On Graham, Nukes, And The History We Tell Ourselves

“I was against it on two counts,” Dwight Eisenhower, supreme allied commander, five-star general, and president of the United States, said of dropping nuclear bombs on two Japanese cities. “First, the Japanese were ready to surrender, and it wasn’t necessary to hit them with that awful thing. Second, I hated to see our country be the first to use such a weapon.”

This certainly cuts against the common argument these days: that dropping the atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki saved lives, certainly the lives of American soldiers, and maybe even Japanese lives on net.” – An excerpt from, ““Japan Was Already Defeated”: The Case Against the Nuclear Bomb and for Basic Morality” by Timothy P. Carney, Washington Examiner, July 26, 2023.

“Of the many controversial statements made by Senator Chuck Hagel over the years, none seemed to enrage Senator Lindsey Graham more than his remark that the Israel lobby intimidates U.S. Congressmen into advocating “stupid” policies. He challenged Hagel to name one such senator and to identify one such stupid policy.

The challenge created an unusual opportunity for Hagel, for there could be no better and conclusive evidence of the Israel Lobby’s power of intimidation of U.S. senators on the subject of Israel than these hearings themselves, and most particularly Senator Graham’s own behavior.

Unfortunately, Hagel could not take advantage of that opportunity. Had he done so, his nomination by President Obama to head the Department of Defense would undoubtedly have been dead in the water, for his former Democratic colleagues are no less guilty of yielding to that intimidation than Hagel’s former Republican colleagues.

But the truth of Hagel’s charge must be affirmed, particularly by those who are more concerned about Israel’s ability to survive as a Jewish and democratic state than about jeopardizing contributions to their own electoral campaigns. The truth that needs to be affirmed speaks not only to the existential dangers created by the current Israeli government’s illegal and often immoral behavior in the Occupied Territories but to the violation of the shared values that supposedly form the foundation of the unprecedentedly close ties between Israel and the United States.” – An excerpt from, “Senator Hagel, Senator Graham, and the Israel Lobby” by Henry Siegman, Huffington Post, February 5, 2013.

Senator Lindsey Graham was a strange goy specimen. 

It’s hard to pin him down. Was he just a surrogate? Did he have genuine political, philosophical, and moral convictions or was he just another sexually compromised individual that loved being in power? 

What did he actually accomplish in his long political tenure besides being a cheerleader for war? 

In every news clip I saw of him throughout the years he was advocating for this or that war. And in one clip he was defending the use of nuclear weapons, suggesting they should be used again in the future.

What a misguided soul.

There’s no strategic or moral case for the possession and use of nuclear weapons. Some people like the late Graham are under the mistaken notion that these are effective instruments of war, citing the dropping of nukes on Hiroshima and Nagasaki for why these weapons have their uses in critical, existential situations. 

But even top American military leaders have said on record that there were zero military justifications for those WWII bombings. The Japanese emperor would have surrendered anyway. That was more of a showpiece bombing. 

Nagasaki was the center of Japanese Catholicism, so it was most likely chosen as a target for that reason than any military or strategic one.

Graham was clueless about the true history of WWII. No real student of the conflict can look at what happened and defend the use of nukes. 

Understanding and investigating history should not be seen as a dry pastime. What we think we know, or don’t know, can inform our current views for the worse. It’s important to always be learning and reading about the past, lest we make fools of ourselves.