.

The answer, of course, is that the “right” is not the “right” any longer. It cannot be and support war. Simply put, the philosophical underpinning of the “right” once was, and still rhetorically is, individualism, the notion that a person is greater than a group, and that the means justify the end. But this is not the current state of the political “right”, is it? Oh, dear heavens no! Now rather that prudent individualism in the face of constant pressure to accept the golden ring of collectivism, the so-called “right” spouts “National Greatness Conservatism” and Rush Limbaugh artfully expounds upon “American Exceptionalism”. Avoiding the obvious conflict between the notion of a collective metaphysical entity-in this case the state-being supreme over the individual...when “individualism” is the supposed cause of that “exceptionalism” in the first place.

War is a collective enterprise, it has to be-individual warfare is called a fist-fight. But, though it be collective in spirit, individuals pay for it and profit from it, as with all collectivism.

Whatever political stance one might take, though, to pretend that questioning the horror and righteousness of war is somehow a character flaw, and particularly the horror of the First Nuclear War, is nothing short of grotesque. When you are expected to suplicate your natural morality to give cover in the name of "patriotism" it seems wise to question the motives of those doing the expecting.

I'll leave you with a quote from-at least according to Kozak's standards-a truly un-American proto-hippie leftist:

“I like to believe that people in the long run are going to do more to promote peace than our governments. Indeed, I think that people want peace so much that one of these days governments had better get out of the way and let them have it.”

Republican President Dwight David Eisenhower. An outspoken critic of the hideous acts of August 1945, and war itself.