It's not a war crime 'cause the west won. War crimes seem only to point to the losers, whereas the west does the same thing (or worse) and they are heroes.

History is written by the winners.

As a side note: The US stopped after two. Do you think Hitler would have?

Interesting question! But contentious. So I hope you'll take the following alternative point of view in the friendly spirit it was intended.
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The simplest answer is that there was no treaty defining such crimes between the US and Japan at the time. If you recall, Japan routinely mistreated prisoners of war and civilian populations. Similarly, we had a treaty with the Germans but the Russians did not, which is why the Eastern Front was far more brutal.

However, even if there had been such a legal framework, it wouldn't necessarily have been judged then as we probably would now. Consider the case of the WWII German general Wilhelm List who, on retreating from Finnmark devastated an area the size of Denmark with 'scorched earth' tactics, leaving 61,000 civilians starving and without shelter at the start of the Scandinavian winter. At his trial at Nuremberg, this was determined by the court not to be a war crime! The law of war is not as most commentators suppose it to be - many even seeming to make it up as they go.

But it's one thing not to know the law of war, another to apply it selectively. Do people like Mr Pilger condemn the other side in just proportion when they breach it, or propose to do so? Are they advocating universal standards, or perhaps taking sides? It's something to think about.

As for Iran and "cooler heads", while there are valid arguments going both ways, the most obvious historical comparison is Chamberlain's "Peace for our time" speech in 1938. Churchill was widely regarded as being hot-headed back then, too.

We can hope that this situation is different. But they say that those who cannot learn from history are doomed to repeat it.

Wow, I hadn't thought of the 'Hitler would have nuked more than two cities argument'. Not sure what the point would be of nuking territories which had surrendered to you once you'd had a chance to demonstrate your new weapon, though. That would be your own spoils of war you'd be tearing up.

And as for war crimes, Nuremberg was notorious for ruling something not a crime if we'd done it too. Killing thousands of civilian families because you're trying to weaken a country's spirit may not always be criminal but I think it's always evil whoever does it (including the Brits fire-bombing Germany). But nuking civilians when their leaders are trying to talk surrender is even worse.

Rob,

Given that the allies also bombed many cities to bits in Germany and created firestorms in wood and paper Japanese cities, I've always wondered why people focus on the Atomic bombings as THE worst allied actions.

Niall Ferguson has an interesting view on these issues in his The War of the World.

As for the surrender issue, there were clearly some Japanese willing to surrender but the dogged defence that their soldiers put up towards the end of the conflict certainly indicates a willingness to fight on.

On the modern issues. Do you really believe that the US is keen to attack Iran? I just don't see it.

And Israel "itching" to attack them? Where's the evidence, seems a little too much.

As for the supposed threat Pilger sees to turn Iran into an Nuclear Wasteland, that is clearly a situation that Morris mentions as a worst case scenario.

I wouldn't be inclined to Morris' viewpoint but equally Pilger seems to be building his case on weak ground!
Eoin

I would call Hiroshima and Nagasaki war crimes if I didn't think they came from a place of idiotic curiosity. "We've never used a nuke before...I wonder what will happen?" Death, destruction, permanent damage to the earth will happen. Go USA!

And hey, you Brits: the blitzkrieg wasn't worse?

Eoin: there's a lot of nervousness around Iran over here. There are also a lot of fools (unfortunately many of them are in places of supreme power) who believe that Iraq is and has been a smashing success, and that we should go on and take out Iran while we're at it. These are people who don't know that there are countries in the Middle East that don't start with I.

"...but I think it's always evil whoever does it..."

War is always an evil. Not as evil as some kinds of peace, though.

"But nuking civilians when their leaders are trying to talk surrender is even worse."

If you're talking about Japan, the Potsdam declaration was refused. Twice. And Hiroshima was the site of the headquarters of the Japanese fifth division and also the second general army headquarters in command of all the southern half of Japan.

"Do you really believe that the US is keen to attack Iran?"

No. They're afraid they might have to. That's a bit different.

"These are people who don't know that there are countries in the Middle East that don't start with I."

Funny! They're obviously not very good at spelling then, because they wound up in Afghanistan too! Ifghanistan? Ighfanistan...? Whatever.

I hear they also believe that the Messiah is hiding in a magic well, waiting for them to bring about the apocalypse so he can return, and that they are surrounded by an holy glowing aura when making speeches at the UN that compels belief. They've been writing notes to the Messiah about it, and popping them down the well to him.

You see, the humour is all very funny until you find out that they're not joking, that horrific evil is real and can happen to real people, and that they seriously intend for it to happen to you too. Those who cannot learn from history...

And then about half the people making the jokes find that they knew less than they thought, and have been on the wrong side all along.

Easy with the sarcasm please. Plus it's preventing me from understanding what's being said.
- Not everyone considers Afghanistan to be in the 'Middle East'.
- Perhaps peace can be worse than war, but I can't think of an example readily.
- There's plenty of literature that makes claims about Japanese overtures of surrender; how much of it is true is of course a matter for debate.
- Have no idea which 'horrific evil' is being spoken of, but if it's Iran, I'm pretty sceptical.

Sorry. I'll try to tone it down.

I was thinking in terms of the Gulag, the Laogai, the concentration camps currently in North Korea, Burma, Rwanda, The Sudan, and of course the Holocaust. The South African apartheid system, the current state of Zimbabwe, and other remnant consequences of colonialism. Widespread torture, secret police, totalitarian police states, and the consequences of their economic collapse.

Or if you are willing to go a bit further back in history, the devshirme, slavery, medieval European feudalism/serfdom, or many of the actual practices of ahl al dhimma. The subjugation and misery of peoples generally.

The Iranian leadership are not so bad. They only plan a genocide and the Islamic domination of the world - or so they say. (Sorry! Bit of sarcasm there!) The former they might be able to manage one day, the latter is highly unlikely unless things change radically, but only because we'd rather fight a war than submit, and they know it. The difficulty as it has been so many times before is in believing they're serious about what they say.

So far as I know, there were only unofficial and very non-committal approach from Japan to Russia concerning surrender, with a list of conditions that would basically have entailed them staying in power and getting away with what they'd done, but nothing definite. Their official statements in public were all of rejection, and interpreted by the public on both sides as such. I haven't studied the issue in sufficient depth to be certain, though.

While such tu quoques are no excuse for us breaking rules too, the people of the time would have been acutely aware of the 30 million Asians slaughtered by the Japanese, the torture and abuse of POWs, the rape of women, or the discoveries of things like the infamous unit 731 or the practice of cannibalism. The argument for the bomb was always that it would take something dramatic to stop such a culture, and that the aim was to save more lives - Japanese included - than it would take.

The situation is so utterly unlike the modern case of Iran that I can't think why it was brought up.

Anyway, speaking as a (strictly amateur) student of history, I think there are clear reasons why Hiroshima and Nagasaki would not have been and are not generally considered war crimes, and that the only historical comparisons between WWII and the present situation in the Middle East are not favourable to the Iranians.

But these are all points of view, and history as a guide to action can be taken too seriously, too.

I am reminded of an episode(s) of The West Wing when Bartlet is agonising over the assasination of *** (sorry, I forget his name), and calls in a lawyer when it seems that the information is about to leak into the media, and the Lawyer says ' What do you want me to tell you? Most of international law of this sort of thing isn't even written yet!' (or words to that effect).
In other words, until tested in Court the law is a flexible animal.

(With apologies for the sarcasm.)

"No. They're afraid they might have to. That's a bit different."

AMERICANS ARE NEVER AFRAID. FEAR IS FOR COMMIES. AND TERRORISTS.

NaomiM,

It was Abdul ibn Shareef. And I'm pretty sure the international law here is written, (and is very boring,) but no, it doesn't generally come to trial.

KatharineC,

I sort of got your previous joke, but I don't understand this one.

Are jokes about Americans better than jokes about other nationalities like Pakistanis or Japanese?

Rob,

Regarding Japanese surrender attempts, I came across somebody else who noticed the same article, but provides links. You might find it of interest.

http://oliverkamm.typepad.com/blog/2008/08/pilger-on-war-crimes.html

Stevo: I am an American, so I feel I'm allowed to make a joke like this. The joke's intention was about the "strength" of our current leadership, and the idea that rather than admitting that 9/11 made us all very frightened, we move on without fear and attack an unrelated country instead. We are not fearful wimps, we are deciders! Idiotic, but never fearful!

KatharineC,

While that says something about your motivation, I don't see that it makes any difference in whether one should be "allowed" to make such jokes. How can you have any behaviour allowed or disallowed to certain nationalities?

Personally, I don't think any jokes should be disallowed, but I do think a judgement can be made if they seem to be being told more to criticise particular groups than because they're relevant and funny. But enough of that.

The "strength" of your current leadership is unrelated, because it isn't fear of getting hurt that I was talking about, but fear of hurting other people. That Americans feel such a fear speaks well of your culture - it isn't universal by any means.

And the fear that 9/11 evokes in your government is not specifically about that terror attack, or terror attacks generally, but concern over the influence the Islamic supremacist movement is gaining over Western policymaking, and its growing domination over more moderate Islamic opinion. Terrorism is just one method they use for that. Afghanistan and Iraq were not simply "revenge" for 9/11, a petty motivation in any case, but an attempt to break the supremacists' power before it becomes a real threat. And Iran's theocrats have been up to their necks in that for decades, which is why they have been seeking the bomb.

There is a great deal of room for disagreement with that, but dismissing anything one doesn't agree with as idiocy, especially when one apparently doesn't either know or understand the issues oneself, doesn't work.

As I indicated earlier, it's so depressingly like the 1930s again.

Stevo,

I think you are mistaking the climate in the US right now for another Red Scare. Our leadership is not so much concerned about the ideology of Islam being influential, in my view. 9/11 made us feel something we have not felt since December of 1941 - how it feels to be invaded, and done harm to, by citizens of a different country. This made us feel suddenly unsafe, vulnerable, as if any terrible thing was suddenly possible.

I believe you are assigning too much analytical thought ability to our leadership. While the semi-intelligent, and semi-justifiable, reason to invade Iraq would have been to stop something terrible before it spreads too far, I think the real reason is that Bush wanted to do what his father wouldn't do, and the weak Congress made him uniquely positioned to do so. Saddam seemed content to slaughter in his own little corner of the world; I doubt he would have had any interest in hurting the US the way that 9/11 did. Outrageous genocide, yes, but it is not the US's job to police the world, despite what we may think; and if we're going to go that road, why Iraq and not Darfur? My belief is that our administration wanted to demonstrate that they had control over something, something in the Middle East, even if it wasn't the forces that caused 9/11. And I think we can safely say at this point that if the intention was to root out radical Islam in Afghanistan, so far we have failed.

As for dismissing our administration's work over the past eight years as idiocy without understanding the issues involved, please, try having lived here for these past eight years before you accuse me of that. Bush behaves like a king, and all the mischief he commits by perverting the values of my country to his own whims make me believe strongly that he has tyrannical reasons for all of his other policies as well. I have been watching my freedoms melt away like snow in the name of "safety", and there's pretty much nothing I can do but watch.

For all that, I freely admit that I may not know what I'm talking about. I'm biased against the current administration for its ludicrous corruption and its total failure to obey the checks and balances system that our personal freedom depends upon. Due to that, I may be assigning bad decision-making and despicable motives to the wrong people.

But I doubt it.

KatharineC,

We each of us see the world from our own political perspective, and that's not easily or often changed. However, thanks for taking the point seriously enough to give a thoughtful answer.

I don't believe the general climate in the US is akin to the McCarthy years. Most people simply want to put their head under the covers so the monsters will go away. Your leadership knows a bit more about Islamist supremacism than it's saying, and while in the past they also ignored the problem, knowing that dealing with it would be unpopular and therefore, by politician-thinking, best left to a subsequent administration, 9/11 both made them see the urgent need and gave them the window of opportunity.

Your leadership has plenty of analytical thought ability, although it is crippled by being divided against itself with competing factions regarding what to do about it. While Dubya himself is not nearly as stupid as he looks, he is only one cog in the machine. An important one, to be sure, but the administration employs hundreds of thinkers and strategists. Presidents are not dictators, and even dictators still have rely on the support of the people around them. They are not going to follow the President into war on a whim; not without being given what they see as good reasons. Those might not, incidentally, be the same reasons the general public get given.

Saddam Hussein was chosen because he was one of the most urgent of the problems left undealt with, and the one easiest to resolve. The long list of outstanding UN resolutions was a situation that had demanded action years previously, but which had been ignored through the usual UN corruption, and which was about to collapse completely. Saddam's aim was to use his bribed agents in European governments to drop the sanctions, and as soon as that succeeds, to move on to dominate the region by re-arming and becoming a nuclear power as fast as possible. This is dangerous for all sorts of reasons. It would trigger a nuclear arms race in the Middle East. It would allow Saddam to throw his weight around again, thinking he could get away with it (believing the US would not attack a nuclear-armed enemy); his history indicating the sorts of things he'd be likely to do. Reflexive anti-Americanism is always a popular move in Middle-Eastern politics when leaders get unpopular, and Saddam already funded and supported a number of international terrorist groups who could do for him what he as a government could not. And starting another genocidal war with Israel would be considered even more popular, which would this time be far harder to resolve.

And there is what I consider the most serious problem - that Saddam was old and ill, and likely to die not long after rebuilding his forces. (About 15-20 years.) This would likely trigger a war of succession between his sons, the Baathist generals, the Shia in the south, the Kurds, the Turks, the Iranians, and probably others. With nuclear weapons in the mix, and nearly everybody willing to play the Israel card. And while Saddam was merely ruthless, the heir apparent was his younger son Uday, who was quite literally a psychopath.

It was a disaster that everyone could see coming, that had been waiting to happen for more than a decade. Legally speaking, the UN should have acted immediately it became apparent that the sanctions were not working, but Saddam's allies in the UN saw to it that it didn't, and it was all the US and UK could do to delay the collapse, keeping the sanctions in place.

You say it is not the US's job to police the world, and in one sense that is true. It is everyone's job. But the US is the only nation with the capability, and nobody else will do it if you do not.

I believe the US would have liked to intervene in Darfur (and in a dozen other places), but can only deal with one job at a time, and in any case has no legal cover there. So they gave the job to the Europeans, who are now busy demonstrating how well negotiation and diplomacy works against dictators, just as they did in Rwanda. Just as they spent twelve years doing over Iraq. Perhaps eventually the lesson will sink in.

On to the subject of Afghanistan. Where you say "if the intention was to root out radical Islam in Afghanistan", I would reply that it wasn't, because we know that's not possible. The aim was to permanently remove them from government, so that radical Islamists no longer have the resources of an entire nation to play with. Other governments use the radicals, wield them as a weapon to do the dirty work they cannot acknowledge officially, and to keep to pot of hatred bubbling (as Saddam did), but only the Taliban's attempt to fully implement Sharia again, including all the bits about Jihad, gave them free reign to organise and act.

It is true that we haven't succeeded there yet. (And that's something to bear in mind when people say they pose no military threat to the likes of the technological West.) But we're doing quite well, considering. Throughout history, most people who have tried to achieve things in Afghanistan have failed miserably.

I sympathise with your concerns about your freedom. All I would say, in response to your invitation to try living there before commenting, is that you should consider living in the Taliban's Afghanistan, Saddam or Uday's Iraq, or any of the many other nations where radical supremacist Islam has gained influence, before deciding whether it is the US's job to police the world. You want freedom for yourself, but do you want it for other people too? If you will not support their desire for it, will anyone sympathise with yours? Have you taken the time to find out what the Islamists intend for you, what a real lack of freedom might mean, what it has meant for hundreds of millions of other people? Do you know what orthodox Islam and Sharia law actually say?

If you truly care about freedom, not just for yourself but as a matter of principle, then you need to consider it properly. It is easy to joke about Bush. Nobody will kill you or put you in prison if you do. But already, even in the heart of the West, it is not quite as easy or safe to joke about The Prophet Mohammed. It's a minor little thing, but that's something worth thinking about.