Justifying Evil

 

by Keith Knight | Aug 8, 2024

So often, critics of the regime are called conspiracy theorists. Those same people calling us conspiracy theorists also tell us that every foreign politician is a dictator of unsound mind who can’t be reasoned with (Kaiser Wilhelm, Adolf Hitler, Ho Chi Minh, the Taliban, Saddam Hussein, David Koresh, Bashar al-Assad, Osama bin Laden, Muammar Gaddafi, Vladimir Putin, Xi Jinping, etc.). The formula is nearly always enemy X has a plot to take over the world, only a mass murder campaign of conscripts and civilians can save us. 

Consider the destruction of Japan in the Second World War. 

The fire-bombing of Tokyo, otherwise known as Operation Meetinghouse, took place on March 9-10, 1945 at the direction of U.S. Air Force General Curtis LeMay. Roughly 100,000 human beings were slaughtered and another million were left homeless.

In Hiroshima, on August 6, 1945, a single bomb weighing 9,700 pounds killed approximately 70,000 human beings. 

Dwight D. Eisenhower, 1st Supreme Allied Commander of Europe and 34th President of the United States, commented on the bombing of Hiroshima in his 1963 book Mandate for Change, 1953-1956: The White House Years:

[I]n 1945… Secretary of War Stimson, visiting my headquarters in Germany, informed me that our government was preparing to drop an atomic bomb on Japan. I was one of those who felt that there were a number of cogent reasons to question the wisdom of such an act…

During this recitation of the relevant facts, I had been conscious of a feeling of depression and so I voiced to him my grave misgivings, first on the basis of my belief that Japan was already defeated and that dropping the bomb was completely unnecessary, and secondly because I thought that our country should avoid shocking world opinion by the use of a weapon whose employment was, I thought, no longer mandatory as a measure to save American lives. It was my belief that Japan was, at that very moment, seeking some way to surrender with a minimum loss of “face.” 

Three days later, in Nagasaki, 40,000 human beings were murdered with a single bomb and 60,000 more were injured. 

Charles de Gaulle, then Chairman of the Provisional Government of the French Republic, wrote on page 926 in his 1954 book, The Complete War Memoirs of Charles DeGaulle: “[O]n August 6 and 10, the atom bombs were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. As a matter of fact, the Japanese had given indications, before the cataclysm, that they were prepared to make peace negotiations. But it was unconditional surrender the Americans demanded, certain they were, following the success of the experiments conducted in New Mexico, that they would obtain it.“

At the time of the bombings, Robert S. McNamara was Lieutenant Colonel in the U.S. Army Air Corps. He later gave a documentary interview titled The Fog of War: Eleven Lessons From The Life of Robert S. McNamara. Commenting on the war in the east, McNamara says: “Proportionality should be a guideline in war. Killing 50 percent to 90 percent of the people of 67 Japanese cities and then bombing them with two nuclear bombs is not proportional, in the minds of some people, to the objectives we were trying to achieve.” (P. 113)

Domestically, under Executive Order 9066, President Franklin Roosevelt used the Pearl Harbor myth to kidnap roughly 120,000 people of Japanese descent including 80,000 American citizens.

People who would apologize for accidentally stepping on your foot, will explicitly defend or condone the mass murder of innocent people because ‘they attacked us first at Pearl Harbor,’ as if the people killed in fire bombings were the same people involved in the high level secret meetings planning the Pearl Harbor attack. This is equally as ridiculous as blaming all Americans for the actions of Presidents Donald Trump or Joseph Biden.

Most citizens of all countries are rationally ignorant regarding political matters. The high opportunity cost of informing yourself on issues is not worth the microscopic unforeseeable effect your one vote can have on the bigger picture. And we want to not just blame, but murder people in other countries for the actions of their Emperors and conscripted soldiers?

According to the U.S. War Department’s 1944 Handbook on Japanese Military forces, “In peacetime all male Japanese subjects between 17 and 40 are subject to service in the armed forces.”

The Pearl Harbor Myth

After Roosevelt spent 40.1% of America’s gross domestic product with his 1933 New Deal recovery program in hopes of ending the Great Depression, the country experienced a double dip recession in 1937 with unemployment hitting 20 percent.

The plan to provoke an incident at Pearl Harbor was not widely known until January 2, 1972 when The New York Times summarized the then recently released British War Cabinet papers covering the period of January 1941-July 1945. The article titled “War-Entry Plans Laid to Roosevelt” claims,

…President Franklin D. Roosevelt told Prime Minister Winston Churchill in August, 1941, that he was looking for an incident to justify opening hostilities against Nazi Germany.

…The minutes, quoting Churchill indirectly said:

“He [Roosevelt] obviously was determined that they should come in.”

“If he were to put the issue of peace and war to Congress, they would debate it for months,” the Cabinet minutes added.

“The President had said he would wage war but not declare it [and] that he would become more and more provocative. If the Germans did not like it they could attack American forces.”

…“The President’s orders to these [United States Navy] escorts were to attack any [German] U‐boat which showed itself, even if it were 200 or 300 miles away from the convoy. Everything was to be done to force an incident.”

…The President had taken this very well and made it clear that he would look for an incident which would justify him in opening hostilities,” Churchill told the War Cabinet, according to the minutes of the meeting.

Former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger explained Roosevelt’s strategy of provocation towards Germany and Japan in his 1994 book titled Diplomacy:

In September 1941, the United States crossed the line into belligerency. Roosevelt’s order that the position of German submarines be reported to the British Navy had made it inevitable that, sooner or later, some clash would occur. On September 4, 1941, the American destroyer Greer was torpedoed while signaling the location of a German submarine to British airplanes. On September 11, without describing the circumstances, Roosevelt denounced German “piracy.” Comparing German submarines to a rattlesnake coiled to strike, he ordered the United States Navy to sink “on sight” any German or Italian submarines discovered in the previously established American defense area extending all the way to Iceland. To all practical purposes, America was at war on the sea with the Axis powers…

…Roosevelt instructed the American negotiators to demand that Japan relinquish all of its conquests, including Manchuria, by invoking America’s previous refusal to “recognize” these acts. Roosevelt must have known that there was no possibility that Japan would accept…

…Roosevelt had achieved his goal patiently and inexorably, educating his people one step at a time about the necessities before them. His audiences filtered his words through their own preconceptions and did not always understand that his ultimate destination was war, though they could not have doubted that it was confrontation. (p. 392-3)

At the time, Henry Lewis Stimson was the U.S. Secretary of War, and in the 1946 “Investigation of the Pearl Harbor Attack” Stimson’s diary is brought into evidence. On page 177, the report cites a diary entry from November 25, 1941, almost two weeks before the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. Stimson wrote,

General Marshall and I went to the White House, where we were until nearly half past one. At the meeting were [Secretary of State Cordell] Hull, [Secretary of the Navy Frank] Knox, [Chief of Staff of the Army George C.] Marshall, [Chief of Naval Operations Harold Raynsford] Stark, and myself.

The President brought up the event that we were likely to be attacked, perhaps (as soon as) next Monday, for the Japanese are notorious for making an attack without warning, and the question was what we should do. The question was how we should maneuver them into the position of firing the first shot without allowing too much danger to ourselves…

Stimson later published sections of his personal diary in a 1948 book co-written with his brother Bundy titled On Active Service in Peace and War. On page 393, Stimson cites his own diary entry from December 7, 1941 – the very day Japan attacked American troops stationed at Pearl Harbor. 

When the news first came that Japan had attacked us, my first feeling was of relief that the indecision was over and that a crisis had come in a way which would unite all our people. This continued to be my dominant feeling in spite of the news of catastrophes which quickly developed. For I feel that this country united has practically nothing to fear, while the apathy and divisions stirred up by unpatriotic men have been hitherto very discouraging. 

On October 7 1940, a memorandum was written by Captain Arthur McCollum, Chief of the Far Eastern Section of Naval Intelligence. McCollum, whose name is mentioned 55 times in the previously cited official Pearl harbor Investigation of 1946, titled his memo “Estimate of the Situation in the Pacific and Recommendations for Action by the United States.”

The memo was popularized by Robert B. Stinnett in his 1999 book, Day of Deceit, page 4 of the memorandum records McCollum’s 9th and 10th section:

9. It is not believed that in the present state of political opinion the United States government is capable of declaring war against Japan without more ado; and it is barely possible that vigorous action on our part might lead the Japanese to modify their attitude. Therefore, the following course of action is suggested:

• A. Make an arrangement with Britain for the use of British bases in the Pacific, particularly Singapore.

• B. Make an arrangement with Holland for the use of base facilities and acquisition of supplies in the Dutch East Indies.

• C. Give all possible aid to the Chinese government of Chiang-Kai-Shek.

• D. Send a division of long range heavy cruisers to the Orient, Philippines, or Singapore.

• E. Send two divisions of submarines to the Orient.

• F. Keep the main strength of the U.S. fleet now in the Pacific in the vicinity of the Hawaiian Islands.

• G. Insist that the Dutch refuse to grant Japanese demands for undue economic concessions, particularly oil.

• H. Completely embargo all U.S. trade with Japan, in collaboration with a similar embargo imposed by the British Empire.

10. If by these means Japan could be led to commit an overt act of war, so much the better. At all events we must be fully prepared to accept the threat of war.

Why do the ramblings of one single soldier matter? Because the main recommendations from the memo were embraced and enacted by the U.S. government, which as McCollum predicted, led Japan to commit an overt act of war. 

Section “C” was enacted, aiding Chiang’s regime as part of an extension to America’s Lend-Lease program which also aided the British and Soviet governments before U.S. official entrance into the war. 

Moreover, Section “D” was enacted. A restricted document from November 15, 1941 had the subject “General Marshall’s Conference today”, titled “#2-602 Robert L. Sherrod Memorandum for David W. Hulburd.” General George C. Marshall, at the time was Chief of Staff of the United States Army. The document summarizes a meeting at the War Department in a “secret conference with General Marshall.” The memo from The George C. Marshall Foundation reads,

The U.S. is on the brink of war with the Japanese, said the General. Our position is highly favorable in this respect:  We have access to a leak in all the information they are receiving concerning our military preparations, especially in the Philippines.  In other words, we know what they know about us and they don’t know that we know it.

Under great secrecy the U.S. is building up its strength in the Philippines to a level far higher than the Japanese imagine. General MacArthur is unloading ships at night, is building air fields in the carefully guarded interior, is allowing no one within miles of military reservations.

Most important point to remember is this: We are preparing for an offensive war against Japan, whereas the Japs believe we are preparing only to defend the Philippines….We are piling a large proportion of our new materiel into the Philippines, several shiploads a week of it.

…If war with the Japanese does come, we’ll fight mercilessly.  Flying fortresses will be dispatched immediately to set the paper cities of Japan on fire.  There wont be any hesitation about bombing civilians—it will be all-out.  

Section “F” was maintained, when a clear alternative was possible, which was to withdraw U.S. troops from the area since Hawaii was not even an American state at the time and would not be so until 1959.

Most significantly, section “H” of McCollum’s memo advocating an embargo —the forcible restricting of trade with Japan— was enacted on August 1, 1941. This came on the heels of the freezing of Japanese assets which occurred on July 26, 1941. None of this was inevitable, it could have easily been the case that the U.S. government saw the brutality of the Japanese regime in China and feared provocation, or wanted a strong Japan to later fight the Soviets, or contain Chinese expansion in Asia.

With the Japanese having occupied Vietnam in September of 1940, and having maintained Korea as a colony since 1910, the newfound United States Empire inherited conflicts of the previous Japanese Empire. Of course, those with fashionable opinions constantly will say ‘the U.S. had Truman’s Containment policy, and was just trying to contain communism when they killed millions of Koreans and millions of Vietnamese.’ This assumes the U.S. empire has a reasonable fear of communism thousands of miles away from Vietnam and Korea, while Japan had no reason to fear them, even though Japan is far closer to these areas.

Unlike market actors, governments have unique qualities which incentivize warfare in ways that would be unprofitable in the voluntary sector. States have unique access to central bank money creation, taxation, conscription, compulsory education, and a legal double standard which allows them to commit murder under the guise of ‘foreign policy;’ we should expect states to continue to agitate for wars. 

We must see war for what it is, mass murder campaigns based on lies funded by theft. The National Security Elites in every country since the beginning of time must lie and sensationalize potential foreign threats in order to get their domestic populations to surrender their freedoms and bear the high cost of dying and getting their limbs blown off. 

May we all have the humility of Tucker Carlson in reflecting on the atrocities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki: 

I love by the way that people on my side — I’ll just admit it, on the ‘Right’ — have spent the last 80 years defending dropping nuclear bombs on civilians. Like, are you joking? That’s just prima facie evil. If you can’t — ‘Well, if we hadn’t done that, then this, that, the other thing, that was actually a great savings’ — no. It’s wrong to drop nuclear weapons on people, and if you find yourself arguing that it’s a good thing to drop nuclear weapons on people, then you are evil.

– Tucker Carlson, Joe Rogan Experience (ep. #2138)

https://libertarianinstitute.org/articles/justifying-evil/