Too many out of too few

Mr and Mrs Politician,

Ours is not a big army. We can't keep losing these guys while hearing about how YOUR resolve is undiminished.

The Lord's Resistance Army

Ever heard of the LRA, the Lord's Resistance Army?

They represent a face of violent religious insurgency in Uganda, southern Sudan and the eastern Congo. Apocalyptic Christians, their leader claims he is the spokesman of God, and seeks to establish a theocracy based on the ten commandments, with elements of the mystic traditions of the Acholi ethnic group.

Somehow this translates in practice into sexual slavery, child slave-soldiers, kidnapping, mutilation and murder. And against obvious proof of the contrary, painting a cross on your chest makes you bullet proof, if you believe their current leader, Joseph Kony.

Kony is now thought to be hiding in southern Darfur.

The LRA began in 1986, and since then has been responsible 30,000 abducted children.
Maybe 40,000 - no-one can count them all.
Over 2 million displaced people. One investigation found a child slave-soldier bearing arms at age 5. The second youngest was 6.

Kony has been described, optimistically in my opinion, as "Africa's last warlord". He's been hunted for years.
According to Jendayi Frazer, the then US assistant secretary of state for African affairs, Dubbya would rant ""How can this guy call himself a soldier of the Lord? He's just a murderer."

But the hunt for Kony has never gone well....
In 2006, the United Nations did something it doesn't usually do: They sent a hit team. American-trained Guatemalan Special Ops soldiers. They were all killed and the LRA had some new heavy machine guns and grenade launchers to play with.

Then in December 2008 came Operation Lightening Thunder. Reporter Scott Johnson, in an article for Newsweek, writes:

Shortly after dawn last Dec. 14, four Ugandan Mi-24 helicopters banked low over the thick forest canopy of Congo's Garamba National Park. A dense fog had rolled in overnight, and the weather had turned nasty. Earlier that morning at a forward staging area in Uganda, a team of American military advisers equipped with large-scale US government maps and Google Earth technology had shown the helicopter pilots what to look for—four distinct "fishhook shape" camps spread out in cleared areas of the park. In one of these camps, they believed, was Joseph Kony, the professed mystic who leads Africa's longest-lived insurgent group, the Lord's Resistance Army. Find Kony, the pilots' commander had said, and kill him.

Descending through the fog bank and hovering just above the tree line, the pilots spotted what looked like a rebel council meeting in the largest cluster of shelters, code-named Camp K. The gunships immediately unleashed a barrage of rockets and chain-gun fire. Reports from the helicopter crews later stated that several dozen people, including women and children, had been caught in the open. "I saw the helicopters come—they were black, and they were bombing us," recalls George Komagun, 16, one of the hundreds of child soldiers in the Lord's Resistance Army. "I ran. We tried to fight the helicopters, but could not."

Two days after Operation Lightning Thunder began, Ugandan commandos finally reached Camp K. They found bloody trails heading into the jungle in all directions. Hastily dug graves dotted the site's periphery. Kony had been on the run for more than two decades, but this place had the look of a settled homestead. Acres had been cultivated with sorghum, cassava and maize. Stashes of sugar, rice and water in large plastic containers were buried all around.

....

Eight days later Kony retaliated, as usual by attacking helpless civilians. Within a few days, LRA fighters had slaughtered more than 1,000 Congolese villagers, beating them to death with clubs, rifle butts and machetes, and burning entire villages to the ground. Hundreds of children were kidnapped, and roughly a quarter of a million people fled their homes in Congo and south Sudan.

According to George Komagun, mentioned above, Kony would say 'Now you killed them, you must drink their blood and eat their liver." Komagun claims to have eaten 20 livers. In his dreams the people he has killed come to him begging for mercy.

In Southern Sudan there is a militia called the Arrow Boys who defend their village against the LRA. They fight with anything they have, including bows and poison darts.

On of their fighters, Emmanuel Samuel, joined the Arrow Boys in July.

In a report today by Jason Koutsoukis, a journalist with Fairfax Media, he says "The village elders told me to stay in the village but I wanted to stay and follow my father... I have fired my weapon [a bow and arrow] just once"

Emmanuel Samuel is 10 years old.

Axis of Deceit, Fulcrum of Power?

In 2003 a former Australian Army lieutenant-colonel and intelligence analyst, Andrew Wilkie, spoke out as a whistleblower against the invasion of Iraq, and quit the Office of National Assessments.

The ONA provides builds assessments on international political, strategic and economic matters of interest to Australia, reporting to the prime minister and the National Security Committee of cabinet, linking up with services such as ASIO, the Australian Secret Intelligence Organisation.

The conservative Coalition government of the day promptly mounted a campaign of personal vilification.(...a Right-wing government vilifying an experienced military officer for doubting the wisdom and basis for an illegal war...good heavens... who would have thought it?)

Then prime minister (and eternal scumbag) John Howard said Wilkie was ''guilty of distortion, exaggeration and misrepresentation''. Liberal Party senator David Johnston described him as ''unstable and flakey". Howard's own office called Wilkie "unbalanced".

Well... the tables might or might not have turned now...

Andrew Wilkie is now an independent political candidate and a potential power broker in the stand off in the hung parliament, wherein neither government nor opposition alone has the numbers to take power. Wilkie was once a member of the Liberal Party (the greater part of the conservative Coalition), and later stood as a Green.

This week Wilkie said Australia should separate from the US on Afghanistan war policy, and exit the conflict, saying that the assertion that Australia was there because of terrorists is a "great lie". He says the terrorists have "morphed years ago into a global network" making Afghanistan an irrelevance.

Both Labor and the Coalition opposition currently support Australian military presence in Afghanistan.

The night before last yet another Australian soldier was killed. He was from what was Wilkie's own battalion and regiment.

Wilkie has yet to claim victory in his Tasmanian seat but the current Coalition leader and would-be prime minister Tony Abbott has called him and apologised for what the Howard government - of which Abbott was a key member - did to him.

I bet he did.

Gillard has arranged to meet Wilkie on Saturday. Abbott will meet with him on Monday.

Election day

Election day. Two more soldiers killed in Afghanistan.

Private Grant Kirby, father of two, previously served in Iraq.
Private Thomas Dale, on his first deployment.

Gillard says "The mission in Afghanistan is a dangerous one... The mission is a vital one."

Bloody hope it's worth it.

Further perspectives on the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki

I had thought to leave this topic as it stood in my earlier post, but the comments that it provoked prompted this one...

There is prevailing rationalisation for the use of the atomic bomb which asserts that it was less costly, to both sides, than a conventional invasion would have been. This position is so pervasive that I think most people who have ever given thought to this are swayed by it to some extent.

It is predicated, however, on largely unthinking assumptions which are in fact untrue, or at least questionable.

The first key assumption is that the dropping of the bomb and full scale invasion were mutually exclusive alternatives, and that one made the other unnecessary. Any reputable presentation of war plans shows that this was not the intention at the time. Both were actually part of the same planning from the time the bomb became available.

The second key assumption was the bomb demonstrated such awesome power that it, of itself, persuaded the Japanese government to surrender. That is not, strictly speaking, entirely true either. An associated assumption is that the US government actually expected that outcome. Again, not strictly true.

As the war came closer to the Japanese homeland, conceptual plans for invasion were drawn up. Early planning did not account for the atomic bomb, the project being top secret and known to a very few. As it became a reality, though, that changed...
General of the Army George Marshall considered using it.

To support the invasion - not instead of invasion.

At this time there was no single commander who held total military authority over the whole Pacific theatre. Command was shared among several men. There was a sharp divide between the opinions of the US Navy and the opinions of the US Army. Broadly speaking, MacArthur and the Army wanted invasion. Chester Nimitz and the Navy wanted a blockade. The Army said not invading would prolong the war indefinitely. The Navy said invasion would be too costly.
Political considerations gave the Army the edge, and planning moved to a thought process of how to defeat Japan quickly. The plan was called Operation Downfall, split into two sections, Operations Coronet and Olympic. Olympic would take Kyushu, the southern island. Coronet would take Honshu, the main island, via Tokyo Bay.

Marshall did not believe that dropping the bomb would make Japan surrender, and ordered work to begin on how they might be used tactically instead of strategically.
Hiroshima and Nagasaki were "strategic" hits. Using them tactically meant dropping them on the areas they intended to deploy troops.

With the benefit of what we know now about the effects of atomic weapons, this idea is utterly appalling. Allied troops could have been in the effected areas in as little as 48 hours, meaning that after a vicious ground war, surviving veterans would have been falling down dead years later from the effects of radiation. The operational plan probably would have come unstuck very fast as massive numbers of forces committed to the invasion fell sick immediately, in a land where nearly 30 million Japanese civilians had been indoctrinated to fight as irregular military. An irradiated nightmare of a battlezone.

MacArthur was confident and believed Japanese resistance would not be as strong as reports suggested. Nimitz on the other hand had grave doubts. Marshall looked to Truman and fretted that the latter would not greenlight the invasion. Projections of Allied casualties ran as high as 4 million, and Truman could not support that politically given the deleterious effect it would have on civilian morale.

The first two atomic bombs were dropped. Japan did not immediately surrender and invasion plans continued apace.

However on August 9th 1945, the emperor, Hirohito, was advised the Soviets had declared war on Japan. What ran through the mind of a man told from infancy that he was a living god and inseparable from the material and spiritual existence of his country is hard to say, but he authorised surrender to the Allies - with the one condition that the Soviets would absolutely not have agreed to: the continuance of the throne. Earlier it had even been hoped by Hirohito that the Soviets would mediate as neutrals.

Fact: If that condition was not met - or Hirohito had believed it would not be met - it was his stated intention to continue the war. He said so. Another dozen bombs could have been dropped and the war would possibly have continued still.

Had he been killed, there would have been no surrender, for it was the office of the emperor, and his voice heard for the first time on public radio, that was the transcendent authority in Japan, their one way out, their sole means of processing total national catastrophe, the only thing that would make them "endure the unendurable".

The question is not what 'made' Japan surrender. The question is how they came to choose to surrender.

A large part of the latter 20th century spun on the whim of this one man, and the catalyst for his choice was not some dreadful new weapon, it was the choice between the Soviets or the Allies. I know who I would have chosen.

A few other related considerations:

Australia wanted Hirohito hanged. Cooler heads in Washington resisted.
Retention of the emperor enabled what was probably the most benign occupation of a former enemy in the history of the world. With the only use of atomic weapons in anger still within living memory, Japanese today by and large nonetheless regard the United States as Japan's one true friend - an extraordinary reversal. This in a world where there are peoples nursing murderous grudges over things done to them by other peoples generations or centuries earlier.

Footage of the effects of the bomb were suppressed in both the United States and Japan for more than 20 years. In occupied Japan the reasons are obvious. In the US the reasons are less clear.

In a 1944 poll 13% of Americans wanted Japanese exterminated (the source cited for this is here). However, attitudes flipped dramatically in the years after the war. While enmity persisted, common images of Japan went from subhuman adversary to a land of paper houses and tinkling kimonos. By 1959 there was a Broadway play, "A Majority of One", adapted to a 1962 film, wherein the mother of a American killed in the war is romanced by a Japanese widower aboard a cruise ship, to the consternation of the woman's daughter.

Perception is endlessly mutable. Truth is not.
The atomic bomb did not force capitulation so much as the emperor's authority enabled it, inspired by self-preservation under the shadow of the Soviets.

It was not a case of "use the bomb OR invade". It was "use the bomb TO invade". Active assumptions in Washington were that the first two detonations would NOT result in capitulation.

Finally.. let's call a filthy cruel weapon a filthy cruel weapon - not a silver bullet for peace. We are still, all of us, living in danger of these things today. At any time a city in the US, Europe or elsewhere could be leveled by nuclear terrorism. These things are not a solution and never were.

By the way the segment below is a scene from The Bridges at Toko Ri. My intention here is not to be cute, but to contrast this with the above mentioned poll, taken just 10 years earlier....



Thanks for reading.

Perspectives on the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki

A lot of people - particularly of the 'armchair general' type who like to say "war is hell" - believe the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki were entirely justified.

I used to have that opinion too.

However, these are the opinions of William Leahy, Douglas MacArthur, Dwight D Eisenhower and Carter Clarke:

"It is my opinion that the use of this barbarous weapon at Hiroshima and Nagasaki was of no material assistance in our war against Japan. The Japanese were already defeated and ready to surrender because of the effective sea blockade and the successful bombing with conventional weapons...The lethal possibilities of atomic warfare in the future are frightening. My own feeling was that in being the first to use it, we had adopted an ethical standard common to the barbarians of the Dark Ages. I was not taught to make war in that fashion, and wars cannot be won by destroying women and children."
- William Leahy, Chief of Staff to Presidents Franklin Roosevelt and Harry Truman.

"When I asked General MacArthur about the decision to drop the bomb, I was surprised to learn he had not even been consulted. What, I asked, would his advice have been? He replied that he saw no military justification for the dropping of the bomb. The war might have ended weeks earlier, he said, if the United States had agreed, as it later did anyway, to the retention of the institution of the emperor."
- Norman Cousins, a member of General Douglas MacArthur's Staff

"...the Japanese were ready to surrender and it wasn't necessary to hit them with that awful thing."
- Dwight D Eisenhower

"...when we didn't need to do it, and we knew we didn't need to do it, and they knew that we knew we didn't need to do it, we used them as an experiment for two atomic bombs."
- Brigadier General Carter Clarke

My grandfather was a war hero, awarded the Order of the British Empire (among other decorations) for his conduct in fighting the Japanese, who could have landed in Australia. He lost a great many of his friends and brothers in that conflict. He did not believe it was the right thing to do either.

I regard these opinions as being of consequence.

No United Nations?

A former US defence adviser called Edward Luttwak will speak in Melbourne in September about the conduct of the war in Afghanistan.

I have actually read a well-known book by this guy called The Grand Strategy of the Roman Empire. I have a taste for history and it presented a controversial theory about how the Romans solidified their borders which I found interesting but faulty.

Can't say I agree with what he has to say about the conflicts of our times either...
He said building schools and other civilian infrastructure in Afghanistan was "infinitely more outrageous than bombing".

...uh.. yeah, you read that right....

"It is not intervening in the country to knock off the enemy and go home... this taking over Afghanistan, wanting to determine the history of Afghanistan and have it evolve the way you want it."

Yes Dr Luttwak... I would like Afghanistan's history to evolve in a way that makes it a tad less fertile for terrorist safe havens. Pure military force is failing to achieve this. Clearly he doesn't give a shit about civilians either....

Luttwak bases this view on the idea of "frozen" conflicts that never end.

He calls the creation of the UN a "colossal mistake", noting "The Israelis eventually fought hard wars with the Egyptians and they fought enough to reach a peace. They fought with the Jordanians, they reached a peace. But with the Palestinians, the rules are United Nations cease-fires - there is fighting, people are horrified … so you impose a cease-fire and the war doesn't end."

I've heard this before... mostly on the Right wing but occasionally on the Left too: The notion that all would be okay if Israel simply wipes the Palestinians out, ironically as these same jerks go on to dismiss any photo of a dead Palestinian child or other non-combatant as "fake"...

I enjoyed Luttwak's book about Roman strategy and keep it on my shelf, but anyone who sees unlimited war as the way to peace needs his head examined. The UN was created because people didn't want another conflict like WW2, and had there been no UN, there may have been none of the slight relief the world has had from famine, disease, cultural destruction, environmental destruction, child slavery and just about every other evil you care to name.

A world without the UN...? Seriously?

By the way... Luttwak stated in print of Obama prior to the election that he was "born a Muslim under Muslim law as it is universally understood".

Hmm..... very few understandings are indeed "universal", Dr Luttwak... that's why we have wars in the first place.

Friendship dolls

This is Shirley Temple in 1935, from a trip to Hawaii.

"In 1926, 12,739 dolls (composition dolls with wigs and sleep eyes and ma-ma voices)were collected from American children and sent to Japan as a token of international friendship. In return, Japanese children contributed their candy-money to have 58 dolls made to be sent to the U.S. These Torei Ningyo (ambassador dolls) were of the type called Ichimatsu (after an 18th-c. actor) and also Furisode ningyo (representing little girls in traditional festival costume); they were 32" tall and elaborately dressed, and often came with their own furniture, tea-sets, and so on. During the war, many of these ningyo were hidden away or destroyed in both countries..."

The rest of this interesting link here.

My own grandfather was career navy, a champion boxer, and later head of military police in Sydney.

In 1923 the Great Kanto Earthquake levelled Tokyo. He stayed a while, as a very young man, with a Japanese family while he and his crewmates helped relief efforts to rebuild the homes that allied planes would be dropping incendary bombs on 20 years later.

He survived the war. My wife's grandfather, in the Imperial Japanese navy, did not.

I've watched my mother-in-law pray in front of a photo of him and his young wife, who never remarried, with offerings of incence. I wonder what would the two men have made of me witnessing this, in the particular circumstance I have?

Somehow I don't think there would have been any problem.

I have a belief in a particular irony: If we were all warriors, there'd be no wars.

Blair unrepentant

Former British Prime Minister Tony Blair says he had no regrets over the invasion of Iraq...

No matter the lack of WMDs, the intense public disquiet, the massive number of casualties and the subsequent debacle of a failing occupation... he thinks it was worth it. More troubling, he says Iran presents the same opportunity to mount pre-emptive slaughter.

As you will have worked out by now, I am of the opinion that the war was a catastrophe for the rule of law and the struggle against terrorism. For what little it counts, I was of this opinion before the coalition of the willingly fooled even went into Iraq.

"So you'd prefer Saddam Hussein was still in power?" is the inevitable cheap retort (and strawman argument).
The answer is "no, I would prefer he'd have been removed by means other than full scale invasion".
Tracking this hypothetical exchange to its next evolution, I would then come under attack for hypocrisy and "moral confusion"...

As if moral clarity automatically means "...invade". It does not.
There is nothing clouded about my morality: I think massive unnecessary death is a very bad thing. I think creating a beacon for terrorism in the Middle East was a very bad thing. And I think deception of the public about how, why and when the decision was arrived at... was a very bad thing.

Much has been made of Blair's religious bent in how he arrived at his decisions.

Matthew Parris, formerly a conservative MP, writes:

"Tony Blair is a Manichean, or dualist. He believes that the Universe is best understood as an eternal struggle between the forces of good and evil, in contention for dominance. Christians are supposed to believe that the battle is already won, and Mr Blair’s dualism is (paradoxically) closer to Islamic fundamentalism than to the Gospels. For Mr Blair at least “Axis of Evil” was not just a Bushite soundbite: it was a profound philosophical insight into the meaning of world history."

I'm personally not convinced that Christians are in fact supposed to believe the battle is already won, but whatever... rigid dualism in politics is dangerous, is the point.
All 'our' enemies are not, in fact, friends of one another. Acting is if they are, or as if the fact doesn't matter... is stupidly dangerous. It DOES matter. How destroying Al-Qaeda transformed into taking down a regime who were hated by Al-Qaeda and who had nothing to do with 9/11 will become a paradox of policy that will darkly entertain students, teachers and observers of political theory for centuries to come, should civilisation live so long (I like to think it will).

Parris categorises the different types of people who are bitter about Blair's lack of repentance into original opposers of the war (like me), hindsight critics, and another group: "most ominously of all, a number who have not really repented of their doctrine of muscular interventionism, are now eyeing up Iran, and badly need to distinguish between what happened last time and what might happen if we try it again."

Comments by Parris in The Times Online, sourced here.