{"id":4601,"date":"2016-05-29T08:39:37","date_gmt":"2016-05-29T14:39:37","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/admin.patheos.com\/blogs\/janetheactuary\/?p=4601"},"modified":"2016-05-29T08:52:34","modified_gmt":"2016-05-29T14:52:34","slug":"on-obamas-hiroshima-speech-and-a-sense-of-history","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/janetheactuary\/2016\/05\/on-obamas-hiroshima-speech-and-a-sense-of-history.html","title":{"rendered":"On Obama’s Hiroshima speech – and a sense of history"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

https:\/\/commons.wikimedia.org\/wiki\/File%3A%22Fat_Man%22_Nuclear_Bomb_Mockup_-_Flickr_-_euthman.jpg; By Ed Uthman from Houston, TX, USA (\"Fat Man\" Nuclear Bomb Mockup) [CC BY 2.0 (http:\/\/creativecommons.org\/licenses\/by\/2.0)], via Wikimedia Commons<\/p>\n

On Friday, May 27, President Obama, in Japan for the G-7 summit, made a trip to Hiroshima and spoke at a wreath-laying ceremony.<\/p>\n

Here\u2019s the speech transcript from the New York Times<\/a>.<\/p>\n

That speech has been roundly criticized by the right, for instance, in this commentary<\/a> calling it \u201cone of the most repulsive speeches in history,\u201d by Ben Shapiro. \u00a0Obama, we\u2019re told, should have told the Japanese gathered there that it was their own damn fault for starting the war, that it was no worse than the destructive power of the firebombing that leveled all the other major cities, and that these bombings saved lives by ending the war; had it not been for the atom bomb, an invasion of the mainland would have cost untold numbers of lives \u2014 the figure commonly used is a million American soldiers and unknown numbers of Japanese, who were preparing to fight with only sticks for defense, military and civilians alike, due to a \u201cnever surrender\u201d credo.<\/p>\n

Now, there are longstanding issues in Japan around the unwillingness, among a significant segment of the population, to acknowledge that Japan was the aggressor, and the tendency to downplay Japan\u2019s actions, both in education (e.g., the longstanding textbook controversies<\/a>) and public life, so it\u2019s of course not ideal that Obama might\u00a0have given them some support. \u00a0But at the same time, it was (especially for Obama) a brief set of remarks, so not exactly well suited to a nuanced articulation of the situation.<\/p>\n

And it\u2019s also true that there are revisionists in the United States who hold the view that the atom bomb didn\u2019t save any lives at all, because Russia was just about to join the war and the Japanese would have seen the reality of their situation, and the notion that the Japanese were as a society so brainwashed that they, to a person, would have held to the \u201cnever surrender\u201d credo is just as mistaken as the fear that the Germans would have done so. \u00a0Truman, in this view, dropped the bomb because he didn\u2019t want Russia to share in the victory, wanted to keep Japan under American control, and wanted to have an excuse to demonstrate America\u2019s new power to the world.<\/p>\n

There are others who don\u2019t necessarily believe this view but who still think that the atom bomb\u2019s destructive power is of such a different magnitude that Truman should have never unleashed it on the world, and should have ordered the invasion despite the loss of American lives it would doubtless incur.<\/p>\n

Does Obama, in his remarks, suggest that Truman was wrong, that he was either mistaken in what would have happened without the bomb, or that he was evil and unleashed death on Japanese civilians due to his depravity? \u00a0That\u2019s what various pundits are saying (e.g., here at Breitbart<\/a>), but I find the speech to vague to lend credence to that accusation.<\/p>\n

In any case, that\u2019s a \u201cwhat difference, at this point, does that make?\u201d sort of situation, to second-guess the decision; debates about the morality of the atom bomb ought to take place in the present, and, so far as I know, there\u2019s general agreement that a first-strike nuclear attack would be unspeakably evil, but retaliatory attacks are a different matter altogether.<\/p>\n

What I find unfortunate about the speech is that it lacks a meaningful sense of history. \u00a0It\u2019s odd, really \u2014 Obama acknowledges that war has been a part of the human experience since the dawn of time:<\/p>\n

Artifacts tell us that violent conflict appeared with the very first man. Our early ancestors having learned to make blades from flint and spears from wood used these tools not just for hunting but against their own kind.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

and he recognizes that the 100,000 who died at Hiroshima, and the similar numbers at Nagasaki, were only a small part of the death toll of World War II.<\/p>\n

In the span of a few years, some 60 million people would die. Men, women, children, no different than us. Shot, beaten, marched, bombed, jailed, starved, gassed to death. There are many sites around the world that chronicle this war, memorials that tell stories of courage and heroism, graves and empty camps that echo of unspeakable depravity.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

He further acknowledges that, since the end of World War II, there have been profound changes:<\/p>\n

The United States and Japan have forged not only an alliance but a friendship that has won far more for our people than we could ever claim through war. The nations of Europe built a union that replaced battlefields with bonds of commerce and democracy. Oppressed people and nations won liberation. An international community established institutions and treaties that work to avoid war and aspire to restrict and roll back and ultimately eliminate the existence of nuclear weapons.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

He might have acknowledged, as well, that it was (just) not the destructive power of the atom bomb that led to this desire to work for peace, and that the nations of Europe, following World War I and its destruction, itself on a scale previously unknown, had the same goals, and that the outcomes of that war were not just the punitive Treaty of Versailles but the League of Nations as well, however ineffective it proved to be in the end, and a desire for peace among the British and the French that led to the proclamation of \u201cpeace in our time\u201d itself. \u00a0(And remember that, however much\u00a0World War I tends to be portrayed as a powderkeg of alliances that just, almost naturally, blew itself up, it is nonetheless the case that\u00a0\u00a0\u2014 sorry, Germany \u2014 the Central Powers were the aggressors, invading \u00a0to the east and west.)<\/p>\n

In short, our (comparatively) recent past is a remarkable point in time, in which attitudes about war have changed dramatically, and\u00a0the civilized nations of the world have long given up the notion that war is a perfectly reasonable method of gaining territory and advantage for one\u2019s country. \u00a0The trouble, of course, is that not every country is indeed \u201ccivilized\u201d \u2014 dictators and terrorists and authoritarian regimes the world over are still perfectly willing to do so, whether they proclaim \u201cGod is on our side\u201d or are more open about their ambitions of conquest. \u00a0And, among \u201ccivilized\u201d countries, military intervention continues in the name of protecting the oppressed, and disputes about what\u2019s right and what\u2019s wrong are not simple black and white matters of morality but difficult questions about unintended consequences.<\/p>\n

But Obama, in his speech, doesn\u2019t seem to acknowledge that:<\/p>\n

We must change our mind-set about war itself. To prevent conflict through diplomacy and strive to end conflicts after they\u2019ve begun. To see our growing interdependence as a cause for peaceful cooperation and not violent competition. To define our nations not by our capacity to destroy but by what we build. And perhaps, above all, we must reimagine our connection to one another as members of one human race.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

But we have already<\/em> changed our mind-set about war itself. \u00a0We already<\/em> strive to prevent conflict through diplomacy. \u00a0We do<\/em> see interdependence as requiring cooperation. \u00a0In this respect we are not at a turning point. \u00a0But we must also understand that it\u2019s no easy task, when there is evil in the world, and that\u00a0no amount of peaceful wishes emanating from the United States or Japan, no number of paper cranes<\/a>, will prevent, for instance, a North Korean nuclear build-up, and no understanding of us as \u201cmembers of one human race\u201d will prevent such countries as Iran, Russia, and China from building up their power and influence through threats and proxy war.<\/p>\n

Is what\u2019s going on here\u00a0a matter of Obama wanting to see himself and his role, as exceptional (\u201cObama exceptionalism\u201d instead of \u201cAmerican exceptionalism\u201d), so that he\u2019s unable to acknowledge the progress of the past? \u00a0I don\u2019t know. \u00a0But we can\u2019t move forward if we don\u2019t really understand where we are in history in the first place.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

Image: \u00a0https:\/\/commons.wikimedia.org\/wiki\/File%3A%22Fat_Man%22_Nuclear_Bomb_Mockup_-_Flickr_-_euthman.jpg; By Ed Uthman from Houston, TX, USA (\u201cFat Man\u201d Nuclear Bomb Mockup) [CC BY 2.0 (http:\/\/creativecommons.org\/licenses\/by\/2.0)], via Wikimedia Commons<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

On Friday, May 27, President Obama, in Japan for the G-7 summit, made a trip to Hiroshima and spoke at a wreath-laying ceremony. Here\u2019s the speech transcript from the New York Times. That speech has been roundly criticized by the right, for instance, in this commentary calling it \u201cone of the most repulsive speeches in […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2209,"featured_media":4604,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[395,5],"class_list":["post-4601","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-nuclear-weapons","tag-obama"],"yoast_head":"\nOn Obama's Hiroshima speech - and a sense of history<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"On Friday, May 27, President Obama, in Japan for the G-7 summit, made a trip to Hiroshima and spoke at a wreath-laying ceremony. 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