Category: Empire

The disaster that was World War II: Could things have been different? (Part II)

~ Ted Grimsrud ~ 1 Comment

[This is the second of a two-part post. I am just about done with a book I have written about World War II: The Good War That Wasn’t—And Why It Matters: World War II’s Moral Legacy. My last step is writing a conclusion. One part of the conclusion will be to speculate a little about what choices the U.S. could have made to avoid what became (I argue in the book) a moral disaster. Yesterday I posted Part I that discusses five aspects of the lead up to World War II that could have been different—and less disastrous. This post will discuss five more aspects.

Several earlier blog posts will also be incorporated into the conclusion (“Was World War II a Just War?” + “Why World War II was a Moral Disaster for the United States—part 1” + “Why World War II was a Moral Disaster for the United States—part 2”). I will conclude the conclusion with some reflections on what this all means for us today. I hope to post some of those reflections within the next several days. Earlier, I posted rough drafts of the other ten chapters of the book.]

Ted Grimsrud—May 30, 2013

(6) Overtly work to aid threatened Jews in Germany after the Nazis came to power. The plight of Europe’s Jews actually had little effect on the American entry into the conflict nor on the way that the War was prosecuted once the U.S. became a full participant. So more early efforts to help threatened Jews would not have themselves provided an alternative to going to war in the actual event.

However, to the extent that the War is at least after the fact justified as necessary for the sake of the Jews, we could say that earlier intervention would have made the war less necessary. One of the great ironies of the events in the lead-up to the War is that it was in fact the principled pacifists who worked the hardest to try to address the emerging crises for Europe’s Jews. Some Quakers even intervened directly, drawing on their positive reputation in Germany due to post-World War I relief efforts to lobby with Nazi leaders for openness for Jewish emigration. The hold up came not from the Nazis but from the American and British leaders who refused to make allowance for more than a tiny number of Jewish immigrants and, later, refugees.

It would seem that hundreds of thousands of Jews who perished in the Holocaust could have escaped that fate had the nations of the world been willing to allow them refuge. The tone-setters for the refusal to do so were the Americans and British.

Even more ironic, then, is that the main response America had to German tyranny was military-centered, ultimately total war. This response pushed the Nazis toward genocide rather than deportation as their means of dealing with the “Jewish problem.” Even after it became known on the outside that the genocide was happening, America’s war leaders insisted on ignoring that set of atrocities in favor of focusing on simply winning the war and achieving “unconditional surrender”—making it possible for the Nazis to come much closer to their goal of total eradication of Europe’s Jews. Continue reading “The disaster that was World War II: Could things have been different? (Part II)” →

The disaster that was World War II: Could things have been different? (Part I)

~ Ted Grimsrud ~ 9 Comments

[I am just about done with a book I have written about World War II: The Good War That Wasn’t—And Why It Matters: World War II’s Moral Legacy. My last step is writing a conclusion. One part of the conclusion will be to speculate a little about what choices the U.S. could have made to avoid what became (I argue in the book) a moral disaster. This blog post (Part I) contains some of that speculation. Here is Part II.

Several earlier blog posts will also be incorporated into the conclusion (“Was World War II a Just War?” + “Why World War II was a Moral Disaster for the United States—part 1” + “Why World War II was a Moral Disaster for the United States—part 2”). I will conclude the conclusion with some reflections on what this all means for us today. I hope to post some of those reflections within the next several days. Earlier, I posted rough drafts of the other ten chapters of the book.]

Ted Grimsrud—May 29, 2013

I have tried in this book to focus on the actual events that happened in the lead up to World War II, in the War itself, and in its aftermath. I have argued that what did actually happen was a moral disaster for the United States—both the War itself and its aftermath. Here I want to spend a bit of time on a thought experiment. I will imagine various events leading up to and during World War II that could have been handled differently and possibly led to a morally better result.

I hope to make the point here that nothing was inevitable, that the disastrous events need not have happened like they did. More than make a case concerning the moral failures of decision makers, though, I want more simply to emphasize that we need not continue on the same spiral toward continuing disasters that the U.S. seems stuck in. If those decisions could have been different, so too could current and future decisions.

As well, I argue in this book against the mythology that valorizes World War II as a necessary war, a good war, that was fought in the morally most just way possible. To suggest a number of ways things could have been different might lead us even more to question the necessity, goodness, and justness of the War in ways that could lead us to reject the logic that links the “goodness” of World War II to the need today to prepare for future possible “necessary” wars.

Finally, this exercise might also stimulate we who are not directly involved in foreign policy decision-making to recognize our need to treat with suspicion  claims by the foreign policy elite. We should especially doubt the claims they make that decisions to resort to violence are necessary or even pragmatically appropriate. If we treat such claims for necessary violence with skepticism we might be freed to refuse consent and to seek both to challenge the elite to less violent policies and to seek ways outside of the governmental structures to further self-determination and disarmament.

I have chosen ten examples of how things could have been different—with less disastrous results. I tried to avoid series of hypotheticals where one is dependent upon one or more earlier hypothetical. Generally, each example accepts that earlier alternative scenarios did not happen. I focus mainly on decisions Americans made (or did not).

Almost all of these follow from just war criteria and ideals. None assume pacifism. All would have been pragmatically preferable for American interests (that is, the interests of the American people, if not the American business and political elite). Continue reading “The disaster that was World War II: Could things have been different? (Part I)” →

A pacifist at the AAR/SBL

~ Ted Grimsrud ~ 10 Comments

Ted Grimsrud

Last weekend, my wife Kathleen and I made our annual trip to the big city to hobnob with 10,000 religion scholars. That is, we attended that convention of the American Academy of Religion and Society of Biblical Literature in Chicago, November 17-20. As per usual, we had a great time. This year, things were pretty low key—both in the sense of not having many responsibilities and of not attending any high powered, life changing sessions (no Cornel West, Judith Butler, Jeffrey Stout, or Robert Bellah this year).

As always, the biggest highlights were the times with friends—especially those who I usually only see at these meetings, but also some new friends (including meeting in the flesh a couple of cyber friends) and even some good times with people I see regularly.

Because I didn’t have much business to attend to and didn’t really have much interest in the book fair (I’m not quite sure why this was; in the past, I spent as many hours as I could with the always amazing collection of books from hundreds of publishers—maybe as I get older I realize just how many books I already have that I will never read), we spent most of our time attending sessions. While my socks stayed securely on my feet throughout, I still found the sessions interesting and stimulating of thought—even if mostly it was to argue against much of what I heard. Here are some highlights. Continue reading “A pacifist at the AAR/SBL” →

Faith and Politics (Including Voting)

~ Ted Grimsrud ~ 5 Comments

Ted Grimsrud

All this talking and thinking about voting (this post is part three: #1—Should a pacifist vote for a warmonger?; #2 —More thoughts about voting (or not) for a “warmonger”) has pushed me to think about what I understand politics to be about and what this has to do with my faith convictions. These are some thoughts.

Biblical politics

I find the Bible enormously helpful for thinking about politics. Not that it gives us a blueprint or an explicit political philosophy or even a list of principles for godly politics. Just that it tells a story (a complicated story, with many subplots) that we can share in—a story, ultimately, of people trying to join together to make the world more peaceable in light of their understanding of God’s will for their lives.

In a nutshell, I would define “biblical politics” as people working together for peace. “Peace” I would understand as “biblical shalom”—the wholeness of the community, all people living harmoniously with one another and with the rest of creation. The operative sense of “politics,” then, is people working together in community for the sake of shalom.

The Bible, thus, is intensely political as it tells both of how communities can operate in peaceable ways and of how communities violate shalom (and suffer the consequences). From Genesis’s account of the communal problems that emerge when people turn from shalom to Revelation’s account of a great city of peace (the New Jerusalem) being established on earth, the Bible focuses on politics done (or not) in light of the peaceable will of the creating and sustaining God of the universe.

Continue reading “Faith and Politics (Including Voting)” →

More thoughts about voting (or not) for a “warmonger”

~ Ted Grimsrud ~ 24 Comments

Ted Grimsrud

As we draw closer to election day, 2012, I continue to reflect on the voting issue. My October 1, 2012, post asked the question “Should a pacifist vote for a warmonger?”  [UPDATE: I posted a third installment on October 28: “Faith and Politics (Including Voting)”] I concluded that though indeed I believe that President Obama’s four years in office have been a time of increasingly distressing militarism, I still will vote for him. I posed this choice not so much as voting for a lesser evil but as voting against a greater evil. That is, I do not understand my vote to be an expression of support for Obama but to be an expression of opposition to the far more distressingly militaristic and destructive-in-many-more-areas policies I would expect from a Romney administration.

The original posts received many thoughtful and perceptive comments. Within the comments section, several other fascinating conversations that went beyond my own contribution emerged. With these responses and numerous conversations with friends and more reading and thinking, I want to take some time to say a bit more—mainly to try to restate and clarify the argument I am trying to develop. Continue reading “More thoughts about voting (or not) for a “warmonger”” →

Should a pacifist vote for a warmonger?

~ Ted Grimsrud ~ 78 Comments

Ted Grimsrud

This election season is (or should be) an agonizing time for pacifists and other people in the United States who care deeply for peace on earth. Perhaps as much as any time in the history of this country, an uncritical embrace of militarism as a way of life is on display. We have a president running for re-election proudly trumpeting his success in one military intervention after another (including direct assassination of “national enemies”)—and being harshly criticized by his main opponent for being a wuss on national security issues.

Except for people like us on the fringes, Obama’s militarism is not seen as a problem in the national discussion. The country faces extreme economic difficulties and the two main options in this election are giving the military either a somewhat greater share of the national treasure or a much greater share.

Peace advocates’ discouragement with Obama

American peace advocates’ discouragement is heightened by the reality that we thought we might be getting something better four years ago. And we weren’t alone in the world—how else to explain Obama’s clearly premature Nobel Peace Prize (now a distant memory) other than as a statement of hope from the selectors that he truly would provide a new direction in American foreign policy? Yet, when all is said and done, what we see over the past four years is a slight decrease in the bellicose posturing that characterized the Bush administration, but overall a continuation of the trajectory of empire as a way of life.

So, it is understandable that many peace advocates who supported Obama in 2008 (with admittedly varying degrees of enthusiasm—no one I know or know of expected Obama to tack very far toward a truly new, peace-oriented national security agenda; but we did hope for some major positive shifts) are now asserting that they will not vote for him this time. None of these folks, of course, are remotely interesting in voting for Mitt Romney—they talk either of voting for a third (or fourth or fifth) party candidate or of abstaining. Continue reading “Should a pacifist vote for a warmonger?” →

Why We Christians Don’t Love Our Enemies

~ Ted Grimsrud ~ 6 Comments

Ted Grimsrud

[Here is another excerpt from a sermon from some time ago—October 2005]

If there is one passage in the entire Bible that points to both the glory and the shame of Christianity, it is this famous statement by Jesus: “I say to you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, so that you may be children of your Father in heaven” (Matt 5:44-45). Here we have a direct statement of a profound ideal, a call to break the cycle of violence that so bedevils our world. And here we have as stark a reminder as we could imagine of just how far Christianity tends to have strayed from the will of its founder.

The cost of hating enemies

 “Love your enemies,” such an obvious statement of what our world needs. We see so clearly in our present day how hatred of enemies fuels war with simply incredible costs. In the name of stamping out “terrorists” our country spent billions upon billions to pour violence upon the nation of Iraq, diverted resources in a way that made the Gulf Coast more vulnerable to devastation from recent hurricanes, alienated people throughout the world, and sent hundreds upon hundreds of our soldiers to their death along with thousands upon thousands of Iraqis. This hatred fuels a spinning cycle, eye for an eye for an eye leading to more and more blindness.

Hatred of enemies fuels our nation’s prison-industrial complex. We send millions behind bars where they are all too often brutalized, infected with devastating diseases such as hepatitis, and permanently disenfranchised as stakeholders in civil society. As someone said, no matter how long a convicted criminal’s official sentence might be, it is invariably a “life sentence” in terms of the impact going to prison has on one’s life. In the name of “security,” we only increase the spiral of destruction and alienation.

In many other ways as well, hatred of enemies leads to unhappiness, brokenness, pain being visited upon pain—and the cycle of creating only more hatred. So, Jesus’ words cut like a warm knife through butter. He gets to the heart of things. We need to find ways to love instead of hate and to forgive instead of simply punish and to heal when there is brokenness, not simply retaliate. We also need the vision of God these verses give us. The One who models love for enemies and who offers generosity and genuine wholeness, who gives us hope, who empowers us to find another way from the spiral of death.

Jesus’ words seem so obvious. What could be more straightforward and more needed than Jesus’ incisive words? We need them now more than ever; they come to us straight and clear. If it were only that simple. If only Jesus’ words would set the agenda for Christians in our needy world today. If only being a Christian would mean ending hatred of enemies. But, it doesn’t work this way, sad to say. We Christians actually aren’t that good at loving our enemies. I struggle to understand why. Continue reading “Why We Christians Don’t Love Our Enemies” →

Why World War II was a moral disaster for the United States (Part two)

~ Ted Grimsrud ~ 7 Comments

Ted Grimsrud—May 28, 2012

[This post is a continuation of a two-part set of reflections on the moral legacy of World War II. Part one may be found here. An earlier post in the series, “Was World War II an unjust war?” may be found here.]

The national security state and the quest for world hegemony

The years immediately following World War II were determinative for the moral legacy of that war. The rationale given to the American people for the extraordinary costs paid to execute such an all-out war combined a strong dose of fear with an equally potent emphasis on idealism. As postwar events proved, fear won out.

The idealism found succinct voice in President Roosevelt’s State of the Union address on the “Four Freedoms” in January 1941 and in the Atlantic Charter, drawn up by Roosevelt and Britain’s Prime Minister, Winston Churchill, in August, 1941. Out of these statements came the mantra that the U.S. was fighting this war to provide for the self-determination of people from throughout the world, to defeat tyranny and spread the possibilities of democracy.

The public relations efforts of the American and British governments focused on the ideals of these two purpose statements. The Atlantic Charter was agreed upon by all the nations who allied themselves with the Americans and British in the war effort (including the Soviet Union!). These allies took the name, the “United Nations.” After the War ended in an Allied victory, the Charter provided the core values for the formalizing of the United Nations as an international organization of all the nations of the world for the purposes of peace and cooperative relationships.

Many people who had been anxious about negative consequences of total war for democracy and international peace put a great deal of hope in the newly formed United Nations in the immediate postwar years. Regardless of what was thought about the War itself, it could be seen as serving a good end should it lead to an effective and widely embraced United Nations. And the Atlantic Charter and the Four Freedoms ideals provided bases for such hopes.

At the same time, many among the American leadership class believed that decisive victory in the War provided a not-to-be-missed opportunity for establishing their country’s economic and military domination. They faced a crossroads in the years immediately following the War. Would the U.S. demobilize in the dramatic manner that characterized the country after the Civil War and World War I? Or was this instead an opportunity to sustain the extraordinarily powerful status the country had achieved through its war effort (and, of course, through the devastating losses all its possible rivals had sustained)? Continue reading “Why World War II was a moral disaster for the United States (Part two)” →

Why World War II was a moral disaster for the United States (Part one)

~ Ted Grimsrud ~ 6 Comments

Ted Grimsrud—May 27, 2012

World War II stands as the greatest event in the history of the United States. The country poured all its energy into an intense effort that resulted in the defeat of one of the odious embodied political philosophies ever. As the years pass and we learn more and more about Nazi Germany, the more grateful we can be for the ignominious end to the “thousand year Reich.” This war also led to an almost equally ignominious end to the extraordinarily vicious Japanese imperial regime.

World War II also proved to be the catalyst that finally brought the deprivation of the Great Depression to and end in the U.S. and ushered in an extraordinary era of economic prosperity—prosperity for once that reached down into the middle classes and beyond. The U.S. not only contributed impressively to the defeat of these terrible enemies, but the country actually came through the War relatively unscathed. At the end of the War, the U.S. stood with unprecedented economic power and unmatched international prestige as the bearer of the ideals portrayed to great effect in statements such as the Atlantic Charter and the initial declaration of the “United Nations.” These statements rallied people to defeat forces in the world that stood implacably against ideals such as self-determination and disarmament.

World War II as a moral disaster?

So, in what senses, then, was World War II after all a moral disaster for the United States? I will suggest that what World War II actually did for the United States was (1) decisively corrupt the American democratic polity, (2) decisively empower the forces of militarism in the country that have since 1945 led the U.S. into foreign policy disaster after foreign disaster and visited so much violence and destruction on major sections of the world that the term “American holocaust” (William Blum, Killing Hope) may not in actuality not be much of a hyperbole, and (3) decisively shift the economic center of gravity in the country toward the corporate sector, setting the country on a path of long-term corruption, exploitation, and—in a genuine sense—economic self-immolation. Continue reading “Why World War II was a moral disaster for the United States (Part one)” →

Someone else who has problems with World War II…

~ Ted Grimsrud ~ 16 Comments

Ted Grimsrud—April 20, 2012

As I have been working on my research and writing project that I am now calling, “The ‘Good War’ That Wasn’t—And Why It Matters,” I have drawn a great deal of inspiration from a book from several years ago that also expresses deep skepticism about the moral legitimacy of this war. I posted the following reflections on this book almost four years ago when I first started my PeaceTheology.net site. I think it’s worth a revisit as I put the finishing touches on my book.

As could be expected, Nicholson Baker’s  Human Smoke: The Beginnings of World War II, the End of Civilization (Simon & Schuster, 2008) has received mostly hostile reviews both in the mainstream media and among academic historians. I think it is a terrific book, though. It was one of the most absorbing 400+ page books I have ever read.

Describing the lead up to World War II

The book is made up of hundreds, probably close to 1,000, short vignettes that trace the events leading up to World War II and its prosecution until the end of 1941 (which, for the U.S., marked our country’s entry into the War).

These vignettes are mostly simple, descriptive statements; only rarely is Baker’s voice apparent. An example of an editorial comment, though, may be found on page 452: A December 10, 1941, Gallup poll had shown that two-thirds of the American population would support the U.S. firebombing Japanese cities in retaliation for Pearl Harbor. “Ten percent—representing twelve million citizens—were wholly opposed. Twelve million people still held to Franklin Roosevelt’s basic principle of civilization: that no man should be punished for the deeds of another. Franklin D. Roosevelt was not one of them.” Continue reading “Someone else who has problems with World War II…” →