TWAS ALWAYS THUS (Via David Greenberg)

One War is Enough (Edgar L. Jones, The Atlantic Monthly, February 1946)

WE Americans have the dangerous tendency in our international thinking to take a holier-than-thou attitude toward other nations. We consider ourselves to be more noble and decent than other peoples, and consequently in a better position to decide what is right and wrong in the world. What kind of war do civilians suppose we fought, anyway? We shot prisoners in cold blood, wiped out hospitals, strafed lifeboats, killed or mistreated enemy civilians, finished off the enemy wounded, tossed the dying into a hole with the dead, and in the Pacific boiled the flesh off enemy skulls to make table ornaments for sweethearts, or carved their bones into letter openers. We topped off our saturation bombing and burning of enemy civilians by dropping atomic bombs on two nearly defenseless cities, thereby setting an alltime record for instantaneous mass slaughter.

As victors we are privileged to try our defeated opponents for their crimes against humanity; but we should be realistic enough to appreciate that if we were on trial for breaking international laws, we should be found guilty on a dozen counts. We fought a dishonorable war, because morality had a low priority in battle. The tougher the fighting, the less room for decency; and in Pacific contests we saw mankind reach the blackest depths of bestiality.

Not every American soldier, or even one per cent of our troops, deliberately committed unwarranted atrocities, and the same might be said for the Germans and Japanese. The exigencies of war necessitated many so-called crimes, and the bulk of the rest could be blamed on the mental distortion which war produced. But we publicized every inhuman act of our opponents and censored any recognition of our own moral frailty in moments of desperation.

I have asked fighting men, for instance, why they -- or actually, why we -- regulated flame-throwers in such a way that enemy soldiers were set afire, to die slowly and painfully, rather than killed outright with a full blast of burning oil. Was it because they hated the enemy so thoroughly? The answer was invariably, "No, we don't hate those poor bastards particularly; we just hate the whole goddam mess and have to take it out on somebody." Possibly for the same reason, we mutilated the bodies of enemy dead, cutting off their ears and kicking out their gold teeth for souvenirs, and buried them with their testicles in their mouths, but such flagrant violations of all moral codes reach into still-unexplored realms of battle psychology.

It is not my intention either to excuse our late opponents or to discredit our own fighting men. I do however, believe that all of us, not just the battle enlightened GI's, should fully understand the horror and degradation of war before talking so casually of another one. War does horrible things to men, our own sons included. It demands the worst of a person and pays off in brutality and maladjustment. It has become so mechanical, inhuman, and crassly destructive that men lose all sense of personal responsibility for their actions. They fight without compassion, because that is the only way to fight a total war. To give just one illustration, I asked an infantry colonel whether he gave his battalion a pre-battle lecture. The colonel replied approximately as follows: --

"You can damn well bet I put 'em straight ahead of time, and they were the best damn outfit in the Philippines. I taught 'em ethics, fighting ethics. I taught 'em there were two kinds of ethics, one for us and one for the yellowbellies across the line. I taught 'em that the best way to kill a man was when he was lying down with his back up; the next best way was when he was sitting with his back towards ya, and the third best was when he was standing with his back towards ya . . . Always shoot 'em in the back if possible that's what I taught 'em, and there wasn't another battalion could touch 'em!"

Among other things about modern warfare, I think the home front should also comprehend the full significance of the fact that a front-line soldier had a good chance of being killed in this war by his own side as well as by his opponents. Battle positions changed so rapidly that American soldiers were shelled by American artillery and warships, bombed and strafed by American planes, and machine-gunned by American tanks -- not occasionally, but often. We also sank our own ships and shot down numbers of our own planes -- how many no one knows, but the ship I was on in the invasion of Sicily knocked out four German planes and three of our own, which Was considered a good average.

Wars are inhumane. It is pointless to pretend otherwise. Anyone who supported the war, but now claims that they didn't expect Americans to die or to kill or to rampage was frivolous in his support. Anyone who opposed the war and now believes that events have proved him right, is closing his eyes to a great victory, won as such victories are always won.

Posted by David Cohen at June 4, 2004 10:27 PM