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Oliver Kamm Tells A Lie

By David Peterson at Jan 25, 2010

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On January 25, 2010, The Times Online's blogger and Times leader-writer Oliver Kamm told a lie.

Boy, was it a whopper.

That is to say, in his January 25 blog for The Times Online, "An apology to my readers," Oliver Kamm wrote the following:


"I of course haven't attempted to 'justify' the killings of civilians at Hiroshima and Nagasaki. In my post, I was concerned with refuting the ahistorical claim that President Truman 'knew' the bombs were militarily unnecessary: Truman knew no such thing."


So, what makes Kamm's denial of his past record on the U.S. nuking of Hiroshima and Nagasaki a big fat lie? 

Well, as Edward Herman and I point out in our "The Oliver Kamm School of Falsification" (MRZine, January 22), Kamm used the 62nd anniversary of the U.S. nuking of Hiroshima to publicly and explicitly justify the mass killings of civilians at both Hiroshima and Nagasaki. 

There, we write (see the section we've titled "Kamm and Nukes"):


As a genocide denier and facilitator, it is hardly surprising that Kamm defends the nuclear bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, given that his favorite aggressor carried it out; the 200,000 - plus immediate civilian deaths don't faze him one bit.  "Our side did terrible things to avoid a more terrible outcome," he has written.  "[A]bjuring the bomb would have caused greater suffering still."[72]  There is perhaps no better illustration of Kamm's depravity that he can treat the U.S. nuking of Hiroshima and Nagasaki as moral and humanitarian acts.


Our endnote #72 is also highly relevant here. -- As we used it to add:


[72] Oliver Kamm, "Terrible, but not a crime," The Guardian, August 6, 2007.  Instead, see Abbas Edalat and Mehrnaz Shahabi, "Prospects of Armageddon," The Guardian, August 7, 2007.  As these authors rightly objected, the "subtext" of Kamm's defense of the nuking of Hiroshima and Nagasaki "is plain: The same camp whose vocal endorsement led to the present catastrophe in Iraq are no hawkishly gazing at Iran.  The same absurd and dangerous logic that defends the nuclear atrocities of 1945 can no be used to support the pre-emptive use of nuclear weapons against Iran—the threat of which in turn makes the idea of a conventional attack appear more palatable."



Thus, in fact, Oliver Kamm has gone on the record in the past to justify the mass killings of civilians at Hiroshima and Nagasaki.  He does this, he alleges, because these mass killings -- the only two uses of nuclear weapons to date -- served a higher good -- namely, the causing of fewer deaths than would have occurred, had the United States and its allies physically invaded the national territory of Japan. 

 

I don't believe this for one second.  But it is the argument that Kamm offers in public.

Nevertheless.  Kamm's real reason for justifying the mass killings of civilians at Hiroshima and Nagasaki comes down to something much closer to this: Because one of his favorite mass killers (in this case, the United States of America) was the perpetrator, this, ultimately, is what makes Hiroshima and Nagasaki A-Okay in Oliver Kamm's scales of justice.

Of course, readers can only speculate how many other lies Kamm told in his "An apology to my readers."

The next time, he owes his readers a sincere apology.

 

 

"An apology to my readers," Oliver Kamm, The Times Online, January 25, 2010

"The Oliver Kamm School of Falsification," Edward S. Herman and David Peterson, MRZine, January 22, 2010. 

"Oliver Kamm Tells A Lie," David Peterson, ZNet, January 25, 2010

 

Comment On This Blog Post  See All Comments (1)

Amys_pic_of_me

his poor refutation

By McGehee, Michael at Jan 25, 2010 14:15 PM

Truman knew it was militarily unnecessary because folks like Eisenhower openly said so:

"...in [July] 1945... Secretary of War Stimson, visiting my headquarters in Germany, informed me that our government was preparing to drop an atomic bomb on Japan. I was one of those who felt that there were a number of cogent reasons to question the wisdom of such an act. ...the Secretary, upon giving me the news of the successful bomb test in New Mexico, and of the plan for using it, asked for my reaction, apparently expecting a vigorous assent.

"During his recitation of the relevant facts, I had been conscious of a feeling of depression and so I voiced to him my grave misgivings, first on the basis of my belief that Japan was already defeated and that dropping the bomb was completely unnecessary, and secondly because I thought that our country should avoid shocking world opinion by the use of a weapon whose employment was, I thought, no longer mandatory as a measure to save American lives. It was my belief that Japan was, at that very moment, seeking some way to surrender with a minimum loss of 'face'. The Secretary was deeply perturbed by my attitude..."

we knew they were trying to surrender but we were demanding an unconditional surrender which many voiced their concern that that would needlessly prolong the war.

again, Eisenhower: "...the Japanese were ready to surrender and it wasn't necessary to hit them with that awful thing."

but Grew, MacArthur, McCloy, Bard and others.

Shit, even Nitze thought Japan was likely to capitulate to the unconditional surrender before end of 1945.

For Kamm to ignore that it was widely known that Japan was already militarily defeated and looking to surrender is either a lie or proof that he is an exceptionally lousy journalist.

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A Pimp for American Power

By Peterson, David at Jan 25, 2010 15:04 PM

 

Michael McGehee: Outstanding quote from Eisenhower (which, according to Wikiquote, derives from Eisenhower's Mandate for Change: 1953–1956: The White House Years (Doubleday, 1963), pp. 312-313).

Thanks for digging-it-up and sharing it.

In closing, you wonder: "For Kamm to ignore that it was widely known that Japan was already militarily defeated and looking to surrender is either a lie or proof that he is an exceptionally lousy journalist."

Oliver Kamm is an ideologically-driven writer.  He knows that in nuking Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the United States incinerated (let's say) 200,000 Japanese.  But what really matters in Kamm's world is that the United States (or The Allies, The West) was the perpetrator of this deliberately heinous act.  Therefore, it must be defended. 

Don't forget, either, that where Oliver Kamm is concerned, we're talking about a man who defends the cumulative atrocities (let's say between one and two million deaths) perpetrated against the Iraqis by his favorite two states since August 1990.

Plus, as Abbas Edalat and Mehrnaz Shahabi immediately pointed out in The Guardian (apologies for repeating myself): The "subtext" of Kamm's defense of the nuking of Hiroshima and Nagasaki "is plain: The same camp whose vocal endorsement led to the present catastrophe in Iraq are no hawkishly gazing at Iran.  The same absurd and dangerous logic that defends the nuclear atrocities of 1945 can no be used to support the pre-emptive use of nuclear weapons against Iran—the threat of which in turn makes the idea of a conventional attack appear more palatable."  ("Prospects of Armageddon," The Guardian, August 7, 2007.)

The man is a pimp for the violence and destruction of his side.


David Peterson
Chicago, USA

 

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