Vasco Pulido Valente pela segunda vez e respondendo ao que parece a Miguel Portas, revisita no Público de ontem os seus argumentos pelas WMD (enquanto Vasco Rato e José Manuel Fernandes o fazem pelo seu neo-con-anti-anti-americanismo, VPV quer realçar o seu frio-racional-militarismo - ainda que seja uma decisão de um civil democrata de esquerda que esteja em causa).
Quais as ideias centrais?
1. Devaloriza as opiniões contrárias de Macarthur e quase ridiculariza o General (conservador e depois Presidente dos EUA) Eisenhower que em 1963 , retirado, reiterou a sua posição à Newsweek, dizendo, "The Japanese were ready to surrender and it wasn’t necessary to hit them with that awful thing.". Mas sim, o que dizer de um general-conservador-presidente que humilhou a Inglaterra, Israel e a França no caso Suez?
2. E agora o pior: que o uso de armas convencionais nas cidades Alemãs e Japonesas já tinham incinerado muitas mais vitimas civis e portanto já estavamos numa Guerra Total. Assim tipo, quem mata mil mata dez mil. Quem mata dez mil mata cem mil. E por aí adiante. Mas o problema esteve aí precisamente, na assunção pela ocidente-cristão (supostamente) em uma acção após a outra a assumir o extermínio de civis até ser coroada com 2 bombas atómicas.
Não existem guerras boas quando é preciso "kill you in order to save ou". Da Segunda Guerra, sabemos que Hitler estava já derrotado 3 anos depois de começar (tendo estado apenas 12 anos no poder), enquanto Estaline (que morreu em paz e sossego) depois das suas piores "práticas" foi foi um aliado, acabando nas mãos com metade da europa cristã (a qual, tal como a Rússia no meio da falência moral da Grande Guerra - mais uma "vitória" aliada - caiu na ilusão soviética, se deixou pacificamente adormecer na ilusão do pan-comunismo), e na Ásia, com a insistência da "Rendição Total", colocou a zona à mercê do comunismo (ex: a Coreia - antiga colónia do Japão). Uma grande "vitória" para o qual as WMD contribuiram gloriosamente.
Para um liberal, seria anacrónico pensar que desde a recolha do lixo até ao planeamento social, as decisões estatistas correm sempre mal, mas miraculosamente, naquelas em que as decisões afectam tudo e todos, o estatismo (dirigido pelas massas) até funciona razoavelmente bem. Ah, mas porque é que me parece que vamos continuar a testar esta tese ainda mais vezes?
Vasco Pulido Valente fez aqui, o papel do Victor Davis Hanson (o intelectual-historiador-militarista-neo-con):
"Among pundits currently urging Americans to embrace an eternal state of war, I find Victor Davis Hanson one of the most disturbing. Hanson is obviously far more intelligent than shills like John Podhoretz or Charles Krauthammer, and on the surface he seems more reasonable. But closer analysis of his writing exposes that "reasonableness" as a mere patina over the same martial infatuation possessing his less able comrades. His recent column defending the atomic bombing of Hiroshima reveals the Mr. Hyde lurking within our Dr. Jekyll.(...)
So what justified unleashing the A-bomb on the world and melting a large city along with its unfortunate inhabitants? Hanson says: "Truman’s supporters [argued] that, in fact, a blockade and negotiations had not forced the Japanese generals to surrender unconditionally.(...) Hanson leaves unanswered the question of why the US would only accept an unconditional surrender. Just war theory, which is an application of the broader moral theory of aggression, says that such a course is unacceptable.(...)
Hanson would claim that the US had to demand unconditional surrender in order to prevent the possibility that a revived Japan might undertake aggression again in the future. (One wonders how near he believes that future must be – can one wipe every member of an enemy nation to ensure safety from it forever?)(...)
In terms of the particulars of the time, the main bone of contention was apparently whether or not the Japanese emperor would be allowed to remain on his throne. However, after Japan did surrender unconditionally, he was permitted to do so anyway. Oops-a-daisy!
What's more, there is a growing realization that Japan's ability to continue fighting was about nil. As a veteran of the Pacific war recently wrote: "The truth is, I now believe, that in August of 1945, the Japanese Imperial Army could not have defended its homeland against a well-trained troop of Eagle Scouts."
Hanson next moves on to the "we'd done worse" argument: "Hiroshima, then, was not the worst single-day loss of life in military history. The Tokyo fire raid on the night of March 9/10, five months earlier, was far worse, incinerating somewhere around 150,000 civilians, and burning out over 15 acres of the downtown. Indeed, "Little Boy," the initial nuclear device that was dropped 60 years ago, was understood as the continuance of that policy of unrestricted bombing – its morality already decided by the ongoing attacks on the German and Japanese cities begun at least three years earlier."
To be fair, Hanson makes a good point: If unrestricted bombing is moral, then there is no fundamental basis for qualms at going nuclear. But it is fatuous to declare that the morality of unrestricted bombing already had been decided simply because it had been employed. If a serial killer switches from a sword to a gun as his weapon of choice, what sort of defense is it to claim that the morality of serial killing was "already decided" when he was using the sword?
Hanson continues: "Americans of the time hardly thought the Japanese populace to be entirely innocent." Here we have morality by opinion poll embracing a grim collectivism. Because some Japanese civilians were more or less involved in the war effort, all of them, even infants, were fair game to be slaughtered. Note that this sort of thinking is exactly how Osama bin Laden justifies striking civilian targets in the US, Britain, or Spain.(...)
Once analyzed, none of these "moral arguments" are very convincing. The reason that such a smart fellow makes such weak moral arguments is that they are red herrings. The truth is that he and his cohorts just really love war, and love does not stop to ask "Why?" Michael Ledeen can only urge that wars arrive "faster, please." Hanson criticizes both sides of conflicts for not getting down to fighting sooner. But they know they have to talk the good talk, to cloak their raw aggression in some ethical finery, or else the public will turn from their views in disgust.
In the end, they are children in adult bodies, who never lost their fascination with moving little plastic soldiers and tanks around their bedrooms." Hanson Agonistes by Gene Callahan
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