More on Holocaust Memorial day.
This is a response to James's post.
The fact that it is framed in terms of "learning lessons" reminds me of A.J. Muste, an American pacifist, who wrote (at the end of the First World War I believe) "The problem after a war is with the victor. He thinks he has just proved that war and violence pay. Who will now teach him a lesson?" If we wish to avoid being "taught" such a "lesson" by those willing to use despicable and violent means (the threat of non-state terrorists aquiring weapons of mass destruction is very real, not simply invented as a pretext for war - it's just that the most likely source is Russia/Centra Asia, where they are legion, not Iraq, where they are not) then we shall have to work it out for ourselves.
So have we learned lessons from the Second World War, and are they the right ones? We have learned a few, including that nuclear weapons must be used with extreme caution, and only when the threat of retaliation is nil (revelations in Autumn 2003 reveal that this lesson was not learned very well by 1963, when the world came shockingly close to nuclear war).
But what else? Are we able to think about the destruction of war and the Holocaust in meaningful ways? Not meaningful enough if you ask me, and not only for the reasons Zinn gives.
Hiroshima is seen by some as appalling and a culmination of the awesome destructive power of technology just as much as the Nazis' industrialised death camps. But there is to be no "equivalency" with Nazi crimes in polite discussion. There are a lot of reasons for this and some have to do with the exploitation of Jewish suffering as a "uniquely unique" or is it "phenomenologically unique" event, which cannot be explained (if you try, you are trivialising it) or even - if Elie Wiesel is to be believed - described. On all of this see Finkelstein.
An awful lot of people still see it as a prerogative of the Allies to use nuclear weapons, on a utilitarian basis that the total number of dead would have been greater had they not done so. And yet the same people will no doubt produce a wry smile (if experienced in reality, their jaws would surely drop) at General Turgidson's insistence that the USA should attack the USSR with nuclear weapons, on the basis of "two admittedly regrettable, but nonetheless distinguishable post-war environments; one where you got 20 million people killed, and one where you got 150 million people killed." ("Dr. Strangelove")
So am I just attacking utilitarianism? Well the bigger problem I have has to do with the percieved prerogative of the victors of the twentieth centuries wars ("hot" and "cold") to "police the world" as it were, or at least to "intervene" wherever they feel it necessary. Vietnam was costing too many lives on both sides - but how many opposed intervention on principle. The arguments about Iraq crossed over a range of issues, from the level of threat posed to the West to the plight of the Iraqi people. How dare we not intervene, the military humanists cried out, just as they did about Kosovo. But how many opposed it on principle?
In 1945, the victors created the UN. The reason was bi-polar power. The more the Soviet Union weakened, the less the "West" had to take notice of the UN. In a uni-polar world the UN (that is, a forum of global opinion) can easily be made "irrelevant" if it backs the wrong horse. This means the divine right of "intervention" is de facto in the hands of the winners. If the US enjoys ultimate power in inter-state relations, then the "lesson" to it and its allies can only come from one place: non-state actors. It is not a hopeful prospect.
Modernity may or may not be "over" (although it is certainly not the "end of history") but we surely don't have very much time at all to learn the major lesson of the last part of it (the "Age of Extremes" if you like) which is that arrogating to ourselves the right to wage war wherever we choose can only end in catastrophe, for others and for ourselves. A fundamental shift in the way people think about the world is necessary to learn the ultimate lesson, and it seems to me that time is very short indeed.
The fact that it is framed in terms of "learning lessons" reminds me of A.J. Muste, an American pacifist, who wrote (at the end of the First World War I believe) "The problem after a war is with the victor. He thinks he has just proved that war and violence pay. Who will now teach him a lesson?" If we wish to avoid being "taught" such a "lesson" by those willing to use despicable and violent means (the threat of non-state terrorists aquiring weapons of mass destruction is very real, not simply invented as a pretext for war - it's just that the most likely source is Russia/Centra Asia, where they are legion, not Iraq, where they are not) then we shall have to work it out for ourselves.
So have we learned lessons from the Second World War, and are they the right ones? We have learned a few, including that nuclear weapons must be used with extreme caution, and only when the threat of retaliation is nil (revelations in Autumn 2003 reveal that this lesson was not learned very well by 1963, when the world came shockingly close to nuclear war).
But what else? Are we able to think about the destruction of war and the Holocaust in meaningful ways? Not meaningful enough if you ask me, and not only for the reasons Zinn gives.
Hiroshima is seen by some as appalling and a culmination of the awesome destructive power of technology just as much as the Nazis' industrialised death camps. But there is to be no "equivalency" with Nazi crimes in polite discussion. There are a lot of reasons for this and some have to do with the exploitation of Jewish suffering as a "uniquely unique" or is it "phenomenologically unique" event, which cannot be explained (if you try, you are trivialising it) or even - if Elie Wiesel is to be believed - described. On all of this see Finkelstein.
An awful lot of people still see it as a prerogative of the Allies to use nuclear weapons, on a utilitarian basis that the total number of dead would have been greater had they not done so. And yet the same people will no doubt produce a wry smile (if experienced in reality, their jaws would surely drop) at General Turgidson's insistence that the USA should attack the USSR with nuclear weapons, on the basis of "two admittedly regrettable, but nonetheless distinguishable post-war environments; one where you got 20 million people killed, and one where you got 150 million people killed." ("Dr. Strangelove")
So am I just attacking utilitarianism? Well the bigger problem I have has to do with the percieved prerogative of the victors of the twentieth centuries wars ("hot" and "cold") to "police the world" as it were, or at least to "intervene" wherever they feel it necessary. Vietnam was costing too many lives on both sides - but how many opposed intervention on principle. The arguments about Iraq crossed over a range of issues, from the level of threat posed to the West to the plight of the Iraqi people. How dare we not intervene, the military humanists cried out, just as they did about Kosovo. But how many opposed it on principle?
In 1945, the victors created the UN. The reason was bi-polar power. The more the Soviet Union weakened, the less the "West" had to take notice of the UN. In a uni-polar world the UN (that is, a forum of global opinion) can easily be made "irrelevant" if it backs the wrong horse. This means the divine right of "intervention" is de facto in the hands of the winners. If the US enjoys ultimate power in inter-state relations, then the "lesson" to it and its allies can only come from one place: non-state actors. It is not a hopeful prospect.
Modernity may or may not be "over" (although it is certainly not the "end of history") but we surely don't have very much time at all to learn the major lesson of the last part of it (the "Age of Extremes" if you like) which is that arrogating to ourselves the right to wage war wherever we choose can only end in catastrophe, for others and for ourselves. A fundamental shift in the way people think about the world is necessary to learn the ultimate lesson, and it seems to me that time is very short indeed.
posted by UK plc at 6:39 PM
1 Comments:
I might re-spond to this response. Trust b'day was a success and gifts arrived safely?
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