A REMINDER OF WAR - AT 6:23 A.M. ET:  Most of the military men I've known have had the most sober and mature view of war.  They know what those weapons can do, and they understand what happens on battlefields after the folks at home give their cheering sendoffs.  Understanding war is critical to understanding the current debate over harsh interrogation techniques.  So I commend to you a piece by historian Warren Kozak in today's Wall Street Journal.  Kozak deals with Gen. Curtis LeMay, not a man known for kindness in war:

On Sept. 12, 2001, it is highly doubtful that any member of Congress was worried that our government would be too harsh in its treatment of terrorists. When countries are threatened, basic survival trumps civil liberties not just for enemy combatants but for citizens as well. Our priorities change.

We saw that with the attack on Pearl Harbor. Days before Japanese warplanes destroyed the U.S. Pacific fleet on Dec. 7, 1941, 80% of Americans did not want to go to war against either Germany or Japan. The day after the attacks, those numbers reversed themselves. Over the next four years, the United States did things it would never do in normal times -- Japanese-Americans were placed in prison camps, press reports and the mail of American soldiers were censored by the military, and the FBI tapped phones without court orders.

No one claims that these were wonderful things.  A sergeant once told me that people see things in war zones that no human being should ever see.  But LeMay, a young general in the Army Air Force, and later head of the Strategic Air Command, understood the nature of war, and did what he could to bring the war against Japan to a quick conclusion.  His air raids on Japan were ghastly by any account.  He himself said that, had America not won, he probably would have been considered a war criminal.

In the strange calculus of war, LeMay helped prevent an estimated one million American casualties and upwards of two million Japanese by helping push Japan's Emperor Hirohito to surrender before the invasion. Killing large numbers of people to save even more lives is not a decision most of us would want to make. But at the time, the majority of Americans were thankful that LeMay was willing to do it.

Today, some question whether the ends justified the means. In 1945, no American with a husband, brother or son serving in the military did. For them, the speediest end of that horrible conflict was the only goal.

COMMENT:  That is the point.  No civilized human being takes the subject of war, or the brutal treatment of prisoners, lightly.  But the current discussion of enhanced interrogation techniques is unreal, simplistic and adolescent.  I don't want my country engaged in torture, but I do want my countrymen to survive.  That does not mean a blank check, but it does mean an understanding of what war entails. 

May 15, 2009