[Buddha-l] Re: Greetings from Oviedo

[Joy Vriens]

Dan Lusthaus wrote:

> Hence equating Hiroshima with Bali can only be done at the expense of
> ignoring context. On the simplest level, one act ended a war, the other
> intensifies one;

Is there a clean cut end to wars? Was WW I actually ended by the peace 
of Versailles? How many wars and conflicts are in fact sleeping 
volcanoes, because the causes that led up to them weren't properly dealt 
with. Violence and ultraviolence can end an open conflict, but not the 
causes that led up to it.

> on an even simpler level, one ultimately saved many lives

by destroying many lives, isn't that ironic? Apart from considering how 
"saved" a traumatised person or country is.

> (including Japanese lives -- anyone familiar with the Japanese ethos of the
> time knows that the govt. was ready to sacrifice every civilian in the
> country to save the Emperor, and it armed housewives with brooms and white
> smocks so that they would attack any invasion on the beaches, something they
> were already doing with horrible losses not only to allied soldiers but the
> native civilian population which in fact voluntarily became combatants;

Yes and anyone having access to classified information and satellite 
pictures etc. simply knew that Saddam H. had links with Al-Qaeda and WMD 
and could launch missiles in 45 seconds time. etc.
I don't mean to deny what you write, but we have to be very careful with 
"knowing the intentions of..." sort of information.

> not
> to mention the those under Japanese occupation in South-East Asia and the
> Pacific islands who by that point in the war had not only been raped and
> plundered and had no food, but were being eaten by the occupying Japanese
> troops who themselves had no food and nothing further to plunder but the
> very flesh of the people they were occupying). Hiroshima, moreover, was not
> an "innocent" city, but a target with major miliitary strategic importance.

There are desperate situations in which people do desperate things. 
Those actions should not be a guideline or a justification for actions 
of a democracy.

As for the target:

"The targets chosen were cities which had not already been badly bombed. 
The Americans wanted to be able to see quite how destructive the atom 
bomb was. It was seen as an "experiment". For this reason they chose 
targets where there were large numbers of buildings, ie houses, which 
could be destroyed. There were military facilities at both sites, large 
arms factories in Nagasaki, and soldiers in Hiroshima. However the 
targets were not chosen simply as military targets. The bombs were to 
fall where they could have maximum impact on the whole city. In the case 
of Nagasaki poor visibility meant that the bomb was not dropped on the 
centre of the city but further North.

The bomb dropped on Hiroshima contained Uranium, the one used on 
Nagasaki contained Plutonium. Part of the reason for dropping two bombs 
was because the Americans wanted to see the effect of both designs."
http://www.banthebomb.org/archives/magazine/hiroshim.htm (it's the first 
link I found, this is the information I was looking for, I don't know 
about the rest of this site).

> But the dichotomies you draw are also too simplistic and reductive. Because
> ending a war and ultimately saving lives is a good, while driving Hindus out
> of Bali (or Kashmir, or Afghanistan, or Pakistan, etc.) is not, the violence
> does not have the same value.

No, violence doesn't have the same value for the one at the giving end 
and the one at the receiving end. But I don't want to be the object of 
any organised state violence, I don't want to be the victim of violence 
of whatever value, even when ultimately it saves many lives, I don't 
want others to make that decision for me, especially others I don't 
trust the intentions of. And I think I am not the only one to think 
that. I don't want war to be as banal as it still is.

> That doesn't make violence itself either good
> or bad. Violence ultimately is just another form of impermanence, one more
> problematic than dying of old age since it seems in many cases to be
> avoidable.

Dan, you tell me I am too simplistic and reductive, but read what you 
just wrote here: "Violence ultimately is *just* another form of 
impermanence". That is acceptable for a practising Buddhist, on a very 
personal practice level when confronted with it, but we can't use this 
reasoning to condone violence.

> But "many" is not equivalent to "always." Or put another way,
> it's not that one act is simply good, and the other is bad, it's that one is
> better than the other, and the other is worse than the first. Motive and
> consequence are, at minimum, to factors to consider when making such
> evaluations.

But, when the life of individuals is at stake, they should never become 
abstractions, simple equations like if X < Y than X is acceptable.

> Bush is a simpleton. One could argue that the removal of the Taliban and the
> disabling, even temporarily, of the Al Qaeda network and international
> training program were noble and justifiable, and a way to improve the life
> of the Afghani people. It was also a brilliant military campaign that wrote
> a new chapter in the annals of military history (due, largely, to military
> strategies and weaponry developed during the Clinton term). Iraq has become
> a disaster, for reasons too numerous to recite, which tarnishes and
> recontextualizes the Afghani project as well. The real world is messy, not
> simple yes and no, good and bad, surgeon and thug (there are better surgeons
> and worse surgeons, Robin Hoods and Bali bombers).

Sorry, but with my basic antimilitarism, I can't see whether a military 
campaign is brilliant or not. The real word is not only messy, but even 
messier because of incompetent intervention, of which the motives and 
consequences have been very badly evaluated.

>>The suffering caused is real, more real than the notion of a "better
>>world". If you kill real innocent people intentionally for an idea
>>(including statistics about what would have happened or could have
>>happened if...), than according to my ethical values (which some may
>>call Mappo) that is wrong.

> Joy, the logic of this, if you follow it, would mean that it would have been
> better for the Allies to have left France occupied by the Nazis, rather than
> risk their own and possibly innocent French lives. Or for the French to let
> themselves be slaughtered by the Nazis (once the Jews were gone, who would
> the Nazis turn to next?) rather than mount a resistance.

This is a very strong argument. I don't know whether all the French 
would have been slaughtered, but intervention was certainly necessary 
here to stop the genocides. That some actions like the bombing of Dresde 
were excessive is also beyond doubt.

> That's not a vision
> I can subscribe to, nor would I consider it very moral. It's confused and
> even suicidal (better to kill oneself than to kill another? But killing is
> killing, so how can oneself rather than killing another be better? Letting
> others kill you when you know that's what they are going to do is Assisted
> Suicide.

You really seem to want to make us all into killers, don't you? No 
escape possible. You're not living in Florida by any chance (with its 
new "Shoot to kill" law) are you? ;-) 
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,3-1557282,00.html

> And if you are killing yourself to avoid killing someone, then you
> are innocent, so killing yourself is killing someone innocent, rather than
> killing someone not innocent... very confused and a bit twisted, the sort of
> knots R.D. Laing liked to untangle).

Yes, very. Look at our convulsions and convolutions during this debate. 
Let's keep it very simple and say no killing like the Buddha said. :-)

Joy