An Interview with Rev. Peter M. J. Stravinskas

Fr. Peter M.J. Stravinskas used to be the editor of Our Sunday Visitor -a publication for which I have written articles for in the past at the prompting of my ever-persistent friend Pete Vere. Since spring of 2004, Fr. Stravinskas has been working on a new project called The Catholic Response. I am not familiar with this project; however I am sure that with Fr. Peter at the helm, it is well worth reading. For that reason, I will give a very rare "blind approval" if you will of that project.

Oh, in conclusing these brief notes, I would be remiss in not noting that it is nice to see that with his new venture that Fr. Stravinskas has redeemed the TCR moniker...rumour also has it that he is blogging now. Anyone with information on the accuracy of the rumour, please email me on the subject.

I have made a bunch of minor weblog additions, subtractions, reclassifications, etc. in recent days. And while it would take a longer post than I have time for to detail every change made, I will note here only the additions and deletions made. Those deleted or added are the following ones:

Added:

Kevin Miller's weblog De Virtutibus which I discovered is active again.

Kevin Tierney's weblog which I have been slack in adding for too long.

Weblog archives have been extended from 9/10/05 through 10/22/05.

Deleted:

Mary Herboth's old weblog url which has been taken over by someone else.

Obrogated:

Jeff Culbreath's Hallowed Ground BLOG in place of his old El Camino Real BLOG.

Reclassified to Active Status:

Mark Shea's weblog

I also originally put The Curmudgeon's long mothballed weblog into haitus status but he decided to notify me and some others that he has reactivated it as of today; ergo it stays in active status by a hairs breadth ;-)

All modifications (either noted above or otherwise) are hereby made in perpetuity all things to the contrary notwithstanding.

Points to Ponder:
(On Being a Catholic)

One thing cool about being Catholic is that I am free to believe in a literal six day creation or a God guided evolution. Or if another new and better scientific theory comes out I am also free to accept that too. I was a lot less free and more dogmatic when I was an atheist. Meaningless random evolution was pretty much all I was allowed or allowed myself to believe. As a Catholic I am free to believe in miracles and in certain Church approved apparitions, though I am also free to disbelieve those apparitions. As an atheist I was not free to believe in apparitions or miracles. Yet it is generally Catholic who are called dogmatists. Chesterton said that man is a creature who creates dogmas and that is certainly true since everybody holds to dogmas, they just vary on what are to be held as dogmas. Or they at least hold to the dogma that there are no dogmas. [Jeff Miller (circa July 13, 2005)]

As I am in the mood for some poetry today, the following poem from a good friend of mine will be posted to the weblog. Without further ado...

Dress Rehearsals for Our Time in Purgatory

Like lichen boulders
both dead and alive,
her baby teeth
are weighing anchor
in restless gums.
One by one
her howls wean
each pumpkin tooth
from chewing foods
into a wider
gap in her smile
and pillow burial
recasting me
as the tooth fairy out
of my parental
role in the hell
that only our children,
when innocently suffering,
know quite how to
damn us to. [Albert Cipriani]

Points to Ponder:
(On How Historians Should Treat Events and Situations of the Past)

There can be no complaint against the historian who personally and privately has his preferences and antipathies, and who as a human being merely has a fancy to take part in the game that he is describing; it is pleasant to see him give way to his prejudices and take them emotionally, so that they splash into colour as he writes; provided that when he steps in this way into the arena he recognizes that he is stepping into a world of partial judgements and purely personal appreciations and does not imagines that he is speaking ex cathedra. But if the historian can rear himself up like a god and judge, or stand as the official avenger of the crimes of the past, then one can require that he shall be still more godlike and regard himself rather as the reconciler than as the avenger; taking it that his aim is to achieve the understanding of the men and parties and causes of the past, and that in this understanding, if it can be complete, all things will ultimately be reconciled. [Herbert Butterfield -From The Whig Interpretation of History (c. 1931)]

"Exit Stage Left"* Dept.:
(Musings of your humble servant at Rerum Novarum)

As a proposed dialogue on a very complex and touchy subject matter in recent weeks has resulted in the exact opposite of my initial intentions occurring (i.e. matters non normative, objective, and issues based have been transmuted into normative, subjective, and personal), it seems appropriate at this time to put an end to it from my side of the fence if you will.

Readers who have followed the series of events are aware of these two points if nothing else:

--I have set forth very trenchant arguments covering the spectrum of complexities of the subjects in question.

--I have explained in reasonable detail why the attempts to counter my arguments have failed from a logical and non-normative standpoint.

Those points have not been countered with anything representing rational argument; ergo I have said what I intend to say on them and do not intend to say any more.

Thomas a Kempis once noted something akin to the idea that sometimes for the sake of peace we must give up our opinions. I certainly am not doing that but I am recognizing that I played a role (however reluctantly) in perpetuating what could have been an endless series of "he said-she said" responses. For that I apologize to the readers of this weblog. I also apologize to my friend Dave for my role in said perpetuation and appreciate him setting forth his opinion on the matter for readers to consider along with the arguments I set forth to explain my own. For the sake of peace, I am giving up my role in this situation but wish to note a few things in brief first.

To start with, I am generally quite pleased with myself viz. my strivings to follow the discipline of the dialogue but it is always with all of us a work in progress and perfection in it is ongoing. Recognizing that and that on this matter I in some respects fell short of the ideal myself, I extend to my friend Dave my most sincere apologies for any hurt he may have felt by virtue of the often-vigorous and strident manner whereby I defend my views.

And with those words, I bid the subject of the bombings, the moral and ethical matrixes involved, etc. adieu and do so in perpetuity all things to the contrary notwithstanding. I also wish to thank my friend Dave for (i) his time and the energies he expended on the matter and (ii) his generally underappreciated role in the covering of a plethora of subjects as he so often does while seeking to do so from an orthodox and Catholic perspective: a perspective which I remind the readers is often broader than most people (even most Catholics) would casually presume.

* With apologies to the music group Rush:

On Making a Valid Argument and Avoiding Argumentation Fallacies:
(Musings of your humble servant at Rerum Novarum)

It seems that a certain very confused friend of this writer has sought to respond to a recent "points to ponder" thread by taking issue with the person whose words were posted. As the confused friend in question recently was on the receiving end of a pretty thorough drubbing by yours truly viz. some "arguments" they sought to propound on a subject which they were by their own admission not well informed in{1}, it seems that they presume that they can avoid admitting to being taken to the cleaners in their attempted "arguments" by going after the person of Glen Whitman. Those who can figure out what fallacy this involves are ahead of the curve but I will explain it briefly for those who are still reading and for whom the penny has not dropped yet. Nonetheless, before I do that, I will briefly make a defense for the person of someone I have never met or corresponded with.

According to his page, the following information pertains to one Glen Whitman:

Glen Whitman is an assistant professor of economics at California State University, Northridge. He has also been an instructor of economics at New York University, where he received his Ph.D. in economics in May, 2000. He specializes in applied microeconomics, economic analysis of law, and game theory.

As one who has taken classes in economics, business law, international political economy, international business models, and various other subjects along those lines, I can vouch for the fact that they are all subjects which involve a fairly competent ability to argue and argue persuasively. Furthermore, there is this bit of information which also is helpful:

Professor Whitman has also been involved in various forms of public speaking and debate ever since high school. He was the coach of the NYU Parliamentary Debaters' Union for two years, and he is now a trustee of the American Parliamentary Debate Association.

In other words, the person being cited can be recognized as an expert in the area of debate by virtue of their experience in the area. Whatever one wants to say about NYU in general, their parlimentary debate team (of which Mr. Whitman was the coach for three years) has had a remarkable trackrecord of beating other college debate teams in recent years. He has even written on the subject of debating as well as how to run a good debate tournament. If the critic can posit even similar bona fides, then we can consider them similarly qualified but do not hold your breath waiting for that to happen my friends. But enough on that and let us get to the crux of what was actually said.

Argumentum ad verecundiam (argument or appeal to authority). This fallacy occurs when someone tries to demonstrate the truth of a proposition by citing some person who agrees, even though that person may have no expertise in the given area. For instance, some people like to quote Einstein's opinions about politics (he tended to have fairly left-wing views), as though Einstein were a political philosopher rather than a physicist. Of course, it is not a fallacy at all to rely on authorities whose expertise relates to the question at hand, especially with regard to questions of fact that could not easily be answered by a layman -- for instance, it makes perfect sense to quote Stephen Hawking on the subject of black holes.

If we want to argue does Mr. Whitman have expertise in being able to be cited as an authority on argumentation fallacies, I believe what is noted above is more than adequate. But that is not why I cited Mr. Whitman my friends. No, I cited him because he agrees with a position I myself have made and of which I have made my own arguments on: something my confused friend cannot claim for the lions share of their own recent statements. It is obvious that my reluctant pointing of this out publicly has angered them but they brought this on themselves with their recent public actions and statements. Moving on...

At least in some forms of debate, quoting various sources to support one's position is not just acceptable but mandatory. In general, there is nothing wrong with doing so. Even if the person quoted has no particular expertise in the area, he may have had a particularly eloquent way of saying something that makes for a more persuasive speech. In general, debaters should be called down for committing argumentum ad verecundiam only when (a) they rely on an unqualified source for information about facts without other (qualified) sources of verification, or (b) they imply that some policy must be right simply because so-and-so thought so.

Though it was not necessary to do, we have established Mr. Whitman as an expert on debating. Nonetheless, what interests me is what he notes are the conditions which someone should be called down for committing argumentum ad verecundiam and they were the following ones:

---Relying on an unqualified source for information about facts without other qualified sources of verification.

---Claiming something is right because someone else has said so.

Those who followed the recent events know that none of those points can be imputed to me but that my confused friend has violated both of them repeatedly. In closing, there is another fallacy they have fallen into which I will note upon wrapping this posting up and it is this: argumentum ad hominem.

The latter fallacy is to argue to the man rather than the man's arguments. This has clearly been the case with my confused friend by going after Mr. Whitman rather than considering if what Mr. Whitman says is or is not true. There is a reason my confused friend did this and it is this: what Mr. Whitman says about argumentum ad verecundiam is so commonly accepted as to be general knowledge on the matter. But then again, it is always easier to make accusations than to produce any arguments. If your host has had one weakness in this whole endeavour it has been making too many arguments. Unfortunately, my confused friend's weakness has been the converse of that which any unbiased reader of both sides can easily verify for themselves.

In short, by attempting to once again avoid the arguments and focusing instead on the person making them, my confused friend has committed yet another argumentation fallacy. But why do I sense that pride will be their downfall in refusing to face up to and admit to these errors as publicly as they have made them???

Note:

{1} I must concede that on one subject at the very least (the one on double effect) they did actually make some arguments of their own. The rest were basically a hodgepodge of "I disagree and [fill in the list of people you want] agree with me" - the textbook example of argumentum ad vericundium as was noted in the aforementioned points to ponder thread in support of my own arguments advanced on this very subject matter in at least three previous postings of recent vintage.

Points to Ponder:

All successful newspapers are ceaselessly querulous and bellicose. They never defend anyone or anything if they can help it; if the job is forced on them, they tackle it by denouncing someone or something else. [H. L. Mencken]

On the High Gas Prices and the Economics Involved Therein:
(Musings of your humble servant at Rerum Novarum)

The subject of high gas prices is is another subject --like the Hurricane Katrina subject itself-- I have not talked about at all but in light of paying $3.00 a gallon last week for the first time in my life, it seems appropriate to point out the real reason gas prices are so high. The answer of course is basic economics supply and demand my friends. But there is a bit more to it than just simple slogans so let us look at this matter a bit.

To start with, there has been a push for alternative fuel sources for decades by people who are utterly ignorant of how markets actually work.{1} These same people have sought to use the federal government to raise taxes on gasoline to try and shape the buying decisions of the public. Furthermore, the same people have sought to avoid the building of any additional oil refineries in the United States for about three decades making the refineries the weakness in the entire oil-into-petrol-into-your-local-gaspump chain if you will.

And of course if you add to the above concoction a massive storm devastating a key urban center with some of the very limited numbers of refineries in close proximity; inexorably you have a recipe for increased gasoline prices and why they will go up further as a result of the storm fallout over the coming months. At this point, it does not matter if the president taps into oil reserves or has the pumping capabilities in Alaska or other domestic sources increased. This would be done presumably with the idea of increasing supply of oil driving down the price of gas at the pump. But in the words of that great western philosopher Roscoe P. Coltraine: this theory has a serious "flaw in the slaw." For you can pump all the oil in the world but if you cannot increase refining capacities, the extra oil will not impact the prices at the pump. And for those who claim that we "should have had alternative energy sources by now" as their counter, it is now time for "economics 101" to dispatch with that notion in syllogistic form.

(1) The idea that the federal government can best manage the creation of alternative energy sources is a joke. There are very few things the federal government can do well and seeking to micromanage businesses is not one of them.{2}

(2) The creation of new energy sources involves putting capital at risk by private enterprises.

(3) Those who are the most vociferous about the need for new energy sources are almost always in favour of increased taxation and regulation on the so-called "rich" who own private enterprises.

(4) It is pretty obvious that with innovation being in virtually all cases the fruit of capital put at risk for research and development, there has to be an incentive to put capital at risk to develop the wanted alternative energy sources.

(5) If you seek to strangle the profit motive of private enterprises through heavy taxation and mountains of regulation, you remove any incentives to put at risk the capital that could be used to research and develop other forms of energy.

The end result of the above is that there will not be any new energy sources at all because those who are most zealous for them are too ignorant of the way markets operate to advance an agenda favourable for businesses to seek to profitably develop alternative sources.

Does that mean that no sources will not be developed??? Not necessarily so because there may well be companies willing to put up with all the taxes and other crap imposed by the government to hamper industry and develop them. But one thing is sure: because such companies would be very few, that means that the number of suppliers for alternative sources will be limited and that means high prices for the alternative energy sources. This is basic econ. 101 my friends. So, those who want to see alternative energy sources developed anytime soon should endorse the following agenda if they are serious about getting said sources in the near future:

--Supporting the lowering if not the elimination altogether of all taxes on businesses.

--Support the pruning of regulations on businesses except for what is truly required.

Those two steps alone would widen the field of potential companies willing to invest capital into research and development of alternative fuel sources. Furthermore, it would not artificially narrow the number of companies who may want to try such an endeavour; thus keeping the potential suppliers of said sources greater in number. The latter being the case, the probable result would be that the price for said sources (once they were available) would be lower as well. However, since that is a long term solution not a short term one, the following ideas should accompany the above ones as more directly impacting short term goals on the energy prices:

--Pruning back the taxation on gasoline by fifty cents a gallon or or more.

--The building of more refineries to refine greater amounts of oil to thereby increase the gasoline supply.

The former would see an immediate reduction in gas prices and the government could compensate for it by cutting the federal budget to account for the lesser revenue received. The latter idea would create in a matter of months or more (depending on how quickly said refineries could be built and made servicable) a glut of gasoline supply and we all know what happens when the supply of a product increases: price decreases.

Of course I predict that we will see the zealots for alternative energy sources as a rule not want to do any of what I noted above because so many of them are enslaved to the fallacious marxist weltanschauung. And not a few of them happen to hold elected office in the state and federal governments -including several with R's after their name.

Finally, those who think that the reduction in gas tax idea is unwise I remind you: the federal government already has a two trillion dollar budget of which 75% or more is unconstitutional federal spending.{3} The truth is, the federal leviathan could use some serious lopping off of funding and this suggested reduction is only a drop in the bucket of what is really needed if we want to get technical about it.

Notes:

{1} Not coincidentally, these are the same people who tend to think that President Bush is another Hitler so keep that in mind as we look at the factors involved in what is noted viz. the increase of gasoline prices at the pump since these same people blame Bush for their own economic follies over the years.

{2} Do we need to remember that the idea of "planned economies" is a corner stone of the marxist philosophy and that it fails every time it has been tried??? And no, this is not because "the right people have not tried it" but because of the intrinsic flaws in the philosophy itself.

{3} You see my friends, all the prevarications about the "general welfare" clause of Article I Section VIII of the Constitution -used to justify the mountains of unconstitutional drivel that is in the federal budget- can be confuted by one reference to it by the Father of the Constitution himself -the man who was the primary drafter of the document- James Madison:

With respect to the two words 'general welfare,' I have always regarded them as qualified by the detail of powers connected with them. To take them in a literal and unlimited sense would be a metamorphosis of the Constitution into a character which there is a host of proofs was not contemplated by its creators." [James Madison: On the "General Welfare" clause in the U.S. Constitution]

And so that my statement may be affirmed "on the word of two or three witnesses" (Deut. xix,15; Matt. xviii,16; 2 Cor. xiii,1; Heb. x,28; cf. John viii,17), I offer the testimony of Thomas Jefferson, another of the Founding Fathers who was not unfamiliar with the Constitution and its intentions:

"Congress has not unlimited powers to provide for the general welfare, but only those specifically enumerated."

The ignorance politicians have of the Constitution -while problematical of course- is nonetheless not as bad as the people who will vote for whomever enriches their interests irrespective of what the Constitution actually says. [Excerpt from Rerum Novarum (circa October 31, 2003)]

Points to Ponder:
(On Appealing to Authority in Argumentation)

Though I have written on argumentation fallacies in the past{1} and undoubtedly will continue to do so in the future whenever it is germane to the subjects being discussed{2}, the following on the appeal to authority in argumentation (Lat. Argumentum ad verecundiam) can be seen as a supplement to what I have already written on this subject at this very weblog on more than one occasion.

Argumentum ad verecundiam (argument or appeal to authority). This fallacy occurs when someone tries to demonstrate the truth of a proposition by citing some person who agrees, even though that person may have no expertise in the given area. For instance, some people like to quote Einstein's opinions about politics (he tended to have fairly left-wing views), as though Einstein were a political philosopher rather than a physicist. Of course, it is not a fallacy at all to rely on authorities whose expertise relates to the question at hand, especially with regard to questions of fact that could not easily be answered by a layman -- for instance, it makes perfect sense to quote Stephen Hawking on the subject of black holes.

At least in some forms of debate, quoting various sources to support one's position is not just acceptable but mandatory. In general, there is nothing wrong with doing so. Even if the person quoted has no particular expertise in the area, he may have had a particularly eloquent way of saying something that makes for a more persuasive speech. In general, debaters should be called down for committing argumentum ad verecundiam only when (a) they rely on an unqualified source for information about facts without other (qualified) sources of verification, or (b) they imply that some policy must be right simply because so-and-so thought so. [Glen Whitman]


Notes:

{1} Offhand, these threads come to mind though I am sure there are others if I had time to look for them:

On the Fallacy of False Dilemma

On the Fallacy of Argumentum ad Verecundiam (or "Appeal to Authority")

On the Argumentation Fallacy of Provincialism --An Audio Post

Argumentum ad Verecundiam Revisited Briefly

Detailing Seven Argumentation Fallacies in Response to a Moonbat Thread

{2} Most recently there was a revisiting of fallacious forms of Argumentum ad Verecundiam as being utilized by a friend of this writer in precisely this kind of context. Though dealt with in more detail in two rather long threads from September 6th, a previous posting from August 28th dealt more specifically with the Argumentum ad Vericundiam aspects of this -the latter of which can be read HERE for those who are interested.

Miscellaneous Threads for Reviewing:

Finishing the long-overdue JYB update thread is taking a drain on my limited time so I decided to take a brief vacation of sorts from it and post this thread to provide for the readers of this weblog some miscellaneous threads for reviewing in the interim. Having noted that, off on Warp 3 we go starting with Hurricane Katrina.

With regards to the latter, I have said very little thus far{1} preferring to let others hash things out a bit before weighing in further on the subject if I even do at all. However, since it is a major news item, it seems appropriate to get a perspective from a native New Orleanian since they basically agree with me on this matter and are in a better position to enunciate my view (in a macro sense) with some firsthand experience on the matter. For that I direct y'all to Oswald Sobrino of Catholic Analysis. Here is just a taste of what you will find:

As a native New Orleanian, I know well that laissez-faire attitude--I could use stronger words for it that you can fill in-- which is so true to type. The culture of New Orleans is the opposite of what the New Testament is always urging: be vigilant, be sober, be on watch. The roguish attitude of the "City That Care Forgot" is no longer even remotely amusing or entertaining in the face of floating dead bodies, masses of poor people living like animals, and the elderly finally being fished out of old folks' homes. The scandalous ineptness and stupidity shown by local and state officials in failing to enforce and implement a true evacuation of the most vulnerable is, unfortunately, a continuation of the long history of misrule that has marked my native city for decades. Remember that fact when you see local and state officials lashing out at the federal response. Their lashing out is an attempt at distracting from their own obvious responsibility for a self-magnified disaster. [Oswald Sobrino: Excerpt from The City That Did Not Evacuate (circa September 03, 2005)]

For more on the subject, I recommend the above thread if you are interested.

From the "'Sweet Home Alabama' Dept." of Rerum Novarum is this bit from Beth over at the Right Wing Conspiracy weblog on Howard "YEAAAAHHHHH!!!" Dean and his latest quip on the tragedy:

“We must … come to terms with the ugly truth that skin color, age and economics played a deadly role in who survived and who did not,” Dean said.

To which Beth responds as follows:

So what is he saying, that poor/old black people are too stupid or lazy to evacuate before hurricanes? WTF??

Or is he saying that the mayor of New Orleans who didn’t enable the evacuations is to blame because he’s black?

Ouch!!! Those who wonder why I supported the election of Howard "YEAAAAHHHHH!!!" Dean as Democratic National Committee Chair{2} now have yet another reason why. Moving on we have this latest bit of news on the ability of a fetus to feel pain:

New Study Finds Babies Cry in the Womb – "Even the Bottom Lip Quivers"

Of course to those for whom abortion is a key sacrament of their secularist "religion" this will not matter but I thought I would note it here nonetheless.

Fellow Blessed Sacrament parishoner Mark Shea returns to the blogosphere with thirty-nine postings in the last three days on various subjects!!!

Considering that he was absent from the sphere for roughly five months, I think criticisms of his output volumewise the past three days are inappropriate.

Moving from Shea's recent blogging blitzkrieg to the subject of Social Security Reform, we have this interesting link from one of the gang over at Southern Appeal:

Reforming Social Security: Lessons from Thirty Counties

I hope to examine it more in depth but at the moment will recommend it based on the habitual trackrecord of the SA crowd for posting stuff well worth reading. Finally, we have the following from Greg Mockeridge over at the Cooperatores Veritatis weblog on the skewed understanding of so-called "peacemakers" on the subject of torture:

[A Certain So-Called "Peacemaker" and Their] Dick Durbinesque Definition of Torture

While more links could be noted, that should provide y'all with some reading while I finish that JYB update thread. Oh and for those who were wondering why I did not cover the so-called "Catholic Consensus" viz.the subject of the atomic bombings in my two recent (and heavily detailed) confutations of Dave Armstrong (viewable here: Part I - Part II), apparently Greg Mockeridge did too and has weighed in on this subject HERE.

Notes:

{1} The primary subject in the news is Hurricane Katrina and its decimation of New Orleans -Our hearts and prayers fo out to those who have suffered as a result of this catastrophe. And while there is a fair amount of wheat and chaff to discuss in that subject viz. how various parties have responded to the circumstances that took place down there but right now, it is more important to help out those afflicated. With that in mind, anyone who knows of some worthwhile charities which are targeting that area with their resources, please let me know and I will mention them on this weblog. [Excerpt from Rerum Novarum (circa September 4, 2005)]

{2} Yes, there are actually some Democrats who are pushing for Dean in this position out of a belief that he would help their party be viable again. Heck, I would support Dean as DNC Chairman because it would have precisely the opposite effect that the Democrats who want Dean to be Chairman actually want to happen. [Excerpt from Rerum Novarum (circa December 3, 2004)]

"Tales From the Crypt Mailbag" Dept.
(On John Roberts Being Made Chief Justice)

Readers are asked to consider what is noted in the email response below in light of what was posted to this humble weblog a couple of days ago on the death of Chief Justice Rhenquist. The words of the emailer will be in light red font.

Ok I'm open to correction here, but I really don't see this as a good idea. The Chief justice could've been unambigiously constructionalist, he didn't need a stealth nominee. I personally would've rushed that one through right away, get him confirmed, then once they try to oppose Roberts for being "out of the mainstream" point out they allowed an "extremist" through!

Well, in some respects this is a good approach because it prevents Bush from giving the title to Scalia or Thomas: which while I would like that would perhaps make the hearing worse than they will be. Roberts will get through because they have essentially already admitted as much; ergo Bush avoids the assertion that he is making an "extremist" chief justice. Besides, if Roberts is inclined towards the views of Thomas and Scalia (which appears to be the case) they will probably be the powers behind the throne if you will and sometimes it is better to control the king than be the king yourself.

"Armstrong Illusions" Dept. -Part II of II:
(Musings of your humble servant at Rerum Novarum)

As the previous installment of this thread sets down some points on which this thread builds on, it is advisable for the reader to read it first before proceeding to the material in this thread. The aforementioned previous installment of this thread can be read HERE.

In the introduction to the previous installment of this thread, I noted that since Dave does not want to actually interact with the lions share of my arguments- then all that I can do is dispatch with his sole attempt to interact with any of my arguments and then go after the sources he uses in trying to claim to "argue" against my publicly manifested position. And as the first part of that intention was unambiguously fulfilled in the previous thread, this one will handle the second part of what I promised in like manner.

In this thread, the so-called "experts" that he posits from various sources were principly compiled by an individual named Doug Long. Another way of saying it is that Doug Long posted the sources and they are thus received second hand on his site. Dave, by linking to that site and posting the citations in his so-called "argument" to his site is thus basing his premise of making an actual "argument" on second hand sources that he got from another source or what is called third hand sources. If readers find this an odd way to ground the substance of a proposed "argument" for a position, then they are not alone in viewing things this way but that is neither here nor there. Let us move onto those sources now but not without noting that they will be posted in firebrick coloured font to symbolize two things (i) going down in flames upon my dispatching of them one by one and (ii) the atrocious lack of accuracy Dave has in citing them..."bricking" being a term for bad shooting in basketball. My sources will be in darkblue font.

The best and most obvious place from which to start this examination in my humble opinion is with the Supreme Commander of the Pacific himself one General Douglas MacArthur. Doug Long starts his quote-fest by quoting from American Caesar which was William Manchester’s well written biography on the man. As I happen to own the very same William Manchester biography of General MacArthur being cited, I will deal with that source first. Starting on page 510, the following is outlined after discussing the inter-service rivalry between MacArthur, Le May, and Nimitz, the following words from pages 510-511 of American Caesar set the stage for putting Doug Long’s quote into proper context:

Hirohito’s generals, grimly preparing for the invasion, had not abandoned hope of saving their homeland. Although a few strategic islands had been lost, they told each other, most of their conquests, including the Chinese heartland, were firmly in their hands, and the bulk of their army was undefeated. Even now they could scarcely believe that any foe would have the audacity to attempt landings in Japan itself. Allied troops, they boasted, would face the fiercest resistance in history. Over ten thousand kamikaze planes were readied for “Ketsu-Go,” Operation Decision. Behind the beaches, enormous connecting underground caves had been stocked with caches of food and thousands of tons of ammunition. Manning the nation’s ground defenses were 2,350,000 regular soldiers, 250,000 garrison troops, and 32,000,000 civilian militiamen –a total of 34,600,000, more than the combined armies of the United States, Great Britain, and Nazi Germany. All males aged fifteen to sixty, and all females ages seventeen to forty-five, had been conscripted. Their weapons included ancient bronze cannon, muzzle loaded muskets, bamboo spears, and bows and arrows. Even little children had been trained to strap explosives around their waists, roll under tank treads, and blow themselves up. They were called “Sherman’s carpets.”

This was the enemy the Pentagon had learned to fear and hate –a country of fanatics dedicated to hara-kiri, determined to slay as many invaders as possible as they went down fighting. [William Manchester: American Caesar: Douglas MacArthur 1880-1964, pg. 510-511)]

I have already discussed the concept of military conscription in part I of this thread so readers need to account for what was noted there when reading the above words from Mr. Manchester's book. From there the book discusses a dovish contingent that was also present. According to the book (pg. 511) everyone MacArthur talked to in the War Department believed that Japan could hold out for at least two more years. From there, the book quotes some Japanese persons with retrospect statements about how “Japan was finished” all of that is towards the end of page 511 leading into page 512 where the citation from Long is made. I will interact with these quotes shortly but first, here is the passage from pg. 512 as Long quotes it:

"...the Potsdam declaration in July, demand[ed] that Japan surrender unconditionally or face 'prompt and utter destruction.' MacArthur was appalled. He knew that the Japanese would never renounce their emperor, and that without him an orderly transition to peace would be impossible anyhow, because his people would never submit to Allied occupation unless he ordered it. Ironically, when the surrender did come, it was conditional, and the condition was a continuation of the imperial reign. Had the General's advice been followed, the resort to atomic weapons at Hiroshima and Nagasaki might have been unnecessary." [William Manchester, American Caesar: Douglas MacArthur 1880-1964, pg. 512.]

Before supplying the text after the quotation for proper context, I cannot avoid mentioning here that the quote given represents equal parts MacArthur’s outlook and the opinion of the biographer. The latter gives the assertion that "...[h]ad the General's advice been followed, the resort to atomic weapons at Hiroshima and Nagasaki might have been unnecessary” which clearly is a normative argument and thus useless in a discussion of objective facts. Sure it is possible that the bombings may not have been necessary if MacArthur’s advice had been followed but was it probable -that is the question. And in response to the latter I must state for the record that I highly doubt it for reasons not only already outlined but also for additional reasons to be outlined in this thread you are reading.

Interestingly enough, Long does not quote the paragraphs immediately following what he does cite which state the following:

In an implacable mood, then, successive versions of “Downfall”, the code name for the invasion of Dai Nippon, were drafted in Washington, and revised in Manila. All of them assumed the worst: that Russian support would be unavailable, that B-29 raids and a naval blockade of Dai Nippon would not be decisive, and that the Manhattan project (of whose existence MacArthur and Nimitz were unaware until late July) would fail to produce practical nuclear fission devices. Germany’s surrender on May 7, 1945, however, guaranteed masses of veteran Allied infantrymen. Thirty divisions were on their way to the Philippines from the ETO. In June, there were 1,400,000 GI’s ready to stage from the archipelago; another 1,000,000 were expected by December. Courtney Hodges, commander of the U.S. First Army already had arrived in Manila but MacArthur still preferred his own field commanders. “Downfall” would begin with “Operation Olympic”, a frontal assault on Kyushu on November 1, 1945, whose purpose would be to secure, in the General’s words “airfields to cover the main assault on Honshu.” The second phase, “Operation Coronet,” the landing on Honshu, would follow on March 1, 1946. He himself probably with Eichelbarger as his chief of staff would lead that.

He had no illusions about the savagery that lay ahead –he told Stimson that Downfall would “cost over a million casualties to American forces alone”—but he was confident that with the tanks from Europe he could outmaneuver the defenders on the great Kanto Plain before Tokyo. Whether he would be as adroit with Eisenhower’s generals –not to mention Ike himself- was another matter. Granting an interview to Bert Andrews of the New York Herald Tribune, he said that the ETO commanders had made “every mistake that supposedly intelligent men could make,” that “the North African operation was absolutely useless,” that “the European strategy was to hammer stupidly against the enemy’s strongest points” and that if he had been given “just a portion of the force” sent to North Africa in 1942, he “could have retaken the Philippines in three months because by then the Japanese were not ready.” [William Manchester: American Caesar: Douglas MacArthur 1880-1964, pg. 512-513]

Now then, having established the sitz im leben of Long’s quotation, let us examine the statements made on the preceding page about the dove contingent. First of all, it bears noting that MacArthur and Nimitz were not aware of the Manhattan Project until late July. The short gap in time between their awareness of the bomb's existence and its actual usage was therefore at most three weeks time. According to Louis Morton's writing The Decision To Use the Atomic Bomb, MacArthur and Nimitz were told of the atomic bombing after July 25, 1945:

In orders issued on 25 July and approved by Stimson and Marshall, Spaatz was ordered to drop the "first special bomb as soon as weather will permit visual bombing after about 3 August 1945 on one of the targets: Hiroshima, Kokura, Niigata and Nagasaki." He was instructed also to deliver a copy of this order personally to MacArthur and Nimitz. [Louis Morton: The Decision To Use the Atomic Bomb pg. 514 (c. 1958)]

The reason I make the assertion that MacArthur and Nimitz were told of the atomic bombing after July 25, 1945 is because with the greatest likelihood -because of the degree of secrecy that surrounded the Manhattan project- that this was the first time that either MacArthur or Nimitz heard about the existence of the bomb itself. If that theory is correct, than they heard about the bomb either on the 25th or (perhaps) the 26th of July in 1945. That would mean that they would have heard of it at the most with twelve days to go before the actual drop on Hiroshima. Considering that both General MacArthur and Admiral Nimitz were heavily into planning strategery for the November 1, 1945 Operation Olympic invasion at that time --and what would have been the largest land and sea invasion in history: easily dwarfing Normandy-- they were unlikely to have put much thinking into the use of the bomb and the ramifications involved in said usage at that time. So that is one consideration which Dave is hereby offered to counter with evidence to the contrary or concede the point altogether. Of course even if he somehow could prove otherwise, it would not detract from what I am about to point out viz. General MacArthur and (presumably) Admiral Nimitz too. (In light of both their service rivalry and their disputes over how to execute the planned invasion this would appear to be the correct interpretation viz. Nimitz' knowledge on the matter as well.)

What was also definitely not correct is the assessment of Japan’s lack of capacity for making war. At this point, we will consider this position as mentioned in the Manchester biography of General MacArthur. To start with, their “production was finished” and they could only “produce war materials for a few days more”, had their “factories bombed out of existence” and had “no raw materials” as Japanese industrialist Ryozo Asano is quoted as saying in May of 1945 (American Caesar pg. 511), then how were the Japanese able to continue the building of carriers and other warships in Hiroshima, various planes and other munitions in Nagasaki which we knew that they were doing???

If they were so incapable of production as Ryozo Asano claimed, then those wily Japanese must have been building their ships from May through August of 1945 out of some kind of pixiedust...it remains to see if Dave will assert that or not. Further still, how could they be in the process of producing at that time a jet powered fighter craft that (if they had later managed to put it into service in late 1945 for dealing with the impending US invasion) would have had easy pickings from our convoys of military ships due to its ability to run rings around the best planes that the US military had in service at the time???

Obviously this industrialist did not know what they were talking about viz. the whole of Japan and its capabilities since Hiroshima had not even been touched by bombs in the war nor was (to my knowledge) Nagasaki. Indeed, those targets were chosen not only because they constituted complex military industrial nerve centers of the island’s defense and production plants for the armaments to make war but also because of their pristine conditions viz. the effects of the bombings: they were untouched by any of our bombing runs. This was to show just how formidable this new weapon was –though even as I noted earlier, they knew it would be effective but not to the extent that it actually was.

Considering all of these factors, I am making an educated guess here and presuming that the aforementioned industrialist was from Tokyo, which had been decimated of its military production capacities at the time. If I am right about that, then they accurately assessed things as they were in Tokyo viz. military capacities for production but they had little to no knowledge of the capacities of production plants in cities in the south of Japan. Which reminds me.

With regards to the jet powered aircraft the Japanese were on the verge of mass producing, Germany had been producing a similar kind of plane in large numbers in the weeks prior to their surrender which was superior to anything the Allies had: including an order of over a thousand of them to have been built in June of 1945 alone. After 1945, the designer of those jet engines designed engines for the French military as well as the Israeli military –and jets from that designer were on the planes the Israelis used in their first defenses from attack as a nation in 1948. This is a little bit of additional postwar information but it serves to illustrate another fallacy in our beliefs in the capabilities of our Pacific enemies: the belief that we had cut the Japanese off from German scientists and their technology in 1942. Well, that assessment was highly inaccurate. If Germany had held out longer in the European arena, their planes would have wrecked havoc on the Allies in Europe.

Likewise, the Japanese jet planes (based on blueprints obtained from the Germans but with some modifications viz. economy of construction) if the November 1, 1945 invasion had happened as planned would have been in production for at least a month or more at that point. And those planes produced in that span would have been a huge factor for not a few reasons. For example, we would not have beaten them in dogfights as a rule and they would also have been too quick for our missiles. The only way we would have beaten them was to overwhelm them with trained military men flying the planes we had in a sheer numbers advantage since we were not producing planes anywhere near comparable to what the Japanese’s jet fighters would be capable of doing. (Not to mention that Japan had actually tested some atomic devices of their own in 1945 but nothing quite like what we had at the time.)

This is another reason why the blockade idea of The Commentator was so ludicrous: it would have taken a lot of ships to attempt it and our ships would have been sitting ducks for not only the kamikaze prop jobs but also for the jet fighters Japan was on the verge of producing at the time but were not able to produce and press into service before we dropped the two bombs. Germany had pressed their jet planes into service in the last two weeks of the war so we got them to surrender before those planes were even a factor. If we had not gotten an early surrender from Japan in that invasion, we would have been in a similar quandry with them viz. their jet technology as we narrowly averted with Germany in the European arena.

I repeat: our planes would not have caught them, our missiles would have been incapable of hitting them, and our ships would have been sitting ducks -particularly if we had tried the blockade approach. And as the blockade would have with a good degree of probability failed (due to what I noted above) and as you are ruling out the atomic strikes of military targets Dave, I ask you to consider what I note above as quoted in American Caesar (and with far more context than Doug Long cared to provide for his readers) and furthermore, where those men and equipment for the invasion were going to come from. They were going to come from Europe and at that point, I remind my friend Dave of what my very good friend Tim Tull noted in his response to my original article viz. Stalin and his character. I also remind him of the probability of the USSR sweeping across Western Europe. What we had there at the time would not have stopped him and by diverting those forces to the Pacific arena, it would have been a cakewalk for the Big Red Machine under the murderous dictator Josef Stalin.

Unlike President Roosevelt and the latter’s “Uncle Joe” schtick, President Truman did not trust Josef Stalin any further than he could throw him. He knew that Stalin’s word was worthless and that just as the latter had assimilated Eastern Europe into the Soviet collective (to use Star Trek Next Generation lingo), there would be nothing stopping him from doing the same to Western Europe.{1} And once that was done, a blockade of Great Britain would have sealed it. We may have been able to prevent a blockade of Great Britain by the USSR from succeeding in the capitulation of GB, but we would not have stopped the assimilation of Western Europe by the USSR without sending more military to Europe from the Pacific arena and also from America.

For more on the above Doug Long, the following observations from “Hiroshima_facts” –an internet interlocutor I will occasionally cite for an alternate take on these matters—is of interest: His words will be in blue font where applicable.

MacArthur's biographer seems ignorant of the reality of the surrender, in which Japan accepted our terms unconditionally, and in which there was no condition guaranteeing imperial reign.

The above points with regards to the surrender are a matter of record and are frankly not even disputable.

We did insist on a condition giving MacArthur the power to depose the Emperor at will though...

The biographer does note that in American Caesar interestingly enough which only underscores how those who make the “retaining-the-Emperor-would-have-resulted-in-an-early-surrender” argument missed the proverbial boat. If they were so concerned about the Emperor –and if they made his retention a matter of non-negotiation previously –then it is strange that they would agree later on to give General MacArthur the power to depose the Emperor at will: a minor matter perhaps but considered in light of everything else I noted above, it does not favour the view of those who have tried to argue against the bombings in the manner outlined above by the biographer.

Moving onto the second quote from MacArthur, we have this one:

Norman Cousins was a consultant to General MacArthur during the American occupation of Japan. Cousins writes of his conversations with MacArthur, "MacArthur's views about the decision to drop the atomic bomb on Hiroshima and Nagasaki were starkly different from what the general public supposed." He continues, "When I asked General MacArthur about the decision to drop the bomb, I was surprised to learn he had not even been consulted. What, I asked, would his advice have been? He replied that he saw no military justification for the dropping of the bomb. The war might have ended weeks earlier, he said, if the United States had agreed, as it later did anyway, to the retention of the institution of the emperor. Norman Cousins, The Pathology of Power, pg. 65, 70-71.]

It is obvious that MacArthur was operating from the faulty presumption that “the institution of the emperor” being retained would have resulted in a surrender. I will discuss this factor later on in this thread but not without noting that the Americans could not accept the Japanese idea of “retention of the emperor” which was vastly different from what was eventually accepted after the bombs were dropped.

More could be noted on this but perhaps the clincher is that MacArthur was not to my knowledge ever informed about MAGIC and what we knew from that source. Indeed, the biography I have cited heavily from is copyrighted 1978, which was around the time the first batch of MAGIC was partially declassified.{2} The reasons for the general's ignorance on the matter was twofold. First of all, President Roosevelt did not want General MacArthur to be too in the loop about this kind of stuff because he was capable of being disobedient to his superiors much the way General George Patton was in the European arena.{3} Secondly, President Truman (who actually served under then-Colonel MacArthur in WWI) was not unfamiliar with MacArthur’s reputation for flouting the commands of higher authorities and was not about to act any differently than Roosevelt had -particularly since General MacArthur had shown his loose-lips capabilities by being openly critical of the way military operations were handled in Europe in not a few ways. He was thus viewed as too much of a loose cannon to be trusted with this kind of delicate information. Nonetheless, considering everything noted above, it is safe to say that General Douglas MacArthur’s view on this matter was grounded on some faulty presuppositions and furthermore was not enlightened by the additional information that President Truman and the War Department possessed via MAGIC.

Nonetheless, since you want to pretend that this is a viable approach to complete argumentation Dave, let us look briefly at the Doug Long quotes one by one starting with General Eisenhower:

"...in [July] 1945... Secretary of War Stimson, visiting my headquarters in Germany, informed me that our government was preparing to drop an atomic bomb on Japan. I was one of those who felt that there were a number of cogent reasons to question the wisdom of such an act. ...the Secretary, upon giving me the news of the successful bomb test in New Mexico, and of the plan for using it, asked for my reaction, apparently expecting a vigorous assent.

"During his recitation of the relevant facts, I had been conscious of a feeling of depression and so I voiced to him my grave misgivings, first on the basis of my belief that Japan was already defeated and that dropping the bomb was completely unnecessary, and secondly because I thought that our country should avoid shocking world opinion by the use of a weapon whose employment was, I thought, no longer mandatory as a measure to save American lives. It was my belief that Japan was, at that very moment, seeking some way to surrender with a minimum loss of 'face'. The Secretary was deeply perturbed by my attitude..." - Dwight Eisenhower, Mandate For Change, pg. 380

In a Newsweek interview, Eisenhower again recalled the meeting with Stimson: "...the Japanese were ready to surrender and it wasn't necessary to hit them with that awful thing." - Ike on Ike, Newsweek, 11/11/63

As I have pointed out in not a few threads, the presumption that the Japanese were ready to surrender was an erroneous notion. Furthermore, as I noted in dealing with the MacArthur quotes, the MAGIC cables do not appear to be anything that General Eisenhower knew anything about. He may have known about Venona at the time due to his status as Supreme Commander in Europe but Venona was Soviet-focused and had nothing to do with what happened in the Pacific arena. Indeed, by the time he would have learned about these things as president, he would not have had time to go back and review stuff from 1945 as he had a country to run by that point after all. And (of course) in 1963 he was out of the loop completely and could not have accessed them even if he was inclined to. The following observations from the aforementioned internet interlocutor “Hiroshima_facts” are also of interest on these issues:

Funny how Stimson, who always recorded dissent from officials regarding the bombs, failed to record anything about Ike.

Even funnier how Ike's own early depictions of the encounter claimed that he did not voice any vehement objection.

Notice Dave how I cite sources to complement my own arguments and not as arguments in and of themselves…that is how it is supposed to be done. As what is noted in the above paragraphs are adequate to deal with the quotes from General (later President) Eisenhower on the matter, let us move from the two Supreme Commanders to the former president Herbert Hoover. In Doug Long's citations, we see the following:

Herbert Hoover

On May 28, 1945, Hoover visited President Truman and suggested a way to end the Pacific war quickly: "I am convinced that if you, as President, will make a shortwave broadcast to the people of Japan - tell them they can have their Emperor if they surrender, that it will not mean unconditional surrender except for the militarists - you'll get a peace in Japan - you'll have both wars over." Richard Norton Smith, An Uncommon Man: The Triumph of Herbert Hoover, pg. 347.

This is of course is what is called normative argumentation since Hoover was giving his opinion on the matter. We do not see anything to substantiate said opinion and furthermore, we already know that the Japanese insisted on retaining the Emperor but not in the fashion he was eventually retained.

On August 8, 1945, after the atomic bombing of Hiroshima, Hoover wrote to Army and Navy Journal publisher Colonel John Callan O'Laughlin, "The use of the atomic bomb, with its indiscriminate killing of women and children, revolts my soul." quoted from Gar Alperovitz, The Decision to Use the Atomic Bomb, pg. 635.

I have already dealt with this canard in my posting on double effect (as well as in my last posting to you clarifying with no small degree of prescience btw some of your mistakes in trying to interact with the aforementioned thread) so I will not reiterate it here.

"...the Japanese were prepared to negotiate all the way from February 1945...up to and before the time the atomic bombs were dropped; ...if such leads had been followed up, there would have been no occasion to drop the [atomic] bombs." quoted by Barton Bernstein in Philip Nobile, ed., Judgment at the Smithsonian, pg. 142

Of course they were prepared to negotiate. However, they were also “prepar[ing] to negotiate” prior to Pearl Harbour…something that not a few people seem to conveniently forget. However, I for one have not.

It bears remembering that President Hoover was not in the loop on MAGIC so that needs to be taken into account as well when assessing his posited opinion above –indeed the aforementioned internet interlocutor “Hiroshima_facts” points this out as well:

That's not what the MAGIC summaries were indicating to Truman.

The Japanese government did not get behind the negotiation gambit until August 2nd, 1945.

All of that is true and verifiable by the evidences. (Again Dave, this means constructing an actual argument and not merely citing names and opinions thereof.) The next bit from “Hiroshima_facts” is subjective but I will post it nonetheless since it represents a MAGIC-informed opinion which my good friend Dave so obviously does not have:

At any rate, the war wasn't going to end with negotiations. The only way it could end was with Japan accepting all our terms unconditionally.

Of course that is not all that the former president had to say:

Hoover biographer Richard Norton Smith has written: "Use of the bomb had besmirched America's reputation, he [Hoover] told friends. It ought to have been described in graphic terms before being flung out into the sky over Japan." Richard Norton Smith, An Uncommon Man: The Triumph of Herbert Hoover, pg. 349-350.

Once again we have normative argumentation. The late President apparently forgot that we did not know the full extent of the bomb’s power beforehand…we knew it was superior to anything ever used before but insofar as its precise power we did not know – a point that Dr. Art Sippo noted in one of the threads I posted earlier. It is always easy to play “second guess” in retrospect but that game is subjective in nature and does not actually solve anything.

In early May of 1946 Hoover met with General Douglas MacArthur. Hoover recorded in his diary, "I told MacArthur of my memorandum of mid-May 1945 to Truman, that peace could be had with Japan by which our major objectives would be accomplished. MacArthur said that was correct and that we would have avoided all of the losses, the Atomic bomb, and the entry of Russia into Manchuria." Gar Alperovitz, The Decision to Use the Atomic Bomb, pg. 350-351.

I have already dealt with General MacArthur’s statements in this thread so I will not repeat them here. Furthermore, I have effectively disqualified former President Hoover as a credible authority on these matters so no more needs to be said about those assertions. I also already dealt with Col. Carter Clarke’s quote from an earlier posting.{4} Indeed, so many of the rest of Long's quotes from Einstein (scientist) to Nitze (Air Force) to Szilard (scientist) to General Spaatz (Air Force) were not privy to the MAGIC cables so they are easily dismissed on that score as not credible due to lack of key information on the matter. I will therefore touch on some of them only briefly here, starting with Paul Nitze.

First of all, he was in the Air Force so he knew nothing about MAGIC. That is the first strike against him as a credible source. The following points from the aforementioned internet interlocutor “Hiroshima_facts” are also quite interesting –pertaining as they do to Paul Nitze’s position:

The Strategic Bombing Survey was Air Force propaganda that tried to claim that conventional heavy bombers would have won the war on their own, and so should receive the most funding from Congress in an era of rapidly shrinking post-war defense budgets.

Now as far as I know, that is an accurate assertion to some extent -a bit exaggerated perhaps but the essence of the statement is accurate. I challenge Dave to debunk it if he likes. Furthermore, I have already dealt with the rivalry element of the different armed service divisions as well as pointed out that the Air Force had no familiarity with the contents of the MAGIC cable intercepts after at least February of 1942 –the decoding of various portions being the job of the Army and Navy branches after that time. The Air Force was actually in favour of approaches such as firebombing (as advocated by General Curtis Le May) so I will not say anything more than that –as I am sure Dave and I agree that firebombing of civilian targets was an unacceptable practice even in wartime. Nonetheless, that is adequate to dispatch with Paul Nitze.

With regards to Joseph Grew (another supposed "authority" posited by Doug Long which Dave makes use of), I will defer to the internet interlocutor “Hiroshima_facts” on Joseph Grew before addressing this matter myself.

Something most people miss about Grew's suggestion. He was suggesting we allow Hirohito's son to be Emperor under a constitutional monarchy, not suggesting a guarantee for Hirohito himself.

Those who want to review Grew’s comments to check to see if that interpretation is viable are free to do so. It appears correct to me since Grew refers to the "[retention of the] dynasty" which does not necessarily mean Hirohito himself. Here they are from Doug Long's files:

Joseph Grew
(Under Sec. of State)

In a February 12, 1947 letter to Henry Stimson (Sec. of War during WWII), Grew responded to the defense of the atomic bombings Stimson had made in a February 1947 Harpers magazine article:

"...in the light of available evidence I myself and others felt that if such a categorical statement about the [retention of the] dynasty had been issued in May, 1945, the surrender-minded elements in the [Japanese] Government might well have been afforded by such a statement a valid reason and the necessary strength to come to an early clearcut decision.

Anyone can say something after the fact. Why on earth this should be considered a solid piece of evidence is a mystery to me. Moving on...

"If surrender could have been brought about in May, 1945, or even in June or July, before the entrance of Soviet Russia into the [Pacific] war and the use of the atomic bomb, the world would have been the gainer." Grew quoted in Barton Bernstein, ed.,The Atomic Bomb, pg. 29-32.

And if there were real leprechans and pots of gold at the end of the rainbow, that would be great too. Honestly, it is quite evident that Grew was ignorant of the MAGIC cables just by the idiotic statements he made above. I will deal with this in a moment -since unlike Dave I actually present evidences and arguments for my position rather than merely assert it and then cite names of people. But let us first review the words of John McCloy which are similarly misguided before we address both of them with some explication on the subject at hand.

John McCloy
(Assistant Sec. of War)

"I have always felt that if, in our ultimatum to the Japanese government issued from Potsdam [in July 1945], we had referred to the retention of the emperor as a constitutional monarch and had made some reference to the reasonable accessibility of raw materials to the future Japanese government, it would have been accepted. Indeed, I believe that even in the form it was delivered, there was some disposition on the part of the Japanese to give it favorable consideration. When the war was over I arrived at this conclusion after talking with a number of Japanese officials who had been closely associated with the decision of the then Japanese government, to reject the ultimatum, as it was presented. I believe we missed the opportunity of effecting a Japanese surrender, completely satisfactory to us, without the necessity of dropping the bombs." McCloy quoted in James Reston, Deadline, pg. 500.

And this was also wishful thinking. As the very well-read (and MAGIC-informed) historian Richard Frank correctly noted on the whole question of a Japanese surrender:

The Japanese government retained two minimal war aims: preservation both (1) of the Imperial Institution and (2) of the old order in Japan in which the militarists were dominant. They were not just seeking a guarantee of the imperial institution with a figurehead emperor as is often argued. The U.S. war aim of "unconditional surrender" was not merely a hollow wartime slogan. By 1945, it formed an essential element in an overall vision for an enduring peace. "Unconditional surrender" meant the U.S. would secure the legal authority to conduct a complete renovation of Japan to eradicate the old order and assure that Japan never again launched a war of aggression.

Given these minimal war aims on both sides, diplomacy could not work because there was no common ground for compromise between the continuation and the extinction of the old order in Japan. As the [PBS] program noted, even after the atomic bombs and Soviet entry, the Japanese cabinet deadlocked, with the hard liners still holding out for terms including no occupation -- and no occupation means no occupation reforms. As the program further highlighted, as late as the first Japanese peace offer of August 10, 1945, they were still demanding that the U.S. grant real, substantive power to the emperor so that he could veto occupation reforms and defeat the American aim of eradicating the old order in Japan. While critics speak broadly about backing away from or even dropping "unconditional surrender" they have not, to the best of my knowledge, set forth precisely how this could be accomplished and still allow the U.S. to conduct the occupation and the ensuing reforms that produced the peaceful Japan that has exited since 1945. Thus, insisting on "unconditional surrender" was not merely a matter of pride or some perverted American version of "face"; it was the key to the enduring peace. [Richard Frank: Victory in the Pacific from the thread Was there a real strategic reason for the bombing of Nagasaki? (circa May 3, 2005)]

That is more than adequate to dispatch with the fantasies of John McCloy and Joseph Grew on this matter as any kinds of "authority" to use in supporting one's argumentation. But we are not done yet as there are a couple more to tend to.

Admiral William Leahy
(Chief of Staff to Presidents Franklin Roosevelt and Harry Truman)

"It is my opinion that the use of this barbarous weapon at Hiroshima and Nagasaki was of no material assistance in our war against Japan. The Japanese were already defeated and ready to surrender because of the effective sea blockade and the successful bombing with conventional weapons.

I have already gone over in detail why this presumption (that Japan was already defeated and ready to surrender) was false. And to show Dave how one should use sources, I will now supplement my arguments by referring the reader back to my previous citation from the historian Richard Frank. There is also these points to take into consideration on the matter:

That diplomacy offered no prospect of success was made clear to American leaders by the daily Magic Diplomatic Summary covering the decoded Japanese diplomatic communications. Copies of each day's edition were distributed to a select band of American policy makers, with the president at the top of the list. The intercepts first of all established that the diplomats of foreign (neutral) governments in Japan were reporting to their own governments by a three or four to one ratio that it was clear to them that the Japanese had no intention of surrendering and meant to fight on to the end. The intercepts next demonstrated that a half dozen or so Japanese diplomats, including military and naval attaches in Europe, who attempted to approach American officials to initiate negotiations all lacked actual authority from the Japanese government for their actions.

The Magic Diplomatic Summary demonstrated that the sole Japanese diplomatic effort that carried the actual sanction of any real authority in Japan was an effort to secure Soviet good offices to mediate an end to the war on terms acceptable to Japan. It was not, as it is sometimes represented, just an effort to have the Soviets act as a postman to deliver a "we surrender" note. The man who was supposed to present this proposal to the Soviets and secure their good offices was the Japanese Ambassador in Moscow, Sato Naotake. When you read as American officials did Sato's comments, you see clearly the diplomatic initiative was not serious. [ibid.]

It seems to me that Admiral Leahy's opinion was summarized well in the following part of the text:

"The lethal possibilities of atomic warfare in the future are frightening. My own feeling was that in being the first to use it, we had adopted an ethical standard common to the barbarians of the Dark Ages. I was not taught to make war in that fashion, and wars cannot be won by destroying women and children." - William Leahy, I Was There, pg. 441.

Of course retrospect has shown us that the use of those bombs not only brought a quick end to the war and saved lives on both sides –as I noted in my original posting—but that there have been no subsequent atomic or nuclear weapons which have been used in warfare. Indeed, we even test them underground because of the knowledge of the radiation effects now, which was not available to us back then. As far as the claim that we were "making war” by "destroying women and children” I refer the readers to what I outlined not only in the double effect posting but also in my two subsequent postings on the bomb subject -including the first part of this two part thread.

To second (to some extent) my position on Admiral Leahy, I again refer to the interlocutor “Hiroshima_facts” who correctly notes the following:

This is a post WWII position, not a WWII position as claimed above.

And whether or not that is true or not is of course debatable. I have already noted the problem with retrospective argumentation so the viability of that last Leahy quote is at least called into question and thus cannot be viewed as a piece of evidence to establish an argument upon. And (of course) what is not debatable is that Admiral Leahy was presenting a normative argument on the matter.{5}

More could be noted but I think it is clear how so many of those who are cited as “proofs” do not stack up for reasons I have noted above. Frankly, I do not see much in the other statements that you cited from Doug Long that is not one giant normative argument and those will not do for reasons I already cited. But (of course) I have done more than merely assert it but indeed have interacted with all of the names on the list who were of any position to potentially have access to all the pertinent information. There is but one more remaining and that is Ralph Bard and he will be dealt with next...

Ralph Bard
(Under Sec. of the Navy)

On June 28, 1945, a memorandum written by Bard the previous day was given to Sec. of War Henry Stimson. It stated, in part:

"Following the three-power [July 1945 Potsdam] conference emissaries from this country could contact representatives from Japan somewhere on the China Coast and make representations with regard to Russia's position [they were about to declare war on Japan] and at the same time give them some information regarding the proposed use of atomic power, together with whatever assurances the President might care to make with regard to the [retention of the] Emperor of Japan and the treatment of the Japanese nation following unconditional surrender. It seems quite possible to me that this presents the opportunity which the Japanese are looking for.

We know of course that even after the bombs were dropped that the Japanese War Cabinet was considering four conditions prior to Hirohito's intervention. One of them was the retention of the Emperor this is true but not in the fashion that the bureaucrats like Bard were naively presuming. Furthermore, there was also the elements of (i) no occupation and (ii) voluntary disarmament in the mix. It is absurd to suggest that the Japanese would have settled for less before the bombings than they were seeking afterwards and (if not for Hirohito's intervention) they would with the greatest of likelihood not have budged from that position -particularly the ones on no occupation and veto power for the emperor over any US reconstruction ideas.

"I don't see that we have anything in particular to lose in following such a program." He concluded the memorandum by noting, "The only way to find out is to try it out." Memorandum on the Use of S-1 Bomb, Manhattan Engineer District Records, Harrison-Bundy files, folder # 77, National Archives (also contained in: Martin Sherwin, A World Destroyed, 1987 edition, pg. 307-308).

See my previous comments.

Later Bard related, "...it definitely seemed to me that the Japanese were becoming weaker and weaker. They were surrounded by the Navy. They couldn't get any imports and they couldn't export anything. Naturally, as time went on and the war developed in our favor it was quite logical to hope and expect that with the proper kind of a warning the Japanese would then be in a position to make peace, which would have made it unnecessary for us to drop the bomb and have had to bring Russia in...". quoted in Len Giovannitti and Fred Freed, The Decision To Drop the Bomb, pg. 144-145, 324.

The naiveity of the above statement is amazing!!! Furthermore, it ignores the fact that a wounded animal often fights with even greater ferocity and the Japanese were certainly wounded. The Navy had yet to face the full brunt of 10,000 kamikaze planes and I guarantee that the Japanese would have sooner chose that route than surrender: a concept foreign to their 2000 year history and something that those who opined on them surrendering never seemed to take into consideration.

Bard also asserted, "I think that the Japanese were ready for peace, and they already had approached the Russians and, I think, the Swiss. And that suggestion of [giving] a warning [of the atomic bomb] was a face-saving proposition for them, and one that they could have readily accepted." He continued, "In my opinion, the Japanese war was really won before we ever used the atom bomb. Thus, it wouldn't have been necessary for us to disclose our nuclear position and stimulate the Russians to develop the same thing much more rapidly than they would have if we had not dropped the bomb." War Was Really Won Before We Used A-Bomb, U.S. News and World Report, 8/15/60, pg. 73-75.

See my previous citation from Richard Frank on the "surrender attempt to the Russians" red herring pro-offered by Bard above.{6} Moving on we come to this final thread from Lewis Strauss:

Lewis Strauss
Special Assistant to the Sec. of the Navy)

Strauss recalled a recommendation he gave to Sec. of the Navy James Forrestal before the atomic bombing of Hiroshima:

"I proposed to Secretary Forrestal that the weapon should be demonstrated before it was used. Primarily it was because it was clear to a number of people, myself among them, that the war was very nearly over. The Japanese were nearly ready to capitulate... My proposal to the Secretary was that the weapon should be demonstrated over some area accessible to Japanese observers and where its effects would be dramatic. I remember suggesting that a satisfactory place for such a demonstration would be a large forest of cryptomeria trees not far from Tokyo. The cryptomeria tree is the Japanese version of our redwood... I anticipated that a bomb detonated at a suitable height above such a forest... would lay the trees out in windrows from the center of the explosion in all directions as though they were matchsticks, and, of course, set them afire in the center. It seemed to me that a demonstration of this sort would prove to the Japanese that we could destroy any of their cities at will... Secretary Forrestal agreed wholeheartedly with the recommendation..."

I have already outlined in detail why the above opinions (about the Japanese being "nearly ready to capitulate" are the exact opposite of what was reflected in the MAGIC summaries. If Dave wants to explain why such ill-informed so-called "experts" are still viable for this discussion he can feel free to. I am confident though that the casual readers can put things together and see why they are not -any future attempts at Dave to spin them otherwise notwitstanding.

Strauss added, "It seemed to me that such a weapon was not necessary to bring the war to a successful conclusion, that once used it would find its way into the armaments of the world...". quoted in Len Giovannitti and Fred Freed, The Decision To Drop the Bomb, pg. 145, 325.

We know of course via the MAGIC Russian cryptological branch of MAGIC called Venona that the Russians had already hacked into the Manhattan Project so the idea that somehow the weapon would have not been put into the arsenals of the world's powers if we had not used it in WWII is pathetically naive at best.

In summary Dave, every single so-called "authority" you cited from Doug Long fails and fails badly to be a credible source on this subject for reasons I have detailed in this thread. And do not think because I am not addressing various Catholic names you dropped that those anointed "experts" would withstand my scrutiny any better. If anything they would fare much worse for reasons too numerous to go into at this time not to mention various pseudo-"historians" you cite in your response too. Time constraints and space factors prevent those from being interacted with here but do not believe for a second that they are any firmer in foundation than what Doug Long supplied.

Oh and lest you forget, I wanted to keep this kind of stuff private Dave expressly stating this to you more than once at your site. However, you expressed no interest whatsoever in doing that. So for that reason, I am making these threads public as I did with the originally intended private email and issue to you the following challenge:

I challenge you to try and refute what I have written in the threads I have posted thus far –the first eight, the one from yesterday, and this one argument by argument– and cease this illogical and fallacious argumentation form of merely listing names of people who disagree.

If you cannot do what is noted above, then you cannot expect me to take your attempts to refute me even remotely serious. As these two threads amply show (not to mention the ones previous to it which discuss various facets of this subject matter) you are out of your league viz. what we are discussing. I humbly request that you cease and desist before you lose any more face on this matter publicly.

I am sorry for this bluntness my friend but your mere assertions of points without sustaining them by argument -or the approach of simply naming names of people with differing opinions on the bombings of whom we have no idea how they arrived at those opinions were arrived at- does not wash, not even with Tide bleach. I will (and do) give plenty of deference to you and to many other Catholics on not a few theological issues in general{7}; however. on matters of history, I will not since there is already too much attempted revisionism by Marxist-minded polemicists as well as those who do so either out of ignorance or (in their mind) the best of intentions. Either way, these kinds of actions I will not allow to take place in my presence.

I do not care how many people you can list who disagree with me, if all you are posting are conclusions and opinions, then this attempt at dialogue is over. I do not say that such lists are without merit of course but as my good friend Tim Tull noted the other day on the phone (when we discussed your approach on these matters) what you are doing is only valid as support for arguments you have already set forth and established. Once you have done that, the value of people with concurring opinions or conclusions can have some persuasive weight –particularly if the persons are recognized experts or of otherwise high moral authority (i.e. General Dwight D. Eisenhower, Pope Paul VI, Archbishop Fulton J. Sheen, etc). But without using such citations as icing on the cake of the arguments you set forth, they are not of much value at all if any.

In this posting, I have dispatched with the Doug Long citations which formed a large basis of your attempt to dispute this matter with me publicly. Will I (or someone else) need to expose Raico, Zinn,{8} and Buchanan in the same fashion too before things finally focus themselves for you??? Or have you seen enough of what happens when you resort to this kind of presumed "argumentation" where you do not actually make an argument but instead only cite sources: something I noted to you earlier this week before these two threads were even started.

My good friend Tim Tull can vouch for what I am saying here as he has returned to college to pursue a new vocation. If he tried to present a paper arguing a case as you have done -or if I had done that in college myself- we would have been given D’s if not failing grades altogether if our teachers were grading fairly and were not ideologues.{9} Furthermore, if an attorney tried to argue a case in court as you have done, they would be laughed out of court by the judge. Indeed, if we were in court, I would be making a motion for dismissal from the judge for want of viable evidence viz. your position. But since this is not court and since I trust you will recognize in these last three threads why dialogue with you is not possible on this subject, I humbly ask that you reconsider your tactics since I have really had to restrain myself in dealing with your inanities.

I made a statement about your view publicly some time ago which I want to reiterate at this time:

I believe in conclusion that you are WRONG (though in fairness I will give your piece a thorough read: I ask that you consider the above threads into your matrix of argumentation in return of course) but either way, I do not challenge your honesty, your good will, your sense of charity, your sense of fairness, your orthodoxy, or anything else that [not a few polemicists] would assert. And I will note this when I post your thread on the matter so that there is no confusion whatsoever -particularly since I am rather harsh about so-called "peacemakers" and do not want my readers mixing you in with that crowd.

With that note, I conclude this thread and note for the readers that the vast majority of those you cited as credible sources have been discredited Dave. And since you offered no actual arguments prior to having recourse to them, you have been confuted soundly on this subject my friend. I fail to see what more I have to say than that so I will end the thread on that note.

Addendum:

For further reading on the subject of attempted historical revisionism at the 1995 Smithsonian Exhibit, see this very good article. Readers who recognize in there some of the names I have just been critical of can consider the additional arguments in that thread as supplements to my own in this thread.

I also noted in a last minute addition to the eighth footnote a thread from Kevin Tierney where he goes into some detail on the subject I touch on in that point of the thread. If anything else becomes available in the next twenty-four hours on this subject of a similar approach, I will note it here in this posting in purple font. And though I reserve the right to call rebuttal witnesses if the need arises, the prosecution rests.

[Update: I suspect that Dave will yet again begin writing a response without reading what I have written in these last two postings and/or post something in response within the next three days in true de ja vu fashion...let us see if he vindicates NostraShawnus on this score or not. If he does, then he vindicates my premise from over a week ago that he is not interested in dialogue at all on this subject. If he does not, then I predict he will only wait out the three days and prove by what he writes in response that he has not assimilated my arguments yet again before presuming to try and disprove them. -ISM 9/06/05 7:00pm]

[Update: Greg Mockeridge has weighed in on this subject from the standpoint of so-called "Catholic Consensus" in a thread which can be read HERE. -ISM 9/08/05 1:10pm]

Notes:

{1} This is a point brought up in some of the feedback to my original Hiroshima thread from a good friend (and WWII maestro) who did not think I took my arguments on some of the subjects I covered in my original posting far enough:

Imagine this homeland invasion scenario...our casualties are higher than expected or the campaign is dragging out a couple of years. The Soviets sensing a weekness in our massive transfer of forces to the Pacific (which was in the works), saw an opportunity to quickly gobble up Europe including England. Don't put it past them! Don't forget that Stalin declared war on Japan upon hearing of the first nuke falling. Do you think Stalin wouldn't have done it because he believed in a man's word and a handshake - ha! This would have been his one shot at Western Europe. [Excerpt from Rerum Novarum (circa August 18, 2005)]

{2} They would not be fully declassified until 1995 as a result of the tireless efforts of the late New York Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan.

{3} I will not go into the problems that General Eisenhower had with General Patton and who I side with on that issue as it is not germane to this discussion.

{4} See my post prior to the previous one made to this weblog (footnote 4) for details.

{5} The reason I posted a "points to ponder" thread on the subject of normative argumentation back on August 13, 2005 (four days before the original Hiroshima posting) was because I anticipated that this may well happen with those who disagreed on the issue of the bombings . And with the above words, you have played according to my predicted script by trying to make an objective principle of argument into a subjective one by postulating the subjective notion of "too many" into the mix. And with that, your entire thread of argument inexorably unravels. [Excerpt from Rerum Novarum (circa August 28, 2005)]

{6} Also worth considering is this observation from Austin Hoyt:

People who argue Japan was about to surrender also ignore the military intercepts which indicate an increase in the divisions defending the invasion beaches on the southern island of Kyushu from three in June to nine in July to 13 in early August and a fight to the death attitude on the part of the Imperial Army.[Austin Hoyt: Victory in the Pacific from the thread Are there historians who believe that the atomic bombs were not justified? (circa May 2, 2005)]

Those who recognize those military numbers as being from my original thread are correct. I did not get them from Austin Hoyt or even from the Truman library but they are common facts for those marginally familiar with these subjects.

{7} Provided of course that they actually demonstrate their assertions rather than merely make assertions –as anyone can do the latter.

{8} Indeed, if Dave had been paying attention to recent threads to Rerum Novarum, he would have been informed that Howard Zinn is a communist propagandist and is not a serious scholar. This was pointed out courtesy of my very good friend Tim Tull. The first was on education in general and the problem with history revisionist texts being commonplace in today's colleges:

One Cabrillo College English 2 class requires reading Communist propagandist Howard Zinn's book People's History of the United States. Zinn got his start in politics the day he was beaten by police while marching in a Communist Party rally in New York. When asked in an interview for clarification on describing himself politically, Zinn's reply is, "Look at Alexander Berkman's pamphlet, 'Communist Anarchism'" (Perspectives of Anarchist Theory Vol.7 – No.1) Zinn personally traveled to Cuba where Castro warmly received him to perform pro-Communist plays in a country where any speech critical to the government means imprisonment. RateMyProfessor.com has a long list of students almost exclusively saying how the entire English 2 class consists of being fed radical views or having to regurgitate the opinions of the class lest they be punished in their grade. [Excerpt from Rerum Novarum (Tim Tull's Guest Editorial circa July 13, 2005)]

The second posting was from one of the very threads in the post-8/17 thread string which was directly related to this very subject matter in question -so Dave has even less of an excuse for missing this one:

Thank you for pointing out that Hiroshima was a major military logistics and munitions center. The rekindling of this debate points out the real dangerous poison coming from the Zinn-like authors and their Cool Aid drinking followers[.] Going down this path of selective examination of our national history usually roots in Marxist philosophies veiled in objective research. The debates always have in common a very narrow focus that omits the major information. Our whole media industry is based on the strategy. [Excerpt from Rerum Novarum (circa August 18, 2005)]

{9} See footnote eight.