PITTSBURGH, Sept. 7 (UPI) -- The 57th anniversary of the bombing of Hiroshima has just recently passed. In the days leading up to it, it seemed somebody was blaming America for it every time I punched a button on my radio console. Most of the contemporary critics of this U.S. action that effectively ended the war in the Pacific are mostly the usual suspects: peace groups, black separatists and assorted hard left nuts.
Then Pat Buchanan weighed in. The former communications director for President Richard M. Nixon, a president who ran for re-election against a Democratic party that "blames America first," dropped this bombshell in his Aug. 28 column, "Who Gave Mankind the Gift of WMD?"
"Gas attacks on Kurd civilians are child's play alongside history's most impressive use of a Weapon of Mass Destruction against civilians. That honor goes to President Harry S. Truman, who gave the orders to drop two atom bombs, incinerating 140,000 Japanese in August of 1945. If using Weapons of Mass Destruction against civilians is 'what makes Saddam so distinguished in the field of evil,' why does not using atomic bombs on civilians disqualify Truman from the pantheon of moral heroes? Answer: Truman's war was the 'Good War.' ... What does history show? That it was the good Christian countries of the West that invented and first used all the Weapons of Mass Destruction we all deplore -- now that the other guys have got them," he wrote
I don't remember this amount of self-flagellation on the 56th anniversary or the 55th. I don't plan to join in. Not only do I think that Truman acted properly, but I believe that reflection on his decision can offer guidance to us today as we encounter similar ethical conundra in the Middle East and in Central Asia.
First some background.
Terrorism is the targeting of non-military personnel for military purposes. There's some confusion about this and it is worth taking a few moments to clear it up. We're been deluged with new definitions of terrorism, which are grounded in something other than the classical tradition of Just War Theory.
At the most emotional level terrorism has been defined simply as "something I don't like."
A few weeks ago the chairman of the New York Stock Exchange said that the spate of restatements of earnings on financial statements constitutes a form of "economic terrorism." This sort of thing is nuts, and I think we all know that. Enron is not terrorism; veal is not terrorism; and expanding interstate I 279 without voter approval for a bond issue also is not terrorism.
People who appropriate that language for their pet political causes are abusing the public dialogue -- but, no, they're not committing "language terrorism."
The more popular and respectable mis-definition is that terrorism is the use of violence to pursue a political aim. This is closer but still not quite right.
German military strategist Karl von Clausewitz said that war is 'politics by other means'; by this he meant that all military activity is the use of violence for the purpose of achieving political aims. War is an extension of politics, our politicians make the decision to go to war, and they do it for the purpose of getting the other politicians to make the political decision to surrender.
To understand terrorism we have to go to the deeper roots of our civilization -- the fall of Rome, and even further into the past.
In the fifth century AD, one of the greatest thinkers in world history, St. Augustine, formulated a set of rules to judge whether a state, for instance Rome, was waging war justly or unjustly. Although the North African bishop was a world-renowned theoretician, he was really wrestling with practical questions: "In which wars may Christian soldiers participate?" and, "Is Rome a state that is worth defending?"
St. Augustine laid out several principles: war must be defensive; war must be proportional; war must be limited to military targets only.
It is from this last principle, 'no civilian targets', that the West has derived its definition of terrorism. Just war is waged against military targets to disable them so that they can no longer pursue aggression; terrorism is war waged against women and children for the purpose of creating terror in other women and children.
For the record, St. Augustine was not the originator of these ideas, he was only the one who systematized them; they are derived ultimately from the Deuteronomic code of Moses, that explicated the law he brought down from Mount Sinai.
What then about Hiroshima? For that matter, what about Afghanistan and what about the West Bank?
In each of these cases civilians died at the hands of America or her ally. But Just War Theory doesn't say that civilians cannot be killed; it says that they cannot be targeted. Moses, Augustine and the later thinkers who explicated their ideas were realists. They knew that it is physically impossible to wage war without the possibility of unintended civilian casualties. The question is whose fault is it when civilians die? I answer: it is the fault of the aggressor.
Let's look at the case of Hiroshima. The night after the United States had dropped the first atomic bomb, Truman, as usual, wrote in his diary before going to sleep. He wrote that the United States had dropped the A-bomb on Hiroshima "a military target."
He had good reason to write this. Hiroshima had been the principal coordination point for every Japanese war since the 1890s. I would suggest that doubters visit the Hiroshima Memorial Museum, which details this fact.
Located on a bay, this militarily significant city didn't just export war planning; it exported massive of amounts of military equipment. It was arguably Japan's most militarily dangerous target.
The United States had dropped somewhere between 8 million and 10 million pamphlets over this and other Japanese cities warning civilians that these were military targets and that they should leave immediately. Many, many civilians left. But many stayed. But was that America's fault?
The Judeo-Christian concept of limited warfare, that is limited to military targets, presupposes that both sides of the conflict recognize the distinction between military and non-military personnel. But what is to be done in situations where societies like Nazi Germany, and especially imperial Japan, become almost entirely militarized?
The civilians who ignored U.S. warnings and stayed in villages located near military targets in effect became military targets. If they stayed of their own free will then they linked themselves morally with the imperial war effort. If they were compelled to stay, then it was their captors who ultimately made the decision that led to their deaths.
If the rule were otherwise, then every terrorist, every aggressor, and every madman could avoid military repercussions for his attacks by simply sprinkling a few women and children throughout the crews of his attack boats, submarines and bombers. This would effectively paralyze any defending army governed by this unrealistically strict interpretation of Just War Theory.
There are other mitigating factors in the case of World War II: Truman had been told by his own staff to expect far fewer civilian deaths than those that actually occurred, and in fact the initial estimates after the bomb was dropped estimated only 8,000 civilians dead. Truman's alternative to the atomic bomb was a blockade preceding a full-scale invasion. Such drastic actions would have led to the deaths of many American soldiers, many Japanese soldiers, and many Japanese civilians.
The principle that limits war to military targets must also be influenced by the principal of proportionality: It is foolish and immoral to refrain from striking for the sake of sparing noncombatants if the effect of such a decision would lead to even more dead noncombatants.
The other two alternatives certainly would have done just this. We could have starved, and then stormed, the islands. Alternatively, we could have lost, and the historical archives of the Imperial command indicate that Japanese war plans did not indicate much squeamishness about civilians on the American mainland.
Not only was Truman's moral reasoning defensible, it was wise.
It offers guidance to our own would-be Truman, a president who also was considered rather dim by the standards of the northeastern intelligentsia, a president who also was constantly underestimated, a president who also was considered to be a lightweight, who had more or less inherited the office, a president who also was elected by the slimmest of margins.
What Harry S. Truman has to teach George W. Bush is this: that he must not allow the "blame America first" faction to so paralyze the United States with guilt over unintended civilian casualties, that he fails to act with sufficient vigor to prevent our enemies from surviving long enough to inflict intended and even greater civilian casualties. And he must allow our allies the same freedom.
(Jerry Bowyer is a radio talk show host in Pittsburgh. Outside View commentaries are written for UPI by outside writers who specialize in a variety of important global issues.)
