Additional 11.7.08: Alas, Oliver Kamm's site suffered 'the unkindest cut of all' and went off-air for a few days. It is now restored but he lost some posts including the one to which I link below. In any event, it is up and running now but in a few days it will be migrating to The Times website. I will post the link when it happens and I intend to write a few words on Oliver's record as a blogger.
From the DED (Duff's English Dictionary):
To pilger: v., to tell lies in support of a political ideology (see, David Irving, passim).
To kamm: v., to expose pilgering.
You can see perfect examples of both these activities over at Oliver Kamm's site, beginning here but continuing for a further two examples above the original post. I have no need to be involved further in this particular fracas except to shout out to Oliver Kamm, "Give 'im one for me!"
However, in pondering on the subject matter of the dispute, that is, the massive strategic decisions taken by all concerned in the run up to the dropping of the A-bombs in Japan, I was struck by the similarity of psychology, and thus of actions and re-actions to events, by the Japanese High Command and the German High Command in 1918. Both groups shared certain characteristics. The German General Staff were a select elite in the German army; even worse, they were an intellectual elite, demonstrably so because entry to the War Academy was strictly by competitive examination - and we all know, do we not, how dangerous intellectual elites can be! (See, global warming, mad cow disease, the liberal elite, and so on.) It is arguably true that the German General Staff at the beginning of the 20th c. constituted the greatest brotherhood of military expertise the world has ever seen, before or after, and they succeeded in losing, not just one, but two, world wars.
I am not so knowledgeable on Japanese society in the run up to WWII but from the little I do know, the Japanese army (and navy) claimed a special relationship to their god-emperor, in much the same way that the German General Staff insisted on a symbiotic relationship with their king-emperor. Again, just like the Germans, this allowed them to choose their own ministers with direct access to the emperor to represent their service in the government of the day, irrespective of which bunch of politicians were in power. Both the German and the Japanese military saw themselves as separate castes within their societies; the Japanese, thus:
These sons of petty landowners and small shopkeepers felt far less assured of their place in the social hierarchy than did the aristocratic lords of the Choshu and Satsuma clans who had dominated the army high command before WWI: they were thus all the more ready to embrace ideas which re-assured them about the unique role in the nation. Some 25 to 30 percent of the officer corps had attended official military preparatory schools [...] where, from an early age of twelve or thirteen, they had been "immersed in preparing for a military career ... in surroundings totally isolated from ordinary society".(1) Their education stressed the 'mission' of the army officer.(2)
It is an indication of the blind stupidity of the Japanese military leadership that they even contemplated waking the sleeping giant that was America in 1941. I realise that there were economic and political imperatives but these could have been contained if the military had been able to see through their red mist of arrogance and hubris. It was their war, they dreamed it, they planned it, they finessed it and they invested in it all their hopes and beliefs. They half lost it when they failed to take out the American carriers at Pearl Harbour, but then they truly lost it six months later when their crown jewels, the Japanese carriers and all their precious trained aircrews, were lost at Midway. Like the Germans after September 1914 which had seen the failure of the Schlieffen plan, it was now only a matter of time before they were defeated. But in both cases, too many deeply-held convictions and too many reputations would be shattered by defeat and so it was resisted. It is an indication of the stubborn and stupid myopia of the Japanese military leadership that even after the second A-bomb at Nagasaki, they still refused to accept surrender.
What are the lessons to be learned from these sorry examples? I would suggest, first, treat all experts with caution; second, never allow your military elites to become separated from your civil society.
1: Quote from: "The Role of the Japanese Army" by Fujiwara Akira, contained in ...
2: "The Eagle Against the Sun" by Ronald H. Spector
Wow. Implications that climate change and CJD are liberal conspiracies. Not paranoid neurotic frothing at all. No.
Posted by: punkscience | Sunday, 10 August 2008 at 10:57
No, 'little Willy', because everyone knows that the earth's climate changes, and a good thing, too, because otherwise it is unlikely that we would have evolved. The chances are that the next 10 to 15 years will see a cooling in temperatures, not the apocolyptic over-heating that the 'experts' tell us will happen - unless, of course, they are referring to the over-heating of their imaginations, and the over-heating of their hooky statistics! Similarly, everyone knows that CJD exists but all those experts who assured us that it would kill millions were completely and utterly wrong. So, one asks oneself, why they spoke such nonsense? Power, perhaps, so that they could order the mass killing of cows that was quite unnecessary, and boss farmers around like a bunch of dememented commissars?
Posted by: David Duff | Sunday, 10 August 2008 at 15:16