Memorial Day Musings

The occasion of Memorial Day on Monday and the controversy on President Obama going to Japan to ostensibly apologize for bombing them in 1945 to end World War II has caused me to think about the situation, and I am practically forced to put pen to paper to get all my thoughts on this in order. So, here it is.

I’ve read a great deal of accounts from and seen a lot of interviews of American World War II veterans, and something has struck me by its absence. When discussing their experiences in the war, one never hears gloating about how the US won, how our guys kicked their butt, how glorious it was to fight, etc. Almost invariably (I can’t even think of one account I’ve read that it hasn’t been this way), veterans describe their time in the war in a very matter-of-fact manner. You frequently hear phrases like, “we did what we had to do,” “I did my part,” and other almost nonchalant descriptions of their experiences. I’ve usually chalked it up to the social norm against bragging or perhaps feelings of genuine reluctance to take too much credit for what they did individually and that sort of thing.

Although those reasons may well come into play, I think that for a lot of veterans, there is another reason. Every once in a great while one can find an interview or description that really describes the situation that the soldiers saw, especially in the Pacific theater. The term “carnage” works very well here – “carnage” comes to us from the Latin term carnāticum, which is a payment or offering in meat. That’s exactly what American forces did to obtain each and every island along the way to the Japanese home islands. The average soldier saw heads without faces, bodies without heads, limbs torn from bodies. Men scooping their innards back into their own torn-open bellies. Men soiling themselves out of sheer terror. Wounded men screaming like animals as they lay helpless with fractured bodies. Grown men crying for their mothers as the life slowly bled out of them. Stuff you don’t see in movies here in polite society. Not only that, the Japanese forces used the very effective psychological technique of mutilating the bodies of dead enemies. I won’t go into detail here, but more than a few soldiers stumbled upon the hideously posed and carved bodies of their compatriots, and the sight opened up massive mental wounds that remained open for decades in many cases.

Nights were even worse than days, as the gore and muck of the day’s slaughter played back in the dreams of those who could sleep. But sleep was incredibly dangerous, as Japanese frequently invaded foxholes to soundlessly slay the occupants within.

After a few days, the scene became even more macabre. Unable to properly dispose of the bodies of the dead, the stink of death was pervasive. Bodies covered in flies baked in the tropical sun until they were bloated like overcooked sausages, some bursting open to release even more of the hideous smell.

After a few more days, those lucky enough to survive were functioning on nothing but adrenaline, caffeine, and nicotine. For them it felt like the war is something that always was, that life before it was a dim memory from a time long, long ago. Although rarely stated, the conclusion most of them undoubtedly reached didn’t need to be said – there was no glory to be had here. The lucky died quickly, while the cursed lived with the physical and mental scars.

Often I feel like we (myself included) read about history and take the outcome for granted. We don’t usually put ourselves in the feeling of the moment, as we already know how it ends. But I think it is important when thinking of the decision to use the atomic bomb against Japan to do exactly this.

The last major battle prior to the bombings was the Battle of Okinawa. Okinawa is about 300 miles from mainland Japan, and was therefore of extreme strategic importance to the Allies as a launching pad for bombing raids against the Empire. Okinawans are not ethnically nor culturally Japanese – they have their own distinct culture and language, and were in fact their own country until 66 years prior to the battle. However, the fighting on the 877-square-mile island was the fiercest the Allies had faced to date. The battle was informally referred to by both sides as a storm of steel. The United States ultimately committed four infantry divisions and three marine divisions to the battle, totaling 250,000 soldiers and marines. They faced around 77,000 Japanese regulars and 20,000 Okinawan conscripts. Included in Japan’s numbers were 1,780 boys between the ages of 14 and 17 that were mobilized for front-line duties.

Of the quarter million men committed to the task of taking Okinawa, 82,000 became casualties, 12,500 of which were killed or declared missing; basically one in three ended up being injured in some way in the course of battle. Although the psychological effects of battle weren’t fully understood then (not to say that they are remotely adequately understood now), the toll was unmistakable. An article in the Marine Corps Gazette looked back on the horrors of the battle and described the mental toll as follows:

More mental health issues arose from the Battle of Okinawa than any other battle in the Pacific during World War II. The constant bombardment from artillery and mortars coupled with the high casualty rates led to a great deal of men coming down with combat fatigue. Additionally the rains caused mud that prevented tanks from moving and tracks from pulling out the dead, forcing Marines (who pride themselves on burying their dead in a proper and honorable manner) to leave their comrades where they lay. This, coupled with thousands of bodies both friend and foe littering the entire island, created a scent you could nearly taste. Morale was dangerously low by the month of May and the state of discipline on a moral basis had a new low barometer for acceptable behavior. The ruthless atrocities by the Japanese throughout the war had already brought on an altered behavior (deemed so by traditional standards) by many Americans resulting in the desecration of Japanese remains, but the Japanese tactic of using the Okinawan people as human shields brought about a new aspect of terror and torment to the psychological capacity of the Americans.

Though the toll on American forces was severe, the cost to Japanese and Okinawan forces was appalling. Of the estimated 97,000 troops committed to defending the island, only 16,346 were captured alive. Although the Japanese “no surrender” policy was weakening among Japanese troops and was not especially strong at any point among the Okinawans, the defending forces made the Allies fight for every inch of the island, paying for it in human flesh.

Okinawa was the first major island with any appreciable civilian population, and they suffered dearly as well. Allied estimates put the pre-battle civilian population at 300,000, which is roughly the population of Wichita, Kansas. Final numbers put the civilian death toll at between 30,000 and 100,000. As American troops encountered hostile fire from civilian homes, they began to fire at houses as a matter of course. Okinawans alleged rather convincingly that Imperial Japanese troops used them as human shields. Japanese soldiers killed Okinawans who they suspected of hiding food, and killed one thousand islanders who spoke Okinawan for no other reason than that they were concerned that they would engage in spying. Okinawans had been told prior to battle that US forces would kill and/or rape those they captured, which led to mass suicides – Japanese soldiers gave some Okinawans grenades to do the deed, while others jumped off of cliffs.

With Okinawa as prologue, the invasion of Japan was drawn up as Operation Downfall. In a nutshell, the geography dictated to the Allies where the landing would have to be, so the only question would have been when it would occur. Had the invasion been carried out, it would have surpassed Operation Overlord (the D-Day landings on Normandy Beach in June, 1944) in size – the plan was to land six million troops on the shores of Japan, dwarfing the 1.5 million landed on Normandy. Estimates of the casualties that the Allies would suffer were astounding. General Lauris Norstad of the USAAF estimated half a million. Admiral Nimitz guessed 49,000 in the first month alone, with at least 5,000 at sea. General MacArthur’s staff estimated 23,000 casualties in the first thirty days, and 125,000 after four months (he later revised it downward to 105,000 assuming a certain amount of casualties would return to duty). General of the Army George Marshall advised President Truman that the US would endure 31,000 casualties after the first month. Admiral Leahy estimated an ultimate casualty rate of 35% (268,000 overall). Admiral King told Truman to expect between 31,000 and 41,000 the first month. Major General Charles A. Willoughby advised General MacArthur that it would cost between 210,000 and 280,000 to capture one-third of Kyushu. Extrapolating from that number, the lower figure for the entire operation was 500,000 casualties, with only one-tenth returning to duty. The official estimate settled upon in April 1945 was between 149,046 casualties, 28,981 of those either dead or missing, and 514,072 casualties, with 134,556 dead or missing, both of which assume a troop total of 766,700 fighting for ninety days, and not taking into account losses at sea. Official planners did not calculate numbers beyond ninety days, but the overall plan assumed that the operation to finally defeat Imperial Japan could take up to two years. For reference, the United States had already suffered 370,000 casualties, including 112,000 killed, in the years leading up to the planned invasion. Few, if any, estimates were made regarding death tolls of Japanese soldiers and civilians, but judging from the experience at Okinawa, the numbers would certainly not have been small. 

Had the United States not gone through with the atomic bombing, there is no question that the death and destruction encountered up to that point would pale in comparison to what was to come.

The United States ultimately abandoned Operation Downfall after it dropped atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Hard and fast numbers are probably not possible to tabulate, but between the two cities, 129,000 and 246,000 Japanese ultimately succumbed, either due to the initial blast or from injuries or radiation poisoning in the weeks and months following.

War is a terrible, terrible thing that most of us alive today have only encountered on a secondhand basis. As scary as the power unleashed by the weapons used against Japan is, I believe the death and destruction it caused ultimately saved the lives of hundreds of thousands of people on both sides of the conflict. Killing is nothing to celebrate, whether it be in war or in civilian life, whether you’re on the prevailing side or not. By the same token, apologizing for doing what is necessary to stop more killing isn’t an act requiring an apology either. If any apology is due, it should be from politicians in countries the world over who never seem to tire of sending the cream of their youth to kill each other.

Anarchy in Places Outside the UK

Dr. Murray N. Rothbard (smart guy) writing down some stuff about Anne Robert Jacques Turgot (another smart guy) on a chalkboard.

I've been vaguely aware of the takeover of a federal wildlife refuge building in Oregon (I haven't had a lot of time to noodle it, as I've been busy with work stuff [and I'm definitely not complaining]), and it's a good catalyst for writing a post I've wanted to write regarding the rights of government and thoughts along those lines. Please bear in mind as you read this that it's basically an executive summary of issues I'll delve into later. I just wanted to get this on paper (as it were) to have a sort of outline from which to work.

First off, I don’t believe in government. I don’t think we should have one. Let me explain why I think this and how I got to it. Growing up, I was Mr. Conservative. I was a dittohead full on. I never really thought about why I was, I just was because that is the thinking I grew up around. Not everyone takes his own politics, just as not everyone takes his own religion or other beliefs, and I was, at that point, no different.

This all changed in the fall of 2005. I was following the process to nominate the replacement for retiring Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O’Connor. Since that was the “woman seat” on the Court (how insulting is that?!), George W. Bush was supposed to nominate a woman to fill that position, and he nominated Harriet Miers. And, as you may recall, that went over like a turd in the punchbowl. I remember her being criticized as being inexperienced and even characterized as a “bag lady” by Rush.

All of this Harriet Miers falderal was merely a catalyst in my political awakening. I mean in the chemistry sense of the word. The debate (such as it was) had nothing to do with my change in thinking, but for some reason it set the reaction in motion. I started realizing that there are a lot of things about conservatism that I profess but don’t really believe. So what do I believe?

Now the thought I had was, since conservatism by and large seeks to prohibit what they consider immoral, does making “sin” illegal make a person moral simply because he obeys the law? In the Christian theology as I understand it, the attitude of the person in question is what counts, not necessarily his actions. So if a person acts in a moral manner strictly out of fear of punishment, he would not have the right attitude according to Christianity. In that case, what’s the point of making sin illegal?

At this point, morality is divorced from legality in my mind. Then what is law? I find that people rarely question most laws, and most people accept that the law is sacrosanct. The more I thought about it, the less sense it made. The people who make the laws in this country are politicians – a class of people almost universally reviled. Very few politicians, especially at the present time, could be looked upon as anything close to paragons of moral virtue.

And how is law made? It is, in a nutshell, the product of dozens, if not hundreds, of competing interests. It is usually the product of some sort of compromise. But, in the end, one side prevails, and their opinions become laws with penalties. So what’s special about the law? Nothing, except that it is an opinion that is enforced at the point of a gun.

That thinking got me to libertarianism. But thinking about the underpinnings of law and government got me to anarchist. I did it in a sort of Socratic Method.

What is government? Most modern governments say that they are the voice of the people. Our democratic tradition says that.

So government is basically the people coming together to do things in a collective manner that we couldn’t do individually. It basically works as an agent of the people, enforcing rights we’ve given it. Simple agency law says that an agent can’t exercise any more rights than his principal has given him.

That being the case, where does the government derive the right to, say, collect from me a tax I don’t want to pay? No single one of us can force another to pay us money, so, if government is our agent, where does it get the right to collect money by force?

When you break it down, the only real currency the government has is that force. Government makes nothing and has nothing of its own. Everything it has is taken by force. Nobody pays taxes voluntarily – everyone I know takes every single tax credit and exemption they can possibly find in order to limit his tax liability. In fact, most of us pay a person or a service to find as many ways to pay as little taxes as it can.

Now, having established that government derives its rights from the people it serves, and the people don't have the right as individuals to take from others by force, whence comes the right asserted by the government to take from others by force?

Unless and until I receive a satisfactory answer for that question, I will be an anarchist.

Rights, part I

Encino Man, late Holocene

I think about rights a lot. What they are, where they come from, who has them, how many and what kind there are, etc. When I think about these kinds of things, I try to do it as systematically as possible, using logic and reasoning as much as I can.

I think people use the terms "logic" and "reason" without really knowing and understanding what they are. It seems to me like the term "reason" tends to mean "common sense" for a lot of people, which is unfortunate, because when I try to explain to people how I arrived at a particular conclusion and I indicate that I reasoned it out, they take that to mean it was more of a gut feeling than a walked-through conclusion.

One of the most influential and overall best classes I took as an undergrad was Intro to Logic. As a Star Trek nerd I was familiar with the word and had an idea that the study must be of some importance, but I came to learn that logic provided the closest manner possible for the deeply flawed human mind to come to conclusions as rationally and dispassionately as possible. In a nutshell, I learned that logic is the physics of reasoning, and that it came as closely as possible to providing rules for arriving at conclusions that cut out the most bias possible.

So, this is my reasoning on the subject, walking through it in a way I think is logical.

§   §   §

In the beginning, there was man. Well, not the beginning beginning. At the beginning of man there was man, which is redundant, but helps me to define a starting point. I think it makes a good starting point regardless of where you think man came from. So, in the beginning there was a man, who was the first man. The first man brings no knowledge to the table. He can learn, but he hasn't developed what exactly it is he needs to learn. All he really knows is that he has the need to have shelter, sustenance, and to procreate. From Day One he will have to work to meet these needs every single day until the end of his life. He may get assistance from some other humans that spring up or from the hominids that birthed him, but the buck ultimately stops at him for meeting his needs.

In order to meet these needs on a daily basis, certain rules have to be in place. They are unspoken rules, and assuming the absence of written language, they are obviously unwritten. But there are rules nonetheless. The rules are not something he earns or qualifies for - they are too basic for that, and there's nobody around to do the judging. But these rules are so basic that, without them, the man can't continue.

The first rule is that he has the right to be alive. That rule is basically self-evident. Without the right to be alive, there's no point to anything. The first man doesn't know much, but he knows that he really likes being alive, and that being alive is the prerequisite to meeting all his other needs. Nobody has to tell him this. It's a right so obvious that even his body understands it without him having to tell it - his wounds heal, his sickness eventually goes away, and he continues living.

Once he meets other humans, he realizes that they also like to be alive. Therefore, he realizes that they would not like it if he were to go around trying to end their lives any more than he would like it if they did the same to him. He doesn't even really have to think about this, either. He assumes that they want to be alive simply due to the fact that they are still alive.

He also soon realizes that there are other humans that, for whatever reason, seek to encroach upon his right to be alive. Maybe they want to steal from him. Maybe they want less competition for women. Maybe they aren't right in the head. Whatever the reason, he discovers that, in order to protect his right to be alive and his property and possessions, he must also have the right to defend that right to be alive.

In order to exercise the right to self defense, he discovers that simply using his fists isn't sufficient, as some of the people he may have to fend off will come at him with clubs, or slings, or knives. So here comes another right - the right to have tools necessary to defend one's self.

To be continued ...

Here it comes ...

Some guy whose head fell off, 19th century

After I was unceremoniously dumped from my job in oil and gas last November, I embarked on a writing career. I'd been told by many that my writing skills are pretty good, but I never really thought it was possible for me to parley it into an actual career (I'm not sure if there's an equivalent to "starving artist" for writers, but that's what I figured 99% of the world's writers ended up being). However, in the course of my search for a meaningful career, I discovered this path called copywriting. This post and blog are not about that, but the short and sweet of it is that it's possible to make a career at writing commercially, especially now that the Internet has taken over the world. I haven't experienced anything more than a taste of financial success while doing it, and that only recently, but it is who and what I am now, or at least the part of me I get to say after telling strangers my name.

One aspect of my working as a professional writer is that it flexes the creativity muscle quite a bit more than my work in oil and gas. It's not that my work in the petroleum field was easy -- there were plenty of mentally-taxing episodes interspersed with the paper shuffling inherent in the particular jobs I was doing. But that's not creativity, at least not in the way that enlivens my gray matter. The creativity my mind thirsts for is apparently this kind, the kind involving putting words on paper in pleasing combinations. That generated my creative spark, but more even than that is it tapped into a deeper reservoir of thinking. The spark set off a bonfire of thought that burns out of control in my head. The creativity muscle atrophies when neglected, but strengthens when flexed, and I've unknowingly been working out at Gold's Gym every day for hours a day.

The problem I run into now is that I can't turn off the creativity. That's where this blog comes in. Maybe it will be like a mental warm-down lap. We'll see what happens, I guess.