What I felt was improper was your speculating on the ‘purpose’ of my contributions rather than deal with my points directly. I have carefully refrained from drawing, as I might have done, any like inferences from the fact that you took this tack when you were contradicted on a central issue of international politics where your contributions have not reflected a facility with the scholarly sources, but have referred to only one biographical study that has apparently not taken proper account of that literature. If I may say so, mere assertion of your correctness and of my turpitude doesn’t add up to an impression of mastery of your brief. The term casuistry has in the circumstances occurred to me as a description of your own unwillingness, even to the extent of manufacturing arguments I have not made, to acknowledge any respect in which your description of Galbraith’s role in this episode was mistaken or might have misled. For my part, I consider your description of Galbraith’s being “prepared to risk serious damage to his career in pursuit of truth, issuing, for example, a quite damning indictment of the Allied bombing of civilian targets in Japan when he was director of the United States Strategic Bombing Survey” to be misleading in the respects I have indicated, though these may be attributable, as I have surmised, to loose language on your part. I consider the speculation that Galbraith “might have been expected to toe the official line” to involve a serious misunderstanding of what, if anything, constituted an “official line”.

On your subsidiary complaint: I felt, as I have stated, it was fair comment at the time to draw attention both to your erroneous assertion concerning the uniformity of a segment of academic opinion, and your different rendition of the same claim in a later post when you had been called on it. I stand open to correction, if you would care to send me an explanation of my error. As it stands, I am unconvinced that correction is necessary.

The reason that I brought this up was that you were taking umbrage at being called dishonest and were indeed claiming that it was “improper to turn the discussion into speculation on someone’s “purpose” in advancing an argument.” Given that you’ve a history of engaging in such impropriety yourself, I thought that it was a bit rich of you to wax indignant about this. But in retrospect, “rich” wasn’t quite the right word. “Precious” might have fit better. Or better still, “dishonest.”

which I thought was … quite witty in its own way

No doubt you did.

Your argument, as reiterated above, is casuistry, pure and simple. The USBSS findings had no moral objections, powerful or otherwise to the bombing of civil targets. Galbraith’s expression of such objections wasn’t let make it into the final report. As dsquared said above.

JKG did issue a damning indictment of the bombing and he did risk his career by doing so. So the person who said he didn’t is wrong.

And not only wrong, but trying to double up on a bad bet …

Ralph – I think the concept that you’re looking for is something close to bullshit, as defined by Harry Frankfurt. That is, arguments which are made without regard to whether they are true or not (they may be, they may not; it’s a matter of indifference), but rather with regard to whether they are useful for a preconceived purpose.

Just for the record, although one might use the word “lying” when one is “imply[ing] that you’re wrong on the historical facts, possibly deliberately” it’s not quite what I mean. There is a strange human state between lying and honesty in which we intend to believe something that might not be the best argument. It is the squishiness of this state that is interesting, and permits the hint of this, or imputation of that. If we were just deciding whether someone lied, well, that wouldn’t even be interesting. It is the unstated question of why someone persists in believing something poorly demonstrated that is the interesting question…. Or perhaps the issue of why a particular argument is not convincing to one but is to another. Humans. What are you gonna do?

I’ve read Newman’s book, and it’s good, but not quite right. I’ve been meaning to go back and reconcern myself with the problems I had with it (now a few years foggy), and perhaps I shall now do so. If that’s something to come out of the discussion, then there it is.

I don’t see we can go further on this one, however, because you are now clearly misrepresenting my point in your insistence that there were no problems with your original formulation. I don’t anywhere say ‘the claim that bombing was redundant is equivalent to the claim that it is “appalling”.’ On the contrary, I said you’d posed a false dichotomy, i.e. that there is in your scheme an excluded position. That position was the one advanced by USSBS, with powerful support from the military establishment. Of course it’s different in kind from Galbraith’s – his was ethical and humanitarian (and entirely admirable in motivation if not in judgement); Nitze’s was strategic (and self-serving, as he sought to be secretary of the new USAF). My point was that there was no inconsistency between these positions, not that they were the same positions. These positions’ being consistent, your speculation of the pressure on Galbraith to “toe the official line” is bizarrely misinformed. Galbraith was under no pressure to defend the bombings, because the Pacific Survey itself did not defend the bombings.

I fear there may be little I can say that you will not interpret as an attack on you and your “standing as an academic”, but I have said explicitly in this thread that I am sure you are a skilled academic. I criticise you on this particular issue, because you have misrepresented the diplomatic background to it. I suggested you might have been misled by relying too heavily on the Galbraith biography to the exclusion of scholarship about USSBS and the Pacific War, and I stick to that assessment. I fear it may sound ungracious to say so, but as this is a quasi-academic blog on which you are the IR specialist, and as you have been extremely frank and forthcoming in your assessment of my own deficiencies, and as you yourself chose to write about this issue, I feel justified in saying what I would not otherwise voice. I am genuinely surprised by how much of what I have said about the state of recent scholarly debate on one of the defining issues of the modern international order appears to be unknown to you.

Let me refresh your memory a little – you may recall this post

the forum in which Professor Gaddis made his remarks was too esoteric for Professor Farrell, he could have found it referenced in this blog last February. Perhaps he has now stumbled across it, for there is a prudent moderation in his tone this week. So “I don’t know of any” is deftly transmuted to “the paucity of”, which is a rather different matter. Having demonstrated what was at the very least – and this is being charitable – a lack of intellectual curiosity and a disinclination to read, Professor Farrell has come up with a linguistic expedient (let us call it assonantly the “Farrell Straddle”, and mentally store it for future reference) to make out that his initial characterisation was right all along.
When pronouncing “Crooked Timber”, recall that it is the first word that is stressed.

Your protestations of injured innocence about imputations of dishonesty are a bit rich (especially when your attack then was based on as tendentious a misreading as your attack now). Entirely as expected, you’re making the hilariously specious argument that the claim that bombing was redundant is equivalent to the claim that it is “appalling.” This isn’t only bogus – it is preposterous. If I say that Israel’s actions in Lebanon are redundant, this is a criticism that is different in kind, and much weaker, than if I say that they are appalling. This isn’t really an argument you’re making, it’s an exercise in face-saving bullshit. But I’m not really telling you anything that you don’t know already.

So the “certainty” in fact applied two months later than my mistranscription stated.

The reason I chose what you term a weasel-phrase, but is actually a fair qualification in the circumstances that you require me to address, is that your question posed a false dichotomy, and it takes more explanation than I was immediately willing to give on a Friday evening in order to outline what, if anything, constituted “the official line”. No, “the official line” was not that Hiroshima and Nagasaki were “appalling”, but it was that they were redundant. And that official line certainly and immediately generated powerful moral objections to the bombings – for terrible destruction that is militarily unnecessary deserves the strongest censure.

Thus, two separate USSBS reports concluded: “Based on a detailed investigation of all the facts, and supported by the testimony of the surviving Japanese leaders, it is the Survey’s opinion that certainly prior to November 1, 1945, Japan would have surrendered even if the atomic bombs had not been dropped, even if Russia had not entered the war, and even if no invasion had been planned or contemplated.”

USSBS was working in the context of its previous investigations in Europe (which Galbraith touted in extravagant prose). Its conclusions on that theatre of war were that bombing had had only a marginal effect in damaging Germany’s military capability until 1944. There was a very powerful presumption in these deliberations that the function of air power was to provide support to naval and ground forces, and not to engage in area bombing.

This was not an idiosyncratic position held by the civilian directors of USSBS. There was powerful support for this view from the armed forces. There was at the time no independent air force, and the air generals pressed for one to be established after the war. For admittedly a brief time – but it was at the time we’re discussing – these military figures were antinuclear. There were institutional reasons for this position. They feared that a single plane armed with the destructive power of the A-bomb would render obsolete the notion of a developed air force.

It is not “bogus”, but highly pertinent to your depiction of Galbraith to note the congruence of these establishment views with Galbraith’s concerns. His indictment of the bombings was perfectly consistent with “the official line”: they had served no useful purpose and the air force didn’t want nuclear weapons. “The official line” (i.e. the exact quoted conclusion of USSBS) has become a mainstay of Japanese leftwing historians, and has thence made its way into Japanese school textbooks. The conduit for this was the popular writing of the Nobel physicist P.M.S. Blackett, a member of the Maud Committee established in 1940 to consider whether Britain should develop an atomic weapon. Blackett argued, long before Alperovitz (whose supervisor he later became) took up the thesis, that Hiroshima and Nagasaki were in reality the first acts of the Cold War rather than the concluding acts of the Pacific War.

I have now explained twice that I consider what USSBS concluded and whether it was right to reach those conclusions to be separate issues. Whatever you think of the second is not my concern in these comments. What you assumed about the first is, to use your own phrase, baldly wrong.

1. Kamm’s quote, taken from the 1982 memior, is so vague as to be useless in Kamm’s favor, unfortunately for Kamm. JKG does say, “I had no part in writing this conclusion.” He could be referring to the preceding graph from the survey, which is at efforts to stress that Japan would have folded had no bombing taken place. My own interpretation is that he is saying that he wasn’t responsible for that part about Japan surrendering even if Russia hadn’t come into the war. (Parker makes it clear his big obsession was with the effect of bombing, not with the surrender issue.) He could be saying, “By the time that was released, I had no official responsibility for it.” as a statement of technical fact. He could also be trying, as I mentioned before, to fudge something there, but as the entire preceding page is given over to a recitation of the abominable destruction and failure of bombing in Japan to have any important effect, I don’t think that’s the case. Here’s the quote from page 231: “But no more than in Germany was it the bombing that won the war.” He then goes on to obfuscate the quote that Kamm cites by saying: “’Blockading and bombing together,’ we concluded….” So which is it? Did he have no responsibility, or did “we” conclude, meaning he was involved? Kamm cannot rely on this quote for any substantial argument.

2. Henry’s assertion of strong participation against the wishes of the armed forces only gains effect because of the context surrounding the quote that Kamm uses. In addition, Parker’s material makes it clear that the powers that be didn’t like what JKG and cohort were doing at all. It is clear that JKG worked hard to make certain that his points against strategic bombing were in the report, but it is also clear that his personal confidence greatly irritated those who would form the new Air Force…

Oh, and the revisionism dealie. Daniel (and Henry), I don’t hold too much truck with a strong distinction between the historical epithet “revisionist” as opposed to “absurd extremes of historical revisionism.” This word when used around an historical argument means the same thing as “liberal” does in political terms now (in the U.S.). It’s meant to signify to listeners that someone is beyond the pale, with the hint that this is so for very deliberate reasons. To say that someone is from the “fringes of extreme liberalism” is essentially the same as arguing that they’re liberal. Exactly the same? No. One’s stronger. But it’s so vague as to how much stronger that obsessing about the distinction overlooks the main semantic fact: He’s just saying that your history is wrong, that you should know it, and that if you don’t it’s deliberate and therefore perhaps you’re intentially anti-American. THAT you’re free to respond to; Lynd does that by saying that he IS revisionist in the sense that he’s for correctly understanding the past. He might say the same thing for “liberal” too.

But, BUT —Kamm can’t complain that he wasn’t trying to imply that you’re wrong on the historical facts, possibly deliberately. I’m just saying that he would be smearing even had he just said, “revisionist”.

Ah, but you did accuse me of “absurd extremes of historical revisionism” did you not? I’d be interested to know in quite what sense this accusation was intended to draw the careful distinctions that you refer to above. I also look forward with some considerable anticipation to the fruits of your further research. I rather suspect that the weasel-phrase “in broad terms, acceding to it” is intended to cover some bogus claim along the lines of “describing the consequences of bombing civilians as appalling is the same thing, ‘in broad terms,’ as querying whether it was militarily necessary to achieve victory.” But perhaps you’ll surprise me.

Your speculation about my “purpose” is quite unwarranted. I have been careful (look through this thread) to distinguish the historical questions of (a) the justifiability or otherwise of Truman’s decision to drop the A-bomb, and (b) USSBS’s evaluation of that decision. Whatever your view or mine of (a), I consider that you have misunderstood (b). I agree that Galbraith was a man of many admirable personal qualities, but your citing as evidence his independence of spirit on this issue is based on a misconception.

I’m beginning to get some idea of what happened here. I suspect it goes something like this. Oliver comes across my post, which is about Galbraith’s character, and which cites to his willingness to buck the line on Japan as proof of same. He decides that it’s a nice launching pad for his views on whether or not the bombing of civilian targets in Japan was a good or bad thing, regardless of the fact that this isn’t something that the post addresses (whether or not Galbraith made the right call on the facts might be relevant to his judgement, but it’s certainly irrelevant to the point about character that I was making). He tosses in a non-sequitur about how Galbraith didn’t write the conclusion of the report (something that my post never said nor implied), describes me incorrectly as an exemplar of “absurd extremes of historical revisionism” (a claim which is itself absurd; the post wasn’t revisionist in any of the senses in which this word has been employed in this argument), and attacks my standing as an academic. He then moves on (which was his purpose all along) to a discussion of the merits of Nitze’s decision – something which my original post wasn’t about at all, but which it’s easier to discuss if he pretends that it was.

This was a polemical remark such as I think you’ll find is quite common among bloggers, and I doubt that Henry was upset by it. I have dealt at some length with the issue of “revisionism”, because Henry was upset by that, and I can understand why. The confusion about the term was not mine, however; Henry believed that it denoted something pejorative, akin (and this was the analogy he cited) to Holocaust denial, and on this he was mistaken. As I have explained – doubtless pedantically, but if I had genuinely made such an insinuation against Henry, it would have been a disgraceful thing – revisionism is a standard term used by American historians in the debate that we have been discussing, namely America’s use of the A-bomb.

I also consider that Henry’s comments about Galbraith’s role in the Pacific Survey betray a serious misunderstanding of the diplomatic background. This is an issue on which historical research has been greatly advanced over the last 15 years by Newman, Frank, Giangreco (concerning the US) and Asada (concerning Japan), among others. That is more than a confusion over language. I criticise Henry for not taking account of this work when forming his laudatory judgement about Galbraith, and apparently relying on the sympathetic Galbraith biography.

A lot of misunderstanding (I mean this as a general observation rather than a comment on Henry’s remarks) is generated by the assumption that because Nitze was a well-known hawk and Galbraith was a celebrated liberal, Galbraith must have been striking a bravely heterodox course in stating that the bombings were unnecessary. But he wasn’t. He was taking an establishment view, and one that does not stand up at well in historical retrospect.