Here is a VE day commentary by Niall Ferguson.
I think his analysis of the war are accurate, but his conclusion is completely wrong.
For all these reasons, the victory we commemorate needs to understood for what it was: a tainted triumph.
Personally, I think this is an incredibly foolish statement. His logic is that the allies performed atrocities that they stated were unacceptable during the times of peace. They then tried the Nazis and Japanese perpetrators of war crimes and were sanctimonious. Well, that's funny, generally the victor does get to feel justified in their victory and its means.
I also find it bizarre that Ferguson doesn't understand that war is incredibly liquid in moral and ethical aspects of the use of force.
War is ugly. Chivalry has been gone, if it ever truly existed, for many years. Being nice in war doesn't get you victory, it gets you dead. Obviously, there was no way to win these major conflicts without playing by the rules that the Japanese and Germans chose to use. The allies were fighting against countries that were technologically ahead or equal to them. Not fighting by the morally unacceptable methods that politicians stated that they wouldn't perform before the war, would have been assured failure.
Tainted or soiled victory? The war was for survival, and the means, in this case, justified the ends.
I also find it bizarre that Ferguson doesn't understand that war is incredibly liquid in moral and ethical aspects of the use of force.
"Threw Aside" moral restraint in pursuit of victory. Or more likely the governments were trying to do something to preserve the lives of their citizens. He makes it sound like we should be ashamed that the military did what was necessary. You must recall that the estimations of deaths of combatants to take Japan were in the Millions. I see no reason to be ashamed or even concerned with the tactics that were used. I'm amazed that his commentary seems to show a complete lack of perspective for the people living the war.And yet the moral cost of this strategy, whatever its military benefits, was appallingly high. What happened to Hiroshima and Nagasaki is said to have ushered in a new atomic age. It also represented the extent to which the Allies threw moral restraint aside in their pursuit of victory.
War is ugly. Chivalry has been gone, if it ever truly existed, for many years. Being nice in war doesn't get you victory, it gets you dead. Obviously, there was no way to win these major conflicts without playing by the rules that the Japanese and Germans chose to use. The allies were fighting against countries that were technologically ahead or equal to them. Not fighting by the morally unacceptable methods that politicians stated that they wouldn't perform before the war, would have been assured failure.
Tainted or soiled victory? The war was for survival, and the means, in this case, justified the ends.
2 comments:
Yep. War is hell. Fighting one entails actually doing things that, under any other circumstance, are morally reprehensible. The tricky phrase there is "under any other circumstance" because let's face it, our countries interactions with the local natives aside, we don't have the history of insanity of Nazi Germany or Imperial Japan. The war we waged, horrrible though it was, was necessary to stop a greater evil intent on spreading. Did we ally ourselves with other monsters? Yep and then had the wherewithall to engage them as well in forty years of cold war, where we did some reprehensible things to stop a greater evil. Look at it another way, there's a guy raping women. The cops shoot him and he dies. Did the cops kill a person? Yep. But in committing that morally questionable act, they perpetrated a greater good in stopping the rapist.
Well said.
Wish I had been that clear.
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