Oliver Kamm writes about Kurt Vonnegut in The Times today.
“These [the firebombing of Dresden and nuclear attacks on Nagasaki and Hiroshima] were catastrophic acts committed under the necessity of defeating barbarism. But man is not equally culpable, and history not a record of symmetry in brutality. It merely seemed that way to a particular generation at a historical moment: the Vietnam War.”
We have a particular picture of “barbarism” which we aim at our enemies:
“Even if the Japs are savages, ruthless, merciless and fanatic…” – President Truman.
“The Sandinista dictatorship of Nicaragua, with full Cuban-Soviet bloc support, not only persecutes its people, the church, and denies a free press, but arms and provides bases for Communist terrorists attacking neighboring states. Support for freedom fighters is self-defense and totally consistent with the OAS and U.N. Charters.” – President Reagan
“This is not, however, just America’s fight. And what is at stake is not just America’s freedom. This is the world’s fight. This is civilization’s fight. This is the fight of all who believe in progress and pluralism, tolerance and freedom.” – President Bush
Although, it might not be that black-and-white:
“If terrorism is the massacre of innocents to break the will of rulers, were not Hiroshima and Nagasaki terrorism on a colossal scale?” – American Conservative Pat Buchanan
“Instead, the enemy is characterised as “jealous of our way of life”, “hateful of freedom”, and so on. Hence President Bush, no less than the Islamic terrorists, uses the language of religious war: we are on a “crusade”; the military operation was initially called “Infinite Justice”; and the enemy is “evil itself”.
“Along with this is the belief that the pax Romana/Americana is the only “reasonable” way to live. In the American case, we have a military and economic empire that views the world as one big happy market, and believes that everybody needs to come on board. We – that is, global corporate consumerism – are the future, “progress”.
“If the “barbarians” fail to share this vision, they are “medieval”; if they resist, “evil”. Most historians see a relationship, in the case of Rome, between its internal decay and its susceptibility to invasion. By the fourth century, if not much before, Rome had lost its central value, the legacy of Greek culture, and was effectively existing for the sake of military and administrative purposes.” – Morris Berman in The Guardian.
So was the Iraq War another exercise in “the necessity of defeating barbarism” or was it barbarism in itself?
April 15, 2007 at 12:30 am |
Interesting post. It was Rosa Luxumburg, a German socialist around the time of the First World War that said something like we will come to a stage where we have the choice between socialism and barbarism.