On this Day in 1945

Today is the day that the Mars rover Curiosity landed. A remarkable American technological achievement. There have been many other technological achievements in the past century and it's wise to remember them

[reposted from August 6, 2009 (slightly modified)]

At 8:15 AM on August 6, 1945 an atomic bomb was detonated over Hiroshima, Japan. Approximately 78,000 civilians were killed on that day. Six months later the death toll had risen to about 140,000 people.

There are many arguments in favor of dropping the bomb, just as there are many arguments against it. What's clear is that in the context of 2012 we are not in a good position to judge the actions of countries that had been at war for many years.

The most important lesson of Hiroshima is that war is hell and many innocent people die. It's all very well to enter into a war with the best of intentions—as the Japanese did on December 7, 1941—but it's foolish to pretend that when you start a war there won't be any suffering. When you do that, you can really say that the victims of Hiroshima will have died in vain.

The killing and maiming of civilians is an inevitable outcome of war, no matter how hard you might try to restrict your targets to military objectives. Before going to war you need to take the consequences into account and decide whether the cost is worth it.

One of the many mistakes in Iraq was the naive assumption that it would be a clean war with few casualties and no long-term consequences for the Iraqi people. Yet today, the numbers of innocent lives lost in Iraq is comparable to the numbers lost in Hiroshima and Nagasaki. And what is the benefit for Iraq that outweighs the cost in human lives? Is it "freedom" and "democracy"?

Hiroshima was not a glorious victory. It was ugly, heartbreaking, and avoidable. War is not an end in itself, it is the failure of peace. War is not an instrument of your foreign policy—it is an admission that you don't have a foreign policy.

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[The top photograph shows the mushroom cloud over Hiroshima on the morning of August 6, 1945 (Photo from Encyclopedia Britanica: Hiroshima: mushroom cloud over Hiroshima, 1945. [Photograph]. Retrieved August 7, 2007, from Encyclopædia Britannica Online.

The bottom image is taken from a Japanese postcard (Horoshima and Nagassaki 1945). It shows victims of the attack on Hiroshima.]

Trinity, July 16, 1945

The first atomic bomb was detonated on this day in 1945 [Trinity]. The second detonation of an atomic bomb took place over Hiroshima, Japan, on August 6, 1945.

So far, Hiroshima and Nagasaki are the only examples of a nuclear device being used in war. We've managed to avoid dropping atomic bombs on each other for 67 years. If you think about it, that's a pretty remarkable achievement.

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Lance Corporal Robert Alexander Hood (1895 - 1917)

 
Robert Alexander Hood¹ was born in 1895 in a small village north-west of Waterloo, Ontario, Canada. He went to France in 1916 when he was only 21 years old. Robert fought with the 73rd Battalion and he was killed in action at Vimy Ridge on this day, April 12, in 1917.

Canadians "celebrate" the battle of Vimy Ridge as a great Canadian victory. It was part of the larger Battle of Arras, which in turn was a diversionary attack in support of the larger Nivelle Offensive carried out by the French Army. About 3,600 young Canadian men were killed during the four day battle and 7,000 more were wounded. This is just a small fraction of the casualties on both sides during World War I.

We need to be very careful not to glorify war while remembering all those young mean and women who died in a war that never should have been fought. I will eventually go to Arras and visit the large memorial erected by the Canadian government (see below) but I will do it in order to reinforce my view that war is folly and the deaths of soldiers like Robert Alexander Hood should never have happened.

There is never any glory in war and it's nothing we should ever be proud of.

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1. He was a cousin of Ms. Sandwalk's grandfather.

A Message for Hillary Clinton from Canadians

 
From CBCNews [Don't extend Afghan mission, Canadians say: poll].

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Time to Leave

 
Canadian troops and support personal have been in Afghanistan for the better part of ten years. The goal was to create a stable democratic state that could offer security to its citizens and promote the rights and values that we cherish in Western democracies.

We aren't any closer to achieving that goal than we were ten years ago. Should Canadian forces remain in Afghanistan after 2011?

There are two main options ....

1. cut and run (withdraw all military forces)
2. soldier on, perhaps with no combat troops

I favor option #1. We've given it our best shot and it's time to admit defeat. Afghanistan is not going to become a respectable member of the world's democratic community.

My resolve was strengthened by a hard-hitting article in last week's issue of Newsweek [The Gang That Couldn't Shoot Straight].

America has spent more than $6 billion since 2002 in an effort to create an effective Afghan police force, buying weapons, building police academies, and hiring defense contractors to train the recruits—but the program has been a disaster. More than $322 million worth of invoices for police training were approved even though the funds were poorly accounted for, according to a government audit, and fewer than 12 percent of the country's police units are capable of operating on their own. Ambassador Richard Holbrooke, the State Department's top representative in the region, has publicly called the Afghan police "an inadequate organization, riddled with corruption." During the Obama administration's review of Afghanistan policy last year, "this issue received more attention than any other except for the question of U.S. troop levels," Holbrooke later told NEWSWEEK. "We drilled down deep into this."

The worst of it is that the police are central to Washington's plans for getting out of Afghanistan. The U.S.-backed government in Kabul will never have popular support if it can't keep people safe in their own homes and streets. Yet in a United Nations poll last fall, more than half the Afghan respondents said the police are corrupt. Police commanders have been implicated in drug trafficking, and when U.S. Marines moved into the town of Aynak last summer, villagers accused the local police force of extortion, assault, and rape.

It's time to leave—the sooner the better. The people of Afghanistan have to want change bad enough to fight for it and that's ain't happening.

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[Photo Credit: Defense Industry Daily]

[Hat Tip: Canadian Cynic]

November 11, 2009

 
Today is Remembrance Day in Canada. It's a day to remember that war is evil and horrible. It's a day to remember that war represents the ultimate failure of a civilization.

War is not glorious. People who kill other people are not heroes. The people they kill are not heroes. We are shamed when we turn average citizens into murderers. We lament their deaths because it means we have failed in our responsibility to maintain peace. They paid the price of our failure.

Soldiers are a necessary evil, like prison guards. The long range goal of a humane society is to eliminate armies (and prisons). Once a year, on this day, we need to think about how far we are from achieving that goal and what we can do to make it a reality.

We need to remember our past—the dirty, ugly, face of death and destruction—and resolve never to repeat it. We need to apologize to those men and women we forced to endure those horrors. We need to promise our children that we won't make them go to war.

No war is necessary. Tanks, bombers, and battleships are not necessary. I dream of an eleventh day of the eleventh month when, at the eleventh hour, no cannons are fired, no soldiers are marching, and no fighter planes are flying overhead. That will be a day to remember.

The greatest generation will be the one that avoids war. Perhaps our children's children will be that generation.

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[Photo: Dresden, February 14, 1945]

[Poster by Lorraine Schneider (1925-1972), for the Los Angeles organization Another Mother for Peace, 1967.]

Hawks on Campus

 
It's probably just a coincidence but now that students have returned from their summer break there are more and more reports of hawks flying over the main open space on campus just outside my office. I seen them (it?) as well.

The latest issue of the University of Toronto eBulletin has a photo of a red tailed hawk—one of the regular visitors. Darryl Chow took the picture.

Does this explain the noticeable lack of doves on campus? I haven't seen any significant gathering of doves for many years. It used to be a regular occurrence on university campuses.

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On this Day in 1945

(reposted from August 6, 2007)

At 8:15 AM on August 6, 1945 an atomic bomb was detonated over Hiroshima, Japan. Approximately 78,000 civilians were killed on that day. Six months later the death toll had risen to about 140,000 people.

There are many arguments in favor of dropping the bomb just as there are many arguments against it. What's clear is that in the context of 2007 we are not in a good position to judge the actions of countries that had been at war for many years.

The most important lesson of Hiroshima is that war is hell and many innocent people die. It's all very well to enter into a war with the best of intentions—as the Japanese did on December 7, 1941—but it's foolish to pretend that when you start a war there won't be any suffering. When you do that you can really say that the victims of Hiroshima died in vain.

The killing and maiming of civilians is an inevitable outcome of war, no matter how hard you might try to restrict your targets to military objectives. Before going to war you need to take the consequences into account and decide whether the cost is worth it.

One of the many mistakes in Iraq was the naive assumption that it would be a clean war with few casualties and no long-term consequences for the Iraqi people. Yet today, the numbers of innocent lives lost in Iraq is comparable to the numbers lost in Hiroshima and Nagasaki. And what is the benefit for Iraq that outweighs the cost in human lives? Is it "freedom" and "democracy"?

Hiroshima was not a glorious victory. It was ugly, heartbreaking, and avoidable. War is not an end in itself, it is the failure of peace. War is not an instrument of your foreign policy—it is an admission that you don't have a foreign policy.

[The top photograph shows the mushroom cloud over Hiroshima on the morning of August 6, 1945 (Photo from Encyclopedia Britanica: Hiroshima: mushroom cloud over Hiroshima, 1945. [Photograph]. Retrieved August 7, 2007, from Encyclopædia Britannica Online. The bottom image is taken from a Japanese postcard (Horoshima and Nagassaki 1945). It shows victims of the attack on Hiroshima.]

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