"Armstrong Illusions" Dept. For Preserving the Historical Record:
(Musings of your humble servant at Rerum Novarum)

Allow me to preface this post with an excerpt that will encapsulate what the aforementioned post itself will deal with.

When you take it down to brass tacks, Dave does not make his own arguments on the subjects I raised. Instead, he makes a laundry list of people who agree with him irrespective of their actual agendas or the arguments they advance to arrive at their conclusions and opinions. This is nothing more than the fallacious form of appealing to authority which I pointed out in my last posting. [Excerpt from Rerum Novarum (circa September 6, 2005)]

Now for those who read the first quote of this posting and decide to not read the rest of it, I frankly do not blame them as I really did not want to have to go into this again. However, it is obvious now (if there was ever any doubt previously) that Dave Armstrong has a problem over how things went down last year when he tried to discuss a subject in the public forum that he (by his own admission) was not well-read on. But before we delve into it, a bit of disclosure will be noted for the readers in case they wonder why on earth I am both posting this thread and also (prior to its posting) added to the side margin of this weblog three posts deliberately left out of the last update. All of this may appear confusing to the seven people still following this stuff so allow me to briefly explain it before moving into the meat of this posting. I apologize in advance for any grammar glitches or spelling mistakes as I do not have time to review the work and fix them now. (Maybe later this week if I am inclined to revisit this stuff again and have time to.)

To start with, after attempts to dialogue with Dave last year failed, there was a period of no contact. Certain events happened last month that potentially paved the way for private discussions and attempts were made at a reconciliation.(*) I did not initiate these contacts but I did agree to participate in them. In doing so, I noted in one of the emails I sent that I had no interest in publicly revisiting this issue again at the present time.

Unfortunately, Dave again sought to take a private discussion public without warning or warrant to do so and yet again refused to actually consider what I outlined in a couple of email circulars on what I saw as problematical with his whole approach to the controversial issues in question. Thus, with the continual refusal to interact with my actual arguments and another public attempt to grandstand by Dave undertaken, I cannot stand by and let these diversions from the subject at hand go unanswered.

[(*) Clarification: Greg Mockeridge after reading this thread told me that a reconciliation was not the original intention he had in emailing Dave. Obviously, once contact had been established, that issue came up but Greg told me that was not his original intention; ergo I retract my original recalling of this event since Greg would know his original intentions a lot better than I would - ISM 1/24/06 3:14pm]

Due to the fortunate circumstance of a rare block of time to do so, I decided to interact with Dave's original posting and ignore all of his subsequent attempts to deny what he really said and did. The real beef I had was him in this whole incident can be boiled down to a few points, namely (i) his violation of the private forum with posting on matters discussed there publicly without prior notice, (ii) what he wrote originally, (iii) the poor quality of his argumentation, and (iv) the objective lack on his part of following the disciplines of a proper dialogue. Later on, this spread to (v) all of his subsequent attempts to distract from that by claiming he did not say and do what his own words reveal by any objective review. For this reason, those subsequent posts will be summarily ignored in this posting except where needed to clarify certain points subsequent to his original posting. Dave's words will be in dark yellow font with sources of his italicized. My sources will be in darkblue font unless otherwise noted. Without further ado, here goes...

The Nuclear Bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki: Do They Meet Catholic Just War Standards of Morality? (vs. Greg Mockeridge and Shawn McElhinney)

Notice how off the bat Dave tries to spin this as a kind of "handicap match" as if he is taking on two people at once. (This would hardly be an issue if not for the fact that Dave seems to actually think in this way; ergo all of his "x vs. y" kind of denoting personalities in his papers.) The truth is, Dave has more time for this stuff than any three or four people I can think of; ergo readers should keep that in mind when going over stuff of this nature where he is involved. (If you do not feel like revisiting this issue after reading this far, feel free to scroll down and read other entries to this humble weblog from recent weeks -a number of them linked in this sentence for your convenience.)

Introduction

In an e-mail to my good friends Shawn McElhinney, Greg Mockeridge, and Christopher Blosser (the first two having basically brought up the subject), I wrote (more or less "off the cuff"):

As for my $00.02 on this, I think the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki was clearly immoral by just war standards, and cannot be morally justified. Pre-emption is a notion I have no trouble with, and I believe it can be synthesized with traditional just war standards, but killing 100,000 civilians, whether at Dresden or in Japan, cannot.

The decision may have been "complex" or "understandable" at the time, but with the benefit of hindsight we would fully expect to have a more informed, objective opinion on it 60 years later, than we did in the frenzy and passion of (justified) war.

It should be noted that in responding to that email back on in early August{1} that I deliberately did not use Dave's name in it. The reason for this should be obvious but since for many people it is not apparently, I will touch on it here. There is always a problem with bringing personalities into the picture when dealing with the discussion of ideas. The reason I have rarely made things a matter of personalities in recent years was because of how often I noticed that it leads to public confrontations which are not edifying and where the ideas themselves get short shrift.

Since the latter is the last thing I want to see happen, it makes sense to me to cloak interlocuters in confidentiality to keep the subject matter as the point of focus and not the persons involved. And though I have already dealt with this; the recent public attempts to "airbrush" the historical record of what happened{2} requires that I set the record straight once and for all in a post for the archives here at Rerum Novarum.

To do this properly though will require referencing some stuff that I wrote recently for a targeted audience including Dave. I will however only quote what I wrote in those emails in doing this and not anything from Dave or anyone else. When the idea of a possible rapproachment was raised by someone in late December, some correspondence was exchanged. Here are substantive parts of what I wrote to Dave earlier this month in response to his claim that he did not engage in argumentation fallacies in August and September with regards to the subject of dispute at that time:

[Y]ou engaged in the fallacy of argumentum ad vericundiam all over the place and when you were not doing that, your whole response consisted of unsubstantiated statements...Furthermore, after I dispatched with some of your so-called "experts" in the posting of August 28th, you continued to refer to them as "experts" which is another argumentation fallacy altogether...

It was at the point when you started reiterating discredited arguments/opinions (of certain parties I will mention later on) that I decided to expose in detail the flimsiness of your so-called "experts" as well as deal with a number of areas, which you had either ignored or given the impression that you did not well understand them. That was the genesis of the two posts [I and II] from September 6th... [Excerpts from an Email Correspondence With Dave Armstrong and Some Others (circa January 12, 2006)]

As far as the claim from Dave that he was "attacked" by your humble servant, this was also dealt with in the aforementioned correspondence:

Dave, the only things I said which could in any way be constituted as an "attack" were these:

---You lacked by your own admission sufficient knowledge on the matter...something you said the day before you left for vacation in private and reiterated in your posting on 8/25. (The day of your return if I recall correctly.)  

---Your quickness to jump into the fray immediately upon returning from vacation was suspicious at best since you were unlikely to have studied these matters much in ten days...certainly nothing to compare to the degree of study I have conducted on them.

---The degree of nuance involved with the matters in question requires more than a surface familiarity if all facets of the equation are to be accounted for with any hope for completeness of exposition. But as I noted in more than one place, you were misunderstanding and misrepresenting certain key principles, which demonstrated that you had no business publicly discussing these matters. (If you recall, I agreed to a private dialogue and it was because of your admitted lack of knowledge on these subjects.)

---Despite being warned of the problems with certain questionable sources and arguments they made, you used such sources anyway...after I had already proven well beyond a reasonable doubt (with historical facts and mathematical models) that the numbers originally used to justify the figures they parroted did not square with reality.[...]

---You engaged often in argumentum ad vericundiam...Your subsequent attempt to spill type explaining why a circle is actually a square only indicated to me that you were trapped in a regress-spiral and were beyond dialogue with on that matter...

---Though I mentioned it at the outset this fallacy in your argumentation (and did so a few times including in one weblog posting at RN), I only focused significantly on the latter argument after making mincemeat of your paltry offering of so-called "experts" from Doug Long's site which you obviously posted without adequately vetting them first. That is why there was a nine day delay in my response when you presumed I had "withdrawn" from the discussion when indeed I had not. I was doing the research on the sources which you simply played "cut and paste" with. Do not tell me that you vetted those sources before using them because it is as evident as corn in Iowa that you did not.

---Furthermore, you sought to bolster your position with opinions from writers of very dubious repute (to put it nicely) but I did not want to deal with that issue myself in much detail.

Far from being any kind of "attack" I was merely relating what was happening and what you were doing. If that constitutes an "attack" than any reporting of events or circumstances constitutes an "attack." [Excerpts from an Email Correspondence With Dave Armstrong and Some Others (circa January 12, 2006)]

What is noted there is adequate to set the stage for dealing with the material for which Dave claims he actually made arguments in doing. But Dave privately admitted precisely (i) what I have been saying all along on these matters and (ii) will demonstrate in this post by subjecting his first post to a thorough examination. Since I am not about to reinvent the wheel on the matter, here is how I responded to Dave's private admission that he had no interest in dealing with many of the arguments I made on the subject of dispute:

[Y]ou prove that you were not interested in dialogue in precisely what you note above: if you had no intention of interacting with my arguments then WHY THE HELL DID YOU POST ANYTHING ON THE SUBJECT TO BEGIN WITH???...

You should have had the decency to have admitted to it publicly rather than try to pretend that you wanted to dialogue...I take dialogue and the discussion of ideas seriously and have no interest in wasting it with sophists who talk the talk and then fail to walk the walk. And on those issues Dave, that is what you were acting as. Now one can act like a sophist without necessarily being one so do not read into this anything more than what I noted above: that on THIS ISSUE that is how you came across. That does not mean it necessarily translates into other areas too; ergo my reason for this clarification up front...

No Dave, I made a very logical and factual analysis with many facets to the equation and backed up every bit of it with sound analysis and you treated it from the get-go without an ounce of respect. Furthermore, you have admitted now exactly what I said all along about not only dodging my arguments but refusing to dialogue properly. Thanks for vindicating me Dave even if only in private. [Excerpts from an Email Correspondence With Dave Armstrong and Some Others (circa January 19, 2006)]

In short, Dave has privately conceded what he would not concede publicly. Since I cannot stand this kind of "rational dualism", I have quoted my words in response to what he wrote privately to set the stage for looking at what he wrote and posted on the day he returned from vacation. And yes, those who find this approach by Dave as odd are not the only ones as I have noted it several times in various mediums already. However, for the moment that will have to be set aside as the meat of what Dave claims he "made arguments" in will now be looked at in detail. His words will continue to be in dark yellow font. Parts excised either for the sake of economy of response or which were duplicated in posts I wrote subsequent to this posting will be in purple font and in brackets.

In a second informal response, responding more directly to comments by Greg, I stated:

With all due respect, I think what you provided in that last letter doesn't even come close to justifying it or overcoming the weight of the Catholic just war criteria. I think it is a slam dunk. One can never deliberately do evil in order to prevent further evil. One must always use just means. I can understand "unintended consequences" and so forth, but when you are deliberately dropping a bomb like these were, you know what is going to happen, and many thousands of women and children who had nothing directly to do with the Japanese war effort were slaughtered. This is immoral and unjustifiable. Period. I think it is even in natural law, before you even get to Catholic moral theology, developed over 20 centuries.

Readers should bear in mind that Dave claimed his position was a "slam dunk" but then later on chose to not interact with the arguments I set forth countenancing an opposing view to his. This strongly indicated to me from the get-go that he had no interest in an actual dialogue but instead wanted to turn what was a private discussion on a very theologically complex subject matter into a public spectacle.

Is this blunt? Sure, as usually in my writings, for better or ill. I'm a straight shooter, and always will be. Overstated or "undiplomatic" or insufficiently nuanced and qualified? Perhaps; indeed quite possibly. But that's why I am doing this present paper, which shall explore (with attempted fairness, if not total objectivity) both sides of the moral debate over this tragic event (all sides at least agree that it is tragic).

Remember readers, Dave has now admitted that he did not have any interest in many of the arguments I set down; ergo his claim to want to "explore...both sides of the moral debate" was...well, I will let you draw your own conclusions there.

Just before my vacation, I wrote to the same group, primarily addressing Shawn:

Obviously, you and Greg have studied this particular matter in far more depth than I have. So I eagerly look forward to considering your arguments carefully when I return. If you can convince me, great. I would like to think that the act was a morally justified one. Thus far, from what I know (and admittedly there is a lot more to learn about the whole thing) I maintain my present opinion. But I love a challenge; I love to discuss ethical issues such as this one, and I'll never impugn your motives in such a discussion.

Of course subsequent to this he did precisely what he has claimed he would never do, again the readers can draw their own conclusions here.

The last clause of the last sentence above is key, and I wish to emphasize it at the outset of this debate among friends, who respect each other's thinking ability and integrity. In all that follows, I will not be suggesting in the least that anyone who disagrees with my own position on this matter (whatever it is, or turns out to be) is any less of a good or orthodox or moral Catholic, or any less concerned with the seriousness of the ethical question and the larger question of just war and the tragic necessity of war at times, or some kind of simplistic, sheeplike, unthinking fool, as has been the unfortunate tendency of some Internet webmasters who especially fancy themselves "peacemakers," while spending tons of energy condemning those who take a different view on vexing issues, in good faith and good conscience, all the while as endlessly touting their own alleged moral superiority and impeccable Catholic pedigree.

And of course the person Dave refers to in the above paragraph as a so-called "peacemaker" is one he has now supposedly "reconciled" with while he has made a complete 180 on the rest of what he noted in the above paragraph. The readers should consider those facts in light of what is presented below to get the full measure of whom we are dealing with here but to avoid getting offtrack, back to what Dave purports to be arguments for his view.

All of us in this particular group of blogging Catholics favor the war in Iraq and consider it just, both in theory and (for the most part) in practice. That's why it is interesting that we don't have the same moral-political agreement concerning the bombings of Japan. Greg and Shawn believe these acts of war to be morally justified: if not entirely, then at least partially, or to a large extent, by the Catholic just war criteria. Christopher Blosser and I do not.

Frankly, this is not an accurate representation of Chris Blosser's views. Chris admitted initially that he shared Dave's view but that was before the material I wrote on this matter pointing out the myriad of problems with Dave's view in a variety of ways. Since that time, Chris has given every impression of taking an agnostic approach to this issue but he can speak for himself; ergo ask him how he views these things if you like.{3}

Many prominent Catholics, and many in the apologetics movement (of which I am a part) oppose the bombings as immoral and unjustifiable.

This is true. I would argue however that it is because those persons are not properly considering all the factors involved in making a proper evaluation of this matter which is why they have the views that they do. That should hardly surprise since this issue has many layers to it (including historical and military factors) that Catholic apologists as a rule are ill-equipped to discuss. Apologists do not deal with issues of this kind of complexity very often and usually when they do, they muff it up really badly due to oversimplification of more complex factors and the latter's accompanying nuances. But nonetheless, what Dave noted above was (and is) accurate.

For what it's worth (I'm not appealing to the ad populum fallacy; simply stating what I believe to be a fact), I believe Greg and Shawn's position to be a minority view among orthodox Catholics.

Again, this is correct and there is no fallacy being committed in pointing out a fact as Dave does in the above sentence. However, when you consider how few Catholics (or people in general) get beyond the surface soundbytes on these kinds of issues, it makes sense that only a minority of them do. There is also quite possibly some in that minority who take their positions based on some kind of jingoistic nationalism or "my country does no wrong" also; however neither Greg nor I have done this.

That doesn't make it automatically wrong; it has to be discussed on its merits or demerits.

Which Dave has yet to do and has since admitted that he did not want to do in the first place mind you. (And yes, I have on file him admitting to exactly this in private.)

I shall survey the two opinions pro and con, debate and challenge a few particulars, and allow readers to reach their own conclusions, as is my wont and desire. I'm no expert on this, which is why I am citing many others who are much more so, and better placed to authoritatively comment on this issue. I will learn as I go along, and develop and cultivate my position, or change my mind, as the case may be (and I am including the discussion which will follow this paper, in the BlogBack).

Readers who followed the threads Greg and I wrote are aware that we exposed as sham sources some of the very sources Dave appealed to in this paper and subsequent to it. And this was done not only publicly but also privately as well; ergo Dave's appeal to them again would appear to show a lack of interest in discussing these matters equitably as he previously claimed to want to do.

Shawn's words will be in blue; Greg's in red; prominent military historian Victor Davis Hanson's in green. Karl Keating's words will be in purple, and Mark Shea's in brown. Other citations will be indented (the colored ones will not be).

Shawn McElhinney Lays Out the Catholic "Pro" Case

In a series of blog posts ( one / two / three / four / five / summary link post containing all articles), Shawn has vigorously asserted his position that the bombings were at least morally neutral, not immoral in and of themselves. Extensive excerpts follow (As throughout this paper, I won't use ellipses for major breaks; these will be indicated by new paragraphs):

Of course I was not through posting material at that point but it matters not since Dave will show a lack of attention paid to what I had written to that point with what follows from here.{4}

[Snipping of quotations from one of my weblog posts as quoted by Dave]

For readers to get a better taste for what I wrote than the snippets Dave quoted, go HERE to the thread itself and read what was written. Dave also quoted a snippet from this thread also. At that point, he quotes some from a post written by Greg Mockeridge:

Greg Mockeridge Makes His Case for the Moral Use of the Atomic Bomb in Japan

From his article: The A-Bomb Drops on Japan: Is There Room In the Catholic Conscience to Support Truman's Decision? :

[Snipping the quotes from Greg's article]

See the link above to read what Greg wrote rather than mere snippets from it.

Greg also prominently links to Victor Davis Hanson, military historian, conservative Democrat, senior fellow at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University, and frequent contributor to National Review, describing one of his articles as a "smackdown on the revisionist historians and hand wringers." We shall turn to this article next.

Notice that Dave is not really interacting with any of what he is quoting. For that reason, he cannot be said to be truly engaging in dialogue as the latter requires both listening as well as assimilation of argument and interaction with arguments. On all three points, Dave came up well short of the mark. Moving on though...

Victor Davis Hanson's "Smackdown on the Revisionist Historians"

First of all, it should be noted for the record that Hanson is not a Catholic. It took some doing to discover this but I was curious enough to pursue it.

Of course Dave quotes from a few sources who also are not Catholic (read: Zinn and Raico) but he does not seem to want to point that out to his readers. In light of how he made Hanson's non-Catholic status a major point in his paper at this point, the lack of equal treatment for certain sources he would reference to try and countenance a view different from that which Hanson made is very troubling to say the least. But I digress.

At length I found a statement of Hanson himself: "I am a 48-year-old Swedish-American Protestant . . . " Most Swedes (and their American offspring) who are religious at all are Lutherans, and that would be my best guess here, unless Hanson converted to something else later on. That doesn't mean that Hanson could not accurately portray or reflect in his own opinions, classical Catholic just war theory (I did so myself in my former Protestant days), but it is just a tad bit strange that a Catholic has to appeal to a Protestant in order to uphold primarily Catholic just war thought and ethical considerations.

Notice dear reader that Dave tries to hold Greg's sources to a standard that he nowhere imposes on his own!!! But that is not all for you see: Dave made the mistake of claiming that Greg was "appeal[ing] to [Hanson]" when Greg was merely referencing Hanson to substantiate arguments he had already set down. This is a far cry from appealing to a source, gentle readers...

In fact, in the article cited by Greg: 60 Years Later: Considering Hiroshima , Hanson never once uses the terms just war or Christian or Catholic.

The purpose of the article Greg cited was to touch on the options available at the time for dealing with the Japanese enemy. It was an article for National Review and Dave oughta know that when you publish articles there are word and space limits to consider. It is not even remotely possible to cover the complexities of the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombings in a mere sixteen very short paragraphs nor could Hanson have been intending an indepth dissertation with the article anyway. But notice Dave trying to make the article do more than it was obviously intended to (or capable of) doing in the space allotted for it.

And when he uses the word morality in reference to the bombings, it is in a sense decidedly non-Catholic, and arguably relativistic, merely utilitarian, and an instance of situation ethics (I shall cite that portion below, in a separate section).

Notice that Dave now attempts to put an unfavourable interpretation onto the views of Hanson in the above paragraph without warrant for doing so (aka an uncharitable interpretation). But granting him his premise anyway, Dave seems to presume without adequant warrant to do so that one would have to argue this from a relativistic, merely utilitarian and as an instance of situation ethics.

Furthermore, he strongly implies that the bombings were indiscriminate actions in precisely the sense that Catholic teaching clearly condemns. So this is a strange source for Greg to cite in favor of his outwardly Catholic position.

Of course readers who look at the two threads will notice that Greg did not cite Hanson's article in his piece from 8/19 at all!!! It was instead a link posted on 8/07 dealing with the subject of historical revisionism. Dave's attempt to posit the Hanson article as one that Greg "cite[d] in favor of his outwardly Catholic position" only points out that Dave did not read Greg's piece very closely at all. Furthermore, the statement implies that Greg's position is not a Catholic one but Greg can deal with that if he wants to.

Hanson's argument does not (at least not prima facie) proceed from Catholic or even general Christian principles, it seems to me. Could it be tied into the "double effect" principle? Possibly, but I am not yet persuasded of it.

See my previous comments. It also bears noting that Dave proved later on that he had no idea what double effect actually was...arguing it in a normative and subjectivist fashion which was contrary to its intention as a non-normative and objective point of reference for moral and ethical analysis.{5} But that is a subject for another time perhaps.

[Snipping the Hanson article excerpts since Dave was quoting a source Greg did not use in his blog post from 8/19]

The Horrors of World War II and the Dangers of the Benefit of Hindsight

Dr. Art Sippo wrote (as recorded on Shawn's blog) -- I agree with what he states:

[Snipping the quotes from Art's article]

I would suggest ignoring Dave's snippets and instead reading the entire email Art sent me HERE.

Likewise, George Weigel describes some horrific details of Japanese resolve, citing William Manchester's book, Goodbye, Darkness:

"After the great banzai obliterated their army, depriving them of their protectors, they decided that they, too, must die. Most of them gathered on two heights now called Banzai Cliff, an eighty-foot bluff overlooking the water, and, just inland from there. Suicide Cliff, which soars one thousand feet above clumps of jagged rocks.

Saito [the Japanese commander] had left a last message to his civilian countrymen, too: "As it says in the Senjinkum [Ethics], 'I will never suffer the disgrace of being taken alive,' and I will offer up the courage of my soul and calmly rejoice in living by the eternal principle." In a final, cruel twist of the knife he reminded mothers of the oyaku-shinju (the parents-children death pact). Mothers, fathers, daughters, sons— all had to die. Therefore children were encouraged to form circles and toss live grenades from hand to hand until they exploded. Their parents dashed babies' brains out on limestone slabs and then, clutching the tiny corpses, shouted "Tenno! Haiki! Banzai!" (Long live the Emperor!) as they jumped off the brinks of the cliffs and soared downward. Below Banzai Cliff U.S. destroyers trying to rescue those who had survived the plunge found they could not steer among so many bodies; human flesh was jamming their screws. .. . But Suicide Cliff was worse. A brief strip of jerky newsreel footage, preserved in an island museum, shows a distraught mother, her baby in her arms, darting back and forth along the edge of the precipice, trying to make up her mind. Finally she leaps, she and her child joining the ghastly carnage below. There were no survivors at the base of Suicide Cliff.

. . . These deliberately sanguinary tactics help explain the carnage that ensued in February 1945 on Iwo Jima, an island only 5 miles by 2.5 miles in size. There, out of a Japanese garrison of 20,000, only 200 were captured alive, at the cost of 6,000 American deaths and 25,000 wounded Marines. Then there was the invasion of Okinawa in April 1945, the last stepping-stone before the Japanese home islands: 100,000 Japanese soldiers died there, as did 150,000 Okinawan civilians, while the U.S. Marines and Army suffered 75,000 casualties before the island was secured in mid-June.

Was Use of the A-Bomb Understood as Indiscriminate Killing to More or Less Extent?

Dr. Art Sippo in the above-mentioned article appears to at least partially affirm this (emphasis added):

[Snipping the quotes Dave supplied]

Again, read Art's whole thread rather than just snippets from it.

In my opinion, much of the present argument will hinge upon the necessity for the proponents to prove that there is a crucial moral / tactical distinction between Hiroshima and Nagasaki vs. Dresden and Tokyo, which even many of the proponents of the former acts condemn, along with those of us who decry all four instances as objectively immoral and inconsistent with time-honored Catholic moral-ethical principles.

Dave by all appearances did not absorb what I had written and therefore makes an unnecessary stipulation here. Furthermore, he frames the locus of the argument in a way that presumes apriori what he says rather than seeking to demonstrate his assertion first. For those interested in logical fallacies, this is what is called questionable premise.

Catholics Who Oppose the Bombings as Immoral

Here is where Dave moves into pure argumentum ad vericundiam citing names of people and opinions as arguments.

Karl Keating, in his e-letter of 3 August 2004 , writes:

Many justify the bombings of Nagasaki and Hiroshima by saying the abrupt end to the war saved as many as a million American lives that would have been lost had Japan been invaded. I don't know where the figure of one million came from. My understanding is that the War Department estimated a maximum of 46,000 casualties in an invasion. That was a worst-case scenario, meaning the likely number of casualties would have been far lower.

Some commentators have argued that no invasion was needed at all, since Japan no longer had an air force or navy and had no domestic source of oil for its industries. A blockade would have resulted in the Japanese war machine and economy grinding to a halt. The war thus could have ended without an invasion, though the end probably would have come long after the summer of 1945.

Be that as it may, what concerns me is the attitude, so prevalent among political conservatives (most of whom are religious conservatives), that there are no limits in defensive warfare: If the other guys started the fight, they deserve whatever they get. In a defensive war it is not a matter of "My country right or wrong" but of "My country can do no wrong," which is an odd thing coming from conservatives who, on domestic matters, can be highly critical of their government's moral failings (as regards abortion or homosexuality, say).

To achieve a good, you may not perform a sin. To provide your family financial security, you may not rob a bank. To protect your wife's health, you may not abort the child she is carrying. And to defeat an enemy in war, you may not violate just war principles. But we did--and more than once, sad to say.

The atomic bombings of Nagasaki and Hiroshima, like the fire bombings of Dresden and other German cities, cannot be squared with Catholic moral principles because the bombings deliberately targeted non-combatants. The evil done by our enemies did not exonerate us from the moral law. Their evils did not provide us justification for evils of our own. Being a Christian in peacetime is difficult; it is more difficult, but even more necessary, in wartime.

Fat Man exploded directly above the Catholic cathedral in Nagasaki. The city was the historical center of Catholicism in Japan and contained about a tenth of the entire Catholic population. The cathedral was filled with worshipers who had gathered to pray for a speedy and just end to the war. It is said their prayers included a petition to offer themselves, if God so willed it, in reparation for the evils perpetrated by their country.

Of course Dave does not tell his readers that I had already dealt in detail with the above arguments in my posting from 8/17 -particularly the 46,000 stat which was based on fraudulent War Department calculations (along with a naivete of both the will and capabilities of the Japanese) which did not manifest themselves in reality. Ergo, for Dave to appeal to them here as he did unfortunately shows that he was not interested in dialogue on this issue.

The Catholic Answer Guide, Just War Doctrine (presumably agreeable to Karl Keating), expands this reasoning a bit:

The treatment of non-hostile individuals in wartime is not the only consideration involved in the just prosecution of a war. The existence of weapons of mass destruction poses special moral challenges. In this regard the Catechism states:

Every act of war directed to the indiscriminate destruction of whole cities or vast areas with their inhabitants is a crime against God and man, which merits firm and unequivocal condemnation. A danger of modern warfare is that it provides the opportunity to those who possess modern scientific weapons -- especially atomic, biological, or chemical weapons -- to commit such crimes (CCC 2314).

Dave is now engaging in the fallacy of questionable premise once again since he presumes (without actually bothering to substantiate it) that the bombings were indiscriminate in how they were directed. This is not an acceptable way to argue.

The U.S. has not always been committed to this principle. In the Civil War, World War I, and World War II the United States violated it. Grave violations during World War II included the firebombing of Dresden and the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

Of course these are opinions given without sustaining arguments; ergo to rely on the opinions or conclusions of an authority rather than examine the arguments they made to arrive at those opinions and conclusions is a textbook example of argumentum ad vericundiam as I noted on this weblog some time ago and on more than one occasion. But notice Dave appeal to a source which gives opinions as if that constitutes a valid argument. Moving on...

Those were not attacks designed to destroy targets of military value while sparing civilian populations. They were deliberate attempts to put pressure on enemy governments by attacking non-combatants. As a result, they were grave violations of God's law, according to which, "the direct and voluntary killing of an innocent human being is always gravely immoral" (John Paul II, Evangelium Vitae 57).

I dealt in detail with the falsities in that line of argumentation in my post thread from 8/17. The writer of the above text was obviously quite ignorant of the wartime situation but rather than simply accept my assertion of it, consider some of the pertinent data which obviously was not considered by the writer of that text (whether it was Karl Keating who wrote the text or not).

It is important to recognize what this principle does and does not require. While it does require strenuous efforts to avoid harming innocents, it does not require the result of no innocents being harmed. Such a result is impossible to guarantee. Even with the smartest of smart munitions, it is not possible to ensure that no non-combatants will be harmed in wartime. As tragic as it is, collateral damage to innocents is an inescapable consequence of war. Catholic theology recognizes this. It applies to such situations a well-established principle known as the law of double-effect. According to this law it is permissible to undertake an action which has two effects, one good and one evil, provided that certain conditions are met.

This much of what is noted is true.

Although these conditions can be formulated in different ways, they may be enumerated as follows: (1) the action itself must not be intrinsically evil; (2) the evil effect must not be an end in itself or a means to accomplishing the good effect (in other words, it must be a foreseen but undesired side-effect of the action); and (3) the evil effect must not outweigh the good effect. If these three conditions are met, the action may be taken in spite of the foreseen damage it will do.

There is more to it than those points including some key elements not taken into consideration above. To be blunt about it, the Catholic Answers guide poorly framed the conditions for double effect to begin with leaving out a couple of important distinctions. The proper criteria for double effect (taken from the 1967 New Catholic Encyclopedia) is as follows:

---The act itself must be morally good or at least indifferent.

---The agent may not positively will the bad effect but may merely permit it. If he could attain the good effect without the bad effect, he should do so. The bad effect is sometimes said to be indirectly voluntary.

---The good effect must flow from the action at least as immediately (in the order of causality, though not necessarily in the order of time) as the bad effect. In other words, the good effect must be produced directly by the action, not by the bad effect. Otherwise, the agent would be using a bad means to a good end, which is never allowed.

---The good effect must be sufficiently desirable to compensate for the allowing of the bad effect. In forming this decision many factors must be weighed and compared, with care and prudence proportionate to the importance of the case. Thus, an effect that benefits or harms society generally has more weight than one that affects only an individual; an effect sure to occur deserves greater consideration than one that is only probable; an effect of a moral nature has greater importance than one that deals only with material things. [Excerpt from Rerum Novarum (circa August 26, 2005 and December 30, 2004)

Having noted those points, let us consider what else that source has to say on the matter...

The law of double-effect would not have applied to the cases of Dresden, Hiroshima, and Nagasaki.

It is absolutely disgraceful that this text puts Dresden, Hiroshima, and Nagasaki in the same category when there are key differences to each of them. But then again, Catholic Answers has never impressed me with their ability to deal with more complex subject matter anyway so this does not surprise me. And if Dave thinks citing this source is some kind of boon for his position, he was (and is) mistaken.

In these situations though the act (dropping bombs) was not intrinsically evil and though it is arguable that in the long run more lives were saved than lost, the second condition was violated because the death of innocents was used as a means to achieve the good of the war's end.

This is where the argumentation of the source goes astray. First of all, it is not only arguable that more lives were saved than lost, it is an indisputable fact as anyone with a smidgen of knowledge of the war situation in Japan during WWII is well aware. Secondly, the idea that there were all of these "innocents" in Japan and that their deaths was a means to achieve the end (rather than a derivative effect of the action taken) is also misguided. All that is required is for the good effect to be sufficiently desirable to compensate for the allowing of the bad effect. And with most of the populace in Japan under conscription, there were very few who could be called "innocent" and even with those that were who died it does not get in the way of a proper understanding of the principle of double effect.

[Small snip]

Mark Shea concurs ("If Killing You is Wrong, I Don't Wanna Be Right" ):

I like Mark but he has not shown any evidence that he understands this issue any better than the crowd at Catholic Answers does. Nonetheless...

In discussion of the nuclear annihilation of Hiroshima and Nagasaki that Keating's letter provoked on my blog, somebody wrote: "If I was never forgiven for this by my God, I believe I can honestly say I would sacrifice my own soul so that Japanese deaths (as well as American) could be reduced."

What strikes me about a statement like this is how much it reminds me of Milton's Satan. There are certain temptations to wickedness which present themselves under the guise Noble Self-Sacrifice. Different flavors of human see different forms of (mark this) grave rebellion against a Holy God under the delusional appearance of courage and selflessness. But the underlying temptation is always the same: We persuade ourselves that we are being, not rebels and sinners, but heroes.

Leftist rebellion against God, obsessed as it is with "pelvic issues" often takes the route of cloaking its rebellion in the garb of Forbidden Love Standing Against Authority: ("If loving you is wrong, I don't wanna be right")--the theme song of every degenerate, stalker, pedophile, and adulterer in the world. It sings brave, self-glorifying songs about defending Sexual Freedom and Choice while it pursues the death of innocents for a Higher Cause. To normal, healthy people the prideful self-delusion is obvious. These people are not heroes. They simply want what they want and God can go to hell for all they care if he stands in the way of their desires. But to themselves, they appear as Great Romantic Heroes, such is sin's power to blind.

But the problem of prideful self-delusion is not simply found on the Left. To those on the Right, the temptation to cast God as Perverse Authority Opposed to the True Good tends to happen more in the arena of Anger than in the arena of Lust.

So it's not just the Left in the Church that often seems to sees God's justice as a system of rules which must be sometimes broken by Heroes who must defy the Old Man Upstairs for the sake of their Own Heroic Vision of the Good. The Right can also fall into this deadly trap. And in making that choice, they can even become what they hate: champions of the ruthless murder of innocents for a Higher Cause. The One Ring can corrupt even (and perhaps especially) the Bold Men of Gondor.

There is no denying that what Mark notes about the temptations of all sides of an issue to cut corners in the interest of a kind of utilitarianist approach to solving problems. However, that admission does not in any way detract from the arguments I and others have made on these matters. Notice that Dave cites opinions and conclusions from others as if these are viable arguments. Once again argumentum ad vericundiam is present in Dave's work for all to see along with context-switching and questionable premise (the latter in Dave's presumption that what Mark wrote on this matter actually applies to how Greg and I argued for our positions on the subject in question). But there is more...

Catholic apologist Jimmy Akin also agrees:

. . . regardless of what one may think of particular instances in the U.S.'s record (which is not perfect; the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki were wrong), it remains the case that the U.S. is (d) a stable nation (not likely to become a "failed state" like Somalia) that (c) has a large number of citizens today who will not tolerate leaders who use such weapons indiscriminately (as at Hiroshima and Nagasaki) and (b) will not pass them to terrorists or (a) proliferate them to unstable states.

So Jimmy thinks the bombings were wrong. He is of course entitled to that opinion but his opinion doth not an argument against them make.

So does Chris Burgwald:

. . . the standard defense for dropping the bomb is this: if we hadn't done so, we would have lost perhaps a million men in an invasion of the Japanese home islands, and many more Japanese would have died in that fighting than did in the dropping of the two nukes. This is the basic form of the argument by the pilot of the Enola Gay mentioned above.

response: so what?

The fact of the matter is this: if we consider the moral act of dropping the atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki objectively -- i.e. apart from the subjective factors involved for those who ordered & carried out the attacks (more on this below) -- there is no doubt that it was an immoral act, in that thousands of innocent non-combatants were deliberately killed (as is well-known, neither city had any real military value). I don't care that it (may have) saved lives, both American and Japanese. On the objective level, there is no moral ground for deliberately killing an innocent non-combatant. (Here it comes...) the ends never justify the means. . . . It is in war especially that moral considerations must be made, to ensure that our cause and how we carry it out is just.

I want to make it clear that I am not passing judgment on Truman, the pilots, or anyone else involved in ordering & carrying out the strikes: as they say, war is hell, and the pressure the situation brought to bear on all of them greatly reduces their culpability, in my opinion. As I have noted, my argument focuses solely on the objective level -- whether or not it was (and is) right to nuke a civil population for any reason.

I know that many of you -- including fellow Christians -- may disagree with me. Great. I'd love to receive emails or see another blogger engage me on this issue, because it's possible that I've neglected something. But at this point, I don't see how anyone who values innocent human life could endorse dropping The Bomb on Japan.

See my previous comments and insert Chris' name in place of Jimmy's. Chris is dead wrong about the cities not having "real military value" though I could see if he thought that how he could arrive at the position he holds. Nonetheless, it is virtually certain that neither he nor Jimmy have looked into this issue with the depth that I have and besides...what needs to be considered here are the arguments for a position not the opinions or conclusions of various persons. And argument-wise, there are plenty of problems with what Chris set down...the one I noted above being the most obvious of the problems.

("WWII and the Bomb")

It also bears noting that Chris wrote that three plus years prior to the squabble with Dave and it is quite possible that he would modify his views in light of some of the arguments I have set down on the matter. (Certainly he admitted to being open to such a possibility which I have no reason to doubt him on.)

Mark's argument is basically this: dropping the bombs was justified because it saved more innocent lives than it killed and it ended a war that caused untold suffering (Mark also points to the fighting "character" of the Japanese).

While I understand Mark [Sullivan]'s argument, I have to disagree. As Catholics who uphold the unique dignity of every human being -- even of those against whom we may have to fight -- we cannot perform a numerical analysis to determine the pluses and minuses of a particular action in order to decide how to act. Although I'm sure that it was not at all his intention, Mark's argument sounds dangerously like that of ethical utilitarians, who argue that the best course of action is that which maximizes pleasure (or money, or power, or whatever standard you choose) and minimizes pain & suffering, regardless of the nature of the act itself.

Such a view clearly runs against Catholic moral thought. Some acts are -- in and of themselves -- immoral, and no circumstances can mitigate that reality. Intentionally killing thousands of civilians is such an act . . .

("More on the Bomb")

See my previous comments. I have no idea how Mark Sullivan argued his position and it is certainly possible he did so in a utilitarian fashion (unwittingly or otherwise). I however did not do this nor did Greg!!! For that reason, Dave's posting of this part of the text and appearing in his doing so to imply that we did was another example of him not paying attention to what we actually did write. But then again, Dave already has admitted to this privately and I have those notes on file though I am not going to quote his words on the matter publicly of course.

Lane Core concurs with the above:

Notice the endless appeal to the opinions and/or conclusions of others. Now if Dave wanted to take the arguments these people made and make them his own, that would be one thing. However, thus far he has shown no indication of actually doing that. Nothing he has noted thus far in the arguments of others he has posted either has not been dealt with by yours truly or others or would be too much trouble in the case of the ones we did not deal with. But at least these parties have made arguments of their own however flimsy and/or not pertaining to the matter at hand that they happen to be. Dave thus far has not done this except in the case of the Hanson piece. But since those arguments did not interact with what Greg actually wrote, they need not even be given the time of day by me or anyone else interested in the original subject under discussion.

I agree with this analysis. Especially since (1) I cannot believe that other potential targets, entirely of the Japanese military, were not available and (2) I cannot believe that destruction of Japanese military targets by atomic weapons would not have had the same effect, though perhaps not in such a short time. I do not mean, by this, to lend aid and comfort to America Haters who beat their breasts (and try to beat us over the head) at the beginning of August every year.

Fr. Jim Tucker provides further argumentation along these lines:

The reader should know up front that this is the same Fr. Jim Tucker who made the following public assertion on the bombings on his weblog:

That is why the Vatican of Pope Pius XII condemned these actions as crimes against God and man. And Pius XII was certainly no push-over liberal.

Greg Mockeridge told me months ago that he sent Fr. Jim some private emails requesting that he substantiate the assertion of papal condemnation with a source. Thus far, Fr. Jim has not done that. Furthermore, Dave omitted adding that part of the text in his quote and he omitted putting in ellipses to show that part of the quote was being removed so here is what Dave quoted with that part of the text inserted in blue font:

Today is not only the feast of Edith Stein, it is also the 60th anniversary of the atom bombing of Nagasaki. We patriotic Americans aren't supposed to question the morality of what our government did in that war, but we're going to do it anyway. When the bombs were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, tens of thousands of lives of men, women, and children were snuffed out in a single instant, and over a quarter of a million would eventually die of the effects. For centuries, Catholic morality has taught us that it is intrinsically evil to target a civilian population and to resort to indiscriminate killing and destruction, which is exactly what happened in both the atom bombings.That is why the Vatican of Pope Pius XII condemned these actions as crimes against God and man. And Pius XII was certainly no push-over liberal.

It's important for us to consider this and come to terms with it -- not because we should feel guilty. We shouldn't feel guilty about Hiroshima and Nagasaki, any more than today's Germans should feel guilty about the Holocaust. We didn't do it, but we are under a moral obligation to form our consciences so that this sort of thing will never happen again. And it's not just about atom bombs: the moral structure of this issue touches all sorts of other cases that abound in today's world. Our bedrock principle is this: we may never commit an intrinsically evil act, for whatever reason, however good that reason might be. So, even though it's good that the war ended quickly after the bombings, and it's good that our soldiers were spared a bloody invasion of Japan, those good ends can never excuse using immoral means to achieve that end.

Nagasaki is also connected to another of the saints of World War II, St Maximilian Kolbe, a Polish priest killed by the Nazis at Auschwitz. Most people don't realize that Nagasaki was the one place in Japan that had a strong Christian presence. Nagasaki was one of the chief places that the crucifixions of the Japanese martyrs had taken place centuries before. It was also at Nagasaki that St Maximilian Kolbe went to build one of his "Cities of the Immaculata." So, when Harry Truman's atom bomb fell on Nagasaki sixty years ago today, many of the victims burned to ashes and melted away were not just fellow human beings, but fellow Roman Catholics.

If Dave wants to cite as one of his sources someone who makes such unsubstantiated statements and then does not substantiate them in the same forum when challenged to do so, all I will say on that is this: it is not the way someone interested in authentic dialogue conducts themselves. 

Furthermore, many of these Catholics that Dave is citing are obviously emotionally attached to this issue in light of the number of Catholics who died in the Nagasaki blast. For that reason, one could perhaps argue that they are allowing a bit of what is called provincialism to cloud their judgment on the matter at hand. And while the latter is not always an argumentation fallacy, it often is and thus that kind of mentality needs to be carefully held in check lest it cause those who have it to lose a proper sense of perspective.

Furthermore, Dave does not reveal to his readers that Karl Keating's wife is Japanese; ergo, one could ask the question if he can detach himself from that significantly enough to write on this issue equitably. However, since the quality of Karl's argumentation is so weak and based on discredited assertions, I saw no need to bring that up. Despite that, I note it here because like the Hanson article from earlier and the careful snipping from Fr. Tucker's text, there is a manifested failure to disclose certain biases that some of his sources may have which could unduly colour their judgment. But those will be dealt with as they come up in the rest of this posting.

Cardinal Alfredo Ottaviani wrote in 1947:

Alfredo Ottaviani was not a cardinal in 1947.

The extent of the damage done to national assets by aerial warfare, and the dreadful weapons that have been introduced of late, is so great that it leaves both vanquished and victor the poorer for years after.

Innocent people, too, are liable to great injury from the weapons in current use: hatred is on that account excited above measure; extremely harsh reprisals are provoked; wars result which flaunt every provision of the jus gentium, and are marked by a savagery greater than ever. And what of the period immediately after a war? Does not it also provide an obvious pointer to the enormous and irreparable damage which war, the breeding place of hate and hurt, must do to the morals and manners of nations?

These considerations, and many others which might be adduced besides, show that modern wars can never fulfil those conditions which (as we stated earlier on in this essay) govern - theoretically - a just and lawful war. Moreover, no conceivable cause could ever be sufficient justification for the evils, the slaughter, the destruction, the moral and religious upheavals which war today entails.

Of course Dave does not point out that he is taking the text out of the context of Ottaviani's writing. Here is the text Dave draws from with the parts he omits quoting in blue font:

At the [First] Vatican Council the Fathers intimated to the Pope their desire that some definite statement be drawn up which might induce men to abandon warfare altogether or at least induce them to conduct their wars according to humanitarian principles. The salvation of certain Christian peoples was the chief cause of their concern; not simply because these peoples were then in the throes of war but "rather because of the horrible disaster" with which they were afflicted as a result of war. War, they were gravely troubled to note, was the occasion of disasters not the least of which, a lowering of moral standards, accompanied and persisted after war, and made shipwreck of the faith of so many souls. We in this century have even further cause for concern:

On account of the great development of communication in modern times and the desire on the part of nations to extend their interests to all parts of the world, excuses for war are now all too frequent.

The disasters which worried the Fathers at the Vatican Council now affect not only soldiers and armies at war but also entire peoples.

The extent of the damage done to national assets by aerial warfare, and the dreadful weapons that have been introduced of late, is so great that it leaves both vanquished and victor the poorer for years after.

Innocent people, too, are liable to great injury from the weapons in current use: hatred is on that account excited above measure; extremely harsh reprisals are provoked; wars result which flaunt every provision of the jus gentium, and are marked by a savagery greater than ever. And what of the period immediately after a war? Does not it also provide an obvious pointer to the enormous and irreparable damage which war, the breeding place of hate and hurt, must do to the morals and manners of nations?

In these days, when the world itself has become seemingly shrunken and straitened, the bonds between the nations of the world are so close and exigent that almost the whole world becomes involved once war is declared.

A regime may be under the impression that it can engage in a just war with hope of success; but in fact secret weapons can be prepared to such effect nowadays that they, being unforeseen, can upset and utterly thwart all calculations.

These considerations, and many others which might be adduced besides, show that modern wars can never fulfil those conditions which (as we stated earlier on in this essay) govern - theoretically - a just and lawful war. Moreover, no conceivable cause could ever be sufficient justification for the evils, the slaughter, the destruction, the moral and religious upheavals which war today entails.

In practice, then, a declaration of war will never be justifiable. A defensive war even should never be undertaken unless a legitimate authority, with whom the decision rests, shall have both certainty of success and very solid proofs that the good accruing to the nation from the war will more than outweigh the untold evils which it will bring on the nation itself, and on the world in general.

Otherwise the government of peoples would be no better than the reign of universal disaster, which, as the recent war has shown, will claim its victims more from the civilian population than from the combatant troops. In what way then shall international crises be dealt with on future occasions? "Discussion and force", says Cicero, "are the main ways of settling quarrels, the former of which is peculiar to man, the latter to brute beasts". The former therefore is ever to be preferred; the interests of peace must be our chief concern ever - and it is not the forming of armies but the formation of minds which will best secure this. [Alfredo Ottaviani: The Future of Offensive War (circa 1947)]

Now Dave omits these parts because he is only interested in noting what he can from the source for his own agenda. But to examine the context of Ottaviani's text, he was opposed to all modern warfare period. Dave however believes WWII was a just war if memory serves but he quotes Ottaviani in a way that does not reveal that Ottaviani does not appear to agree with him on that point...presumably banking on his post being so long that no one would bother to fact check it. That is perhaps a good gamble to try with a lot of people but not with me. He then hedges his bet with the following note appended to the bottom of the parts he cites in slightly smaller font:

[I would argue that current-day technology with non-nuclear precision, "surgical" strikes, smart bombs, etc. make just war conditions far easier to fulfill than 60 years ago (indeed I believe that the criteria are fully met in the Iraqi War); but one cannot anachronistically project today's weapons back to 1945; the atomic bombings as they were carried out remain unjustifiable by catholic moral standards]

Notice again that Dave makes an assertion about the bombings but he does not sustain it by an actual argument. He instead reiterates it over and over as if it is self-evident (when in reality it is anything but that). I noted this to Dave more than once in private (albeit not with that analogy) but apparently he still does not get it. Here are a couple examples which could be noted on the matter for the record:

Nice try Dave but again, you failed to interact with all but one of my arguments at all. Most of what you wrote was not even an argument but instead a case of "I disagree and X agrees with me" which is something that no one who respects logic and reason would take seriously as a legitimate response. Either that or you made a bunch of statements in response and treated the statements as if they were credible counter-arguments when they were not. Too much of your stuff followed one of those patterns except for (I must admit it) the response you made to the double effect thread. You did make actual arguments in that thread albeit context-switched ones[...] but that is a subject for another time if you like. I cannot deny that you sought to make an argument in those threads because that would be dishonest of me. But I can say that about the other points I raised because it is true and I could demonstrate it from what you wrote previously. [Excerpt from an Email Correspondence With Dave Armstrong and Some Others (circa January 12, 2006)]

And again:

Dave, if you are arguing as you did against a position taken by someone else (particularly one you claim is a "slam dunk" and "against Catholic principles") and you oppose the sound argumentation countenancing an opposing view with evasion and compilation approaches, you have established nothing. Again, citing the opinions and conclusions of others without their arguments (so that the latter could be interacted with) is argumentum ad vericundiam no matter how you slice it. I covered this stuff eighteen months ago in a weblog posting and revisited it during the Hand episode early on because Stephen was doing it in spades. Strangely enough, you appear to have recognized it then but now you are not...

Again Dave, I dealt with [argumentum ad vericundiam] above. You can claim that what you did was not what it was but without proving that there is a distinction with a difference first, it is one giant question-begging enterprise. And begging the question btw is an argumentation fallacy. Oh and your assertion of falsity of premise in the paragraph above also begs the question since you are asserting something you have not proven. You cannot expect someone concerned about sound rational thought and the use of logic to accept such a matter uncritically... [Excerpts from an Email Correspondence With Dave Armstrong and Some Others (circa January 19, 2006)]

Essentially what we have here is Dave doing something he claims he is not doing.{6} But that is not all for we have another source coming up next and that is one Patrick J. Buchanan.

Pat Buchanan ("Hiroshima, Nagasaki & Christian Morality" ) notes how the decision to engage in immoral, indiscriminate bombing had already been deliberately, self-consciously adopted in the bombing of Dresden:

[Snipping the quotes from Buchanan]

Of course a book could be written about the problems Patrick J. Buchanan has understanding various facets of Christian morality. That is not to say that his stuff is without merit of course but on these kinds of matters, he has a habit of playing fast and loose with his sources -an example of which can be seen with vivid clarity in the way he egregiously misrepresented President John Quincy Adams' view of America fighting battles abroad.{7}

From here there is another blurring of distinctions between firebombing and the atomic droppings and I have no interest in dealing with them again since I did so in detail in a response to Dave's fudging of these distinctions via one of two threads I posted to this humble weblog circa September 6th. For that reason, I see nothing to be gained in interacting with Buchanan's stuff since I made a bunch of distinctions in that thread that he has not and ones which are important to understanding the difference between firebombing and the use of nuclear weapons. He also does not comprehend the true nature of the populace of Japan at the time nor did Dave take this factor into account at all whereas your host has and did:

[L]et us deal with the subject of conscription since it also changes the landscape of this issue and is a detriment to Dave’s argument:

The opposite of voluntary enrollment is conscription, carried out by the nation-state. The resulting military force lacks the moral characteristics of a volunteer army; it is essentially a machine requiring severe discipline, its cohesion being maintained by the threat of punishment. Its great problems, desertion and slackness among the troops, can be kept within bounds only by strong organization and leadership...

[Most often], conscription is part of a program of universal military service accepted by the public and carried out in cooperation with it. [Encyclopedia Brittanica Fifteenth Edition: Excerpt from War, the Theory and Conduct of Macropaedia Volume XXIX, pg. 705 (c. 1985)]

Obviously, where you have conscription taking place of giant chunks of the population, that changes the dynamic of a key point of the argument altogether. Again, this is not secret knowledge but to listen to Dave’s arguments, he evinces no familiarity whatsoever with this factor of the overall equation. [Excerpt from Rerum Novarum (circa September 6, 2005)]

Those who wonder why I very quickly tune out those who try to argue about "civilian deaths" in the bombings it is for that reason: the bulk of the populace was not civilian at all as that term is properly understood. Ergo, those who claim otherwise are not only engaging in the fallacy of context switching but they are also betraying either (i) a profound ignorance of the situation in wartime Japan (ii) a profound ignorance of the distinction between civilians and conscripted persons, or (iii) all of the above. But it also is worth noting that in Buchanan's paper (cited by Dave) he refers to the quack "scholar" Ralph Raico as a "historian" instead of as a propagandist. This was yet another example demonstrating a lack of interest in dialogue. To reference part of a note I sent to Dave and others in mid January on this matter:

Let us start with the prior notification you received about the instability and fringe views of Ralph Raico and Howard Zinn. The former was given by Greg ten days before my Hiroshima thread was posted. Here is the relevant part of that email of which you were a recipient at the time:

Speaking of stupid [people], www.LewRockwell.com/raico/raico22.html has an article by Ralph Raicio calling Truman not only a war criminal for dropping the bombs, but a war criminal worse than any Japanese general. [Greg Mockeridge: Email Circular (circa August 7, 2005)]

That was ten days before my thread was posted and nineteen days before you wrote and posted your response. [Excerpt from an Email Correspondence With Dave Armstrong and Some Others (circa January 12, 2006)]

That was the heads up that Dave got on Raico. When he pulled this same stunt with Howard Zinn, he was called out on it by not only myself but also Kevin Tierney. (I had threads on my weblog including one of the five Dave linked to in his response that pointed out the instability and unreliable revisionist approach to history taken by Zinn.) Furthermore, did Dave bother to tell his readers anything about Raico's views on Truman being a war criminal or of WWII not being a just war??? Of course not just as he did not with Buchanan in that first posting or Zinn later on in the sequence. In fact, for that matter he also did not mention that Buchanan also believes that WWII was not a just war. Dave if memory serves does think WWII was a just war; ergo leaving that part undisclosed to the readers would not give them important information on the source being cited here. And surely the readers have an interest in knowing that pertinent data if they are to make an equitable discernment of the statements made by those personages.

In other words, once again, we have Dave not telling the whole story for some reason and probably because those who did not agree with Raico and Buchanan on their assessment of WWII would be less likely to take what they say uncritically. (Not to mention Zinn and his frank admission of not only being a communist but also that he does not believe there can be any objectivity in how history is viewed.)

[Snipping Maclin Horton's gibberish about "targeting non-combatants in war" as per what I noted earlier on about conscription and also the obvious ignorance that Horton displays about the moral and ethical principle of double effect and its proper application thereof.]

George Weigel readily concedes the objective immorality of the bombings, and their clash with just war theory, while noting the limitations of the options of that terrible time (as opposed to maintaining that the actions nwere just because of the complexities of the ethics and military strategy, as Greg and Shawn and Victor Davis Hanson do):

George Weigel is a very good moral theologian but certainly he is not perfect. It would be interesting to see if he would adjust his view or consider doing so in light of the manner in which the atomic bombings conform to the principles of double effect as I have adequately demonstrated on previous occasions.

And of course just because George Weigel conceded the point Dave noted it does not mean that the point needs to be conceded. It is possible that he has not been made aware of the approach to the matter that I and others have undertaken. Either way though, in his article he does make some statements that are not substantiated and he does appear to make the common mistake of blending together the distinct approaches of dropping the atomic bombs with the firebombing campaigns. The two are not the same: the end in some respects is but the means are not nor is the formal and active human cooperation element even remotely similar. All of this was dealt with in one of the postings from September 6th so I shant reiterate what I wrote back then at this time.

Secondly, it is a profound oversimplification to state that my arguments were based merely on the complexities of the ethics and military strategy as that is but one facet of the equation only. I will not venture a guess as to why he did this as I am through giving Dave the benefit of the doubt on these matters and have been since September 6, 2005 or thereabouts.

In these circumstances, which were the real world circumstances of the time, the use of atomic weapons seems far less a deliberate atrocity than a tragic necessity.

At least Weigel gives some impression as to understanding the environment that we were facing during the war with the Japanese militants...

This is not to suggest that the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki was, or is, easily justifiable under the moral criteria of the classic just war tradition. But the moral barrier had been breached long before August 6 and August 8, 1945. So-called strategic bombing, aimed at the destruction of civilian populations, had been going on for five years; none of it met the just war in bello criteria of proportionality and discrimination. Indeed, if one measures the violation of non-combatant immunity statistically, the fire-bombing of Tokyo, Osaka, Kobe, Nagoya, and other Japanese cities was a greater breach of the just war tradition than Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

That is assuming that the atomic bombings were a breach of the just war tradition of course: a proposition I do not accept. That is also assuming that the fire-bombings are a violation of just war tradition as well. I happen to see the atomic bombings as in conformity with the just war tradition and the firebombings as not meeting that criteria. However, I am not shut off from the idea that the latter could not somehow be justified; I simply do not see how they can and that is all I will say about them for now.

That the Germans had destroyed Rotterdam, the British, Hamburg, and the British and Americans, Dresden, does not "justify" the American destruction of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. But certain moral distinctions can and should be drawn between the bombing of cities for purposes of sheer terror (Rotterdam) or revenge (Dresden), and the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, which, on the best available evidence, was undertaken with a legitimate strategic purpose in mind. That purpose was summarized succinctly by Truman biographer David McCullough: "If you want one explanation as to why Truman dropped the bomb: 'Okinawa.' It was done to stop the killing."

Yes, a distinction between the two must be made and I am glad to see Weigel making one.

The greater legitimacy of an end does not, of course, justify any possible means. But recognizing the legitimacy of the end does enable us to enter imaginatively and even sympathetically into the moral struggle over means faced by a responsible political leader confronting a brace of bad choices.

I do not completely agree with what Weigel noted in the above paragraph but at least he approaches this matter with a care that very few people seem to want to do.

It sometimes happens, these days, that a parallel is drawn between Auschwitz and Hiroshima, as two embodiments of the evil of the Second World War. But this seems wrong. What Harry Truman did in August 1945 was, strictly speaking, unjustifiable in classic moral terms. But it was understandable, and it was forgivable. What was done at Auschwitz was unjustifiable, maniacal, and, in this world's terms, unforgivable. That is a considerable moral difference.

Weigel's moral distinction between Auschwitz and Hiroshoma/Nagasaki is an important one which many people do not make.

At my parish church on the morning of August 6, 1995, we prayed God to grant "that no nuclear weapons will ever again be used." It was a petition to which all could respond with a heartfelt, "Lord, hear our prayer." Only by facing squarely the unavoidable moral dilemma confronted by President Truman will we gain a measure of the wisdom that might help us avoid similar dilemmas in the future. By reducing the decision to use atomic weapons at Hiroshima and Nagasaki to crudely political, even ideological, categories, the revisionists do a disservice not only to history but to the future, and to the cause of peace.

I concur completely with the above paragraph from George Weigel.

United States Conference of Catholic Bishops: Statement of 6 August 2004 :

[Snipping the text]

Frankly, the USCCB demonstrated their complete incompetence to discuss these matters with their disasterous 1983 Challenge of Peace document. To have followed their prescriptions on the matter there would still be detente and the propagation of the "necessity" of maintaining some sort of "mutually assured destruction" position with the Soviet Union. Furthermore, there would still be a Soviet Union since they would not have been bankrupted as President Reagan did with the arms race. In short, this is hardly a credible source to be referencing...PARTICULARLY fifty-nine years AFTER the fact and with the slew of historical revisionism that has taken place on these matters since at least the mid to late 1960's if not earlier.

Furthermore, the USCCB in their text make the mistake of equating a passage from Gaudium et Spes about the "indescriminate destruction of whole cities" as applying to the atomic bomb droppings when that very factor is highly debatable. It is in my view not debatable with firebombing campaigns and presumably the European bishops and theologians at the Council had the firebombings in mind when that text was written. Certainly it would give every indication of applying to firebombing methods but to attempt to attach it willy-nilly to the atomic bomb droppings is to engage in what can be called questionable premise if not petitio principii (begging the question). But then again, this is the same body whose inability or unwillingness to make proper distinctions on the subjects of the war in Iraq, the death penalty, and certain applications of Catholic social justice doctrines occasioned a letter of clarification from Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger (now Pope Benedict XVI) in his capacity as prefect for the Vatican's highest dicastery the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith.

Ralph Raico, a scholar at the Ludwig von Mises Institute, provides some much-needed factual information:

[Snipping Raico's bloviations]

I see no reason to entertain the nonsense of Raico since I have already demolished the more pertinent arguments he makes in either my 8/17 thread on Hiroshima (i.e. the 46,000 deaths canard, the absurd notion that Hiroshim and Nagasaki were not military targets) or subsequent threads (i.e. the idea that the Strategic Bombing Survey was anything but a propaganda arm of the Air Force whose "conclusions" were of questionable import at best). Raico may well be a member of the Ludwig von Mises Institute but to use the word "historian" or "scholar" to describe him would require the kind of stretching which Mr. Fantastic of the Fantastic Four would labour to accomplish.

Lowell Ponte, after chronicling the Christian history of Nagasaki, describes the grim reality of the bombing :

[Snipping the quotes from Lowell Ponte]

Notice that now Dave is engaging in the appeal to emotions fallacy of argumentation. For those who do not know what this is, it is a fallacy committed when someone tries to get another to accept a claim or position based on an appeal to the emotions. Obviously not all references to emotions are problematical in argumentation but when emotions are used as a key premise or tactic to downplay pertinent information, then the approach is fallacious. Dave starts this fallacy in the post we are looking at now and really hit his stride posting pictures of the bomb blasts in the days after he posted his first thread. It was at that point that I realized that dialogue with him would be impossible and thus far that assessment has been as accurate as the Gregorian calendar.

So why did Marxocratic policymakers inside Roosevelt’s and Truman’s New Deal alter military targeting decisions, commanding instead that Nagasaki – relatively insignificant as a military target – be moved into the bombardier’s crosshairs and that its Christian people be cremated alive into clicking-hot radioactive ashes by atomic bomb annihilation?

Once again, why do I even bother with such ignorant statements??? I like Lowell Ponte a lot -he is one of the few Libertarian talk show hosts who does not annoy me to no end in various ways. (He and I also agree to a reasonable degree on a lot of issues.) But on this issue, he obviously is talking out of his backside since there is no doubt that Nagasaki was a significant target as I noted in the threads from August-September of 2005. As far as whether or not Nagasaki was in the original plans for bombing, it was an alternate target or as one of the sources I cited in one of the two 9/06 threads noted:

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)]

Originally the targets were supposed to be Hiroshima and Niigata but in the case of the latter, the weather did not permit an accurate drop so the military did what in football is called "change the play at the line of scrimmage" and went with one of the alternate targets. But as I am aware of how provincialism affects a lot of Christians when approaching issues such as this one, I am as a rule sympathetic to such people of course. However, I do not accept this when it comes to discussing issues where personal feelings should as much as possible be left at the door.

We see this problem a lot today with judges who rule according to their own personal whims rather than in accordance with the rule of law; ergo I find it interesting that many people who would oppose this kind of judicial activism do the exact same thing with certain issues themselves. Consistency requires the same approach across the board after all. But enough on that point for now and onto the next one.

Kai Bird and Martin Sherwin, Co-chairs of the Historians' Committee for Open Debate on Hiroshima, wrote to the Smithsonian Institute concerning the Enola Gay Exhibit, in 1995:

[Snipping the quotes of Kai Bird and Martin Sherwin]

Of course Dave fails to inform his readers that Kai Bird is a contributing editor to The Nation which is a profoundly radical socialist periodical (one might even say marxist) actually. Martin Sherwin is also a contributor to The Nation. I trust the readers can see how disclosing this information helps to provide a contextual backdrop to their espoused viewpoints that is lacking without the aforesaid disclosure being made. For those who do not know what the ideology of The Nation is, take the worst features of the MSM and the kook fringe of the Democratic Party and magnify them at least fivefold. Think of what the views of "Jesse Jackson", "Teddy Kennedy", and "Nancy Pelosi" would be if they were consuming Dianabol (a steroid) like it was candy at Christmas and you can get an outline of what we are talking about here. Or as I noted in a comments box posting circa August 27th:

I would be remiss in not noting that you seem to be posting anything (and from whatever dubious sources) in a disjointed fashion to try and make your case. For one example of many which could be mentioned, you cite Ralph Raico and treat his stuff as "much needed information." Dave, I absolutely destroyed many of the arguments he makes in my posting…particularly his regurgitation of the 46,000 figure:

But the worst-case scenario for a full-scale invasion of the Japanese home islands was forty-six thousand American lives lost.

I explained in detail and with actual mathematical models of battlefield casualties in the Pacific theater why that figure was a pipedream. You not only do not interact with my arguments but you place them on the same plain as Raico's drivel. And that brings us to Patrick J. Buchanan who reiterates the same stuff and tries to pass off Raico as a respectable scholar.

I will not go into how shoddy Mr. Buchanan's scholarship is when discussing these issues as I have done this at other times. He is so partisan that he is willing to prooftext sources to present his case. I originally thought that [a certain ideologue] was the culprit when I wrote that thread but discovered later that [the ideologue] got his information from Mr. Buchanan. Now you are citing the same Mr. Buchanan on this matter -not to mention on the subject of just war??? Who will be cited next, Mother Jones??? The World Socialist Workers Party Newspaper??? The Journal of Historical Review??? Any source you can remotely find to give credence to your already held position??? How is that in any sense to be a constructive dialogue.

You should recognize that not all sources are of the same weight and anytime you have third hand quotes (of which many of your quotes happen to be btw) that there can be misrepresentation or quotes could be posited without concern for actual context[...]: all of which mitigates against their viability as evidences...

Remember, people can say anything and I have not merely undermined many of the arguments from many of the sources you cite but have obliterated them. You cannot expect me to take your reposting of them as if they are still viable to be serious…that is not only not authentic dialogue but it is its very antithesis. [I. Shawn McElhinney: Excerpt from Cor ad Cor Loquitur Comments Thread (circa August 27, 2005) as quoted in a Rerum Novarum posting (circa September 6, 2005)]

Of course it is possible that Dave did not know the above information about Kai Bird and Martin Sherwin. But if that is true, then it only lends yet more credence (as if more is needed by this point) to my assertion that Dave was cutting and pasting sources as fast as he could find them without bothering to properly vet them first.

And as I dealt in previous postings with the issue of the Snithsonian exhibit and the bald faced lies set down by the two Nation writers which Dave has quoted from already, I fail to see why I need to do so again. If Dave is actually interested in dialogue, he can interact with what was written there...oh and Dave, The Nation and its marxist cronies are quite good at historical revisionism or have you forgotten about that now too???

Military and Political Figures Who Dissented From the Terrible Decision

Now we get to the easiest part of this whole thread to dispatch with...well...easiest now since I already did the work in fact checking Dave on these matters. Nonetheless, here goes...

President Dwight D. Eisenhower

[Snipping Eisenhower quotes]

I dealt with the Eisenhower quotes Dave posted third-hand and the actual degree that Eisenhower was in the loop on these issues in this link:

"Armstrong Illusions" Dept.--Part II (circa September 6, 2005)

To summarize it in brief: Eisenhower was not a source of any special competence or credibility on these matters at all for reasons dealt with in the aforementioned thread.

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

[Snipping Leahy quotes]

I dealt with the Leahy quotes Dave posted third-hand and the actual degree that Leahy was in the loop on these issues in this link:

"Armstrong Illusions" Dept.--Part II (circa September 6, 2005)

To summarize it in brief: Leahy was not a source of any special competence or credibility on these matters at all for reasons dealt with in the aforementioned thread.

President Herbert Hoover

[Snipping Hoover quotes]

I dealt with the Hoover quotes Dave posted third-hand and the actual degree that Hoover was in the loop on these issues in this link:

"Armstrong Illusions" Dept.--Part II (circa September 6, 2005)

To summarize it in brief: Hoover was not a source of any special competence or credibility on these matters at all for reasons dealt with in the aforementioned thread.

General Douglas MacArthur

MacArthur biographer William Manchester has described MacArthur's reaction to the issuance by the Allies of the Potsdam Proclamation to Japan: "...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, p. 512)

I dealt with the MacArthur quotes Dave posted third-hand and the actual degree that MacArthur was in the loop on these issues in this link:

"Armstrong Illusions" Dept.--Part II (circa September 6, 2005)

To summarize it in brief: MacArthur was not a source of any special competence or credibility on these matters at all. Furthermore, Doug Long quotes very disingenuously from Manchester's book --a book I happen to own and have read twice-- but see the above thread for details on that matter.

[Snipping the other MacArthur quote]

I dealt with the arguments advanced by Norman Cousins in the thread link above. The long and short of it is this: MacArthur was not in the loop on these matters and thus not a source of any special competence or credibility for reasons dealt with in the aforementioned thread.

Brigadier General Carter Clarke (The military intelligence officer in charge of preparing intercepted Japanese cables - the MAGIC summaries - for Truman and his advisors)

[Snipping Clarke quotes]

This was the most egregious example of Dave proving he was not even remotely paying attention the whole time.

Indeed, I dealt with the Clarke quotes Dave posted third-hand and the actual degree that Clarke was in the loop on these issues twice and both times Dave ignored them. The first debunking was in a footnote in this link:

Clarifying Some Additional Points on the Atomic Bombing Subject With Dave Armstrong (circa August 28, 2005)

When Dave reiterated those quotes as if they were still credible (and as if Clarke was still an authoritative source), I dealt with them in even greater detail in this link:

"Armstrong Illusions" Dept.--Part II (circa September 6, 2005)

To summarize it in brief: Colonel Clarke was not a source of any special competence or credibility on these matters at all. And Dave proved if there was any doubt on the matter that at the very least he was sloppy and not bothering to read and consider the arguments debunking his sources. For reasons noted in those threads, Clarke was not (and is not) a source of any special competence or credibility on these matters.

Other dissidents cited in this survey include:

Joseph Grew (Under Secretary of State)
John McCloy (Assistant Secretary of War)
Ralph Bard (Under Sec. of the Navy)
Lewis Strauss (Special Assistant to the Secretary of the Navy)
Paul Nitze (Vice Chairman, U.S. Strategic Bombing Survey)
Ellis Zacharias (Deputy Director of the Office of Naval Intelligence) "Zacharias, long a student of Japan's people and culture, believed the Japan would soon be ripe for surrender if the proper approach were taken. For him, that approach was not as simple as bludgeoning Japanese cities . . ."
General Carl "Tooey" Spaatz (In charge of Air Force operations in the Pacific)

All of these so-called "experts" were dealt with in the following thread:

"Armstrong Illusions" Dept.--Part II (circa September 6, 2005)

And summarize it in brief: none of them were authoritative sources on these matters at all for reasons dealt with in the aforementioned thread.

Above, Victor Davis Hanson also mentioned General Hap Arnold, General Curtis LeMay , and Admiral William Halsey.

And those sources would be just as debunkable as the other ones noted for many of the same reasons. In the case of Curtis LeMay, he was opposed to the bombings because he wanted to firebomb those cities. Does Dave disclose that fact to his readers??? No he does not and that gets to the importance of not only being familiar with a subject one is discussing but also with any information that sources they would use to back up their position which would potentially affect the objectivity of said sources.

Summary of Further Catholic Condemnations of the Bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki as Immoral (taken from recent related BlogBack comments where they are fully documented)

Notice again gentle reader that Dave is not making an argument at all but instead he is merely quoting the opinions of others whose special competence in discussing this matter has not been established first. Whatever one wants to say about me, I have at least made cogent and compelling arguments to explain why I hold the view on this that I do. The same cannot be said for the various sources Dave quotes.

Pope John Paul II (9-11-99, to the Japanese ambassador Toru Iwanami): [Hiroshima and Nagasaki should remind the world of] "the crimes committed against civilian populations during World War II . . . true genocides [are] still being committed in several parts of the world."

John Paul II made as strident a condemnation of the war in Iraq and the usage of the death penalty as the one above viz. Hiroshima and Nagasaki--presuming for a moment that he was speaking of them in the above speech. I frankly believe what has been documented thus far gives any reader a good reason to question if Dave is handling the sources he references in an equitable manner and with concern for proper context. We know that the views of the pope on those issues were not ones of a binding nature; ergo Dave is in the position of having to prove that that quote has a higher degree of authority than the ones condemning the war and the use of the death penalty.

Furthermore, can Dave demonstrate that Karol Wojtyla was properly informed on all the variables pertaining to the issue in question??? The answer to that question is of course "no" and thus no more needs to be said about it than that except that it is highly unlikely that he had. Oh and lest I forget to mention it, I have read a couple of detailed biographies on John Paul II and in none of them did it even hint that he was as familiar with the various contingent factors going into a solid evaluation of this issue as he would need to be to do the issue proper justice.

Pope Paul VI (Peace Day: 1-1-76): ". . . butchery of untold magnitude, as at Hiroshima on 6 August 1945 . . ."

Can Dave demonstrate that Giovanni Battista Montini was properly informed on all the variables pertaining to the issue in question??? The answer to that question is of course "no" and thus no more needs to be said about it than that except that it is highly unlikely that he had. Oh and lest I forget to mention it, I have read three detailed biographies on Paul VI and in none of them did it even hint that he was as familiar with the various contingent factors going into a solid evaluation of this issue as he would need to be to do the issue proper justice.

Cardinal James Francis Stafford : ". . . the total warfare that was seen in Nagasaki, Hiroshima, Dresden … that is the wholesale disregard for the civilian populations."

First of all, the blending of Hiroshima, Nagasaki, and Dresden together is highly inappropriate (to put it real mildly). Secondly, there is the issue of the person in question properly understanding the diverse elements involved in the issue in question. Can Dave demonstrate that James Francis Stafford was properly informed on all the variables pertaining to the issue in question??? The answer to that question is of course "no" and thus no more needs to be said about it than that except that it is highly unlikely that he had.

Archbishop Fulton Sheen : "When, I wonder, did we in America ever get into this idea that freedom means having no boundaries and no limits? I think it began on the 6th of August 1945 at 8:15 am when we dropped the bomb on Hiroshima."

Can Dave demonstrate that Fulton J. Sheen was properly informed on all the variables pertaining to the issue in question??? The answer to that question is of course "no" and thus no more needs to be said about it than that except that it is highly unlikely that he had. Oh and lest I forget to mention it, I have read the personal autobiography of Fulton Sheen and he did not so much as hint that he was familiar with the various contingent factors going into a solid evaluation of this issue. That does not tarnish my profound esteem for the man mind you, only that on this issue his evaluation is profoundly suspect at best.

Monsignor Ronald Knox: ". . . men fighting for a good case have taken, at one particular moment of decision, the easier, not the nobler path".

The above sentence appears to be a stretch to say that Monsignor Knox was referring to Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Dave could argue that the description given applies to those situation but then he is engaging in the fallacy of begging the question in using that quote as he does. And of course even if he is quoting Knox in proper context, there is no evidence presented that Knox was familiar with the various contingent factors going into a solid evaluation of this issue. That does not tarnish my profound esteem for the man mind you, only that on this issue his evaluation is profoundly suspect at best.

Dr. Warren Carroll (Founder of Christendom College and renowned orthodox Catholic historian): "I don't agree with the use of the atom bomb against Hiroshima and Nagasaki. You don't use a weapon in a way that you know is going to kill primarily women and children. It's a basic principle of moral philosophy that the end does not justify the means."

Now certainly Dr. Carroll is a historian of note; however his specialty if memory serves is church history. Attempting to translate his specialty in church history over into secular history is an example of the fallacy of context switching since a recognized expert in one area is not necessarily of similar authority in other areas. And (of course) Dr. Carroll's argument is specious on its own merits and is hardly to be accepted simply because he says it.

Fr. Michael Scanlan (formerly head of the Franciscan University of Steubenville , 1983): ". . . the sinful atrocities of the contemporary world. Whether it be the ovens of Auschwitz and Dachau, the charred bodies of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the ravages of saturation bombing, . . .

Anyone comparing Auschwitz and Dacau to Hiroshima and Nagasaki has no credibility whatsoever on these matters as they are distinct circumstances with a whole world of differing variables to them. I immediately throw out of the court of viable opinions (on these issues) the opinions of people who fail to make these kinds of elementary distinctions. There is also the issue of questioning if this person has taken the time I have to look at all the pertinent data and consider it carefully.

I realize this sounds like a broken record but I will continue to note whenever my arguments are ignored or opinions are cited without any attempt to explain the arguments whereby those opinions came about. I will do this with Dave much as I do with anyone else.

John Courtney Murray (prominent thinker on church-state issues): "atrocities, . . . savage . . . paroxysms of violence."

See what I noted about the quote from Ronald Knox except insert John Courtney Murray's name instead.

Evelyn Waugh (famous convert and author): "To the practical warrior the atom bomb presented no particular moral or spiritual problem. We were engaged in destroying the enemy, civilians and combatants alike. We always assumed that destruction was roughly proportionate to the labour and material expended. Whether it was more convenient to destroy a city with one bomb or a hundred thousand depended on the relative costs of production."

Obviously a defense of the atomic bomb drops can be made from a utilitarianist approach but it need not be. The problem with Waugh’s statement is that it seems to imply that this is the only way it can be defended and I obviously do not agree for reasons set forth in detail previously.

Joseph Sobran (conservative columnist and author): ". . . mass murder is not an option . . . a complete violation of all principles of civilized warfare. And the development of the atomic bomb was only a cold-blooded extension of this monstrous policy. The whole idea of rules of warfare is to rule out certain atrocities, whether or not they achieve their goals . . . The rule against attacking civilians means that it is forbidden even if it's the only way to win a war. Why is this so hard to grasp?"

Of course Joseph Sobran is a source which is of questionable import for many reasons. And as he commits many of the same fallacious arguments I have already dealt with previously, I see no reason to reiterate anew what I wrote at that time.

Also, note the immensely popular and influential Anglican apologist C.S. Lewis's opinion: "The victory of vivisection marks a great advance in the triumph of ruthless, non-moral utilitarianism over the old world of ethical law; a triumph in which we, as well as animals, are already the victims, and of which Dachau and Hiroshima mark the more recent achievements . . ."

Once again, just because CS Lewis may have thought that there was moral equivalence between Dachau and Hiroshima does not mean that there was. Likewise, just because he thinks that Hiroshima was an exercise in utilitarianism does not mean that it was. I have argued cogently against this notion already; ergo I need not spill more type to do so here. Oh and as with so many of the others quoted above, this lacuna does not diminish in anyway my respect for CS Lewis which is significant.

Conclusion

In conclusion, Dave quotes a bunch of opinions and now he is going to conclude with a position of his own all while claiming he is not engaging in argumentum ad vericundiam!!! What is the very argumentation fallacy of argumentum ad vericundiam except taking a position not on the basis of arguments made to substantiate said position but merely on the basis of presumed authorities one can cite who give an opinion on the matter in question???{8}

I conclude that the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, which are defended, as they are, on mistaken utilitarian calculations which are contrary to both fact and probable fact (as exposited by the highest level military commanders), and with apparent ignorance regarding the facts concerning the nature of the target and the number of innocent civilians killed (which could scarcely have been otherwise, given the target of the center of the city, etc.), and without due regard for Catholic ethical principles, were immoral and unjustifiable.

To summarize this enterprise, Dave has just made no argument whatsoever but instead has posited a bunch of opinions and then concluded that those opinions taken together constitute an argument. See what I have written in different parts of this note for what argumentation fallacy that involves.

The figures above were in a position to know much more than mere military laymen and blogsters like Shawn (much as I like the guy's zeal and spunk) and Greg (fellow Michigander and eloquent proponent of the just nature of the Iraqi War), or even prominent and generally respectable historians like Victor Davis Hanson, who is a scholar of the military, yet who argues (whether he deliberately intends to or not) precisely as a secular utilitarian or situation ethicist would.

As I have noted in a series of threads, the figures Dave posited were all not in a position to know what Dave claims. I dealt with every one of them and in detail at that. Dave’s only recourse to my debunking of his sources was to ignore the arguments I made and to act as if such an ignoring of the arguments constitutes a credible position.

Faced with the extreme difficulty of justifying these atrocious acts based on Catholic principle (as George Weigel fully grasps and concedes), proponents must fall back on skewed factual data and mere aversion (by their own outright admission) to apologists stating that certain acts are immoral. But I submit that they are in no better position (all things being equal) to defend them as moral or morally neutral. The arguments they have offered simply fail, and I conclude that, not from any desire for this to be true (quite the contrary: as stated above, I wish that it weren't true), but because the facts and considerations outlined above do not, in my opinion, allow a different conclusion.

In light of what he threw together, Dave should have avoided referring to skewed factual data or mere aversion. Furthermore, any reader who has reviewed what I have written is aware that every assertion Dave makes above can be safely ignored as seriously flawed and not worthy of consideration. That is all a result of what can happen when someone attempts to tackle a subject --which due to their lack of the type of wide-ranging knowledge and depth of study needed to discuss the matter equitably-- falls well out of their field of apologetic expertise.

Furthermore, any reader who has reviewed what I have written is aware that every assertion Dave makes above is lacking in veracity. And Dave should be ashamed of himself for attempting to pass off such a paper as some kind of “serious scholarship.” It is frankly embarrassing to see a person with Dave’s gifts act in this fashion but I am not surprised to see it really. That is what happens with those who have either a provincialist approach to issues or an apologetic "must-debate-anything" mentality coupled with a predictable and "one-size-fits-all" approach to these matters.

That's not to say that it becomes a settled dogma in the Catholic Church (I have approached this matter as an ethical one, not a dogmatic one, which is a different level of discussion altogether). Readers are urged to always remember the many qualifying statements from opponents of the bombings, that I have cited. I agree with all of them.

This whole thing was one giant appeal to authority precisely as I said it was both last year and also at the outset of this posting.

In particular, the justification of "double effect" cannot, I think, be reasonably, plausibly maintained with regard to these bombings. There were simply too many civilian casualties. The scale of death and destruction does not allow it. It is -- with all due respect to my friends, who offer some very harsh criticisms of opponents themselves-- hopelessly naive and muddleheaded and a denial of concrete reality to suggest that these were only peripheral, and non-intentional, while military targets were primary intentions.

As I subsequently pointed out when Dave actually sought to interact with one of my threads (the one on double effect) he does not understand this concept very well at all.

Moreover, given the informed opinions of so many that the bombings were not necessary to force surrender or save 500,000 (or whatever the figure) Allied lives

Once again, we have questionable premise since Dave merely assumes they were informed. Now that is fine when you do not have all the facts but I provided them and Dave would recognize this and account for it accordingly. I would not have written what is in this paragraph back then but in light of what I have seen since that time from him (privately as well as publicly), what is noted in this paragraph is now apropo.

(Eisenhower and MacArthur were militarily uninformed, we ought to believe???!!!!),

Actually, yes they were militarily uninformed on this matter Dave and once again, I went over all of this within the series of threads posted on this subject.

and the nature of the targets, such a view cannot hold water, and must be rejected.

But Dave, the so-called “informed opinions” you cite were not informed opinions at all!!! I have said that and I have demonstrated it more than adequately. It is fairly evident that you were using Google to find sources to support your own preconceived viewpoint rather than seeking to have a genuine dialogue.

From what I have learned, the facts do not justify it.

But based on the way you have gone about addressing these matters Dave, why should anyone lend credence to a mere opinion which is lacking in any sound argumentation to substantiate it???

I can certainly be more educated on the subject (time-permitting), but at this point, my prior far less informed opinion has not changed, and has only been greatly strengthened by what I have learned in my studies.

I am afraid you need to retake the course Dave. I will ask the instructor to give you an incomplete instead of failing you outright to help preserve your "gpa."

I welcome and encourage all discussion and feedback on this issue.

So you say. But your actions prove otherwise and I pointed this out to you more than once and publicly as well as privately. Here are just a few examples that I could note of from the private forum (see the threads from 8/28 and 9/6 along with the ones that followed it in the sequence for the ones already noted publicly). All of what is noted here is only my words and nothing you have said:

Dave, the only things I said which could in any way be constituted as an "attack" were these:

---You lacked by your own admission sufficient knowledge on the matter...something you said the day before you left for vacation in private and reiterated in your posting on 8/25. (The day of your return if I recall correctly.)  

---Your quickness to jump into the fray immediately upon returning from vacation was suspicious at best since you were unlikely to have studied these matters much in ten days...certainly nothing to compare to the degree of study I have conducted on them.

---The degree of nuance involved with the matters in question requires more than a surface familiarity if all facets of the equation are to be accounted for with any hope for completeness of exposition. But as I noted in more than one place, you were misunderstanding and misrepresenting certain key principles, which demonstrated that you had no business publicly discussing these matters. (If you recall, I agreed to a private dialogue and it was because of your admitted lack of knowledge on these subjects.)

---Despite being warned of the problems with certain questionable sources and arguments they made, you used such sources anyway...after I had already proven well beyond a reasonable doubt (with historical facts and mathematical models) that the numbers originally used to justify the figures they parroted did not square with reality.[...]

---You engaged often in argumentum ad vericundiam...Your subsequent attempt to spill type explaining why a circle is actually a square only indicated to me that you were trapped in a regress-spiral and were beyond dialogue with on that matter...

---Though I mentioned it at the outset this fallacy in your argumentation (and did so a few times including in one weblog posting at RN), I only focused significantly on the latter argument after making mincemeat of your paltry offering of so-called "experts" from Doug Long's site which you obviously posted without adequately vetting them first. That is why there was a nine day delay in my response when you presumed I had "withdrawn" from the discussion when indeed I had not. I was doing the research on the sources which you simply played "cut and paste" with. Do not tell me that you vetted those sources before using them because it is as evident as corn in Iowa that you did not.

---Furthermore, you sought to bolster your position with opinions from writers of very dubious repute (to put it nicely) but I did not want to deal with that issue myself in much detail.

Far from being any kind of "attack" I was merely relating what was happening and what you were doing. If that constitutes an "attack" than any reporting of events or circumstances constitutes an "attack."...

When the issue of the quack pseudo "scholars" you were referencing arose in the conversation, I noted that I was not writing on the issue because it was not necessary for the solidity of my argumentation approach in those threads to do so (the additional length of the posts such a project would have involved notwithstanding of course). I did touch on them though in the second of the two 9/6 threads but even then, it was mainly by citing past writings of mine post 8/17 which you obviously ignored in your "response."

If you had not ignored them, you would have presumably not made the serious error of relying on them and then trying to justify that boneheaded decision by appeal to their degrees as if that was the same thing as them knowing what the hell they are talking about. You know darn well that there are plenty of people with higher education degrees who have little actual knowledge about the subject they are supposedly an "expert" in.[...] Furthermore, the appeal to such "credentials" to attempt to sustain a weak argument is a hallmark of the sophist. I know you do not like sophists but when you act as they act, you deserve to be called out for it my friend....[Excerpts from an Email Correspondence With Dave Armstrong and Some Others (circa January 12, 2006)]

And again:

Nice try Dave but again, you failed to interact with all but one of my arguments at all. Most of what you wrote was not even an argument but instead a case of "I disagree and X agrees with me" which is something that no one who respects logic and reason would take seriously as a legitimate response. Either that or you made a bunch of statements in response and treated the statements as if they were credible counter-arguments when they were not. Too much of your stuff followed one of those patterns except for (I must admit it) the response you made to the double effect thread. You did make actual arguments in that thread albeit context-switched ones[...] but that is a subject for another time if you like. I cannot deny that you sought to make an argument in those threads because that would be dishonest of me. But I can say that about the other points I raised because it is true and I could demonstrate it from what you wrote previously. [Excerpts from an Email Correspondence With Dave Armstrong and Some Others (circa January 12, 2006)]

And again:

[Y]ou were proving that you were not able to have a proper dialogue on these subjects...[P]art of a proper (or authentic) dialogue entails the participant actually listening to, entering into the views of, and interacting with the actual positions of the other party. You did none of these things...

Furthermore, you seem to think that responding to someone is the same as refuting them: I remember reading your stuff where you tried to claim that a circle was really a square and thinking you would make a good politician in how you went about that. But let us not consider your defenses of your original words but instead to what you originally said as that was the source from which any assertions made by yours truly attach themselves to. I may well go over that thread in detail (it is saved to this email site exactly as you posted it to potentially facilitate that occurring) and I could demonstrate if I have to exactly what I am saying. The problem is, you wrote it and now you seem to not want to be accountable for what you said and what you did for whatever reason. [Excerpt from an Email Correspondence With Dave Armstrong and Some Others (circa January 19, 2006)]

And yet again:

[Y]ou prove that you were not interested in dialogue in precisely what you note above: if you had no intention of interacting with my arguments then WHY THE HELL DID YOU POST ANYTHING ON THE SUBJECT TO BEGIN WITH???...

You should have had the decency to have admitted to it publicly rather than try to pretend that you wanted to dialogue...I take dialogue and the discussion of ideas seriously and have no interest in wasting it with sophists who talk the talk and then fail to walk the walk. And on those issues Dave, that is what you were acting as. Now one can act like a sophist without necessarily being one so do not read into this anything more than what I noted above: that on THIS ISSUE that is how you came across. That does not mean it necessarily translates into other areas too; ergo my reason for this clarification up front...

No Dave, I made a very logical and factual analysis with many facets to the equation and backed up every bit of it with sound analysis and you treated it from the get-go without an ounce of respect. Furthermore, you have admitted now exactly what I said all along about not only dodging my arguments but refusing to dialogue properly. Thanks for vindicating me Dave even if only in private. [Excerpts from an Email Correspondence With Dave Armstrong and Some Others (circa January 19, 2006)]

To summarize everything covered above in conclusion: I made the assertions at the time that Dave was not interested in dialogue, he did not interact with any of my arguments{9}, and he was attempting to argue publicly on issues he was woefully inadequate to discuss due to his own ignorance on the matter. All of these were substantiated at the time and they have been substantiated once again. This was done not merely by my own words but by looking in detail at Dave's original public utterings on these matters. My original assertions stand intact, stable, and valid and the historical record on the matter has been preserved in light of Dave's recent attempt at historical revisionism. And that is the bottom line really except that I see Dave in the same light as I do any number of sophists out there I could mention.{10} And however Dave tries to creatively re-explain what is written above in public or in private, what I have written above is the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth as inconvenient a truth for Dave's position that it happens to be.

For Further Reading (if Interested):

My Other Threads on the Atomic Bomb Droppings, Military and Statistical Calculations, the Moral and Ethical Aspects of the Subject Matter in Question, Etc.

The A-Bomb Drops on Japan: Is There Room In the Catholic Conscience to Support Truman's Decision? (Greg Mockeridge)

Debunking Dave Armstrong’s “Consensus of Catholic Opinion” Argumentation Fallacy Viz. The Atomic Bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki (Greg Mockeridge)

A Call for Honesty in Dialogue With I. Shawn McElhinney and Dave Armstrong (Kevin M. Tierney)

[Update: It was recently pointed out to me by a few people that the tonality of this posting detracted from the substance of the points I was making. I do not deny that I was positively livid when I drafted it and my anger was hardly unjustified. However, that does not mean that the manner whereby I responded is automatically appropriate or without deficiency in prudence. So with that in mind, I decided to revisit this posting from 2006 where invective so suffused the arguments I made as to render them far less persuasive to casual readers than they otherwise could have been.

To potentially render this enterprise more fruitful, I asked someone to act as a third party editor of sorts to review the postings and make suggestions of areas to be revised and others to be removed. (This person had no part whatsoever in the original controversy and to my knowledge is on good terms with all parties involved.) They agreed to review this post and made a number of suggested corrections. In all but one instance, I promptly made revisions where suggested and removed material that was recommended to be removed and resubmitted the proposed adjustments to them for follow-up critique, etc. This process continued until areas originally found problematical were adjusted to their satisfaction at which time I made the adjustments to the posting itself and republished it.

The revised posting before you is far more focused on my original arguments and hopefully provides much more light than heat unlike what was written previously. And though I stand by the substance of my original critiques, I do nonetheless profoundly regret letting my anger get the better of me in how I originally responded to Dave Armstrong in this post and extend to him through this effort as well as in words a most sincere apology. -SM 10/2/13]

Notes:

{1} The thread was tweaked a bit, expanded somewhat, and then posted on August 17th of 2005 with the title On Hiroshima, Nagasaki, and the Profound Problems With Ivory Tower Revisionist Pontifications.

{2} This is a common tactic of ideologues as a way of covering for their own embarrassing track record -something I noted in a recent "points to ponder" posting. (The appearance of which is appearing to be prescient in light of Dave's latest public attempt at historical revisionism.)

{3} I figured rather than speculate on this matter that I would contact the person in question to make sure I was representing their view correctly (and that Dave's representation was incorrect). Here is what Chris sent in response to my email request for clarification on that point:

That would be an accurate assessment, if only because I have not studied the issue (or military history) to the extent that is required to come to an informed decision. [Christopher Blosser: Email response to Shawn McElhinney (circa January 21, 2006)]

Chris' honesty on this matter (and frank admission of limitations on an issue) is refreshing. If only certain Michigan residents who claim the mantle of being an "apologist" had this same degree of humility but I digress.

{4} The summary link thread he included in the thread was a later addition to his post (post 8/26/05).

{5} See these threads for details:

Clarifying Some Additional Points on the Atomic Bombing Subject With Dave Armstrong (circa August 28, 2005)

"Armstrong Illusions" Dept.--Part I (circa September 6, 2005)

{6} This is of course a form of a fallacy called argumentum ad vericundiam; however it also entails what is called argumentum ad nausium. Or as I noted to Dave recently in an email correspondence:

Dave, here is the problem in a nutshell: you were chronicling opinions of others which were based on arguments I had already vaporized. You also quoted in doing this at times the precise arguments I dispatched with oftentimes as if they are still viable ones when they are not. That is not to say that arguments for the positions cannot be made but the ones you provided were smashed to pieces and thus in serious need of either being scrapped completely or significantly reworked. Since you were opposing my arguments and confutations of the arguments from which those sources based their opinions, you were engaging in the fallacy of questionable classification at best and argument to authority at worst. Either way, there is fallacy involved; ergo my assertion of argumentation fallacy was correct.

I only started focusing on appeal to authority when you started two kinds of fallacies at the same time: argumentum ad nausium and accompanied with the aforementioned argumentum ad vericundiam. The first was a continual reiteration of the same argument or unproven premises as if repetition of it constituted validity. (The repetition of unproven premises constituted what is called questionable premises btw.) The second was the repetition along the lines of "I profoundly disagree as does Paul VI, Bishop Sheen, Dwight Eisenhower, etc. etc. etc." Once you started doing that, you were engaging blatantly in argumentum ad vericundiam. I realize you think there is some clever distinction to be made between what you did and the latter but ultimately there is not and your attempt to claim there is puts the burden of proof on you to demonstrate it convincingly.

What you are doing would be like me claiming to "invent" a new kind of football defense whereby I put nine defenders on the line to go after the quarterback on every down emphasizing speed and surprise, etc. Then, when an astute football observer claimed that what I was doing was a duplicate of Buddy Ryan's old 46 Defense ala the mid 1980's Monsters of the Midway (Chicago Bears), I were to claim, "I am not ripping off Buddy Ryan and this is not the 46 Defense but instead it is the 'Seattle Hustle'" despite it being exactly the same thing as the schemes that Ryan and company ran. No one would take such an assertion (if I tried to make it) seriously nor should they. Likewise, you cannot ape argumentum ad vericundiam and then claim you are not doing it without being called to substantiate the differences. And thus far, you have not done it but have instead tried to claim (in what you wrote) that essentially the square is a circle. Sorry but that dog will not hunt Dave.

It is obvious that you are presuming something that is not only not self-evident but which if you tried that in a college course on logic and rational argumentation, the professor (if they are doing their job) would fail you for it. Furthermore, utilizing an unproven method as you claim you are doing is in itself a fallacious form of argumentation. It is (as I noted earlier) a form of what is called questionable premise incidentally which basically means that if you utilize or accept an argument based on a premise that your opposition would find either questionable, the argument contains an integral begging of the question or (in other words) another fallacy. [Excerpts from an Email Correspondence With Dave Armstrong and Some Others (circa January 19, 2006)]

{7} See this thread for details:

Briefly on the Founding Fathers and Propagandistic Uses of Their Words (circa September 5, 2004)

I did not know at the time that the person I was critical of in that post had gotten their references from Buchanan; however readers need to consider this significant scholarly problem on the part of Dave's supposed expert source here and whether or not they should uncritically accept anything he says on any subject whatsoever.

{8} See footnote six.

{9} He did later on make some arguments on the subject of double effect but he argued out of context in normative and subjective ways rather than non-normative and objective ways: the context I originally argued in and the context in which the moral and ethical principle of double effect is properly understood. (And I have admitted to him attempting an argument on that issue.)

{10} See this thread to understand the parallel:

On Dialogue and When it is a Waste of Time (circa September 25, 2005)

I know this will not sit well with Dave but it is unfortunately the truth as this thread more than amply demonstrates.

Threads on the Atomic Bomb Droppings, Military and Statistical Calculations, the Moral and Ethical Aspects of the Subject Matter in Question, Etc...
(A Rerum Novarum Recapitulation Thread)

In light of what I am about to post, it seems appropriate to summarize up to this point in one spot all of the threads on the above subject matters from August 17th to September 20th of 2005:

On Hiroshima, Nagasaki, and the Profound Problems With Ivory Tower Revisionist Pontifications (circa August 17, 2005)

Some Feedback on the "Hiroshima, Nagasaki, and the Profound Problems With Ivory Tower Revisionist Pontifications" Thread (From Dr. Art Sippo circa August 18, 2005)

More Feedback on the "Hiroshima, Nagasaki, and the Profound Problems With Ivory Tower Revisionist Pontifications" Thread (From Tim Tull circa August 19, 2005)

More Feedback on the "Hiroshima, Nagasaki, and the Profound Problems With Ivory Tower Revisionist Pontificatons" Thread (From Tim Tull on Dr. Sippo's Email circa August 21, 2005)

Points to Ponder --On the Atomic Bombs and Their Usage (By Dr. Art Sippo circa August 22, 2005)

And Yet More Feedback on the "Hiroshima, Nagasaki, and the Profound Problems With Ivory Tower Revisionist Pontifications" Thread (circa August 25, 2005)

And More Feedback on the "Hiroshima, Nagasaki, and the Profound Problems With Ivory Tower Revisionist Pontifications" Thread (circa August 26, 2005)

And Yet Still More Feedback on the "Hiroshima, Nagasaki, and the Profound Problems With Ivory Tower Revisionist Pontifications" Thread (circa August 26, 2005)

Expanding Futher on the Subject of Double Effect Viz. the Atomic Bombings (circa August 26, 2005)

Clarifying Some Additional Points on the Atomic Bombing Subject With Dave Armstrong (circa August 28, 2005)

"Armstrong Illusions" Dept. --Part I of II (circa September 6, 2005)

"Armstrong Illusions" Dept. --Part II of II (circa September 6, 2005)

Points to Ponder --On Appealing to Authority in Argumentation (circa September 9, 2005)

Briefly on Making a Valid Argument and Avoiding Argumentation Fallacies (circa September 11, 2005)

"Exit Stage Left" Dept. (circa September 12, 2005)

Abstract Theorizing and Hypothetical Wartime Situations With SecretAgentMan--Parts I-II (circa September 20 & 23, 2005)

The reason for this recapitulation thread will become quite evident in short order...

John Wayne You scored 30% Tough, 23% Roguish, 23% Friendly, and 23% Charming!

You, my friend, are a man's man, the original true grit, one tough talking, swaggering son of a bitch. You're not a bad guy, on the contrary, you're the ultimate good guy, but you're one tough character, rough and tumble, ready for anything. You call the shots and go your own way, and if some screwy dame is willing to accept your terms, that's just fine by you. Otherwise, you'll just hit the open trail and stay true to yourself. You stand up for what you believe and can handle any situation, usually by rushing into the thick of the action. You're not polished and you're not overly warm, but you're a straight shooter and a real stand up guy. Co-stars include Lauren Bacall and Maureen O'Hara, tough broads who can take care of themselves. Find out what kind of classic dame you'd make by taking the Classic Dames Test.

My test tracked 4 variables How you compared to other people your age and gender: You scored higher than 61% on Tough You scored higher than 68% on Roguish You scored higher than 39% on Friendly You scored higher than 36% on Charming

Link: The Classic Leading Man Test written by gidgetgoes on Ok Cupid, home of the 32-Type Dating Test

In light of a controversy which certain parties seem insistent on resurrecting publicly, I have judged it as necessary to add to this weblog three threads I deliberately left out of the last weblog update. Those threads are as follows:

Clarifying Some Additional Points on the Atomic Bombing Subject (With Dave Armstrong) [>>>]

"Armstrong Illusions" Dept. (Part I) [>>>]

"Armstrong Illusions" Dept. (Part II) [>>>]

Normally I add series links which are threaded together as one entry but on this occasion I am making an exception because the two parts to that thread are both important but significantly different in the subjects discussed. Nonetheless, I tire very quickly of sophistic timewasters and those who try to revise the historical record; ergo the addition of the threads noted above.

All things to the contrary notwithstanding.

Rough Draft of an Album Review:
(Musings of your humble servant at Rerum Novarum)

*****

A Jam Session Well Worth Listening To...

Albert King was always overshadowed by BB King and thus never received the credit he deserved for the way he shaped how the electric guitar is played. This is true not only in the blues but indeed in all styles of music. Modern guitar players who look back with a sense of fondness for players such as Eric Clapton, Jimi Hendrix, Jimmy Page, Paul Kossof, etc. would do well to consider the man who so strongly influenced their playing. Bill Belmont tells in his album notes of a young British guitar player who wanted to borrow a copy of his friend’s album of Albert King’s Bobbin singles (c. 1958-1961) in 1965. The player was Eric Clapton. The latter’s tenure in Cream earned him the moniker “Clapton is God” but in reality, the British guitar virtuoso was copping riffs and even (on occasion) whole solos note for note from Albert King. The bluesier side of Jimi Hendrix’s playing was similar affected and countless other guitarists could be mentioned if not for word limits on this review. (Including bluesmen Otis Rush and Albert Collins: already distinctive stylists in their own right prior to King’s signing with Stax in 1966.) When Stax released “Born Under a Bad Sign” in 1967, the blues world would never be the same indeed the approach to the electric guitar in music generally speaking would be altered forever. The reviewer Robert Palmer (in reviewing a late ‘70s live album of Albert King’s) said of the “Bad Sign” album “its impact was as inescapable amongst blues players as John Coltraine’s influence was in jazz.” And perhaps no other guitar player was as influenced by Albert King as the young Texan Stevie Ray Vaughan.

To say that Stevie Ray Vaughan idolized Albert King would not be inaccurate nor would saying that Stevie’s style was about 80% influenced by the mammoth Mississippi bluesman. King was not the nimblest on the fretboard but he was among the most expressive with a torrid tone, a stirring vibrato, and an authoritative string-bending style that created a perfect wailing sound for the blues. Couple these things with an effective use of dynamics, an impeccable sense of timing, a deep grainy voice, and an inherent competitive nature and you have the makings for a player that could (and did) intimidate fellow musicians. Certainly when Stevie was little, he was awed by his mentor’s presence and whether he was at this session or not we will never know. But even if he was, Albert King would have expected Stevie to bring his A game and indeed Vaughan did for this recording. The songs are mainly from King’s repertoire but in many cases Stevie had been weaned on them and practiced them in his formative years so there was not much in the way of adjustment for him here generally speaking. In Albert’s case, only one song was unfamiliar to him but we will get to that in time…onto the album though.

It starts off with “Stormy Monday” which King begins with some of his signature mournful phrasing while Vaughan utilizes a tasteful countermelody in return. Albert’s comments as the song was starting off indicate that they have played the song together before and the way they played off one another that would seem to be the case as it comes off so smooth. Albert sings the song (as he does all but one of the songs on this album). Stevie’s playing is retrained and tasteful on the tune...a few flashes of wildness but not many. Albert counters with a throaty vibrato-drenched solo and Stevie answers with a King-influenced solo and Albert counters again by going lighter for the close and nine minutes of stirring blues comes to a close. From there a bit of dialogue takes place where they reminisce about old times including the first time Stevie met Albert, the first time they played together, and Albert’s assessment of how Stevie stands out from so many other guitar players not because of his speed but his ability to play with soul. From there Albert asks about “that thing you do, that rap thing with a heck of a groove” and Stevie kicks off “Pride and Joy” with Albert playing small fills and Stevie singing.

On "Pride and Joy", Stevie is clearly in control as well he should be (he wrote it after all) but Albert pulls a few bits from his bag and at one point in the nimble turnarounds I thought it was Vaughan playing…if not for the tone and a few signature bits from King I would have been fooled. But King can play riffs that way even if he usually does not. Vaughan finishes the song and they moved into the BB King song “Ask Me No Questions.” Unlike the previous song where it was King who had to adapt to a new song, this time it was Vaughan and he does so quite well with tasteful vibrato fills and taking the first solo at King’s request. With the latter’s prompting, he ratchets the intensity up and then mixes in some tasteful vibrato bits. King follows with a short solo and the piano player solos at length before the verses resume and then King and Vaughan have another alternating of solos. They then dialogue a bit more with Albert asking Stevie to never settle but instead to always strive to work and play better.

From there Albert kicks off “Blues at Sunrise” with a trademark scorching opener…probably the oldest song of the ones he plays here chronology-wise. Albert talks a bit about how they calmed the people down in the old days by “back[ing] up, reach, and grab one from the bottom” and he goes down the register for a trademark low range riff pattern before going back up top to preface his singing of the song. About a third of the way in, after two verses Albert recollects playing the song with Jimi Hendrix and Janis Joplin at the Fillmore West and later on mixes his story a bit by mentioning Stevie in the sequence prior to meeting him. (There is definite misaccounting going on with the latter –Hendrix and Joplin dying two years before Stevie first met Albert- but since Albert was 60 when this was recorded, I think he can be pardoned the memory lapse.) Stevie’s playing is more rapid here as a counter mainly because Albert told him he “had to play the Jimi Hendrix thing” which he does to Albert’s laughing and encouragement. (Few could mimic Hendrix as well as Vaughan could as anyone familiar with the latter’s work is well aware.)

As far as the song goes, Stevie would be familiar with this if not from Albert’s Bobbin period (when he wrote it) than at least from his 1968 “Live Wire/Blues Power” Fillmore recording which a young Stevie certainly had in his collection and probably spent hours listening to and copping riffs from. Albert’s playing from after the scorching intro to about the seven-minute mark was pretty light in counter to Vaughan’s more aggressive approach but the former then kicks off a two chorus solo spanning over a minute which is torrid to say the least. Vaughan responds with an intense lead on his part and then after the chorus, he plays the low riff range pattern Albert played earlier in the song (a bit of homage to which he laughs when King says “that sounds familiar”). Then King ratchets up the intensity with his counter and Vaughan follow suit with a very King-like solo replete with repeated intense bends and his use of vibrato with a bit of Stevie’s flash thrown into the mix. Anyone who doubts that a fifteen minute blues song with a shuffle beat can be kept interesting for fifteen minutes needs to hear these two play off of each other.

After the song concludes, Vaughan breaks a string, King laughs, and then they have a discussion about restringing their “git-fiddles” (cf. King). From there, it moves into the instrumental “Overall Junction” which was on King’s “Born Under a Bad Sign” album (and originally released a year earlier as the B side to “Laundromat Blues”). This song has a strident pacing to it and King and his band often used it as a warm-up for that reason. Vaughan starts it off and gets his bits in certainly –based on much of what he plays his familiarity with the original tune is evident to this listener. And King shows on the song for those who would question it that he can move around the fretboard nimbly…a feature he usually saved for instrumentals but not always. They then move pretty quickly into “Matchbox Blues” a longtime King concert staple, which he finally recorded in 1983 just prior to this session. There is a bit of talk between them before it starts and the playing alternates in its dynamics by both players. Stevie’s playing in the song is a homage to Albert and he certainly could authentically approach the latter’s style better than arguably anyone else. There is then another dialogual interlude prior to the last song where both players express appreciation for the other.

The last song on the album is “Don’t Lie to Me”, a song Stevie would recognize as “I Get Evil” the title Albert originally recorded it under and usually referred to it by in concert performances (though the title used here is closer to the actual title than the one Albert used ironically enough). Again the dueling is entertaining when Vaughan goes into the lower registers and Albert encourages him further in the process. That concludes the album but not this review.

The essence of blues playing requires soul and you cannot manufacture it by wanking speed riffs on a fretboard. (I note that here for those who think "better blues playing" means faster playing: that is not necessarily so.) If you take King’s influence from Vaughan, you would have a very mediocre player at best whereas if you took any of Stevie’s other influences from him, you would still have a good guitarist. That is all that needs to be said about such ignorance of the blues and the many facets that go into playing the blues like a master. Albert King was a master of the blues and Stevie Ray Vaughan was his most loyal disciple. Indeed, I believe he is the only one who could so flagrantly use King’s own signature riffs in his playing without the master himself taking offense. And when you consider that Albert did not take such things lightly --because he developed a unique style and by his reckoning owned it—that is no mean achievement.

But clearly on this album King had in mind to some extent a passing of the torch to Vaughan at one point in the recording because he plainly says so after they finished playing “Blues at Sunrise.” Stevie laughs and says he does not believe it but the sentiments sounds convincing enough even if King was to continue playing live after Vaughan’s passing in 1990 at the tender age of 35. (The former retired and made comebacks in the same fashion as Frank Sinatra and presumably for the same reasons: the difficulty of performers to let it go but at least in King’s case, he retained his form all the way to the end with minimal if any diminishment.) As far as Vaughan’s passing goes, King would recount in a 1991 interview published before his passing that Stevie’s loss hurt him and if you listen to the way they interact musically and otherwise on this album, it makes sense. What started out as a young boy and his idol grew into a situation where they were contemporaries and there was a genuine affection between them. And Albert seemed to view Stevie as his son in the blues and no father wants to see his son go before him. May they both rest in peace and may this recording stand as a testament to two masters. If only more jam albums were this entertaining but alas, that is as rare as diamonds. But those who obtain this album have just that and it is worth obtaining, owning, and cherishing: particularly for lovers of the blues but music lovers in general.

Since I play a Les Paul Epiphone (a Gibson copy) when I play electric guitar, this result is not surprising to me...

Take the quiz:
Which guitar are you

Gibson Les Paul
You are a Gibson Les Paul. You are a favorite of some of the best metal AND rock and roll bands. You are flaxible and can be used in almost any genre. you are a classic.

Points to Ponder:
(On the Left and Historical Revisionism "Airbrushing")

The left aims to be born again...by erasing the embarrassment of its disreputable past, by hiding the shame of having supported Stalin and Mao and Fidel and Ho and all the purges, mass murders, and other "necessary" means that finally served no beneficial end. But the real embarrassment for the left is to have been so stubbornly and persistently on the wrong side of history, to have embraced "solutions" that were morally, practically, and economically bankrupt. It is the important struggles of our time. As Josef Stalin was the first socialist to truly understand, the airbrushing of history is the onyl sure means to preserve the honour of the left. [David Horowitz (circa 1999)]

Santa Cruz Special Reports:

Though not technically a part of the Santa Cruz Reports series I spoke of earlier, this is a posting done while on vacation so technically it qualifies even though I am not calling it that. Nonetheless, I wanted to let you know that I have added forty-nine artists to my Launchcast radio station, rated everyone there, and also some songs that popped up while I was doing that. So go there and you will get a better feel for the eclectic nature of my musical tastes than you would have gotten previously. Meanwhile, I have drinking and other things to tend to now...later y'all...

There seems to be a consensus among the sources I have read that the Alito so-called "hearings" are not worth spending much time on...vindicating my gut intuition on the matter as noted yesterday. But at least there is some excitement in the blososphere if not on the hearings themselves than on events or persons pertaining to them in some respect...witness Beth's recent outburst which had me chucking as I read it. My first thought when finishing the thread was that she must be a fun person to drink with Which reminds me...

Goin' to California, yes
To resurrect my soul
The sun is always shinin', shinin'
Or at least that's what I'm told...

I will be vacationing in California later this month (Santa Cruz to be precise) and may blog once or twice when I am down there if there is time to. Those who would find it interesting that I would head down to a place like Santa Cruz (which is one of the former Kremlin's west coast branches) it is to visit one of my oldest friends who has (in their time there) definitely become another Ted Nugent if you know what I mean. So it should be a blast and be a good recharge for my mental and physiological batteries. I am going to have to get in some "pre-emptive training" at the gym to prepay in advance for the we will do but that will be fine...I may even get a temporary membership at a gym when I am down there as well (if there is time for it).

So in the tradition started with the late 2003's Puerto Vallarta Special Reports threads, there will probably be a thread or more blogged when I am down there...time-willing of course.

[Update: What is posted below this point was added around 8pm PST (20:00 for you military types) -ISM]

Finally, I found this thread from the weblog called Girl on the Right as a recommended read. Just a little taste though...

Conservatives are scary. Everyone knows it. They're fanatical, radical, evangelical . . . or not. But what do the facts matter in politics.

Just like there are fanatical, radical, evangelical conservatives, there are also fanatical, radical, evangelical socialists. Our country has been run by the latter for the better part of 40 years, so it is not entirely unreasonable that a couple of generations of Canadian children have grown up without ever understanding that there is a middle ground -- and that in many ways, especially recently, it is the Conservative Party of Canada that holds that middle ground.

Just like 2004, Paul Martin is using this election to attack my values and tell me that I don't belong. He's aiming his vitriol at Stephen Harper, but most of what he says applies to me as well and since the shoe fits . . [LINK]

I will readily admit that Canadian politics is something I find confusing; ergo I will email my Canadian friend Pete Vere and ask for his appraisal of the above thread. From what I have read, it looks good but I know better than to attempt an analysis of Canadian politics lest I come across looking like a moron. So Pete, give that thread a read and email me with your comments so I can blog them for the benefit of the readers m'kay???

Some Confirmation Hearing Predictions:
(Courtesy of your humble servant at Rerum Novarum)

[Note: This thread has been updated with the additions in purple font - ISM 1/11/06 7:00pm]

I wish I could say that I was paying a lot of attention to the Alito hearing but frankly I am not.{1} Basically, I can predict what will happen with this pretty much already so (donning my Kreskin hat) here goes...

---The Democrats are going to try to get Alito to answer questions about their pet issues as a kind of litmus test.

---They will have abortion on their minds primarily but as a rule will not address it as much as the so-called "right to privacy" or Griswald v. Connecticut in 1965 which fabricated a so-called "right to privacy" which is the lynchpin for Roe v. Wade.

---Alito like Roberts before him will have to answer these questions in a fashion that gives at least the appearance that he would consider sticking with the status quo in order to get confirmed and avoid a major fight on the nomination.

---Certain Catholic commentators will claim without suitable warrant that Alito like Roberts in answering in this fashion would be "selling their faith down the river" ignoring the obvious fact that if ever was there a time to have to approach something with the "cunningness of serpents and the guileness of doves" (cf. Jesus Christ) than it is in these instances.{2}

---Alito will be confirmed by a vote of approximately 57-43.

---President Bush will afterwards figure he has appeased his supporters enough and do something stupid figuring he can get away with it. (Depending on what that is, it is difficult to say whether or not he will succeed at it or not.)

---Both Alito and Roberts will pan as genuine originalists as a rule viz. how they approach the issues brought before the court during their tenures.

---There may well be a third confirmation hearing before the 2006 elections and thus Bush needs to be watched like a hawk to avoid picking another Miers or viewing the Stevens seat (the next to be vacated) as "the seat of Alberto Gonzales" or some equivalent thereof.

As for the rest, the gang at Southern Appeal have written a bit on this subject as one might expect. I for one concur with Patrick Carver (and Captain Ed of Captain's Quarters whom he quotes) that Alito thus far is a much better candidate than Miers...see this example which illustrates the difference well in snapshot form for those who are interested.

Notes:

{1} Apparently I am not missing much according to Beth at VRWC.

{2} Anyone with a normal intact functioning brain realizes that if Alito or Roberts would have been 100% forthright and answered the questions the Democrats asked of them that they never would be confirmed. But certain geopolitically naive sorts seem to think it is better to do that and lose rather than take a more tactical approach in the hearings and win.

Points to Ponder:
(On Fighting Wars in a Timely or Appropriate Manner)

[Prefatory Note: The below statement by Fr. James V. Schall SJ coheres quite well with something your host posted to this weblog almost seven months ago in another "points to ponder" thread taken from his own private musings - ISM]

"I could make an historical argument, I think, to the effect that failure to fight wars in time or appropriately has caused as much chaos, degradation of the human spirit, and slaughter as wars that were in fact fought. Wars are a question of justice. When justice is an obvious and paramount question, it is not a virtue to avoid them. It is the mistake of always framing the issue in terms of peace and not in terms of justice. Logically, the former cannot be had without the latter. Peace without justice is the definition of extreme tyranny. And it is not just a question of justice, but of generosity and self-sacrifice. If there are no causes worth fighting and dying for, we might as well give up pretending that we are civilized." [Fr. James V. Schall SJ]

First Draft of An Album Review:
(Musings of your humble servant at Rerum Novarum)

[Update: I made a few minor tweaks to this review dividing the larger paragraphs into smaller ones, adding some segues, and also some new stuff to two of the songs discussed -ISM]

[This is the rough draft of an album review which I plan to revise and abridge for posting at Amazon before the end of the month. -ISM]

*****

The Band’s Magnum Opus

Perhaps no musical group exemplified an anti-counter cultural approach to music better than The Band did in various ways. They influenced many people who were influential in their own right either at the time (Eric Clapton and George Harrison’s approach to music) or would be in years to come (i.e. Roger Waters’ approach to concept album writing with Pink Floyd) not to mention being one of the begetters of 1970’s style "folk country." And while more could be said about them than that, there is plenty to say about this album and that is where the review will be focused. But the mark of a memorable musician/group/thinker/writer, etc. is not only their influence on subsequent generations but also on their contemporaries. And in this area The Band definitely succeeded…a few examples of which were given above to illustrate this assertion in brief. But that is enough ado…let us get onto the songs themselves now.

The album opens with "Across the Great Divide" and it sets the tone for the very down home Americana feel of this album full of uniformly excellent songs. The latter song contains the story of a man who tries to explain himself to his woman and recounts to some extent the recklessness of his “younger days” as he tries to persuade her to not kill herself. It is not as grim as it sounds in words I assure you.

The second song is “Rag Mama Rag” which is a fun quirky song with fiddles, an offbeat drum pattern (played by Richard Manuel who usually plays piano: the multitalented Garth Hudson played piano on this one), Levon Helm eschewing his drums for mandolin, Rick Danko playing fiddle instead of bass, and John Simon (the co-producer) playing the bass parts on tuba. The lyrics of the song were about a woman who only wants to play ragtime music…there may be a sly message in that but whatever. That brings us to one of the best songs on the album.

“The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down” is musically and lyrically a masterpiece. It is ironic a Canadian songwriter (Jaime Robbie Robertson) could write such an empathetic tune about the old South but it the power of the song cannot be denied. It was delivered with conviction by the only American in the group (the southerner Levon Helm) who was back on drums for this tune. (Levon also apparently persuaded Robbie not to mention Lincoln in the tune: Robbie more fittingly substituted in the narrative a story about Robert E. Lee instead and saved the song from being an affront to southerners unintentionally.) Garth Hudson gets some very textural sounds with a melodica overdubbed via his Lowrey organ, which sounds like a harmonica starting with the second verse of the song. It is an example of the multifaceted talents of the Band’s members –all of whom except Robbie Robertson played multiple instruments. I never get tired of hearing this song, singing it, or playing it on guitar. At this point, it seems fitting to touch on the genius of Robbie Robertson as a songwriter.

While the latter wrote only a few songs on the group’s very solid “Music From Big Pink” debut album (with band mate Richard Manuel and Bob Dylan contributing more in that area) on this album, that changed dramatically. Robertson solidified himself on this album as the chief songwriter of the group to the extent that he wrote eight of the songs by himself and has co-writing credit on the other four. One of the co-writing credits is “When You Awake” with Richard Manuel (who also sings the song) who was back behind the drum kit on this song with his frantic drumming style. Garth Hudson’s organ gives a nice backing to the song while Robertson’s lyrics are about family and remembering with grandfatherly advice being given.

From there the album moves to “Up on Cripple Creek” which is a song with a very “back porch” feel which is (I must say it) deliciously sleazy in a way. Garth Hudson is playing a clavinet through a wah wah pedal to create the sound of a jew’s harp. When mixed with Danko’s bass playing, it gives a significantly low range to the tune about a narrative of a man who wants to lookup an old girlfriend for “assistance” if you will and how in many areas she completes him. “Whispering Pines” follows, which Robertson co-wrote with Richard Manuel. The song has a completely different tempo than the one preceding it and Manuel delivers a very wrenching vocal performance vocally and on piano.

Following “Whispering Pines” is “Jemima Surrender” which has a heavier tempo with boogie-woogie piano (played not by Manuel but by Hudson), Manuel on drums, Levon Helm not on drums but rhythm guitar, and Robertson on lead guitar. (The alternate take –-half the songs on the album have an alternative take on this CD- has the members on their usual instruments for a completely different approach to the song.) The song is about the singer wanting a girl named Jemima to give in and...well...that is all I will tell you about it.

“Rocking Chair” is possibly my favourite song on the album. It is unconventional musically for the group in that there is no drums (Helm is on mandolin on this tune), Hudson plays accordion, Robertson is on acoustic guitar, and the timekeeping is done solely by Danko’s bass and that is adequate. The lyrics (Manuel on lead, Danko joining on the bridge) are about two old time sailors –one telling his first mate (and best friend) “don’t raise the sails anymore” because he has been at sea his whole life, he believes they have used up all the time they have in that endeavour and should spend the sunset years of their lives together “back in old Virginny” in rocking chairs. Having lost my oldest friend recently, this song really has an effect on me now…musically the song is quite excellent and the lyrics I find to be quite haunting for reasons already expressed and others not to be mentioned here.

“Look Out Cleveland” is a up tempo rocker sung by Danko with some aggressive lead fills by Robertson backed by Danko’s equally aggressive bass picking and is about “a storm coming through” which ends up devastating everything. (Compared to everything else on the album, this song stands out in its strident phrasing.)

From there the next song is “Jawbone” and it opens with a very slow start and alternates time signatures from verses to the pre-chorus to the chorus and back again with lyrics about a thief who is unrepentant. The album next moves into “Unfaithful Servant” which is sung by Danko and is a slow creeper about…well…exactly what the title says and the narrator tries to examine the reason for the faithlessness involved.

The album ends officially with “King Harvest” which is a frantic tune sung by Manuel. The song has an unusual sound even for an album of songs many of which are distinctive in that sense. The shifting tempos from verse to verse (a feature common to many of my favourite songwriters) gives a distinctive sound as does Robertson’s stinging lead playing which shows a pleasing restraint to it (another feature I like in lead guitar players). The lyrics show the tensions of paradoxical attachments (city and country, past and present, etc) and is a tale about a union man who is feeling the pinch ala Steinbeck's “Grapes of Wrath” and wraps up the album quite strongly. (It is also one of my favourites on the album.)

There are also alternate takes of six of the songs on the CD release as well as an outtake of a song that would appear on future albums (referring to “Get Up Jake"). They are all interesting for different approaches taken to songs in different takes…from instruments used to who played what, who sang the songs, some false starts, instructions given, etc. But the twelve songs on the album as originally released are the focus of this review and they all cohere well making this album a must have for anyone who likes good music.

"If You Want Something Done Right, Do It Yourself" Dept.
(On Arguments Opposed to Military Involvement in the Middle East)

Due to the bankrupt nature of the "arguments" propounded by the lions share of who are opposed to the utilization of the military option in the Middle East (with regards to Iraq or otherwise), many ideas for approaching this have been pondered over by those of Us at Rerum Novarum. One of those that has seemed increasingly necessary is to insure that if critics will kvetch that at least they will use solid argumentation in the process and not the brainless ideological twaddle of the antiwar.com crowd and various and sundry idiotarians (read: moonbats) of that sort. For such things grate on your host who is and always has been generally speaking quite anti-idiotarian in his geopolitical approaches and not only because there is not enough time in the day to fact check those sorry specimens and post the biblical scroll of errors, distortions, and logical/argumentation fallacies that the screeds of such ideologues inexorably contain.

However, it is not often recognized that there are those who could be classified as anti-idiotarian who take a different view on the war situation. Such people are rare and deserve to be recognized. And as they are intellectually capable of making rational arguments, your host has thought about providing adversaries of this sort with some actual arguments with which they can use to construct a viable argument with which he and others can interact with. Or as this writer noted in a recent emailing to a friend on this subject matter (modified slightly in spots):

[T]o show what a standup guy I am, I [may] actually...post sometime [soon] some probable arguments against the war in Iraq which I will give to the antiwar crowd to develop free of charge. Basically I am tired of confuting stupid arguments on that score and am thus [contemplating giving] them some bonafide arguments which they can use...though I may offer them to [a good friend] to use against me first...[someone who] can be brutal at times in [their] argumentation. [Excerpt from Email Correspondence (circa September 9, 2005)]

Exactly when or if this is done remains to be seen but it is leaning more and more in that direction simply because your host wants there to be in the public square solid arguments on both sides rather than the common shrieking and irrational opposition by various assortments of moonbats countered by various fiskings or mistings by those of Our general outlook where only our side uses actual arguments. Anyway, that is what We are considering doing at some point in the future but it seemed appropriate to publicly note it at this time so that certain parties We have in mind for a possible future dialogue on the subject can be alerted to this free gift from your humble servant at Rerum Novarum and can ready their brickbats accordingly (if they are so inclined to).

[Last minute update: Your host has literally just been notified as of posting the above thread by one of the anti-war anti-idiotarians he had in mind that the proposed dialogue noted above is of interest to them. For that reason, it is now a question of when and not if it will take place. Stay tuned for the arguments your host will offer the opposition to develop in opposition to his own position...they need to be finetuned and sent to Our adversary first so they can start developing them. (Once they are in at least draft form, We will post the arguments in bullet form to this weblog for your perusal.)]

[Update: A continuation of this thread can be read HERE. - ISM 1/29/06 2:27pm]

On Miscellaneous Matters:
(Musings of your humble servant at Rerum Novarum)

They call it stormy Monday...aah but Tuesday's just as bad...
Ohhhhh they call it stormy Monday...but Tuesday's just as bad...
You know Wednesday's worse...
Aaaand Thursday's oh so sad...

It should not surprise me that it is raining in Seattle on a Monday but today I could have used better weather for my mood...normally the latter is not affected much by external environment but today it certainly is. It also does not help that it is a holiday today either but what can one do with the uncontrollable elements such as that??? The answer is nothing of course and while I am optimistic about this being a better year than last year (and even better than 2004 which was the best overall year of the new millennium for me thus far); nonetheless, it seems appropriate to jot down some notes of various subjects that I have had in mind for a while. The first is the subject of resolutions.

It has been a long time since I bought into the idea of "resolutions" for the new year...part of the reason I suppose is that they are treated as such a joke by the culture at large. I am not opposed to resolving to do better of course but there is too much making of resolutions by people which are constructed in a way that almost guarantees them failure. For example, someone who smokes a pack of cigarettes a day and has for years is not about to be likely to go cold turkey on the new year and expect to succeed. But at the same time, that does not mean that they cannot succeed at their goal within the year. Likewise with those trying to lose weight...you cannot go from eating lots of food a day to no food without some form of phased in program as well as certain kinds of supplement support. And the idea of giving anything up completely if it is something you are accustomed to needs to be dealt with carefully.

I would not hold it against someone who (for example) resolved to quit smoking on the new year who has already failed in the "cold turkey" approach. Likewise, someone who sought to give up refined sugar products completely, lose a certain amount of excess body weight, or something else of that sort. However, I do find it interesting how people if they fail once in a resolution often take an "oh well, I tried" and act as if since they failed once, they need not try again. This is akin to someone who gets a flat on the highway choosing instead of fixing the flat and moving on again towards their destination to shoot out the other three tires too. Habits of mind or of a person's general disposition take time to form and they are thus not going to change as quickly as we might like them too. But if the right approach is set down in advance and a proper strategery undertaken, the odds of success will be much greater in whatever the area of intended improvement happens to be. Just keep in mind the determination that you will succeed at whatever your goals are and do not let setbacks be anything but temporary delays.

Occasionally the subject of writing is one I ponder particularly when I see a website or weblog writer who start such an endeavour and then cease it under the pretext that they have nothing to write about. But then again, that is what happens when you start a weblog or a website with a very limited scope as your primary means of expression. That is not to say that certain projects may not at times call for their own individual site of course. But there should be a general or primary source which is not so limited if you want to insure against anything more than a temporary (at most) writers block.

I suppose some would view it as a good thing that I have more things to blog on than I have time for...but the reason for that is my refusal to limit myself for the sake of fitting a particular "niche" or whatever. As I see it, most of what we do in life has some form of stratification to it and thus one's space for musing should not be so "specialized." Obviously if you involve yourself in projects of other people which have certain limits set down then those limits should be respected. But beyond that, only limit yourself in weblog or website writing if you want to build in your own obsolescence device of sorts.{1} There are a number of different sources for insuring against permanent "writers block" for anyone who cares to search them out. But to save on time, consider what the present writer has discovered in his time blogging viz. sources you can utilize to assist in coming up with material.

The truth is, writing is like anything really and when you have a system or methodology in place to assist you in generating material, you can mitigate the problems that develop in the absence of having such a system in place. And while I did not always recognize the approaches I utilize as encompassing a "system" of sorts; nonetheless, I do not mind sharing many of the means from which I have come up with nearly 1800 posts (thus far) since this weblog debuted nearly three and a half years ago. Admittedly it is not the complete list of sources I have used (and continue to use). But what I publicly wrote on this matter nearly two and a half years ago{2} was reprised in a different context{3} and can be considered good points of reference for anyone who wants to cultivate the writing discipline to some extent either in weblog format or some other form of media communication.

Anyway, that is all I have time to muse on at the moment..."the time is gone...this post is over....thought I'd something more to say???"

Notes:

{1} Speaking only for myself, I do not feel a sense of guilt if I go for a day or two (or three or whatever length) without blogging. Initially I did but then it dawned on me (and fortunately this happened very early in the life of this blog) that the moment I worry about that is the moment any edge I have (if I even have one) is blunted...

I do not know what subjects elicit the most readership and which do not and frankly, I have no interest in finding out. For the moment I do that is the moment my impulse to blog my mind becomes to some extent compromised. [Excerpt from Rerum Novarum (circa February 3, 2003)]

{2} What originally got me sketching these ideas down as I discovered them was a test that made the rounds in mid 2003 which was a "personality quiz" of sorts seeking to identify the personalities behind various blogging collectives. My setting forth of many of the sources I have used (and continue to use to the present day) was to counter the assessment that weblogging was a "soliloquy" of sorts and that there was no feedback of sorts from other people in what was or was not blogged. In light of the conspicuous lack of comments boxes at Rerum Novarum, it seemed appropriate to note that We were not hurting for outside input in many other ways which more than compensated for not having comments boxes.

{3} The differing context of the post reprising that subject matter was a revisiting of the comments box subject earlier this year. My position on comments boxes has not wavered on this weblog since its founding yet whenever I mention this, there are inevitable people who accuse me of not wanting to interact with other people, not receiving feedback on post material, or other kinds of what can be summarized as "soliloquizing." I doubt what I wrote then will silence the comments box "true believers" but at the very least it showed (hopefully) that one can receive ideas for writing and no shortage of feedback from others in a variety of ways other than comments boxes.

"Auld Lang Syne" Dept.
(Aka "The Last Post of the Year")

I have tended for the past couple of years on this weblog to open the year (or close it) with the traditional song for ringing in the new year. As I did ringing in 2004, I will forward-post the present thread now (as I will not being in front of a computer when the new year rings in) yet want it to be time stamped in a contemporary way; thus it will be the last post of 2005. Here 'tis:

Should auld acquaintance be forgot
And never brought to mind?
Should auld acquaintance be forgot
And days of auld lang syne?

For auld lang syne, my dear,
For auld lang syne
We'll tak a cup o' kindness yet
For auld lang syne.

And surely ye'll be your pint stoop
And surely I'll be mine
And we'll tak a cup o' kindness yet
For auld lang syne.

For auld lang syne, my dear,
For auld lang syne,
We'll tak' a cup o' kindness yet,
For auld lang syne.

We twa hae run about the braes
And pou'd the gowans fine
But we've wander'd mony a weary foot
Sin' auld lang syne.

For auld lang syne, my dear,
For auld lang syne,
We'll tak' a cup o' kindness yet,
For auld lang syne.

We twa hae paidl'd i' the burn
Frae mornin' sun till dine
But seas between us braid hae roared
Sin' auld lang syne.

For auld lang syne, my dear,
For auld lang syne,
We'll tak' a cup o' kindness yet,
For auld lang syne.

And here's a hand, my trusty fiere
And gi'e's a hand o' thine
And we'll tak a right good willy waught
For auld lang syne. [Attr. Robert Burns]

May you all have a blessed and prosperous new year and I hope to see y'all next year...same Bat time...same Bat blog ;-)

On the Subjects of National Security, the Patriot Act, Etc.
(Musings of your humble servant at Rerum Novarum)

I have said very little about The Patriot Act {1} except that I agree with it in principle if not in certain specifics. However, there is more to it than just that and as certain personages with soundbyte mentalities tend to misunderstand my view all too often, it seems appropriate to discuss this subject at the present time because...well...because I want to and that is a good enough reason for me.

One of the things I have not explictly said about the whole idea of The Patriot Act is that I see the approach as contradictory when you have a president and legislative branch of the government who are not concerned with securing the borders. This is one of the key issues on which I wavered a bit in my support of President Bush about two years ago and my view on the issue has not changed. Our borders are overrun by illegals everyday and the lack of security of them gives a good route of passage for potential terrorists. A key problem with The Patriot Act is that it is yet another case of creating more laws while ones already on the books are not properly enforced. There is also the issue to any piece of legislation not having a sunset provision in it as I noted back in August of this year.

The Patriot Act was extended six months as a kind of congressional compromise. But six months from now, we will be in the middle of June 2006 about five months from the midterm elections. I hate to say it but if I was a Democrat, I would hammer the Republicans and the president for their insistence on the "necessity" of The Patriot Act while they basically let the borders go unsecured. This is a pretty basic violation of the law of non contradiction...not that most committed Democrats and other quasi-socialists concern themselves with non-contradiction most of the time of course. But this will be an election year and if President Bush and the Republicans want to bring up the whole "national security" issue when The Patriot Act is up for extension in the middle of 2006, they can (and should be) hammered for their obvious inconsistency here.{2}

And (of course) if President Bush and the Republicans start talking about securing the borders in 2006 --and I predict that they will-- ideological enemies who want to publicly opine as to why this was not a concern for President Bush and many of the Republicans for the last five years will not in doing so find any criticism from this writer, that is for sure.

Notes:

{1} Briefly on the Patriot Act, Some Problems I Have With It, Etc. (circa August 2, 2005)

Miscellaneous Musings on the Patriot Act and Legislative Reform--An Audio Post (circa November 23, 2004)

{2} Granted, the claims of "inconsistency" or "crimes" by Bush's political opponents are usually able to be exposed as ideologically driven and lacking a basis in fact as well as in logic. However, what is noted above is a clear example of contradiction which cannot exist in a position if the latter is to be sound.

You Should Get a JD (Juris Doctor)

You're logical, driven, and ruthless. You'd make a mighty fine lawyer.

What Advanced Degree Should You Get?

As my father used to sardonically say in a Dirty Harry kinda way (squinted eyes and all): Marvelous!!!

Points to Ponder:
(On Inconsistent Approaches to Nature)

Nature is raw material, worthless without the mixture of human labor; yet nature is also the highest and most sacred thing. The same people who struggle to save the snail darter bless the pill, worry about hunting deer and defend abortion. Reverence for nature, mastery of nature—whichever is convenient. The principle of contradiction has been repealed. [Allan Bloom: From The Closing of the American Mind pg. 172 (c. 1987)]

Please remember in your prayers Larry Gonczy and his grieving family...Larry passed away a few days before Christmas and his funeral was today yesterday.

[Lord] remember Larry Gonczy. In baptism he died with Christ: may he also share his resurrection, when Christ will raise our mortal bodies and make them like his own in glory. [Eucharistic Prayer III: From The Roman Missal under Masses for the Dead]

Also commended to your prayers is the mother of a good friend of mine (one of my oldest friends actually) who will be going into hospice soon. For those who do not know that means that her death is all but imminent so please keep Kathy Hanks and her family in your prayers.

Points to Ponder:

It is now fashionable to deny that there ever was a state of nature. We are like aristocrats who do not care to know that our ancestors were once savages who, motivated only by fear of death and scarcity, killed one another in quarrels over acorns. But we continue to live off of the capital passed on to us by these rejected predecessors. Everyone believes in freedom and equality and the rights consequent to them. These were, however, brought to civil society from the state of nature; in the absence of any other ground for them, they must be just as mythical as the tale of the state of nature told by the unreliable travelers. [Allan Bloom: From The Closing of the American Mind pg. 162 (c. 1987)]

Briefly on Claude Frederic Bastiat, the US Constitution, and Socialism:

My interlocuter's words will be in shale font.

To paraphrase XX XXXXXXXX's argument, I hope I can be forgiven for a Frederic Bastiat quote:

"Socialism, like the ancient ideas from which it springs, confuses the distinction between government and society. As a result of this, every time we object to a thing being done by government, the socialists conclude that we object to its being done at all."

Indeed. Claude Frederic Bastiat's work should be required reading in schools. Any liberal arts degree or economics degree without reasonable familiarity in Bastiat's magnum opus The Law is worthless.

A SCOTUS that will invalidate the laws creating Social Security, workplace safety regulations, the minimum wage, medicare, medicaid, and uunemployment insurance is their real aim.

Social Security is unconstitutional as is the minimum wage, medicare, medicaid, etc. Obviously if states wanted to put in place workplace safety regulations and minimum wage legislation, that would be fine and the same is the case with the other programs noted above. But socialism is nothing more than communism in a lessor-developed state of growth: something else that Bastiat correctly pointed out over 150 years ago.

Furthermore, there is no Constitutional authority for federal intervention in so-called "social welfare" programs. PERIOD. The Constitution does have a commerce clause which indicates that Congress has the power to "regulate Commerce with foreign Nations, and among the several States, and with the Indian Tribes." But that does not mean that the federal government has power to govern commerce within individual states. Indeed as Alexander Hamilton wrote in 1789, the proposed Constitution made certain distinctions which so-called "social democrats" are either ignorant of or are interested in subverting. Here is the distinction on the commerce clause that our so-called "enlightened justices" have ignored for about seventy years or so:

The proper division between federal and state authorities Commerce, finance, negotiation, and war seem to comprehend all the objects which have charms for minds governed by that passion; and all the powers necessary to those objects ought, in the first instance, to be lodged in the national depository. The administration of private justice between the citizens of the same State, the supervision of agriculture and of other concerns of a similar nature, all those things, in short, which are proper to be provided for by local legislation, can never be desirable cares of a general jurisdiction. (Federalist #17)]

In other words, the federal government can licitly regulate commerce between nations, states, and other extra-state configurations (such as the Indian tribes) but not inner-state commerce. Thus, all attempts at the latter are blatantly unconstitutional and make a mockery of the Constitution whether you like it or not.

However, (as I noted) states have the authority to enact the kinds of legislation you speak of. Furthermore, if a company governs across state lines, one could argue that it is subject to the federal commerce clause. However, small inner-state companies, franchises, etc. are another matter altogether: the state has the authority to regulate them but not the federal government.

Meanwhile regarding NNNN's defense of Social Security and such. Would remind him that in the real world, the current Social Security structure would send its managers to the hoosegow. Ponzi scheme- with increasingly shrinking number of paying employees to support those who need its services. Would strongly urge Mr. N. and all y'all to hook up with national best-seller The FairTax Book by Neal Boortz and Cong. John Linder. Arguing for 22% Federal flat tax on all goods and services, eliminating FICA, IRS, other impediments to our economic growth and development. Prof. Drs. Boortz and Linder developed a sixth sense for any and all objections to their proposal in clear and easy terminology. More necessary for our future than who sits in snazzy robes and makes rulings to be misinterpreted down the line.

Precisely. I have always found it ironic that those who are the most adamantly opposed to multi level marketing arrangements tend to be very loyal to the panzi scheme of Social Security. As far as the flat tax goes, I am more in favour of a consumption tax with food and medicine exempted as well as (perhaps) a certain portion of home purchase price as well. However, if the choices left are what we have now and a flat tax, obviously the latter is preferable with certain income exemptions of course...say the first $30,000 to $40,000 of income.

Percentage wise, I think 22% is too high...the federal leviathan does not need that much of our money to govern according to constitutional boundaries. However, if we were talking a phased in flat tax starting at 22% and then graduating downward over time (to allow us to gradually prune back the federal tree) to say 10% or less, that is something I would definitely like to see.

The previously noted first draft of an album review (Roger Waters's Amused to Death) was posted to Amazon earlier today with minimal adjustments made. I have a few more items in mind for reviewing...though I am not sure any of them will be done before the end of the year.

Miscellaneous Threads for Reviewing:

Briefly on some threads that have been accumulating for a while...

Great Care Should Be Taken in Interpreting Messages From God (Doug Bandow)

The above article is a good one for those who like to interpret natural disasters as messages from God for ideological purposes. It is posted because I remember reading some articles from well-meaning people who opined that Katrina was a "punishment from God" for various crimes of our society. Personally, I find the argument of Katrina being punishment a rather curious interpretation since many of the areas which would seem to be logical targets for chastisement by those who make that argument were left relatively untouched. But that is a subject perhaps for another time.

Who Are You Calling Angry? (Michelle Malkin)

The hypocrisy of Janeane Garofalo ("talk radio host" on Air UnAmerican) is briefly touched on by Ms. Malkin in the above thread. Particularly of interest to your host is her reference to liberal projection: a subject I have spoken of before and may write on in the future if I feel inclined to.

Hillary vs. Moonbats (Michelle Malkin)

I would be lying if I did not admit to feeling a fair amount of schadenfraude after reading the above article :)

Right To Digital? (George Will)

In a word: no, there is no "right" to digital TV. But watch those who are incapable of giving a reasonable working definition of "rights" to claim that there is one. Definitions are the tools of thought and frankly, those who are not willing to define their terms do not deserve to be taken seriously...whether they are misappropriating the term "rights", "neo cons", or whatever.

It’s Time To Investigate Able Danger and the 9/11 Commission (Andrew McCarthy)

As one who has not been quiet on the Able Danger subject myself,{1} I concur with Mr. McCarthy's assessments on the matter in question.

Baseball: The Sublime Game (The Thoughtful Crab)

Many of the reasons your host has long loved baseball are summed up well in the above thread.

And now for some economics threads for consideration...

What's Inflation? (Dr. Walter Williams)

Hopefully more people will know after reading the above thread...

Basic Economics (Dr. Walter Williams)

This time, Dr. Williams discusses basic economics as they pertain to the cost of gasoline...a subject your host discussed back in September in a more technical fashion.{2} But the lessons to be learned in both threads are important ones...particularly since a lot of economically ignorant people vote and tend to vote for socialist candidates based to a large extent on their ignorance of how things work in the real world. And (of course) the above article has two really good one-liners that I may have to use in upcoming "points to ponder" segments :)

Random Thoughts (Thomas Sowell)

My favourite columns from Thomas Sowell are his "random thoughts" columns. I am not sure if there is a connection or not but I believe the whole idea of "miscellaneous musings" on this weblog was indirectly influenced by this feature of Sowell's writing. But give it a read and ponder over the various bits he notes so that your host can forego a "points to ponder" installment for a few more days...

Between Venus and Mars, the Church of Rome Chooses Both (Sandro Magister)

The reality of Catholic Church geopolitics and why they are not as simplistic as certain pseudo "peacemakers" would seek to deceive people into believing

The Genius of Karl Rove, Cont. (Noemie Emery)

I am no fan of Karl Rove's but if any of the above article is correct...well...let us just say I will not complain :)

Bush Gives the Iraq P.R. Machine a Much Needed Tune Up (Greg Mockeridge)

And the president paralleled many of the suggestions set down by Greg in a post he wrote back on December 3rd:

The Bush Iraq P.R. Machine Is Running Better, But Still Needs Work (Greg Mockeridge)

Evidently, the president or one of his advisors got the above memo ;-)

[Update: I decided to extend this thread a little after doing a bit more reading today...and what is noted from this point on is what has been added to the post since this morning. -ISM 12/26/05 8:45pm]

It seems appropriate to close on the war on terror subject and include these two threads...

Huge Weapons Cache Found (Ryan Lenz)

Your host was made aware of the above thread by Bryan Preston of The JunkYard BLOG. And of course remember dear reader that your host mentioned some time ago that it would take time to find any weapons in Iraq if there were any to be found at all.{3} Little by little things have been found but the MSM tends to not want to report them for obvious reasons. If the intention is to be fair and to tell the whole story, then these findings have to be reported on or else the media is engaging in distortion. Thankfully, there is the alternative media (and the much-sneered-at blogosphere) to do the MSM's job for them yet again.

Iraq Stubbornly Continues to Not Be Quagmire (Mac Stansbury)

While not the shill for the Bush Administration that Mac admits to being; nonetheless, your host does concur with the overall position which Mac notes in the posting above.

Notes:

{1} On Able Danger and A Potential Defense Department Coverup (circa September 21, 2005)

Briefly Revisiting Able Danger (circa October 20, 2005)

"Focus on Able Danger Stupid" Dept. (circa November 3, 2005)

{2} On the High Gas Prices and the Economics Involved Therein (circa September 10, 2005)

And while the above thread contains a lot of valuable information on the economics of gasoline production, distribution, and pricing, it does nonetheless also contain a blown prediction by your host viz. gasoline costs. I explained the reason for this missed prediction HERE but to summarize it briefly: I went against one of my rational principles by placing too much trust in the accuracy of the MSM on the matter at hand. The end result of course vindicated the McElhinney Media Dictum yet again even if on this occasion it was because I myself was not faithful to it.

{3} Among the postings that come to mind offhand are this one:

Because so many of the antiwar partisans are ignorant of Santayana's dictum about history, I want to return to it briefly to remind the readers of this weblog that it took longer to find weapons of this sort in countries where there has been greater cooperation than the time thus far spent in Iraq. Until those who parrot the "no WMD's in Iraq" line take these facts of reality seriously -not to mention certain other factors that they also conveniently overlook,[...] I fail to see why anyone should give their statements on this subject (whomever they happen to be)[...] the time of day. [Excerpt from Rerum Novarum (circa September 18, 2004)]

And this one:

Finding and getting rid of such weapons in Ukraine, Belarus, Kazakhstan and South Africa took 18 to 30 months, even though those governments all actively cooperated with the U.N. It is fanciful that similar results could be achieved in Iraq in a few weeks.

Not finding the weapons in a fixed timeframe does not mean they never existed. British and Spanish governments have been looking for weapons caches of Basque and Irish terrorist groups for 35 years and have found little. But everyone knows those groups have arms.

On the other hand, the Philippine government still finds weapons caches left by the Japanese over half a century ago. [Excerpt from Rerum Novarum (circa December 16, 2003)]