ISSN 1995-5928Ingesluit LitNet Akademies
Tuis > SêNet-briewe

Oorlog en Christelike Etiek

Pieter Redelinghuys 2013-09-16
  • 45
Shares0Pin0Print0LinkedIn0

Kan Christelike Etiek enige rol speel by oorlogvoer, volksmoord, en die uitwis van die vyand, lg jou medemens, volgens Christus se eie Woorde?

Die volgende sitaat is afkomstig van "The Untold History of the United States" deur Oliver Stone en Peter Kuznick:

Unknown to most of the (American) public, many top military leaders considered the bombings, (Hiroshima and Nagasaki) military unnecessary or morally reprehensible. Truman´s chief of staff, Admiral William Leahy, who chaired the meetings of the Joint Chiefs, was the most impassioned, classifying the bomb with chemical and bacteriological weapons as violations of "every Christian ethic I have ever heard of and all of the known laws of war". He proclaimed that the "Japanese were already defeated and ready to surrender ... The use of this barbarous weapon at Hiroshima and Nagasaki was of no material assistance to our war against Japan. In being the first to use it we adopted an ethical standard common to the barbarians of the dark ages. I was not taught to make war in that fashion and wars cannot be won by destroying women and children".

Leahy angrily told the journalist Jonathan Daniels in 1949, "Truman told me it was agreed that they would use it...only to hit military objectives. Of course, then they went ahead and killed as many woman and children as they could which was just what they wanted all the time".

As Brigadier General Carter Clarke, who was in charge of preparing summaries of intercepted diplomatic cables, stated, "we brought them down to an abject surrender through accelerated sinking of their merchant marine and hunger alone, and when we didn´t need to do it, and we knew we didn´t need to do it, and they knew we didn´t need to do it, we used them as an experiment for two atomic bombs."

Die Anglo-Amerikaanse leuen-storie wat na die afloop van die Tweede Wêreld Oorlog in die Weste getrompeteer is, en as die ware gospel geglo is, vertel dat die atoom bombadering van Japan ’n spoedige einde aan die oorlog gebring het, en daardeur is derduisende Amerikaanse soldate se lewens gered. Die waarheid egter was dat Japan reeds militêr verpletter was en al vir maande probeer het om tot ’n ooreenkoms te kom met die VSA om ’n einde aan die oorlog te bring, maar dit het die VSA nie gepas nie. Die VSA se voorwaardes was ook van so ’n onrealistiese aard dat die Japanese dit eenvoudig nie kon aanvaar nie.

Hier volg ’n beskrywing van die mensgemaakte Hel wat losgebars het oor Hiroshima op Augustus 6, 1945:

Injured and burned survivors suffered immensely. Hibakusha (bomb-affected persons) described it as walking through Hell. The streets were filled with an endless ghostlike procession of horribly burned, often naked people, whose skin hung off their bones. Desperately seeking help for their wounded bodies, searching for family members, and trying to escape from the encroaching fires, they tripped over dead bodies that had been seared into lumps of charcoal, often frozen in midstep.

Hiroshima´s most renowned atomic poet, Sanichi Toge, who died in 1953 at age thirty-seven, wrote a poem titled "August Sixth" that reads in part:

How could I ever forget that flash of light!
In an instant thirty thousand people disappeared from the streets;
The cries of fifty thousand more
Crushed beneath the darkness---

Then, skin hanging like rags,
Hands on breasts;
Treading upon shattered human brains...
Crowds piled on the river bank, and on rafts fastened to the shore,
Turned gradually into corpses under the scorching sun....

 

Truman always claimed that he felt no remorse, even bragging that he "never lost any sleep over that decision". When television interviewer Edward R. Murrow asked him, "Any regrets?" he responded, "Not the slightest- not the slightest in the world". When another interviewer asked if the decision had been morally difficult to make, he responded, "Hell no, I made it like that", snapping his fingers.

Dit is moeilik om woorde te vind  om my morele afsku te beskryf vir hierdie afskuwelike klein mannetjie wat besluite geneem het wat die lewens van derduisende onskuldige Japanese siviele geraak het. Deel van sy onverskillige houding kan seker  teruggevoer en verklaar word op die basis van die heftige propagandakampanje in die VSA teenoor  Japanese tydens die Tweede Wêreld Oorlog. Hulle is uitgebeeld as ’n barbaarse ras wat nie eintlik aan die menslike spesie behoort nie, maar veel laer, soos  luise en kakkerlakke, en liewer van die aardbol elimineer moet word. Tot watter mate godsdiens in hierdie giftige brousel ’n rol gespeel het kan mens alleen oor raai, aangesien die Japanese Boeddhiste, en nie Christene is nie. 

Ter afsluiting, die VSA het chemiese gifstowwe gebruik in hulle oorlog teen Vietnam (agent orange), en na die oorlog is baie Vietnamese kinders gebore met ernstige kongenitale afwykings. In 1990 is wapens gebruik met chemiese gifstowwe in die sg "Gulf War" in Kuwait teen Irakkese soldate maar die soldate van die VSA en Brittanje het ook aan die gevolge hiervan gelei, aan sg "Gulf sickness", ’n entiteit wat die regerings van hierdie lande erg ontken.

Dus kom ons terug na die vraag: Kan Christelike etiek van basiese menslike ordentlikheid enige rol speel in oorlogvoer? 

Beste groete,

Pieter Redelinghuys

Shares0Pin0Print0LinkedIn0
  • 45

Kommentaar

  • CorneliusHenn

    Nee Pieter, Christelike etiek van enige basiese menslike ordentlikheid, kan geen rol speel in oorlogvoer ... of enige ander ideologiese spel op aarde nie - ook nie die Christelike Nasionale waansin lank gelede aan Mzansi nie ... alle Godsdiens op aarde, behels die besonderse verhouding van elke hart op aarde met onse Skepper ... dis nie iets bedinkbaar, of organiseerbaar nie - vandaar Wouter Ferns se struikel byvoorbeeld oor die katolieke Kerk (katolieke, met 'n kleinletter gespel) ... ek voel egter dat indien jy konsekwent beoordeel, jy ook ewe bewus omtrent die gruwels onder ateïstiese lyding elders in die wêreld te wees ... ek hoop en bid dat jy wel tussen sinies, en skepties onderskei waar dit ander se harte raak ... Cornelius Henn

     

     

     

    Reply
  • Pieter Redelinghuys

     

    Beste Cornelius,

     

    Ek wonder of jy diep gedink het oor al die implikasiese van jou antwoord op my vraag?  Jy skryf:

    Nee Pieter, Christelike etiek van enige basiese ordentlikheid, kan geen rol speel in oorlogvoer....

     

    Nou vra ek jou: wat dan is die punt van Christelike etiek oor die algemeen, en wat is die punt om ag te slaan oor enigiets wat Christus ooit kwyt geraak het? Al sy raad is van só onrealistiese aard dat wanneer dit tot die toets kom kan dit nie toegepas of verwerklik word nie.

     

    Wat van die maning dat jy van al jou wêreldse rykdom moet afstaan en hom volg. Dit is mos onsin. Wie gaan vir jou dogtertjie omsien?

     

    Sy maning om jou naaste lief te hê soos jouself (die Tweede Gebod, en die kern van die hele Christelike geloof), en dit sluit ook jou vyand in, is per slot van sake net die onrealistiese uiting van 'n idealis wat nooit verwerklik kan word nie.

     

    By oorlog tel net een saak: die uitwis van jou teenstaander, of hy wel 'n Christen is of iets ander, óf word self uitgewis.

     

    Beste groete,

     

    Pieter Redelinghuys

    Reply
  • Wouter

    Hello Pieter, 

     
    Verskoning dat daar in die antwoord aan jou eers aan Cornelius Henn aandag gegee moet word. Maar die man is so 'n pyn en kan my eenvoudig nie met rus laat nie. Hoe desperaat moet Henn nie wees om reaksie uit te lok. Genoegsaam om te stel dat nuanse is nie 'n sterk punt by Cornelius Henn is nie, soos elke postering van Henn bevestig, daarom die eindelose gekerm oor katoliek en die miljoene wat katolieke sou wees en ook net so in sy skedel.  
     
    Maar met jou brief raak jy 'n komplekse onderwerp aan en is die volgende geneem van 'n boek wat op my Kindle wat die onderwerp aanspreek en ek aangekoop het na aanleiding van podcasts wat die begin van jaar vrygestel is. Dit het as doel gehad die bespreking van die 2013 Lionel Gelber Prize. Een van die boeke op die lys was: 
     
    Andrew Preston interviewed by Rob Steiner onSword of the Spirit, Shield of Faith: Religion in American War and Diplomacy(a book published by Knopf Canada and Alfred A. knopf)     
     
    Die inleiding van die boek is soos volg:
     
    Sword of the Spirit, Shield of Faith (Andrew Preston)
    KIndle Location 160-87  | Added on Monday, September 16, 2013, 05:46 PM
     
    Introduction 
     
    Finally, my brethren, be strong in the Lord, and in the power of his might. Put on the whole armour of God, that ye may be able to stand against the wiles of the devil. For we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places. Wherefore take unto you the whole armour of God, that ye may be able to withstand in the evil day, and having done all, to stand. Stand therefore, having your loins girt about with truth, and having on the breastplate of righteousness; And your feet shod with the preparation of the gospel of peace; Above all, taking the shield of faith, wherewith ye shall be able to quench all the fiery darts of the wicked. And take the helmet of salvation, and the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God… —Ephesians 6:10–17 
     
    SWORD OF THE SPIRIT, Shield of Faith was written under the assumption that religion played an important role in shaping American perceptions of the world and in contributing to domestic debates on how the United States should engage with other nations. It is an exploration not of whether religion influenced U.S. foreign relations, but how. It is a logical assumption: few would argue that religion has not played a consistently important role in American life, for better or worse. This last qualifier—for better or worse—is important, for this book also operates under the assumption that religion is just like any other historical topic. It is not my desire, and certainly not my intention, to make a case either for or against a role for religion in public life. Readers will of course use the material in this book to support their own beliefs that religion is either a productive or a pernicious force in American foreign relations. Partisans on both sides of the acrimonious debate over religion’s place in the public square—and increasingly over the nature of religion itself—will find plenty of evidence to back up their competing claims. But such quarrels are not my concern. Religion provokes intense emotions, and no historian is free of bias. Nonetheless, I have sought to treat my subject as objectively as possible. Doing so has meant recognizing that there was not one religious influence upon American foreign relations, but many: nationalist but also internationalist, exceptionalist but also cosmopolitan, nativist but also tolerant, militant but also pacifist. The religious influence was neither monolithic nor consensual but a product of intense dialogue, debate, and controversy. Nor did it always push U.S. foreign policy in the same direction. It is a fascinatingly complex story, but its very complexity makes its unraveling all the more important and worthwhile.
     
    ==========
     
    Indien jy die idees van die boek wil ondersoek kan jy hier na 'n onderhoud met die skrywer luister:
     
    http://www.utoronto.ca/munk/gelber/downloads/2013_gelber_podcasts/Andrew Preston (Interviewed by Rob Steiner for the Lionel Gelber Prize).mp3

     
    Baie dankie
     
    Wouter
    Reply
  • George

    Pieter, dankie vir 'n interessante bespreking. Dis 'n ontstellende verhaal. Die weergawe wat ek, lank gelede, gehoor het klink anders. Die ontsettende weerstand wat die Japanners op klein eilandjies in die Stille Oseaan gebied het en die hoë ongevallesyfers onder die Amerikaners het hulle laat vrees oor die geweldige teenstand wat hulle sal ondervind as hulle die hoofeilande aanval. Gevolglik is atoombomme afgegooi om die oorlog spoedig te beëïndig en ongevalle drasties te verminder. Is gerekende Amerikaanse en Japannese historici dit eens oor die standpunt wat jy stel?

    Jy begin met die stelling: “Kan Christelike Etiek enige rol speel by oorlogvoer, volksmoord, en die uitwis van die vyand, lg jou medemens, volgens Christus se eie Woorde?” Dit moes wel al dikwels 'n rol gespeel het. My eie geskiedenis kennis is op hierdie stadium verroes – wens ek kry tyd om dit weer aan te vul. Ek weet dat met die Engelse Oorlog was daar Boeregeneraals (Piet Joubert?) wat gevoel het dat dit onchristelik is om na 'n oorwinning die vyand agterna te sit en uit te roei. As kind het ek ook die argument van ooms gehoor dat as ons nie so 'n christelike volk was nie sou ons die swartes uitgemoor het (soos ander nasies wel gedoen het) en nie met 'n rasseprobleem gesit het nie. Die geskatte toename van die inheemse bevolking sedert Van Riebeeck se aankoms bied interessante leesstof en bewys dat ons nie soos die Amerikaners en Australiërs opgetree het nie.

    George

    Reply
  • Pieter Redelinghuys

    Beste George,

     

    Baie dankie vir jou belangstelling in hierdie onderwerp en jou gedagtewisseling daaroor.

     

    As byvoegsel kan ek noem dat een van die redes (dalk die hoofrede) om die bom te gebruik was die toetrede van Rusland in die oorlog teen Japan. Die Japanese was reeds op daardie tyd militêr verpletter en sou geen weerstand kon bied teen die Rooi aanval nie.

     

    Die Amerikaners wou nie hê dat die Rooiweermag enige voordeel mag trek uit hierdie nuwe situasie nie, en hulle posisie kon konsolideer  nie. Die VSA wou die bom gebruik as demonstrasie van Amerikaanse oormag, aldus as afskrikmiddel  tydens hulle onderhandeling met die Russe aangaande die toekoms van Europa.

     

    Al die volgende sitate kan gevind word in "The Untold History of the United States" deur Oliver Stone en Peter Kuznick:

     

    According to  Deputy Chief of Staff General Torashiro Kawabe:

     

    It was only in a gradual manner that the horrible wreckage which had been made of Hiroshima became known...In comparison, the Soviet entry into the war was a great shock when it actually came. Reports reaching Tokyo described Russian forces as "invading in swarms". It gave us all all the more severe shock and alarm because we had been in constant fear of it with a vivid imagination that "the vast Red Army forces in Europe were now being turned against us".

     

    Admiral Toyoda agreed:" I believe the Russian participation in the  war against Japan rather than the atom bombs did more to hasten the surrender".

     

    A study conducted by the U.S. War Department in January 1946 came to the same conclusion, finding "little mention...of the use of the atomic bomb by the United States in the discussions leading up to the decision..it(is) almost a certainty that the Japanese would have capitulated upon the entry of Russia into the war".

     

    Dus bestaan daar meer as genoeg bewyse dat die gebruik van die bom onnodig was om 'n spoedige einde  aan die oorlog te bring. 

     

    "Six of the United States´seven five-star officers who received their final star in World War II- Generals MacArthur, Eisenhower, and Arnold and Admirals Leahy, King, and Nimitz- rejected the idea that the atomic bombs were needed to end the war. Sadly, though, there is little evidence that they pressed thier case with Truman before the fact.

     

    Hiroshima vandag is 'n skoon moderne stad, en 'n besoek aan die gedenkmuseum 'n onvergeetlike ondervinding. Woorde kan nie beskryf die hel wat die inwoners, mans, vrouens en kinders ondergaan het toe die VSA op 6 Augustus, 1945, om 08.15 die oggend, die atoombom oor die stad laat ontplof het toe die strate vol kinders op pad skool toe was nie. Een van die slagoffers, 'n 9 jarige seun, is deur sy pa gevind tussen die rommel. Hy het die kind huistoe gedra en kyk hoe sy seun binne 'n paar uur sterf.

     

    Die gedagte sal altyd by my spook dat 'n sg. Westerse Christelike nasie  verantwoordelik kan wees vir boosheid van so 'n enorme skaal. Massamoord van siviele op 'n fenomenale skaal.

     

    Beste groete,

     

    Pieter Redelinghuys

    Reply
  • CorneliusHenn

    Beste Pieter,  

     

    Die Evangelie handel gewis nie daaroor om 'n politieke mag te ontwikkel, of sodanige samelewing te skep nie.  

     

    Dis egter waar dat deur die millennia heen, menige godsdiensboef gekom en gegaan het en hul dogma, byvoorbeeld die vergange Christelike Nasionale ideologie, uit die hel op mense afgedwing het.  

     

    Elke hart wat Jesus Christus onse HERE as hul persoonlike saligmaker ken, is by 'n verskillende mylpaal op hul weg. Daar is dus geen standaard of moraal anders as die troos van God onse Moeder, die Heilige Gees in ons harte nie.  

     

    Hoe kan daar dan 'n standaard 'n moraal, algemene wet en orde wees waaraan sulke saligheid gebind kan word?  

     

    Die infernales rig wel hulself en ander aan 'n bepaalde moraal af, en vloek hulself dan salig!

     

    Maar, Jesus Christus onse HERE red elkeen in BESONDER (byvoorbeeld die misdadiger saam aan die Kruis), sonder om orde daarmee in 'n samelewing te bedoel!  

     

    Daarom is Kobus de Klerk se bespotting van ander se geloof en ongeloof, juis so Satanies.  

     

    Dis jammer om daarop te wys, maar Wouter Ferns, is ook net nog 'n slimjan wat reeds menige informasie wat ek met hom hieroor gedeel het, sy besef daarin persoonlik gevat het en nou moedswillig voortploeter met die hoop dat Kobus de Klerk hom 'n klop op die skouer sal gee.  

     

    Ek aanvaar egter dat dit wat ek hier met jou deel, nie die gewone ideologiese dwepery is wat jy reeds ken nie.

     

    Pieter, ek handel stap vir stap hierin, en sal dit werklik waardeer indien jy my daarop wys waar my verduideliking onverstaanbaar is - eerder as om in kognitiewe dissonansie troos te probeer vind.  

     

    Namaste!  

     

    Cornelius Henn

     

    Reply
  • Chris Dippenaar

    Hello Pieter

    Nog voor die einde van die Tweede Wêreldoorlog was die Koue Oorlog al goed op dreef. Dit sou moontlik wees om die finale oorwinning oor Japan te hê sonder om die atoombom te gebruik, maar dit sou tyd geneem het. Tyd wat Stalin se aanspraak en inmenging in Japan se lot teweeg sou kon bring. Hiervoor het die Amerikaners nie kans gesien nie en wat hulle nodig gehad het was 'n uitklophou teen Japan. Die atoombom het hierdie uitklophou verskaf en effektief die aanspraak van Stalin op Japan in die kiem gesmoor. Hierdie manier van dink verklaar ook die motivering van Amerika om Japan (Berlyn ook) so gou moontlik op sy bene te kry met reuse beleggings en rekonstruksie.

    Die rede wat gewoonlik gegee word vir die gooi van die atoombom is dat die Amerikaners nie bereid was om die lewensverlies van duisende soldate te dra nie, en dit is seker nie 'n ongeldige argument nie, maar ek dink die veel belangriker rede was om Rusland uit te hou.

    Dit regverdig natuurlik nie die gebruik van die atoombom nie, maar dit is dalk nodig om in die lig hiervan te spekuleer oor wat die Japanese sou moes deurmaak sou Stalin sy hande op hulle kon kry. Is oorlog nie baie keer 'n keuse tussen twee of meer euwels nie?

    Chris

    Reply
  • Pieter Redelinghuys

    Beste Wouter,

     

    Welkom terug en dankie vir jou inset.

     

    Godsdiens het ongetwyfel 'n rol gespeel by die morele regverdiging van genocide, altans in die owering van nuwe wêrelddele deur die Weste. Onmiddellik kom die Spaanse conquistadores en hulle verowering van Suid-Amerika tevore, en hulle morele regverdiging van hulle rooftog op Indiaanse goud en lande berus op tekste van die Bybel. Die rasionaal sou wees dat die Mayas heidene en barbare was met die gevolg dat  die Spanjaarde 'n godgegewe reg had om hulle uit te wis, (vergelyk die intog van die Jode in die gelofte land) óf om hulle met geweld te bekeer tot die Christen-geloof.

     

    Die feit dat die geallieerdes en die Duitsers albei Christen-nasies is, het hulle nie verhoed om met mekaar oorlog te maak nie, in die Eerste en Tweede Wêreld Oorloë nie.

     

    Ek is bevrees dat Christelikheid geen rol gespeel het in die raming van die VSA se buitelandse beleid sedert die Tweede Wêreld Oorlog nie, en die Presidente van daardie nasie het self sluipmoorde (Castro) gegoedkeur. Daar is dus geen plek vir Christelike sentimente waar eiebelang tel, en oorlewing op die spel is nie.

     

    Dus is ek self baie pessimistiese oor die praktiese verwerklikwordiing van enige Christen beginsels onder hierdie omstandighede.

     

    Beste groete,

     

    Pieter Redelinghuys

    Reply
  • CorneliusHenn

    What If?

     

    A Poem by Ganga White

     

     

    What if our religion was each other?

    If our practice was our life?

    If prayer was our words?

    What if the Temple was the Earth?

    If forests were our church?

    If holy water—the rivers, lakes and oceans?

    What if meditation was our relationships?

    If the Teacher was life? If wisdom was self-knowledge?

    If love was the center of our being ...

     

     

    ©1998 Ganga White, Santa Barbara All Rights Reserved - Written at the Rainforest Benefit, NYC April 1998

     

     

    Reply
  • Chris Dippenaar

    Pieter, ek sien dat jy ook Rusland as faktor noem. My reaksie hierbo het ek gestuur voor ek jou bydrae gesien het.

    "Hiroshima vandag is 'n skoon moderne stad...." Die vraag wat ek seker vra is of hierdie frase geskryf kon word vandag as Japan onder die juk van Stalin was.

    Weereens, ek probeer glad nie die gooi van die atoombom regverdig nie, maar die gekiedenis van Oos Europa na die oorlog was grootliks een van onderdrukking en armoede. Ek wil graag aansluit by Wouter se bydrae hierbo wat afsluit met: "It is a fascinatingly complex story, but its very complexity makes its unraveling all the more important and worthwhile." Deur terug te kyk na die verlede is van die vrae wat ons vra miskien van meer waarde omdat dit gaan na die hart van van etiek, en dit is selde 'n swart en wit prentjie.

    Chris

    Reply
  • Trienie

    Beste Pieter

    Die onderwerp wat jy aangeraak het is uiters belangrik. Dankie. Ek sien nog geen kommentaar van jou af op Wouter se skrywe. Die man verbaas my weer aangesien die beste antwoord op hierdie delikate saak vanuit sy tikvingers gevloei het. Alhoewel ek besef hyself dalk nie die diepte van die antwoord verstaan nie.

    Hoe voel jy oor Wouter se skrywe? Of wat verstaan jy onder dit?

     

    Reply
  • CorneliusHenn

    Chris Dippenaar, Japan was lankal verower toe die atoombom geval het ... jy lees beslis uit die verkeerde koerant!

    Reply
  • CorneliusHenn

    Wouter Ferns, had jy maar die ordentelikheid om jou struikel te erken en die werklikheid buite jou slimmigheid te respekteer, dan was jou "marteling" lankal verby ...

     

     

     

     

    Reply
  • Wouter

    Hello Almal, 

     
    Hierdie is nie 'n reaksie op 'n enkele persoon nie maar brei wel uit op sekere punte wat Chris aangeraak het net soos dit 'n alternatief tot Oliver Stone soos gebied deur Pieter verwoord. Oliver Stone, 'n uitstekende kunstenaar en sy films altyd die moeite werd om te kyk is egter ook te veel van 'n samesweringteoris. 
     
    Een van die eienaardigste terme in oorlogvoering vir my is die term, 'theathre of war'. 
     
    Dit wat nou volg word geneem van hoofstuk 16 wat handel oor die toneel in die omstreke van Japan en dan die aanloop tot die uiteindelike gebruik van die atoombomme. Slegs dit wat ek as die kern van die hoofstuk beskou het is hier geplaas en gaan die vertellings soos volg: 
     
    A World at Arms (Gerhard L. Weinberg)
    Kindle Location. 18958-19958 | Added on Tuesday, September 17, 2013, 
     
    THE WAR IN THE PACIFIC
     
    Allied plans for the defeat of Japan were developed in the summer and fall of 1944. The success in the Marianas and northern New Guinea opened the possibility for new strikes at the Japanese empire. It was not yet settled among the American planners whether an attack on Luzon, the largest and most important island in the northern Philippines, was preferable to a landing on Formosa (Taiwan) as the basis for the direct attack on Japan itself.
     
    The Formosa project, especially dear to Admiral King, however, fell victim to three developments in the fall of 1944. The collapse of the Chinese Nationalists made the idea of a base off the China coast for the coordination of operations from there in the great assault on Japan an unrealistic project. The continuation of the war in Europe into 1945 precluded the early transfer to East Asia of the troops and shipping needed for the Formosa operation.
     
    The logistic needs of a Formosa landing, especially past a Japanese-controlled Luzon, were beyond the anticipated resources of the Central Pacific theater, so that Admiral Nimitz increasingly favored a Luzon over a Formosa operation as a follow-up to Leyte. 
     
    Even while the plans were being question of trying to make the Japanese surrender all of their forces simultaneously, on the mainland of Asia as well as in the cut-off islands of the southwest Pacific, assumed increasing importance in Allied thinking. In view of their experience with the way the Japanese held on to the bitter end, the prospect of further years of fighting in all sorts of places on the continent and the islands raised very serious questions indeed, questions which included concern about the willingness of the American-to say nothing of the British-public to support bloody “cleaning-up operations” for years on end.
     
    The most important hope of Tokyo was that of keeping the Soviet Union neutral. 
     
    Beginning in August 1944, the Japanese government attempted diplomatic steps to encourage the Soviet Union to adhere to the 1941 Neutrality Pact. 
     
    Japanese Foreign Minister Shigemitsu Mamoru appears to have thought of the possibility of some new Japanese-Soviet agreement which might lead to their jointly developing a program for a general settlement of the whole war, a project which assumed that the Moscow government was prepared to abandon its allies, relieve Germany of its Eastern Front, and thereby in effect force the Western Allies into making peace through a revived Tripartite Pact, with the Soviet Union taking the place of Italy.
     
    Once upon a time, in the winter of 1940–41, Stalin had been seriously interested in such an arrangement; but as the Japanese ambassador in Moscow, Sato Naotake, repeatedly told his government, there was not the slightest chance of such a project now. 
     
    Why should the Soviet Union leave a winning alliance for a losing one and give up the enormous advantages of victory for the minimal advantages Japan offered?
     
    Tokyo kept trying for months but simply could not get anywhere with its scheme. Whether or not massive Japanese concessions to the Soviet Union could at this time have turned things around remains an open question, but there was no inclination in Tokyo in 1944 to make the sorts of offers put forward in 1945, when any interest Stalin might conceivably once have had was long gone.
     
    ==========
     
    The growing strength of the Japanese intersected with increasing problems for the Americans. Not only was Japanese resistance on the island growing rather than waning, the air situation deteriorated badly.
     
    (Hierdie dui aan dat Japan nie so hulpeloos was nie). 
     
    ==========
     
    During November 1944 the Americans fought the steadily reinforced Japanese army on Leyte in bloody positional warfare resembling the trench fighting on the Western Front in World War I and the early fighting in Normandy. 
     
    The fighting had been heavier and longer than the Americans had anticipated. 
     
    As usual, MacArthur’s announcement at the end of December that the fighting was over was premature by months. United States casualties had been heavy, over 15,000. 
     
    The Japanese losses had been even higher, including well over 50,000 dead.
     
    Two American steps altered the situation in the air war against Japan dramatically. The landing on Iwo Jima on February 19 followed by the subsequent conquest of the island and expansion of the Japanese airports on it shortened the distance to be flown from the Marianas, because there was no need to depart from the direct route on account of Japanese fighters based on Iwo. 
     
    The island provided an intermediate base on which B-29s could land, and allowed the stationing of fighters to escort the bombers to Japan. 
     
    The B-29 bombing effort from the Marianas had originally been something of a disappointment. From October 1944 into early 1945 a series of raids had produced some effects, especially on the Japanese aircraft industry against which it was primarily aimed, but not anywhere near the results hoped for and at considerable loss to fighters, anti-aircraft fire, and–most of all–weather, accidents, and other operational problems.
     
    ==========
     
    On the night of March 9–10, 1945, 334 B-29s attacked Tokyo. For over three hours, the procession of B-29s lumbered over Tokyo, turning the great mixed area of homes and industry into a raging inferno. Between 80,000 and 100,000 died in the flames.
     
    (Hierdie is soortgelyk aan die vernietiging wat geheers het met lugaanvalle oor Duitslands and kan daar verwys word na WG Sebald se 'A Short History of Destruction). 
     
    ==========
     
    On March 18, more than a week after the great fire raid on Tokyo, Emperor Hirohito himself inspected the tremendous damage. 
     
    With relatively little debate, the American air force embraced in the last stages of the Pacific War the concept of area attacks which it had so long opposed in Europe, where it had for years been advocated and practiced by the Royal Air Force. In the face of a series of ever bloodier battles at the front, there were few if any qualms about launching a rain of death on Japan’s cities, which now experienced what the Japanese air force had first visited on China and which the Japanese balloon operation had been designed to do on an even larger scale to Canada and the United States.
     
    The gist of a report of early April on the unwillingness of the Japanese to accept unconditional surrender from the Swedish Minister in Tokyo, which was passed on to the British, elicited the Foreign Office comment on May 9: 
     
    “the Japanese will have to have a much harder knock than they have yet had.”
     
    (Hier is die verwysing na Chris se soeke na die uitklophou). 
     
    The time tables worked out at Yalta and Potsdam, and the shipments of American supplies for the Red Army to use in its campaign against Japan, were keyed to Soviet participation at a date well before the Olympic landing.
     
    (Is dit nodig om te bevestig dat die belangrikste figure hier, Roosevelt, Churchill en Stalin)
     
    ==========
     
    The Soviet Union had every intention of going forward with the agreed upon attacks in Manchuria. Detailed planning began in March 1945. 
     
    The endless Soviet trains heading eastward across the Soviet Union were observed with anxiety by the Japanese–whose reports were deciphered, presumably with relief, by the Western Allies-and by the representatives of neutral powers in the country.
     
    The Soviet government clearly looked toward major operations on the ground and was also preparing for the possibility of Japanese air attacks when hostilities began, and even cooperated minimally, and at a very much lower level than originally promised, with the Americans.In a long and agitated series of exchanges and negotiations, the government in Tokyo tried to assure the continued neutrality of the Soviet Union. The government hoped for this in the face of both the doubts of its own ambassador in Moscow, Sato Naotake, and its own unwillingness in the winter of 1944–45 to make such substantial offers of concessions to the Soviet Union as might conceivably have raised doubts in Stalin’s mind. As the April deadline for denunciation of the 1941 Neutrality Pact approached, the Foreign Ministry in Tokyo was still hopeful, but a formal Soviet note of April 5, 1945, declared that the Neutrality Pact would be allowed to expire rather than be renewed.
     
    (Rusland was vierkantig aan die kant van die 'helde', hierdie dan die komplikasies van geskiedenis en ongelukkig nie bevestigend van die koue oorlog nie, alhoewel dit 'n belangrike onderwerp in eie reg is)
     
    ==========
     
    Why were the Japanese still fighting and to what end? 
     
    The series of defeats in February and March followed by the American landing on Okinawa and the Soviet denunciation of the Neutrality Pact led to the fall of Prime Minister Koiso Kuniaki. His successor, Admiral Suzuki Kantaro, was a man whose heroic role in the Russo-Japanese War of 1904–5 made him immune to charges of cowardice if he steered the country toward peace; and this may well have been a contributing factor to his selection. But Japan was not ready to end the war; Suzuki expected it to last several more years. 
     
    Although being urged by some of its diplomats in Europe to end the war by whatever means it could and as soon as possible.
     
    The response of Tokyo, however, was that war would continue after Germany’s surrender. The treaties with Germany, which the latter had broken by giving up, were null and void, but Japan would fight on.
     
    Some rumors of peace negotiations via Stockholm and Switzerland, with the American OSS chief Dulles involved in the latter, were cut off by the Japanese government.
     
    The key point was that, whatever the interest in peace, the idea of surrender was as yet unacceptable.
     
    President Truman was clearly disturbed by the casualties incurred in the Okinawa campaign and wanted a careful review of the alternatives before giving the green light for Olympic and Coronet, operations which were expected to involve even more desperate fighting with an even higher cost in lives. 
     
    On June 18 he held a conference at the White House with the Joint Chiefs of Staff (General Eaker representing General Arnold) and the Secretaries of War and the Navy.Ambassador Sato also sent his own views to Tokyo. 
     
    He called the Japanese approaches to Moscow ridiculous and futile and recommended that Japan instead accept the Allied call for unconditional surrender a suggestion independently sent to Tokyo by several other Japanese diplomats in Europe.
     
    ==========
     
    The repeated assertions from Tokyo that this unsolicited advice had been rejected, and that the Japanese government would not accept the concept of unconditional surrender even if the institution of the imperial house were preserved told the Americans two very important things. In the first place, these exchanges showed that the subject of surrender was actually under discussion in Tokyo, an entirely new feature of the situation. Secondly, they demonstrated that so far the advocates of continuing the war were winning out over those who were prepared to surrender, but they might not always be able to do so. Perhaps the blows of atomic bombs and of Soviet entrance into the war could swing the balance to the faction which urged surrender.
     
    ==========
     
    The Potsdam Declaration combined a call for unconditional surrender with extensive assurances about Japan’s future. Designed to appeal to the peace faction in the Japanese government, the document was based on the prior drafts discussed in Washington and assuring a future for a peaceful Japan which could eventually pick its own government. The imperial system was not mentioned, but the implication of its possible retention was clearly there, and the document was so read in Tokyo.
     
    ==========
     
    The Japanese government was also being urged to accept the Potsdam terms through their contacts in Switzerland with the American Office of Strategic Services but they were unwilling to accept the Potsdam terms and so announced in public. The Americans waited a few days to see whether there were second thoughts in Tokyo the President then gave the orders to go ahead with the atomic bombs.
     
    ==========
     
    Sonder enige twyfel tragies en bevestig maar net weer die geykte uitdrukking, daar is geen wenners in 'n oorlog nie en was hierdie ook nie 'n pleidooi of 'n verdediging vir die gebruik van atoombomme nie.
     
    Daarvoor is die verhale van die slagoffers net te grusaam.   
     
    Baie dankie
    Wouter
    Reply
  • Wouter

    Hello Pieter, 

     
    Ek wil weer in  my beurt ook beaam wat Chris aangedui het, weer onderskraag toe Chris geskryf het:  

     
    Deur terug te kyk na die verlede is van die vrae wat ons vra miskien van meer waarde omdat dit gaan na die hart van van etiek, en dit is selde 'n swart en wit prentjie. 
     
    Dit is dalk die luukse wat ons vandag het, dat dit moontlik is om te verlede te ondersoek vir die etiese, die morele en die lesse wat ons daaruit kan put. 
     
    Ook kan ek nie verby die gevoel kom dat Oliver Stone is nie die regte gids vir die ondersoek van hierdie geskiedenis nie. 
     
    Soos alreeds aangedui is daar net te veel van die samesweringteoris in Oliver Stone. 
     
    JFK? 
     
    Baie dankie
     
    Wouter
     
    Reply
  • Wouter

    Hello Trienie, 

     
    Baie dankie vir jou reaksie. Daar is net een punt waaroor ek wil kibbel en dit is dat jy voel ek dalk nie 'dalk nie die diepte van die antwoord verstaan nie'. 

     
    Ek hoop ek doen, want die boek het juis as doelwit die effek van Godsdiens, die etiese daarvan op politiek, buitelandse beleid, hetsy positief of negatief en kies ek nie as 'n klinklaar antwoord, dat die invloed negatief is nie. Daarom wil ek die lesers hier verwys na die onderhoud met die skrywer wat beide negatiewe en positiewe invloede probeer uitlig en hoe godsdiens ook as 'n teenwig tot oorlog gedien het. 
     
    Eenvoudige antwoorde op komplekse vrae het ek regtig 'n broertjie aan dood. 
     
    Baie dankie
     
    Wouter
    Reply
  • Pieter Redelinghuys

    Beste Trienie,

     

    Dankie vir jou brief en belangstelling in hierdie onderwerp. Jy vra my kommentaar op Wouter se skrywe. Die paragraaf wat Efesiërs siteer bevat die kern van sy antwoord: dat daar "rulers of darkness of this world" is en teen hulle geveg moet word met "the whole armour of God". Dit klink so vars uit die mond van Ronald Reagan wat herhaandelik gepraat het van "the Evil Empire" en GW Bush oor the "Axis of Evil". Trouens Reagan het sy hele program van "Starwars" geloots teen hierdie einste "Evil Empire".

     

    Hierdie teks vorm dan die grondslag en regverdiging vir oorlog en die uitwissing van jou ideologiese vyand. Hierdie tiepe van denke sit diep gewortel in die psige van die Westerse mens wat geskool is op die Bybel: Die Woord van God.

     

    Die probleem is eenvoudig dat jy nie mense kan klassifiseer in nét goed en boos nie, en nadat jy die vyand gedemoniseer het, het jy dan 'n Godgegewe reg om hom uit te wis. Die tekste in Openbaring sal ook vir veel "lunatic fringe" Christene genoeg stoffasie gee om 'n Armageddon te wil ontketen. Dit is mos die finale stryd tussen Goed en Kwaad.

     

    Dus is ek persoonlik oortuig dat godsdiens 'n subtiele rol speel ('n rol waarvan mens dalk nie eers bewus is nie)  by die persepsie van jou vyand, en by die voer van oorlog.

     

    Beste groete,

     

    Pieter Redelinghuys

    Reply
  • Pieter Redelinghuys

    Beste Chris,

     

    Dankie vr jou brief - ek merk dat ons ooreenkom oor al die aspekte onder diskussie, en dankie vir jou opmerking omtrent die moontlike toekoms van Hiroshima, en Japan as 'n geheel, indien die Russe daar aangeland het.

     

    Beste groete,

     

    Pieter Redelinghuys

      

    Reply
  • Pieter Redelinghuys

    Beste Cornelius,

     

    Dankie vir die mooi gedig vol sentimente vir 'n visie van 'n beter wêreld en naasbestaan.

     

    Beste groete,

     

    Pieter Redelinghuys

    Reply
  • Wouter

    Hello Pieter et al, 

     
    Ek voel ek is 'n verduideliking verskuldig oor Oliver Stone. Maar eers 'n staaltjie. Comestor was altyd kwaad vir my in die verlede wanneer ek aangedui het dat ek nie 'n boek deur hom bespreek erken as verteenwoordigend van die werklike aard van die boek nie en dit het tot baie argumente gelei. 
     
    Die rede vir die vergelyking was te vinde in die feit dat ek nou al vir jare ingeskryf is op die New York Review of Books, London Review of Books, Times Literary Supplement en The New Republic en soos verstaan kan word is die bespreking van boeke en die idees daarin die lewensaar van die publikasies en help dit 'n leser om die nuutste argumente wat 'n boek bied te volg en so te besluit watter boek kan uiteindelik in jou versameling opgeneem word en hoe die boek en sy argumente ervaar word in die debat van die dag en in die groter skema van die historiese verloop. 
     
    Met dit dan die volgende oor Oliver Stone. 

    In die 21 Februarie 2013 uitgawe van die New York Review of Books was daar dan 'n bespreking van Oliver Stone & Peter Kuznick se 'The Untold History of the United States, a book and television series' deur Sean Wilentz. 

    Sean Wilentz is 'n uitstekende historikus en sal ek veral sy 25000 woord opstel oor Lincoln aan Comestor aanbeveel. 

    Maar om tot die punt te kom en is ek in ooreenstemming met Sean Wilentz en haal ek die belangrikste temas uit sy opstel aan: 

    Die opskrif bevestig alreeds wat verwag kan word, 'Cherry-Picking Our History'.

    Oliver Stone and Peter Kuznick’s new book and accompanying ten-part televised documentary have a misleading title. Most if not all of the interpretations that they present in The Untold History of the United States—from the war in the Philippines to the one in Afghanistan—have appeared in revisionist histories of American foreign policy written over the last fifty years. Challenged by early reviewers, Stone and Kuznick have essentially conceded the point about their sources and claimed that what they call the “revisionist narrative” that informs their book has in truth become “the dominant narrative among university-based historians.”The real problem, they say, is that this revisionism has yet to penetrate the public schools, the mainstream media, and “those parts of America that cling to the notion of American exceptionalism.” 

    Their version of history may not be untold, but “it has been almost entirely ‘unlearned.’” And so what originally sounded like a startling account of a hidden history is in fact largely a recapitulation and popularization of a particular stream of academic work, in a book that would more properly be called The Unlearned History of the United States—if the scholarship and the authors’ reworking of it were thorough, factually accurate, and historically convincing.

    The United States, according to Stone and Kuznick, has remained in the malefic grip of the militarists and empire-builders to this day. Even well-intentioned leaders like Barack Obama have been brainwashed into mentaining the repressive national security state that oversees US domination of the world.

    Although Stone and Kuznick’s claim that their efforts reflect the dominant view of American history inside the universities, the work of many highly distinguished and influential scholars ranging from the traditionalist John Lewis Gaddis to the revisionist-influenced Melvyn P. Leffler indicates otherwise.

    The soundness of Stone and Kuznick’s work, though, depends not on its intellectual pedigree but on how the authors render the historical record. 

    Die kruks vir my is die volgende: 

    That “untold” history began not in the 1960s and the Vietnam era with which Stone—Oliver, not just I.F.—became so closely identified, as anyone who has seen Platoon (1986) and his other Vietnam movies instantly grasps. It began in the 1940s, when the beginning of the cold war divided American liberals and leftists of various stripes.On one side stood those such as Reinhold Niebuhr, J.K. Galbraith, Walter Reuther, Chester Bowles, and Eleanor Roosevelt, who believed that liberalism and communism were fundamentally opposed, with respect both to social ends and political means. 

    On the other side stood those who believed that liberalism and communism existed on a continuum, with political freedom at one end and economic freedom on the other, and who believed further that, through peaceful coexistence and competition, each side could learn from the other. 

    And there was a third group, of Communists who believed that liberalism was an underdeveloped politics, useful as a cover for their own higher ends.

    Although the book by Stone and Kuznick is heavily footnoted, the sourcing suggests, recalls nothing so much as Dick Cheney’s cherry-picking of intelligence, particularly about the origins and early years of the cold war. 

    The authors also devote many thousands of words to criticism of such destructive American policies as Ronald Reagan’s in Central America and George W. Bush’s in Iraq, but much of this will be familiar to readers of these pages, as will their objections to Barack Obama’s use of predator drones. 

    (Hiermee is ek in akkoord, die oolog in Irak en haat ek ook met 'n passie die 'drones' wat onskuldige mense by die duisende dood). 

    This book is less a work of history than a skewed political document, restating and updating a view of the world that the independent radical Dwight Macdonald once likened to a fog, “caused by the warm winds of the liberal Gulf Stream coming in contact with the Soviet glacier”—but now more than twenty years after the dissolution of the Soviet empire.

    Net soos dit die inleidende stellings aangebied in jou brief teenstaan en ek 'n aparte kommentaar daaroor geplaas het wat saam met hierdie behoort te verskyn. 

    Stone and Kuznick simply ignore the scholarship that contradicts their basic assumptions. It is hardly clear, for example, that the Japanese government was close to surrendering on the Allies’ terms in the summer of 1945. American analysts believed that, short of a bloody invasion of its shores, Japanese leaders would fight hard, holding out for a much milder negotiated settlement, which negates Stone and Kuznick’s contention that Truman was misleading about his motive for using atomic bombs: that they would spare the lives of untold thousands of American GIs. Nor did Truman shift away from FDR’s incomplete vision of a grand bargain with the Soviets until he fitfully became convinced that Stalin’s encroachments in Eastern and Central Europe posed a threat to Western security

    Waarteen gewaak moet word is die volgende: 

    Stone and Kuznick indulge in a Manichaeanism that inadvertently recalls the long political and intellectual antecedents behind their entire interpretation. 

    Om regverdig te wees Oliver Stone laat van hom weet en reageer soos volg: 

    In his error-riddled review of our Untold History of the United States book and ten-part Showtime documentary film series [NYR, February 21], Sean Wilentz accuses us of “cherry-picking,” a pejorative term for selecting which facts to include and which to exclude from one’s narrative. This, at least, is a process with which Wilentz is quite familiar.As a historian of Jacksonian America, Wilentz can be forgiven for getting so much wrong. 

    However, his real bone of contention with our analysis is over our searing critique of the US empire and national security state. An avowed friend and supporter of Hillary Clinton, Wilentz infuriated liberals with his 2008 assault on Barack Obama, whom he dismissed as having “purposely polluted” the 2008 primary with “the most outrageous deployment of racial politics since the Willie Horton ad campaign in 1988.” There was little that he wasn’t willing to say or do to defend Hillary Clinton.We, on the other hand, sharply criticize the former first lady and secretary of state for being an unstinting defender of the American empire. Not only did she vote to authorize war in Iraq, she helped pressure a reluctant Obama into sending an extra 30,000 troops to Afghanistan in 2009. And more recently, in her November 2011 Foreign Policy magazine article titled “America’s Pacific Century,” she laid out the administration’s dangerous and wrongheaded plans for an Asia “pivot” to contain China militarily, politically, and economically. Perhaps it is here that the battle between our interpretations and Wilentz’s should be drawn.

    Oliver Stone and Peter Kuznick
    Los Angeles, CaliforniaBethesda, Maryland

    Pieter, ek aanvaar dat ek en jy hier gaan verskil en sal ek nie aan jou karring nie, maar bly my gevoel, die verlede is nooit eenvoudig nie, nooit swart of wit nie en is daar baie grys. Hierdie woord herhaal ek tot vervelens, nuanse, dit is die enigste metode wat gevolg kan word met die antwoord op 'n vraag. 

    Baie dankie

    Wouter
    Reply
  • Pieter Redelinghuys

    Beste Wouter,

     

    Saun Wilentz se kritiek, in die finale analise, klink bloot soos regverdiging vir die VSA se buitelandse beleid, en ek is nie geneig om sekere van sy argumente te aanvaar nie.

     

    Die New York Review of Books is ook nie die alfa en omega, of die goud standaard (miskien in die VSA) van literêre kritiek nie, of die finale arbiter van die waarheid nie.

     

    Beste groete,

     

    Pieter Redelinghuys

    Reply
  • Chris Dippenaar

    Hello Wouter

    In my reaksie hierbo sê ek die volgende: "Die rede wat gewoonlik gegee word vir die gooi van die atoombom is dat die Amerikaners nie bereid was om die lewensverlies van duisende soldate te dra nie, en dit is seker nie 'n ongeldige argument nie, maar ek dink die veel belangriker rede was om Rusland uit te hou." Hiermee maak ek natuurlik die fout waarteen jy probeer waarsku deur 'n komplekse situasie te vereenvoudig in netjiese kompartemente. Ek erken dat ek meer gemaak het hiervan as wat geregverdig kan word.

    Dit gesê, met die Potsdam-ontmoeting was dit alreeds duidelik vir die weste dat Stalin hom nie gaan hou by van die stipulasies wat ooreengekom is by Yalta nie. As voorbeeld, Poland, sou nie onder Rusland se invloed onafhanklik wees met 'n demokraties verkiesde regering nie. Daar was duidelik spanning tussen die "helde" en ek sou nie so ver gaan om hierdie verhouding as "vierkantige" en volkome wedersydse respek en ondersteuning vir mekaar te beskryf nie.

    Een van die probleme wat die interpretasie van geskiedkundige gebeurtenis belemmer en bemoeilik is dat gebeurtenisse benoem word. Daar word gepraat van die Eerste en Tweede Wêreldoorloë, gevolg deur die Koue Oorlog ens., en hiermee moet daar noodwendig afgebaken en vereenvoudig word aan geskiedenis wat veel meer vervleg is as wat ons dalk besef. Die revolusie van 1917, byvoorbeeld, kan gesien word as die oorsprong van die Koue Oorlog. Met hierdie revolusie was dit noodwendig dat oos en wes ideologies verskillend sou ontwikkel en dat samewerking nie maklik sou kon wees nie. Gooi hierby in die figuur van Stalin en hierdie verhouding was verder bemoeilik. Die enigste rede hoekom hierdie twee wêreldsienings saamgewerk het was 'n gemeenskaplike vyand. Hierdie samewerking het begin verbrokkel met die val van Duitsland en het 'n invloed gehad op Amerika se besluit om die bom te laat val op Japan, dalk net nie so groot as wat ek aanvanklik geïnsinueer het nie.

    Dis amper seker dat my interpretasie van geskiedenis hopeloos oorvereenvoudig is, en solank ek dit besef is daar die moontlikheid dat ek iets kan leer. Baie dankie vir jou bydraes hierbo.

    Chris

    Reply
  • Wouter

    Hello Pieter,

     
    Dit is inderdaad so, hierdie publikasies is nie die alfa en die omega nie of die goud standaard nie, maar dit vervul 'n belangrike rol in die sin dat kenners die geleentheid gebied word om ander kenners se werk te toets en te bevestig of dit die toets slaag en die standaarde hoog gehou word. 
     
    In daardie konteks is die opstelle uiters waardevol want dit bevestig dat Oliver Stone en sy vennoot betref dat daar nie met werklike 'geskiedenis' te doen is nie, maar veel eerder 'n politieke inslag wat as oogmerk net een funksie het, die algehele beswaddering van die VSA al verg dit wanvoorstellings soos gesien kan word in die gebeure rondom Japan. 
     
    Die mislukkings van die VSA in sy buitelandse beleid en die skandes en skades gepleeg is werd om te weet maar wie sal die mees redelike gids daarvoor wees? 
     
    Dit blyk nie Oliver Stone te wees nie. 
     
    Baie dankie
     
    Wouter
    Reply
  • CorneliusHenn

    Beste Pieter,  

     

    Alhoewel dit die grootste waan denkbaar is om enige Godsdiens as enigiets anders behalwe 'n persoonlike verhouding met onse Skepper voor te stel, is dit tog waar dat die intellektualisme oral daarvan, die wêreld regeer - ook op die werf.  

     

    Hoe absurd is die gedagte byvoorbeeld dan dat 'n Protestante-Amerika, in alliansie met die ekstreme en fundamentele Al Qaeda, Sirië se katolieke aanval?  

     

    Om dit te verstaan moet jy die Kobus de Klerks' en Trienie Mahnes' se gedweep oor die massas ware Christenegelowiges teenoor andersgelowiges se stryd verstaan waar dit hulle pas, net om my en die katolieke Kerk weer uit te kryt as hulle nie daarin geëer word nie, en sulke waansin in diepte kan opneem.  

     

    Pieter, bemoedigend is die volgende berig: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/09/18/atheist-pac_n_3943223.html?ncid=edlinkusaolp00000003  

     

    Ek weet dit van harte; dat die breinspoeling met Godsdiens in die belang van "magsiek-ideologie", wel eendag uit die mensdom se gedagte gewis sal word.  

     

    Namaste!  

     

    Cornelius Henn

     

     

    Reply
  • Wouter

    Hello Chris,

     
    Baie dankie vir jou reaksie. In wese is daar nie veel waarmee ek kan of wil verskil met jou nie, aangesien die poging om sin te maak van hierdie geskiedenis 'n komplekse besigheid en dit aanvaar word dat my kommentaar het ook nie al die aspekte kon aanspreek nie. Met dit dan slegs 'n paar notas wat ooreenstemming en verskille bespreek na aanleiding van jou laaste kommentaar. 
     
    Jy skryf: "ek dink die veel belangriker rede was om Rusland uit te hou." 
     
    Ek put weer uit die New York Review of Books en dan 'n opstel wat nou al vir jare in my gemoed is en haal ek aan vir jou die gedeelte wat ek dink onderskraging bied vir jou argument. Die opstel was 'n opname van die stand van sake na die gebruik van die atoombomme en die 50 jaar herdenking daarvan en spreek onder andere die volgende boeke aan, The Decision to Use the Atomic Bomb and the Architecture of an American Myth, Gar Alperovitz, Sanho Tree, Edward Rouse Winstead, Kathryn C. Morris, David J. Williams, Leo C. Maley III, Thad Williamson & Miranda Grieder asook Hiroshima in America: Fifty Years of Denial by Robert Jay Lifton, by Greg Mitchell:
     
    Die gedeelte in die opstel wat Rusland aanspreek gaan soos volg: 
     
    'Lifton and Mitchell claim, like Alperovitz, that since the successful test of the atomic bomb, “Truman and Byrnes began to focus on how to end the war sufficiently quickly that the Soviets would not gain a foothold in Japan.” But again the authors do not consider the reasons why. To them it is but one more example of Truman’s irrational state of mind, because he was suppressing his feelings and “any tendency to reflect,” since he had been bad at sports as a child and was afraid of being “a sissy.” Even if all these things were true, there were still compelling reasons for wishing to stop Soviet troops from entering Japan. There was concern in Washington about the swift expansion of the Soviet Empire in Eastern and Central Europe. The US ambassador to the Soviet Union, W. Averill Harriman, called it a “barbarian invasion.” He believed, quite correctly, that Soviet control of other countries meant the extinction of political liberties in those countries and a dominant Soviet influence over their foreign relations. As subsequent events in China and the Korean peninsula have shown, Truman was right to worry about Soviet power in northeast Asia. It certainly would not have suited US interests, or those of Japan for that matter, if the Japanese archipelago had been divided into different occupation zones, with Stalin’s troops ensconced in Hokkaido'.
     
    Bogenoemde dui aan indien bogenoemde korrek verstaan word dat Truman was lugtig vir die langtermynplanne van Stalin. 
     
    Hierdie moet saam gelees word met 'n boek in my versameling waaruit ek put met die titel, From Potsdam to the Cold War deur James L. Gormly. 
     
    Dit is nie moontlik om die hele boek in kort hier te verwoord nie en sal ek slegs 'n enkele idee of twee uitlig. 
     
    Daar word verwys na hoofstuk drie met die titel, 'The Decline of the Grand Alliance, September-December 1945'. 
     
    A large part of the success of the Potsdam Conference was purchased by deferral: the explosive issues of the peace treaties with Romania, Bulgaria, and Italy were referred to the newly created Council of Foreign Ministers. The council was an affirmation that the postwar settlement would be primarily a product of cooperation among the Big Three. With the addition of France and China, it resembled Franklin D. Roosevelt's concept of the Five Policemen more than the United Nations, which was to assemble in six months. The Soviet press stated that the collaboration of the war years could continue only if the governments were inspired by the spirit of Yalta.The spirit of Yalta and, to a lesser extent, Potsdam, however, was a result of the war. The war was over. Gone were the immediate diplomatic needs mandated by the cooperation necessary to defeat the Axis powers. The international situation was fluid, yet all realized the fluidity would not last long. Already, new priorities and policies were being formulated, reflecting new perspectives and goals. As one British official said, it was the time to stake claims and establish positions, before the world situation hardened. Over the weeks and months following Potsdam the foreign ministers met to test their new policies and perceptions. As they debated and negotiated with one another, their wartime collaboration dissipated into distrust and rancor. Eventually, the peace treaties with Germany'sallies would be written, but the postwar settlement to emerge would be vastly different from that symbolized by Yalta and the Five Policemen. The London Conference of the Council of Foreign Ministers was the beginning of the process that would mold postwar international relations and the world.
     
    Daarom is ek dit eens met jou dat die nodigheid van samewerking het hierdie vreemde bedmaats bymekaar gebring en kon dit sekerlik nie verwag word dat die vrede sou hou nie. 
     
    Hierdie wil ek graag lees in konteks met die Cambridge History of the Cold War wat in die inleidende opstelle die volgende verklaring bied: 
     
    The term “Cold War” was ?rst used by the British writer George Orwell in 1945 to deplore the worldview, beliefs, and social structure of both the Soviet Union and the United States, and the undeclared state of war that would come to exist between them after the end of World War II. “The atomic bomb,” Orwell found, may be “robbing the exploited classes and peoples of all power to revolt, and at the same time putting the possessors of the bomb on a basis of equality. Unable to conquer one another they are likely to continue ruling the world between them.”4 It was a new world system, Orwell found, dualistic, technology-based, in which nuclear terror could be used against those who dared rebel. To the author of 1984, the systemic aspects of the Cold War showed dark portents of the future. Historians ?rst took up the term “Cold War” in the late 1940s when attempting to explain how the wartime alliance between the United States, Britain, and the Soviet Union had collapsed. In the ?rst postwar decade, the term was mostly used by American historians as a synonym for what they saw as Soviet leader Josef Stalin’s confrontational policies from the latter stages of World War II on. The Soviet Union waged cold war against the West (meaning, mostly, the United States and Britain), while the West was seen as defending itself and the values it believed in. The Cold War, in other words, was imposed on the rest of the world by the Soviet leader and the tyrannical Communist system he had created. 
     
    Maar ek aanvaar volkome jou argument dat die oorsprong van hierdie botsing in die bestaanblik van hierdie twee moonthede moet gesoek word in 1917: 
     
    Hoofstuk II se inleiding in die Cambridge History of the Cold War is soos volg: 
     
    Russia’s Great October Socialist Revolution of 1917 triggered a confrontation between the Soviet Union and the United States that would last much of the twentieth century. In its early years, each side aimed to transform the other. American–Soviet con?ict became global only in the 1940s, at which point it shaped the international system and every nation in it. In addition to competition over markets or territories, this new form of struggle – the Cold War – was at its root a battle of ideas: American liberalism vs. Soviet Communism.The ideologies animating the Cold War had centuries-long pedigrees, emerging by the early twentieth century as powerful and compelling visions for social change. These ideologies – explicit ideas and implicit assumptions that provided frameworks for understanding the world and de?ning action in it – were not antithetical to material interests, but often shaped the way foreign-policy o?cials understood such interests. Ideologies were lenses that focused, and just as often distorted, understandings of external events and thus the actions taken in response.
     
    ('n Biografiese nota: Juis weens 'n gesprek met Pieter jare gelede en na aanleiding van 'n bespreking in Foreign Affairs het ek bogenoemde volume aangekoop daardie tyd. Die gesprek op daardie stadium was of die koue oorlog kon dien as 'n verskoning vir apartheid. Ek dink die slotsom was, dit kon nie). Alhoewel dit nie kan dien as 'n verkoning vir apartheid nie, het dit wel die mensdom se bestaan van 1917 tot ongeveer 1991 in 'n baie duidelike drukgang geplaas en dink ek die stolsom is dat die mensdom was vir 'n eeu gevange hou deur ideologiese verdrukking. 
     
    Die laaste gedagte verwys na die volgende aanhaling uit die opstel wat die 50 jarige herdenking van Hiroshima en Nagasaki in oorweging gebring het en bring dit vir die kompleksiteit van die poging om die geskeidenis te ontleed en dit dan so te doen soos in Pieter se inleidende brief waar daar swaar gesteun word op die sogenaamde euwels van godsdiens: 
     
    “Religion was linked to the nuclear bombs from the beginning. Witnessing the first successful nuclear explosion in New Mexico, Dr. J. Robert Oppenheimer famously quoted from the Bhagavad-Gita: “Now I am become Death the destroyer of worlds.” President Truman, announcing the bombing of Hiroshima, thanked God that the weapon had “come to us instead of to our enemies; and we pray that He may guide us to use it in His ways and for His purposes.” Arthur H. Compton, a member of the Interim Committee for Atomic Bomb Policy, believed that “God had fought on our side during the war, supplying free men with weapons that tyranny could not produce.”Even if one leaves God out of it, it is hard to disagree that deliberate mass murder of civilians by so-called conventional or nuclear bombing is a war crime. But “strategic bombing,” including the use of the two atomic bombs, was not an act of God. It was the result of political decisions, taken by human beings acting under particular circumstances. The trouble with focusing on God, sin, transgression, and other moral or religious aspects of this strategy is that it makes it very hard to discuss the politics and the historical circumstances dispassionately. This is especially true when politicians, newspaper columnists, peace activists, and veterans enter the debate. Too often emotional moralism sets the tone.”
     
    Aangesien boegenoemde aanhaling dit soveel duideliker stel as wat ek kan het ek dit gebruik aangesien hierdie debat oor godsdiens die moontlikheid om die debat te vertroebel, maar ek aanvaar ek ook dat daar waar godsdiens 'n invloed het moet dit verwoord en baie duidelik uitgelig word. Baie dankie vir jou kommentaar en is bogenoemde slegs 'n voorlopige verstaan van my kant af en is ek net soos jy bereid om te leer. 
     
    Baie dankie
     
    Wouter 
    Reply
  • CorneliusHenn

    ... en so balanseer Wouter Ferns se patologiese sy grys skaaltjie deur inligting te verkrag sodat dit nie kantel nie ... slim vir baie ja; gru vir enigeen wat vir hulself kan dink om te aanskou ... die doel natuurlik vir die Wouter Fernse' en Chris Dippenaars' se grys denke, is om sinies en altyd onseker te moet wees sodat hul "Big Brother", die massamedia, verantwoordelikheid vir hul waansin kan aanvaar ... siestog ..

     

     

     

     

     

    Reply
  • CorneliusHenn

    Wyl Chris Dippenaar dalk meen Wouter Ferns, bedoel diese slimmigheid as iets "gryse-wysheid", Wouter Ferns in geen onsekerheid, sy onsekerheid eintlik in alles daarmee verkondig ...

     

    hahahahahaha ...

     

    grys, (-e); =er, =ste. 1. Grou, vaalwit, donkerwit. 2. Oud, wit; kinders wat glad te grys is, vroegryp kinders. dit sal my nie grys maak nie, ek sal my nie daaroor bekommer nie; grys voor sy tyd, op vroeë leeftyd al grys; slim vir sy jare (kind). 3. Verwaand, aanmatigend wees; in die gryse verlede, baie lank gelede.

     

    ... Wouter Ferns en Chris Dippenaar, krap maar daaruit so hard as jul kan om julself te probeer komplimenteer in jul vaalheid ...

     

    Ek dink jul siniese beskouinge is gewoon aanmatigend en verwaand!

     

    Reënboog groete,

     

    Cornelius Henn

    Reply
  • Wouter

    Hello Chris, 

     
    En dankie aan jou vir 'n gesprek waar die soeke meer belangrik is as die vooropgestelde antwoorde geredelik beskikbaar. 
     
    Baie dankie
     
    Wouter
    Reply
  • CorneliusHenn

    Beste Pieter,

     

    Wyl sommige van die kommentare hierbo duidelik niks meer as onderhewig aan 'n kruipery onder mekaar is nie, het onse geliefde emeritus aartsbiskop Mpho Tutu, die volgende omtrent die katolieke beskouing rakende die rol van die Kerk, rakende die verwysing onder meer na etiek in jou bydrae geseg:

     

    It is the job of religious leaders to call societal attention to things politicians would sometimes prefer to ignore, to jab society in the ribs when it becomes complacent, to provide comfort where people are in distress.Party political allegiances render the maintenance of critical distance extremely challenging, if not impossible. It is the role of religious leaders to provide spiritual and moral guidance, while it is the role of government to provide infrastructure and services.If we allow politics or politicians to set the faith agenda, we break our sacred trust as the voice of the voiceless, to speak for the poor, the powerless, the destitute, and the marginalized. It is they who must set the faith agenda.As religious leaders we bring people together, we encourage active citizenry, we engage the issues that challenge us – from sanitation to gangs to sexual violence. We criticize politicians where criticism is due, and applaud them for doing the right thing. But our applause is only meaningful when it is trustworthy.In my view, it is impossible to trust the words of faith leaders who speak from the back pocket of a political party rather than as representatives of the community, particularly the most marginalized and poor.

     

    Lees gerus hier meer: http://www.tutu.org.za/mpho-tutu-on-religious-leaders-and-politicians-18-september-2013

     

    Katolieke groete,

     

    Cornelius Henn

     

     

    Reply
  • Wouter

     Hello Almal, 

     
    Die volgende wat volg staan nie in debat met enige aspekte in hierdie siklus aangespreek nie en kan daarom slegs as aanvulled gesien word en dien slegs as stimulering vir verdere denke. In dit wat volg word The Myth of Religious Violence Secular Ideology and the Roots of Modern Con?ict van William T. Cavanaugh gevolg en uitgegee deur Oxford University Press, 2009.
     
     In die studie van Cavanaugh word die volgende algemeen aanvaarde argument dat godsdiens, geweld bevorder, ondersoek. 
     
    Hierdie veronderstelling is deel van die konvensionele wysheid van Westerse samelewings en het hierdie algemene aanvaarding van die konsep as die bousteen gedien van baie van die Weste se instellings en die ??beleid om beperkings te plaas op die openbare rol van godsdiens asook daadwerklike pogings om liberale demokrasie te bevorder in die Midde-Ooste. Die idee van "godsdienstige geweld" is die veronderstelling is dat godsdiens is in wese apart van "sekulêre" funksies soos die politiek en ekonomie is hoogs plofbaar en het 'n buitengewone gevaarlike neiging om geweld te bevorder. Godsdiens moet dus getem word deur die beperking van die toegang wat godsdiens het tot tot die openbare krag. Die sekulêre staat word dan beskou as die natuurlike teenwig tot die universele en tydlose waarheid oor die inherente gevare van geloof. Godsdiens weens die inherente geweld daarvan moet beveg word met alles wat die sekulêre staat tot sy beskikking het.
     
    Cavanaugh bevraagteken hierdie beginsel deur die volgende beginsel te gebruik: 
     
    In this book, I challenge this piece of conventional wisdom by examining how the twin categories of religious and secular are constructed in the ?rst place. A growing body of scholarly work explores how the category “religion” has been invented in the modern West and in colonial contexts according to speci?c con?gurations of political power. 
     
    The myth of religious violence helps to construct and marginalize a religious Other, prone to fanaticism, to contrast with the rational, peace-making, secular subject. 
     
    This myth can be and is used in domestic politics to legitimate the marginalization of certain types of practices and groups labeled religious. They have not yet learned to remove the dangerous in?uence of religion from political life. Their violence is therefore irrational and fanatical. Our violence, being secular, is rational, peace making, and sometimes regrettably necessary to contain their violence. We ?nd ourselves obliged to bomb them into liberal democracy.
     
    Wat is die boek nie? 
     
    Hierdie boek is nie 'n verdediging en verontskuldiging van godsdiens teen die aanklag van geweld nie en stel Cavanaugh dit soos volg:
     
    I have no intention of excusing Christianity or Islam or any other set of ideas and practices from careful analysis. Given certain conditions, Christianity and Islam can and do contribute to violence. War in the Middle East, for example, can be justi?ed not merely on behalf of oil and freedom but on the basis of a millenarian reading of parts of the Christian scriptures. Christian churches are indeed complicit in legitimating wars carried out by national armies. There are many other careful empirical studies that helpfully examine particular cases of violence within speci?c cultural contexts, such as among radical Middle Eastern Muslims or extreme right-wing American Christians. 
     
    Hoekom volgens die argument is godsdiens dan so 'n bron van geweld in die samelewing? 
     
    Die drie redes gebied deur Cavanaugh is soos volg: 
     
    Religion causes violence because it is:
     
    (1) absolutist 
     
    (2) divisive
     
    (3) insuf?ciently rational.
     
    Cavanaugh gaan dan voort en beskryf bogenoemde drie redes aan die hand van nege skrywers op wie sy werk put om bogenoemde stelling te verwoord maar gaan nie nou in detail hier uitgelig word nie. 
     
    Die rede daarvoor is van my kant af aangesien ek graag by hoofstuk twee wil kom, getiteld, 'the Invention of Religion'. 
     
    Hierdie is die gedeelte wat my fassineer het en wil ek graag volledige gedeeltes daaruit aanhaal: 
     
    Ancient languages have no word that approximates what modern English speakers mean by religion. 
     
    Scholarly consensus indicates that neither the Greeks nor the Egyptians had any equivalent term for religion and a similar conclusion is found for the Aztecs and the ancient civilizations of India, China, and Japan.The word is derived from the ancient Latin word religio, but religio was only one of a constellation of terms surrounding social obligations in ancient Rome, and when used it signi?ed something quite different from religion in the modern sense. Religio referred to a powerful requirement to perform some action. Its most probable derivation is from religare, to rebind or relink, that is, to reestablish a bond that has been severed. 
     
    To say religio mihi est that something is “religio for me”—meant that it was something that carried a serious obligation for a person. Religio was  a  relatively  minor  concept  for  the early  Christians in  part because it does not correspond to any single concept that the biblical writers considered signi?cant. In St. Jerome’s Vulgate New Testament the standard Latin translation for over a thousand years of Christendom religio appears only six times, as a translation for several different Greek terms. In the King James Version of the New Testament, religion appears only ?ve times, for three different Greek words—and not always the same ones that Jerome rendered as religio.13 The word religio is found scattered through the Latin patristic writings, where it has a number of different meanings, including ritual practice, clerical of?ce, worship (religio dei), and piety, or the subjective disposition of the worshipper toward God.As we look to the medieval period, the term religio becomes even less frequently used in Christian discourse. 
     
    Indien daar sou gesoek word vir 'n definisie dan kan die volgende opsomming gebruik word wat volg na 'n bespreking van kloosters, Augustinus & Aquinas. 
     
    In the medieval application of the term, religio was primarily used to differen- tiate clergy who were members of orders from diocesan clergy. Secondarily, religio named one relatively minor virtue in a complex of other practices that assumed the particular context of the Christian church and the Christian social order. 
     
    Hierdie bring die leser dan wat beskryf kan word as die 'moderne tydperk'. 
     
    The creation of the modern category of religion begins in the Renaissance, with two Christian Platonist thinkers taking a central role. 
     
    Nicholas of Cusa (1401–1464) uses religio to indicate the various ways in which God is wor- shipped; there are Jewish, Christian, and Arabic religions, that is Jewish, Christian, and Arabic ways of worshipping God, though there are as yet no religions called Judaism, Christianity, or Islam.
     
    The second major Renaissance contributor to the creation of religion was Marsilio Ficino. The title of Ficino’s 1474 work, De Christiana Religione, was one of the ?rst uses of this phrase. By it, he did not mean “the Christian religion” in the sense of a system of doctrines and practices to be set aside from the other world religions. Religio meant something like piety. What distinguishes his usage of the term religio from the ancient and medieval usages is that it is both interiorized and universalized. It is located as a natural, innate impulse of the human heart, indeed the fundamental human characteristic common to all. The essence of religion is thus an unchanging constant across time and space in all human societies: “all opinions of men, all their responses, all their customs, change except religio.”After 1600, it became possible to speak of religion in general, although it was usually used to refer to “the Christian religion,” which indicated that the various religions in Christendom were true or false forms of an abstract essence of Christianity.
     
    Hierdie pad word gevolg tot en met John Locke waar die skeiding soos dit vandag ervaar word formuleer word:
     
     In Locke, we ?nd a modern version of the spatial division of the world into religious and secular pursuits.The new religious-secular dichotomy ?t into the modern state’s individualist anthropology, as typi?ed by Locke. As Ezra Kopelowitz remarks:
     
    The distinction between the “religious” and the “secular” occurs in societies in which the individual, rather than [the] group is the primary component of social organization. The rise of the individual as the basis of social organization corresponds with the expansion of the centralized modern state, with its strong legal-rational bureaucracy that treats individuals and not groups as the primary source of social rights. Before the rise of the centralized state . . . “religion” was not a distinct social category that a person could choose or reject. You were born into a group, of which ceremony and symbols rooted in doctrine (religious content) were an integral part of public life.
     
    Hierdie is nie 'n volledige oorsig van hoe die woord, religie, tot hoe die woord vandag verstaan word nie, maar bevestig dat die woord het sonder twyfel 'n geskiedenis en soos met alle woorde is die betekenis, veelvuldig en selfs soms in kontradiksie. 
     
    Die rede hoekom hierdie klassifikasie belangrik is, is soos volg en dui op die diep geskiedenis waarvolgens religie, godsdiens geoordeel word: 
     
    Our de?nitions of religion do not simply re?ect the new reality of the modern West but help to shape it. The concept of religion justi?es the liberal state’s self-presentation as an apparatus concerned with the wholly negative function of preventing the incursion of substantive, collective ends into the public sphere. This very de?nition of the modern democratic state in fact creates religion as its alter-ego: religion, as such, is the space in which and by which any substantive collective goals (salvation, righteousness, etc.) are individualized and made into a question of personal commitment or morality. Religion is a special political category that marginalizes and domesticates whatever forms of collective social action happen to retain a positive or utopian orientation. In the early modern era, the church was the most signi?cant source of such social action that the state domesticated. Any attempt to break out of this segregation was condemned as dangerous and potentially violent. It is crucial to underscore that the category of religion does not simply describe a new social reality but helps to bring it into being and to enforce it.
     
    Die kern van die idee van religie as 'n bron van geweld word soos volg verwoord en is die gesprek nou al so kompleks dat eenvoudige antwoorde doodgewoon nie moontlik is nie. Wat is die verloop van die mensdom se geskiedenis dan? Antwoorde is welkom. Maar hou die volgende in gedagte:  
     
    The idea that there exists a timeless impulse called religion with a singular tendency to promote fanaticism and violence when combined with public power is not an empirically demonstrable fact, but is itself an ideological accompaniment to the shifts in power and authority that mark the transition from the medieval to the modern in the West.
     
    Die algemeen aanvaarde antwoord is dat religie was die grootste bron van oorlog in die mensdom se geskiedenis. 
     
    Die tweede gedeelte van die hoofstuk word afgestaan van gelowe en religie uit die Ooste en die bekende gevallestudie van die 'Hindoe', waar die benaming geskep is deur die interaksie van die Weste met die Ooste. Met dit as agtergrond word die vraag en die stelling die volgende, “religion is more prone to violence today than are secular ideologies and institutions”. 
     
    Nou hoe om hierdie vraag te antwoord.
     
     'n Voorlopige antwoord kan verwys na die mag van nasionalisme as die belangrikste drywer van geweld. 
     
    Scholars have long noted the way that nationalism has supplanted Christianity as the predominant public religion of the West.
     
    Benedict Anderson argues that the nation has replaced the church in its role as the primary cultural institution that deals with death. According to Anderson, Christianity’s decline in the West necessitated another way of dealing with the arbitrariness of death. Nations provide a new kind of salvation; my death is not in vain if it is for the nation, which lives on into a limitless future.
     
    For Marvin and Ingle, the transfer of the sacred from Christianity to the nation-state in Western society is seen most clearly in the fact that authorized killing has passed from Christendom to the nation-state. 
     
    Hoe poog Cavanaugh om hierdie vraag te antwoord: 
     
    Within the West, religion was invented as a transhistorical and transcultural impulse embedded in the human heart and distinct from the public business of government and economic life. To mix religion with public life was said to court fanaticism, sectarianism, and violence. The idea that religion has a tendency to promote violence is a variation on the idea that religion is an essentially private and nonrational human impulse, not amenable to con?ict solving through public reason. The problem with the myth of religious violence is not that it condemns certain kinds of violence, but that it diverts moral scrutiny from other kinds of violence. Violence labeled religious is always reprehensible; violence labeled secular is often necessary and sometimes praiseworthy.
     
    Hoofstuk drie, bespreek in detail die mite vir Cavanaugh, van godsdiens as die oorsaak van oorlog en die 'wars of religion' in die tyd van die Protestante Reformasie. Hierdie is gewoonlik waarna verwys word om die geskiedenis van religie as die oorsaak van oorlog te probeer staaf. 
     
    Hoekom is die punt in die mensdom se geskiedenis so belangrik? 
     
    Die rede daarvoor is soos volg: 
     
    This story is more than just a prominent example of the myth of religious violence. It has a foundational importance for the secular West, because it explains the origin of its way of life and its system  of governance. It is a creation myth for modernity. 
     
    Hierdie is dan die lesse geleer en waarteen die mensdom vandag moet waak. 
     
    Cavanaugh bespreek dan Spinoza, Hobbes en John Lock en hierdie 'wars of religion' bied dan die fondasie vir die argumente wat die 'Enlightenment' dan formuleer as kritiek teen religie en godsdiens, en wat is die mens vandag nie, anders as die erfgenaam van die 'Enlightenment' nie? (Verwysende na Voltaire, Rousseau et al). 
     
    Moderne denkers soos Skinner en Rawls word ook bespreek. 
     
    Cavanaugh bespreek dan die werklike historiese rekord, bogenoemde kan beskryf word as die filosofiese onderbou van die idee dat religie is die bron van alle kwaad, kras gestel in die taal van Hitchens. 
     
    Hierdie is 'n baie leersame gedeelte van die boek en bied 'n lang lys van konflikte en antwoord dit dan soos volg: 
     
    If the instances of war making—in which members of the same church fought each other and members of different churches collaborated— undermine the standard narrative of the wars of religion, the absence of war between Lutherans and Calvinists also undermines the standard tale. If theological difference tends toward a war of all sects against all, we should expect to ?nd Lutheran-Calvinist wars, but in fact we ?nd none. No Lutheran prince ever went to war against a Calvinist prince. The absence of such wars cannot be attributed to the similarity of Lutheranism and Calvinism. There were suf?cient theological differences to sustain a permanent divide between the two branches of the Reformation. 
     
    There simply was no war of all sects against all. (Hobbes aangepas). 
     
    Cavanaugh se slotsom op die 'war of religions' in die tydperk van die Reformasie en vorming van state is soos volg: 
     
    The transfer of power from the church to the state was clearly a cause, not the solution, of the violence of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. The idea that the liberal state solved the wars of religion is even more implausible than the absolutist version of the myth because in historical fact the liberal state does not appear until much later.
     
    We must conclude that the myth of the wars of religion is ?nally incredible, which is to say, false.
     
    A signi?cant proportion of the violence was between members of the same church, and members of different churches often col laborated (A). 
     
    It is impossible to separate religious motives from political, economic, and social causes (B and C). And the idea that the advent of the state solved the violence ignores abundant evidence that state building was perhaps the most signi?cant cause of the violence (D).
     
    Hoofstuk vier bespreek hoe die mite 'misbruik'/'gebruik' word en vandag nog 'n lewe het.  
     
    Cavanaugh bied egter advies en sluit ek af met dit en plaas dit grootliks soos dit is in die boek: 
     
    The myth of religious violence is false, and it has had a signi?cant negative in?uence. The myth should be retired from respectable discourse. To do so would offer some important bene?ts.
     
     
    First, it would free the valuable empirical work on violence done by Mark Juergensmeyer, Scott Appleby, and other scholars from being hobbled by the religious-secular distinction. 
     
    Rather than attempt to come up with reasons that a universal and timeless feature of human society called religion has a peculiar tendency to promote violence, the question for researchers would be, 
     
    “Under what circumstances do ideologies and practices of all kinds promote violence?” 
     
    Empirical investigations into violent uses of nationalism, the sacri?cial atonement of Christ, the invisible hand of the market, jihad, Marxist utopias, and the view of the United States as worldwide liberator would not be hampered by an a priori division of such ideologies and practices into religious and secular. 
     
    The illusory search for religion as if it were a constant in human society across all times and places would be dropped in favor of a more resolutely historical approach. Investigation into the link between religion and violence would then become investigation into the ways in which the twin terms religious and secular have been used to authorize different practices of power in the modern world. Included would be investigating how the construction of certain practices as religious has autho- rized certain kinds of violence labeled secular.
     
     
    Second, abandoning the myth of religious violence would also help us to see that Western-style secularism is a contingent and local set of social arrangements and not the universal solution to the universal problem of religion. Abandoning the myth would mean that decisions in the United States, France, and other Western countries about the participation of churches, mosques, and other groups and individuals in civic life could be approached with more pragmatism than paranoia. With regard to Muslim countries, Western governments could adopt a more open approach to Muslim experiments with government that do not enforce a strict separation of mosque and state.
     
     
    Third, more generally, eliminating the myth of religious violence would rid the West of one signi?cant obstacle to understanding the non-Western, especially Muslim, world. Stereotypical images of “religious fanatics” wired for violence by their deepest beliefs have helped to poison Western dealings with the Muslim world. To eliminate the myth would help to open Western eyes to the complexity and crosscurrents within the Muslim world. Muslim cultures are not simply predetermined by some ahistorical religious depth. Different theopolitical identities are constantly being created and negotiated in ways for which essentialized accounts of religion cannot account.
     
     
    Fourth, doing away with the myth of religious violence would help to eliminate one of the justi?cations for military action against religious actors. If the unreasonableness of an opponent were not determined a priori, the resort to violence might be forestalled long enough to permit a more peaceable outcome.
     
    Fifth and ?nally, abandoning the myth of religious violence would help to rid citizens of the United States of one of the principal obstacles to having any serious public dialogue over the causes of opposition to U.S. policies abroad. President George W. Bush raised the question “Why do they hate us?” after the September 11 attacks, only to answer it with 
     
    “They hate our freedoms.”
     
    As we have seen, the myth of religious violence allows its users to ignore or dismiss American actions as a signi?cant cause of hatred of the United States because the true cause is located in the inherent irrationality, absolutism, and violent tendencies of religious actors.
     
     They are so essentially evil that our very goodness—our freedoms—is what they hate about us. 
     
    This kind of self-serving nonsense generally passes in the United States for informed and sober analysis of global reality in the post-9/11 world. There might be insane people out there who hate freedom, but the well of resentment from which anti-American militancy draws is much deeper and broader than such insanity, and the solution to it is unlikely to be military. 
     
    If there is ever going to be an end to terrorism, we will need to begin to understand its roots in the much larger context of anti-American sentiment. And understanding that context will require a hard look at U.S. foreign policies and their effects over the course of the twentieth century, not as the sole cause of anti-American sentiment, but as a signi?cant factor that cannot be ignored or safely shelved, as Sam Harris and many others would prefer.
     
    Baie dankie
     
    Wouter
    Reply
  • Pieter Redelinghuys

    Beste Wouter,

    Ek vind dit heel deprimerend dat ek gedurig daarop gewys moet word dat Oliver Stone nie betroubaar is nie en dat hy slegs 'n politieke agenda het om die VSA en sy buitelandse beleid te "beswadder". Hierdie opinie papegaai jy seker uit die mond van Sean Wilenz in sy resensie van Oliver Stone en Peter Kuznick se The Untold History of the United States in die "New York Review of Books". Derhalwe, ek besef ( glo dit of nie) dat Stone nie 'n historikus is nie, maar wel Peter Kuznick. Stone het slegs die TV-reeks gemaak baseer op die boek en dit omvat meer as bloot die kontroversie oor Hiroshima.

     

    Daarby laat jy 'n sterk indruk in jou briewe dat jy die buitelandse beleid van die VSA ondersteun vir wie Wilenz 'n apologeet is, want jy kwoteer graag hierdie man wat die boek wil afmaak as propaganda teen die VSA. En al jou ander kwotasies kom ook vanuit  Anglo-Saksiese bronne. Die wêreld is darem meer as die VSA en Brittanje of het jy al so 'n slagoffer geword van hierdie Imperialistiese Magte, en hulle media, en derhalwe hulle interpretasie van die geskiedenis?

     

    Onthou gerus dat dit altyd die oorwinners van 'n oorlog  is wat die geskiedenis daarvan skrywe en hulle weergawes word dan aanvaar as die heilige waarheid. Hoekom kwoteer jy nie Japanese bronne ook nie vir 'n bietjie belans nie? As jy teruggaan oor wat ek geskryf het, sal jy agterkom dat Kuznick dit wel doen.

     

    Ek sal liewer Stone en Kuznick se narrative oor die gebeure volg want hulle probeer nie die kriminele dade van hulle Presidente goed te praat nie (seker die beswaddering wat Wilenz bedoel), en hulle staaf hulle argumente met uitlatings van die persone betrokke by die geval.

     

    Beste groete,

     

    Pieter Redelinghuys

    Reply
  • Pieter Redelinghuys

    Beste Wouter,

     

    Dankie vir jou inset van 2013-09-19 @ 20.31 wat ek eers vanoggend gelees het, en van kennis geneem het, na my brief van 2013-09-19 @ 22.03

     

    Die "bottom line van jou inset", nl. die laaste twee paragrawe wat ek nie verbatim sal herhaal nie, onderstreep weereens wat ek vir jou probeer laat verstaan omtrent die buitelandse beleid van die VSA en derglike apologete.

     

    Beste groete,

     

    Pieter Redelinghuys

    Reply
  • CorneliusHenn

    Beste Pieter,

     

    'n Vooringenomenheid aan die mag van die dag, is die Wouter Fernse', Jaco Fouries' en Chris Dippenaars' se forte ...

     

    In hul aanhang van die maghebbers se mening, lyk hulle sterk en slim in hul skaamtelose ongevoeligheid vir hul medemens wat daarin uitgebuit word!

     

    Hul geveinsde nuanse om inligiting in 'n grys gebied te forseer sodat hul gebreinspoelde skaaltjies nie kantel nie, ontsier oral.

     

    Nietemin Pieter, dis gewoon en lankal my persoonlike mening en regverdiging daarvoor dat geen eerlike en intelektuele gesprek moontlik met aandag aan sulke slimjanne kan wees nie.

     

    Dankie dat jy dit ook uitwys.

     

    Cornelius Henn

    Reply
  • Wouter

    Hello Pieter

     
    Daar is baie waarmee ek jou eens is en het my laaste brief wel aspekte in wat van jou stellings ondersteun. Ek het ook na Japanese persone verwys in my skrywes en die het aangedui dat oorgawe was nie 'n moontlikheid vir Japanese nie. Dit is loodreg in kontradiksie wat Stone et al verwoord en het jou argument tot 'n groot mate daaraan gehang. 
     
    Ook, is dit nie aanvaarbaar om te skimp soos jy doen dat 'breinspoeling' of dan soos jy dit stel, 'slagoffer van Imperialistiese' 'n verduideliking is vir die inslag wat ek huldig nie. Dit is mos nooit 'n goeie manier om argumente te probeer afmaak nie. 
     
    Tesame daarmee het ek aangedui dat ek ook sekere optredes van die Amerikaanse optredes in die buiteland onaanvaarbaar vind, soos die ewige 'drone attacks'.
     
    Daar is dus glad nie 'n blinde lojaliteit van my kant af nie, net soos ek 'n kommentaar onmiddellik na jou aanvanklike brief geplaas het was die vraag van religie en politiek, die wisselwerking daarvan ondersteun het en aangedui het hoe belangrik dit is om dit in detail te ondersoek. 
     
    Sonder twyfel is ek dit jou eens dat 'n globale bestaansblik is die beste, daaraan glo ek en hopelik doen ek so op my eie beskeie manier. 
     
    Onthou ook, die uitdrukking van,dit is die die oorwinnaars wat die geskiedenis skryf, hou ook nie meer water nie, daar is altyd die wat namens die wat verslaan is ook praat en het die wat verslaan is nie altyd die morele bogrond nie. 
     
    Baie dankie
     
    Wouter 
      
    Reply
  • Wouter

    Hello, 

     
    Nog 'n aspek wat moet ondersoek word is die volgende. Die spreekwoordelike 'elephant in the room', die kwessie van 'Anti-Americanism', die reaksie van die Anti-Amerikaanse impuls en is so oud soos die VSA self. Die redes hiervoor is legio, redes wat beskryf kan word as rasioneel of irrasioneel, populêr of van die wat hulself die elite ag, polities, kultureel, net soos dit fokus op ekonomiese of godsdienstige kwessies en soms geen rede hoegenaamd nie. Soms is om anti-Amerikaans te wees slegs kritiek op sommige van die VSA se beleid of die sosiale samelewing van die VSA. Aan die ander kant is dit soms veel meer intens en kan dit beskryf word as 'clash of civilizations', dus die volledige verwerping van alles en nog wat as "Amerikaans" beskryf word. Die argument wat hierdie verwerping impliseer is die ontkenning dat daar 'n Amerikaanse kultuur of 'n Amerikaanse demokrasie bestaan.
     
    In 'n onderhoud met die New York Times wat 'n profiel oor Oliver Stone publiseer het in Desember 2012 en wat ek vir die skrywe herbesoek het maak Oliver Stone die volgende stelling: 
     
    “Come on, that’s such a canard, you know that.  ‘The Greatest Generation?’ That was the biggest publishing hoax of all. It’s to sell books. This seemingly sacrosanct term was coined by Tom Brokaw for his 1998 book of the same title, in which he recounted the lives of ordinary, World War II-era Americans. “I was in Vietnam with the Greatest Generation. They were master sergeants, generals, colonels. They had arrogance beyond belief. The hubris that allowed Henry Kissinger to say North Vietnam is a fourth-rate power we will break. The hubris of that!”
     
    Die argument wat Stone aanbied is die volgende, “We have been sold a fairy tale masquerading as history, and it is so blinding it may ultimately undo us”.
     
    In 'n kommentaar het ek verwysing na JFK gemaak en word dit in die profiel ook aangespreek in die volgende terme: Stone het JFK as 'n les in geskiedenis aangebied met die vrystelling daarvan. 
     
    “JFK is a history lesson.” 
     
    Prouty, however, who died in 2001, turned out to be extremely problematic. He had many theories in addition to his theories on Kennedy, including that the Joint Chiefs of Staff had foreknowledge of the Jonestown Massacre and that greedy oil barons invented the fiction that oil is made of decomposed fossils. And it was Prouty, Stone said, who turned him on to “The Report From Iron Mountain,” a 1967 document ostensibly written by a secret panel of military planners. The document is a favorite among conspiracy theorists, who, like Prouty, seem unaware that in 1972 the satirist Leonard Lewin admitted he wrote it. Oliver Stone nou aan die woord en soos hy dit nou sien: “I’ve acknowledged when I’ve made mistakes”. “There were a few mistakes, but nothing that changes the big story”, it should be looked at not as history but as a dramatized version of it — “the spirit of the truth.” “It’s called dramatic license”. “It’s a noble tradition. The Greeks did it, Homer did it, Shakespeare did it.” 
     
    Met dit dan as 'n agtergrond was die gevolg die volgende: 
     
    This time, perhaps, having a bona fide tenured professor on his side will silence his many critics. 
     
    Hiermee dan Peter Kuznick as vennoot. Aangesien soveel van die argument van Stone en Kuznick hang aan die diskreditering van Truman word dit ook in die profiel aangespreek: 
     
    Historian Douglas Brinkley stirred things up. He had a few bones to pick with the project. Brinkley, who has written several notable histories, said he thought the series had gone too far in demonizing Truman.
     
    “Truman is one of the most popular presidents in American history, and he’s popular for doing a bunch of things,” he said. Brinkley mentioned how Truman presided over the end of World War II, racially integrated American troops, helped create the state of Israel and airlifted supplies into Soviet-blockaded West Berlin. “The only opening you’re giving him is that he was a naïf,” Brinkley said. This perked Stone right up. He shook his head. “If he’d done something noble, believe me, we’re not looking to cut it out,” Stone said, earning him a round of applause. “I just don’t see any nobleness.”
     
    But Brinkley has a point. If the only thing you ever learned about Truman was from “Untold History,” you might conclude he was a virulent racist, mentally unfit for office and suffering from a gender confusion that led to mass murder. “He was bullied by other boys who called him ‘Four Eyes’ and ‘sissy’ and chased him home after school,” Stone narrates. “When he arrived home, trembling, his mother would comfort him by telling him not to worry because he was meant to be a girl anyway.” 
     
    This, the series implies, might explain why Truman dropped atomic bombs on Japan — not to end the war but to flex his muscles and intimidate Stalin, as he himself had been intimidated as a boy.
     
    While Stone glancingly acknowledges Stalin’s mass murder of his own people, Stalin, compared with Truman, still comes off as heroic, as an honest negotiator who, following F.D.R.’s death, was faced at every turn with Truman’s diplomatic perfidy. 
     
    (Stalin promised that after he defeated Germany, he’d invade Japan, but Truman dropped the bomb anyway.) 
     
    Stone also sees America’s role in the war as exaggerated. “The Soviets were regularly battling more than 200 German divisions. . . . The Americans and the British fighting in the Mediterranean rarely confronted more than 10,” Stone narrates.
     
    Indien bogenoemde nie 'n aanduiding van Anti-Amerikaanse sentimente is nie dan is dit nie seker wat sou wees. 
     
    Volgens die profiel voer Stone en Kuznick die volgende argumente aan: 
     
    “The cold war was mostly a product of American paranoia and imperialist ambitions. Stalin was essentially pulled onto the dance floor by the United States, and Russia’s continued domination of Eastern Europe mainly a defensive response to our nuclear program and the establishment of American military bases throughout Europe.”
     
    In geen onduidelike terme word dit soos volg formuleer indien dit Wallace was wat Roosevelt sou opgevolg het in plaas van Truman:
     
    “There would not have been this cold war. There would have been the continuation of the Roosevelt-Stalin working out of things. Vietnam wouldn’t have happened.”
     
    Is dit nie 'n te radikale vereenvoudiging van die geskiedenis nie? 
     
    In 'n vorige kommentaar het ek verwys na Sean Wilentz, 'n historikus, maar was beskou as 'n blinde ondersteuner van die VSA se buitelandse beleid en daarom nie 'n betroubare kritikus nie. 
     
    In die profiel word daar verwys na emeritus professor Ronald Radosh en die ontleding wat Radosh bied is soos volg: 
     
    “Historians can have different interpretations.What these  guys do is manipulate evidence and ignore evidence that does not fit their predetermined thesis, and that’s why they’re wrong.” According to Radosh, Stone and Kuznick’s take on the United States’ role in the cold war mirrors the argument in “We Can Be Friends,” a book published in 1952 by Carl Marzani, who was convicted of concealing his affiliation to the Communist Party when he joined the O.S.S., the precursor to the C.I.A. “This Stone-Kuznick film could have been put out in 1955 as Soviet propaganda,” Radosh said. “They use all the old stuff.”
     
    Radosh in die profiel dui aan dat die skrywer moet eerder Sean Wilentz kontak aangesien hy wat Radosh is 'will be dismissed as partisan'. 
     
    Die skrywer van die profiel doen so en is Wilentz se reaksie: 
     
    “Always beware of books that describe themselves as the untold history of anything, because it’s usually been told before,” he said. It sets up this thing that there is some sort of mysterious force suppressing the true facts, right? Glenn Beck does this all the time. It’s the same thing here, except this is basically a very standard left-wing, C.P., fellow traveler, Wallace-ite vision of what happened in 1945-46. It’s not, Wilentz continued, that the questions raised aren’t worth raising. “Is there a legitimate argument to be made about the origins of our nuclear diplomacy or the decision to build the H-bomb?” he said. “Of course there is. But it’s so overloaded with ideological distortion that this question doesn’t get raised in an intelligent way. And once a question gets raised in an unintelligent way, then you are off in cloud-cuckoo land.”
     
    So om anti-Amerikaans te wees laat jou toe om galbitter te wees teenoor die VSA, maar dit laat jou nie, jou eie feite toe nie. 
     
    Met dit dan Pieter, ek het vermoede en daarop kan jy reageer indien jy so sou voel maar ek het nog altyd 'n element van anti-Amerikaanse sentinment in jou skrywes bespeur wat die onderwerp aangaan. 
     
    Is dit 'n redelike aanname van my kant af of handhaaf jy 'n neutrale houding teen oor die VSA waar mislukkings en suksesse van die VSA apart erken en aanvaar word?
     
    Hierdie is meer as enige iets anders slegs 'n poging van my kant af om jou bestaansblik te probeer verstaan.  (Dalk weens jou liefde vir die Ooste? -indien ek dit reg gelees het). 
     
    Baie dankie
     
    Wouter
    Reply
  • Pieter Redelinghuys

    Beste Wouter,

     

    Dankie vir die moeite wat jy gedoen het, en vir al die inligting wat jy verskaf het. Meer kan jy nie doen nie.

     

    Die "bottom line" vir my altans is dat baie bloot 'n klomp blah-blah-blah-blah is.

     

    Daar is geen verskoning vir Truman se gebruik van die atoombom oor Hiroshima ('n siviele teiken sonder ENIGE militêre waarde)  vir enige rede ookal nie, en nog minder rede oor Nagasaki. Die Nuremberg Oorlogsverhore verklaar ook dat daar dalk 'n grys area bestaan vir Hiroshima maar geen verskoning vir Nagasaki nie: nl. vervul egter die kentekens van 'n oorlogsmisdaad. As jy ooit in Japan aankom, besoek gerus die gedenkmuseum en bepeins diep die onbeskryflike hel wat die inwoners deurgemaak het. Die VSA wou hulle bomb uittoets op siviele tydens die sg. "rush hour" toe almal besig was om werktoe te gaan en kinders op pad  skool toe was.  

     

    Ek is nie die eerste persoon ! om uit te wys dat die VSA verantwoordelik was van massamoord. Susan Sontag het dit 40 jaar gelede genoem. Maar destyds was ek té jonk en té naïef om te begryp wat sy bedoel het. 

     

    Jy is korrek om te spekuleer dat ek anti-Amerikaans sou wees. Wie vandag in sy regte verstand sou nie wees nie?  Dit het heel laat in my lewe gekom, baie laat, soos my kennis van hierdie land se buitelandse beleid verbeter het, kennis wat in die verlede heel gebrekkig was weens my Suid-Afrikaanse agtergrond. In Suid-Afrika word alleen Anglo-Saksiese weergawes (die VSA  en haar bondgenoot Brittanje) se pers gepapegaai.

     

    Wat moet mens dink van 'n land wat atoombomme gebruik teen siviele teikens? Wat moet mens dink van 'n land wat onder die leiding van twee psigopate (Kissinger en Nixon) dood gesaai het onder honderde duisende Vietnamese, en inwoners van Laos en Cambodia? Wat moet mens dink van 'n president wat oorlog gaan maak in Irak en nie eers weet dat daar Shiia en Sunni muslims oa. woon nie? Ek wil jou nie verveel met 'n lang lys van die VSA se kriminele aktiwiteite nie, maar lees gerus Naomi Klein se boek" The Shock Doctrine" om 'n beter oorsig te kry.

     

    Ek hoop dat bg helderheid aan jou sal bring om my "bestaansblik" te verstaan. Ek voel dat ek dalk jou bestaansblik beter bestaan.

     

    Beste groete,

     

    Pieter Redelinghuys.

     

    Reply
  • CorneliusHenn

    Wouter Ferns se slimmigheid hierbo, impliseer gewis ook dat die waarde heer Donald Trump, as 'n spreekwoordelike 'elephant in the room' - skuldig aan onsin soos 'Anti-Americanism' is ... hoe absurd!!! ... ja, die feit dat 'n mens skepties omtrent 'n saak in jou midde is, of selfs waag om kritiek teen jou eie of andere se leiers het, beteken gewis 'n onoorbrugbare kloof in die gedagte van eng en ekstreme fundamentaliste soos die Fernse', Fouries', Dippenaars' ... die waarheid is egter veel vryer as die grys skaaltjie waarop Wouter Ferns, als verkrag sodat dit nie in 'n sekerheid kantel nie ... nie te danke nie, Cornelius Henn

     

     

     

     

     

    Reply
  • Wouter

    Hello Pieter, 

     
    Die lys van wandade is lank. Hierdie sal die aspekte wees wat ek in my lees ook sal ondersoek verderaan. Dankie vir die gesprek en 'n baie goeie onderwerp wat jy op die tafel gesit het. Dit het my stimuleer sonder enige twyfel en lees ek nou so tussen in 'n biografie van Truman en spesifiek die tydperk wat die besluit vir die gebruik van die bom bespreek. 
     
    Susan Sontag sal jy seker onthou het sterk kritiek ondervind met haar menings oor 911 toe sy in die New Yorker vir die VSA ook blaam toegeken het. 
     
    Baie dankie 
     
    Wouter
    Reply
  • Pieter Redelinghuys

    Beste Wouter,

     

    Ek bedank jou vir die gesprek en die tyd wat jy daarvoor afgestaan het.

     

    Ek weet nie wat Susan Sontag kwyt geraak het oor 911. Ek kan alleen raai:

     

    "They deserved it", en tot 'n groot mate stem ek saam met haar.

     

    Baie groete,

     

    Pieter Redelinghuys

    Reply
  • Chris Dippenaar

    Pieter, ek sit nou en wonder tot watter mate jy sou "saamstem" as dit 'n atoombom en nie vliegtuie was op 9/11.

    Reply
  • Wouter

    Hello, 

     
    Ek het nogal altyd Susan Sontag bewonder vir haar erns. Hard aan die werk met enige onderwerp waarmee sy omgegaan het, in erns en op 'n intelligente manier. 
     
    Gedeeltes wat Susan Sontag oor 911 geskryf het is soos volg: 
     
    The disconnect between last Tuesday’s monstrous dose of reality and the self-righteous drivel and outright deception being peddled by public figures and TV commentators is startling, depressing. The voices licensed to follow the event seem to have joined together in a campaign to infantilize the public. Where is the acknowledgment that this was not a “cowardly” attack on “civilization” or “liberty” or “humanity” or “the free world” but an attack on the world’s self-proclaimed superpower, undertaken as a consequence of specific American alliances and actions?
     
    Die 'clincher': 
     
    “Let’s by all means grieve together. But let’s not be stupid together”
     
    Veral die laaste gedeelte is goeie advies, vir enige tyd en vir enige onderwerp. 
     
    'Let us not be stupid together'. 
     
    Maar hierdie is 'n goeie vraag, vernietiging van New York deur 'n atoombom, 'n tereuraanval. Is dit aanvaarbaar vir al die 'euwels' wat die VSA gepleeg het. Is vernietiging van die VSA dit waarvoor daar intens gehoop moet word en waarvan die volgende 'n voorbeeld is:
     
    French philosopher Jean Baudrillard formulates a radical death wish—the total destruction of America—simply because the United States has become too hegemonic for his taste..... 
     
    Hierdie is 'n baie goeie vraag vir debat. Is die VSA se invloed positief of negatief in die verloop van die geskiedenis die afgelope eeu. 
     
    Baie dankie
     
    Wouter
    Reply
  • Wouter

    Hello Pieter, 

     
    Chris et al, 

    Terwyl hierdie onderwerp nou op die tafel is kan daar verwys word na die volgende artikel uit die week se New Yorker met die titel, 'Nukes of Hazard' deur Louis Menand, voorheen hier verwys na, met sy opstel oor Lincoln, wat in hierdie week se New Yorker  Eric Schlosser’s “Command and Control” bespreek. 

     
    Dit is veral gepas aangesien die opstel open met die volgende skets: 
     
    On January 25, 1995, at 9:28 A.M. Moscow time, an aide handed a briefcase to Boris Yeltsin, the President of Russia. A small light near the handle was on, and inside was a screen displaying information indicating that a missile had been launched four minutes earlier from somewhere in the vicinity of the Norwegian Sea, and that it appeared to be headed toward Moscow. Below the screen was a row of buttons. This was the Russian “nuclear football.” By pressing the buttons, Yeltsin could launch an immediate nuclear strike against targets around the world. Russian nuclear missiles, submarines, and bombers were on full alert. Yeltsin had forty-seven hundred nuclear warheads ready to go.The Chief of the General Staff, General Mikhail Kolesnikov, had a football, too, and he was monitoring the flight of the missile. Radar showed that stages of the rocket were falling away as it ascended, which suggested that it was an intermediate-range missile similar to the Pershing II, the missile deployed by NATO across Western Europe. The launch site was also in the most likely corridor for an attack on Moscow by American submarines. Kolesnikov was put on a hot line with Yeltsin, whose prerogative it was to launch a nuclear response. Yeltsin had less than six minutes to make a decision.
     
    Die feit dat ons besig is om hierdie gesprek te voer, bevestig dat dit gou ontlot was. 
     
    Hierdie toneel is uit Eric Schlosser’s “Command and Control”. 
     
    Nog sulke voorbeelde is soos volg: 
     
    In 1958, for example, a B-47 bomber carrying a Mark 36 hydrogen bomb, one of the most powerful weapons in the American arsenal, caught fire while taxiing on a runway at an airbase in Morocco. The plane split in two, the base was evacuated, and the fire burned for two and a half hours. But the explosives in the warhead didn’t detonate; that would have set off a chain reaction. Although the King of Morocco was informed, the accident was otherwise kept a secret.
     
    Nog een wat die hare regop laat staan is die volgende scenario: 
     
    In 1979, NORAD’s computer again warned of an all-out Soviet attack. Bombers were manned, missiles were placed on alert, and air-traffic controllers notified commercial aircraft that they might soon be ordered to land. An investigation revealed that a technician had mistakenly put a war-games tape, intended as part of a training exercise, into the computer. A year later, it happened a third time: Zbigniew Brzezinski, the national-security adviser, was called at home at two-thirty in the morning and informed that two hundred and twenty missiles were on their way toward the United States. That false alarm was the fault of a defective computer chip that cost forty-six cents.
     
    Truman maak ook weer 'n verskyning: 
     
    Until the late nineteen-sixties, nuclear rhetoric was far ahead of nuclear reality. In 1947, two years after the war in Europe ended, the United States had a hundred thousand troops stationed in Germany, and the Soviet Union had 1.2 million. Truman saw the atomic bomb as a great equalizer (the Soviets had not yet developed one), and he allowed Stalin to understand that the United States would use it to stop Soviet aggression in Western Europe. Truman was subsequently startled to find out from the head of the Atomic Energy Commission, David Lilienthal, that the United States had exactly one atomic bomb in its stockpile. 
     
    The bomb was unassembled, but Lilienthal thought that it could probably be made operative

     
    Ek kon nie help om te glimlag oor daardie een nie. 
     
    Dit was Eisenhower volgens hierdie verhaal wat spoed opgetel het en het die Russe nie laat wag op hulle nie. 
     
    Die volledige opstel kan hier gelees word: 


    Dit is 'n wonder die mensdom is nie al lankal Mars toe geblaas nie. 

    Baie dankie

    Wouter

    Reply
  • Wouter

    Hello, 

     
    Vir die wat dalk nie opstel gaan lees in sy volledigheid nie is dit veral die volgende gedeelte wat vir my waardevol was indien die motivering van Truman ook in oorweging gebring wil word: 
     
    David Holloway, a historian of the period, once raised the question whether the nuclear arms race was a product of the Cold War or a cause. The bomb is inextricable from Cold War history because it was present at the very start. Truman’s principal reason for deciding to drop the bomb on Japan was to bring the war in the Pacific to a quick end, but his secondary one was to erect a psychological obstacle to any Soviet plans for postwar expansion. He wanted the Soviets to understand that the United States had no qualms about answering aggression with atomic weapons. (Ending the war quickly was itself a way to prevent the Soviets from acquiring territory in the Pacific while fighting was under way there, and then colonizing it, as they did in Eastern Europe.)
     
    Schlosser se boek is in Kindle-formaat beskikbaar en is klaar na my 'wishlist' geskuif, net soos Amazon doen, beveel dit die volgende boek ook aan: 

     
    Prompt and utter destruction: Truman and the use of atomic bombs against Japan by J. Samuel Walker
     
    Baie dankie
     
    Wouter
    Reply
  • Wouter

    Hello, 

     
    Alan Moore vertel die volgende staaltjie en plaas ek dit na aanleiding van die advies wat die internet bied. 
     
    Die internet besluit om te gaan reis en arriveer by 'n stad se stadspoorte en die wagte vra dat die internet moet bewys dat hy wel die internet is. 
     
    Internet antwoord, ek bring klank, beeld en woord, van pornografie en die 'ravings of mad people' soos geneem van die kommentare...
     
    Die wagte is nie oortuig nie en vra of hulle internet kan toets. 
     
    Internet stem in....
     
    Die toets is soos volg: 
     
    Die wagte wil weet, indien ons van porseleinkatte hou, waarvan sal ons ook hou en wat sal internet aanbeveel.....
     
    Youtube videos van katte
     
    Baie dankie
     
    Wouter
    Reply

    • Reageer

    Jou e-posadres sal nie gepubliseer word nie. Kommentaar is onderhewig aan moderering.


     

    Top