CHAPTER ONE HUNDRED AND FIFTY FIVE: THE BUCK STOPS HERE

 CHAPTER ONE HUNDRED AND FIFTY FIVE: THE BUCK STOPS HERE

It’s Tuesday, November 17, 2015, and CNN and MSNBC are running their “Breaking News” about the terrorist attacks on Paris, Beirut and a Russian charter airplane flying from a resort in Egypt to Moscow. The “Breaking News” doesn’t change, so one sees and hears the same videos and talking heads that have been presented since Friday the 13^th. Brian Williams has revived his career somewhat by anchoring the “Breaking News” on MSNBC. You can watch this station, or CNN, or Fox News, once a week and you will not miss anything. News doesn’t “break” every minute, or even every hour or day. So most of what you get from these 24 hour “news” stations is “breaking opinions” from the same closed set of talking heads. Retired CIA managers are very popular, as is anyone in a military uniform, from the rank of lieutenant colonel on up.

And for some reason, these so-called news stations think that the candidates for President, especially the Republican ones, should be given air time to bloviate. Oh sure, Rudy Giuliani is wheeled out for every terrorist attack, but he’s being pushed aside by the much more strident Ted Cruz, Marco Rubio and Donald Trump. Who cares what they think about this? And you don’t even hear what they really think about this – you get their campaign scripted statements, prepared for the 30 second sound bite. It’s foreign policy lite, or perhaps more accurately, lightweight. Please don’t let these guys, or Carson or Fiorino, or Christie, or Bush or Kasich anywhere near the White House.  No one asks Rand Paul about foreign policy on these stations, because he sounds like Bernie Sanders, opposed to war in almost all cases. Make no mistake, these news stations are all beating the war drums loudly, and there is no room for a dove in their studios.  When a reporter at a news conference with the President screams out “When are you going to get these bastards?” as his question, you know objectivity in the news is nonexistent.

Like 76% of the American public, I oppose sending troops to the Middle East. We have tried that and failed in Iraq and Afghanistan. Unless we intend to annex Iraq as the 51^st State, our troops will eventually leave and the factions in Iraq will resume fighting their sectarian fights. Shiites, Sunnis, and Kurds don’t like each other and we can’t make them forge a coalition government. Paul Bremer, the putative king of Iraq, anointed by George W. Bush, saw fit to disband the Iraqi Army, turning loose 250,000 officers and soldiers, many of whom sought employment with the up and coming army of ISIS. That order was issued on Bremer’s 2^nd day in Iraq. So yes, he was told to do it, but his claim that “I was just a cog in a machine”, the Eichmann defense, is not favored. Bottom line: ISIS got a huge boost from unemployed, disgruntled Iraqi soldiers who were trained to fight by none other than American “advisers”. You can look this up – it’s fact, not opinion.

This brings me to Harry S. Truman, our 33^rd President. On September 5 of this year I visited his Library and Museum in Independence, Missouri and renewed my interest in his decision to use nuclear weapons against Japan, soldiers and civilians alike, in Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August, 1945. A strong part of his justification was that the end of the war with Japan was not in sight, and the atomic bomb would take a lot of lives all at once, but it would save thousands of lives which would be lost in an unending war.  Historian Alonzo Hamby put it this way:

“One consideration weighed most heavily on Truman: the longer the war lasted, the more Americans killed… Truman, the old artilleryman who had seen war close-up, understood from his own experience the hopes and fears of … young combat officers dreaming of families and futures, just as he had a generation earlier. Their survival would be the ultimate vindication of his decision.”

Today no one sees an end to the war with ISIS. On the contrary, it is spreading its tentacles across northern Africa and Western Europe. Will ISIS pull off a “Pearl Harbor” somewhere in the United States? No one can rule this out. And if, God forbid, ISIS strikes on American soil, what will our response be? Will it include the use of “tactical” nuclear weapons? Hannah Arendt, a noted historian, said decades ago that the United States is most likely to use nuclear weapons in warfare, because we have already used them in WW II. You would think the horror of killing hundreds of thousands of people with one bomb would be a strong disincentive to ever using a nuclear weapon again. But apparently it works just the opposite – once a country’s leaders overcome the reluctance to use this weapon of mass destruction for the first time, the second time there is less reluctance. This is a corollary to the slippery slope syndrome. And numerous surveys of leaders in countries around the world agree that the United States is most likely to drop a nuclear bomb, despite the fact that we have seen the tragic consequences of using it.  

Has everyone seen the photos of the children running naked down the road after Hiroshima was hit by the atomic bomb (equal to 20,000 TONS of TNT), their clothing burned or melted off their bodies by the force of the bomb? President Truman must have seen them, because that was the ultimate restraint on his continuing to drop A bombs on Japan. According to a tablet entitled “The Atomic Bomb: A Chronology of Key Events” at the Truman Library and Museum, on August 10, 1945 “Truman tells his cabinet he has ordered a stop to the atomic bombings. As one cabinet member recalled: ‘He said the thought of wiping out another 100,000 people was too horrible. He didn’t like the idea of killing, as he said, ‘all those kids.’’”

Can you even imagine how many kids have been killed in Syria and Iraq, and in Afghanistan? In a short war perhaps we would see front page headlines of the atrocities committed against innocent children. But in the long, unending wars we have entered since Bush I, we have become desensitized to the murder of children. “Collateral damage” is what they are called. True, some children have been radicalized into taking up arms against the Infidels at very young ages – and they are killed in uniform along with their older brothers, cousins and fathers. But most kids are in the wrong place at the wrong time, when the Western (and now Russian) bombs come raining down on them and when ISIS comes storming into their villages and cities. And we keep killing them. So the question is: Is it time to contemplate the use of so-called tactical nuclear weapons to kill thousands with one attack, in order to save the thousands of lives which will be lost in these unending wars in Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan?  

Don’t get me wrong – I’m a pacifist, a dove. But Harry Truman got me thinking. Not that his decision to drop the A bomb – twice – was greeted as the best decision ever made by a president. Here is what a few of his many critics said:

“I thought that our country should avoid shocking world opinion by the use of a weapon whose employment was, I thought, no longer mandatory as a measure to save American lives. It was my belief that Japan was, at that very moment, seeking some way to surrender with a minimum loss of ‘face’…”  (General Dwight D. Eisenhower, 1963)

“Using atomic bombs against Japan is one of the greatest blunders of history. Both from a practical point of view… and from the point of view of our moral position. I went out of my way to prevent it but, as today’s papers show, without success.”  (Atomic scientist Leo Seilard, August 6, 1945, in letter to his wife)

“Based on a detailed investigation of all the facts, and supported by the testimony of the surviving Japanese leaders involved, it is the Survey’s opinion that certainly prior to 31 December 1945, and in all probability prior to 1 November 1945, Japan would have surrendered even if the atomic bomb had not been dropped, even if Russia had not entered the war, and even if no invasion had been planned or contemplated.” (U.S. Strategic Bombing Survey, Summary Report (Pacific War), 1946)

Of course, President Truman had some support for his decision as well. His Secretary of War, Henry Stimson, wrote as follows in 1947:

“My chief purpose was to end the war in victory with the least possible cost in the lives of the men in the armies which I had helped to raise….I believe that no man, in our position, and subject to our responsibilities, holding in his hands a weapon of such possibilities for accomplishing this purpose and saving those lives, could have failed to use it and afterwards looked his countrymen in the face.”

And at least one historian ended up sitting on the fence. Historian J. Samuel Walker wrote in 1997 the following:

“Was the bomb necessary? In view of the evidence now available, the answer is yes… and no. Yes, the bomb was necessary to end the war at the earliest possible moment. And yes, the bomb was necessary to save the lives of American troops, perhaps numbering in the several thousands. But no, the bomb was probably not necessary to win the war within a fairly short time without an invasion of Japan. And no, the bomb was not necessary to save the lives of hundreds of thousands of American troops."

The biggest surprise to me, given our history of dropping the A bomb, is that not one of the presidential candidates and not one of the news “journalists” has called for the use of nuclear weapons to bring the war against  ISIS to an end – NOW. Yes, a lot of countries have access to nuclear weapons these days, and some of them would not be hesitant to use them to retaliate or to win their own wars against longtime foes. (think Pakistan and India). Instead of calling for the A bomb, the most war mongering voices in our country shout for more “boots on the ground”, as though our American men and women in service were cheap fodder to feed into the war machine.

I don’t think that President Obama is likely to use any nuclear tactical weapons, whatever the provocation. And I respect him for his resolute position that we should not send thousands of American soldiers to their death in Syria and Iraq. Their lives mean something to him, and that is a great relief. On the other hand, if the new trade center in New York is destroyed, or the Pentagon, or the White House, and ISIS claims their jihadists did it, even President Obama could be motivated to stop the killing by using the weapons that kill the most people at once in a single attack. He may decide that “the buck stops here” and there will be no more terrorist attacks on his watch.  That is what makes these times so dangerous. We are on the defensive, not knowing where ISIS will strike next and fearing an assault that will take thousands of lives in one fell swoop. Next time you start to attack the current President for “not having a strategy” to destroy ISIS, stop yourself in your tracks and ask yourself: “Would I want the buck to stop at my desk?” I think not. Now more than ever is the time to unite behind the President and the generals who advise him, because they know more than any of us about the complexity of the situation. Cheer their reluctance to send our troops to slaughter in the desert. Root for the success of the talks to reach an end to the conflict in Syria. Praise their efforts to stimulate the Saudi Arabian military to join the war against ISIS. Don’t stop questioning the President about his decisions, but do so respectfully and give him your support when you clearly agree with him. We need to be united. Campaign rhetoric undermines our unity. Don’t get sucked into the vortex of negativity. Draw on that reservoir of American optimism to expect the best from our leaders. Finally, let’s conduct our discourse with civility, factual statements and humility.