Would you let someone beat you to death? Would you let them beat your children to death? If you shot them or stabbed them or hit them in the back of the head with a shovel, would you say it was ‘necessity’ and ‘justified’ or would that be a symptom of the 'same thinking'? War is terrible, but it is pretty naive to lament Hiroshima as if it existed in isolation, and not in the context of an aggressive imperialist Japan epitomized in the rape of Nanking. While these things need to be explored and looked at, we also need to recognize that death camps and genocide were happening every day the Nazis and Japanese empire were still fighting.
I do not think Hiroshima existed in isolation. I totally agree that the Japanese empire and the Third Reich committed horrible war crimes in WW2. If there's anything I lament, it's how it seems so hard to feel empathy for the traumas of the real people who die in war, whatever side they are on. The New Yorker piece we are commenting on describes mundane lives of normal people. These were not people who were beating someone or someone's children to death. Sure, many if not all Japanese were supporting a regime that was responsible for immense crulety, and sure, I do understand how that affects our ability to feel empathy for them (it's maybe similar to how I feel less empathy for a fan of a rival football team mourning a game's loss compared to a fan of the football team I happen to support). I understand this way of thinking, but I choose to rebel against it. Because we talk about losing real lives, real suffering - and what citizenship of which empire or nation state should be so crucial that it cancels out a person's humanity? As you write yourself, "war is terrible". It really is. Call me naive, but I dream of a world where that sentence is not followed by a 'but', but by a period.
I understand what you are saying and I agree. I think it is important to look at, and empathize with, the suffering on all sides of a conflict. Thank you for taking the time to elaborate.
>As you write yourself, "war is terrible". It really is. Call me naive, but I dream of a world where that sentence is not followed by a 'but', but by a period.
Unfortunately, I think this is naive. It is akin to saying "violence is terrible", but as long as someone could decide to do violence against me, whether to take things I have, because they don’t like me, or just because they enjoy it, violence will still be around and I (or someone else like police) will have to use violence in defense. How do you stop every human from doing violence? How do you stop every nation from doing violence?
America’s failures in Mogadishu influenced their decision not to intervene in the Rwandan genocide. The violence still happened because at the end of the day, we are just very sophisticated animals. I don’t see how war, violence, and conflict could be eliminated without eliminating humanity. Would we be human without our emotions, the good and terrible ones?
