Obama at Hiroshima (longer version)

Here is a longer version of the op-ed I published at The New York Daily News arguing that President Obama should apologize for Hiroshima, with references to Catholic thought.

Once, in a talk to school students about sex, Archbishop Fulton J. Sheen said the following:

When, I wonder, did we in America ever get into this idea that freedom means having no boundaries and no limits? You know I think it began on the 6th of August 1945 at 8:15 am when we dropped the bomb on Hiroshima. That blotted out boundaries. The boundary of America that was the aid of nations, and the nations that were helped. It blotted out the boundary between life and death for the victims of nuclear incineration. Among them even the living were dead. It blotted out the boundary between the civilian and the military. And somehow or other, from that day on in our American life, we say we want no limits and no boundaries.

In dropping the bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Sheen reasoned, the U.S. had incurred a moral corruption that could not be easily contained.

As the first sitting U.S. president to visit Hiroshima, Barack Obama has insisted that he will not apologize for the bombings, doubtless aiming to ward off the domestic criticism that such contrition would garner.  Early in his presidency, his foes on the right lambasted him for an “apology tour” overseas.  A 2015 Pew Research Center Survey showed that 70% of Americans over 65 considered the atomic bombs justified, while 47% of 18- to 29-year-olds thought the same.

Would Obama be wrong to apologize, though?  When Archbishop Sheen called Hiroshima the destroyer of moral boundaries, he was speaking not from the left or the right side of the political spectrum, but rather from the heart of his church and from the standpoint of the natural law.  It is always wrong intentionally to kill an innocent person – that is, to murder.  And one should never adopt an immoral means to one’s end.  These are the precepts behind centuries-old laws of war, which have distinguished combatants, who may be targeted lawfully, from non-combatants, whose death one may never intend.

The deaths of non-combatants, the U.S. manifestly did intend when, for the first and only time in history, it used nuclear weapons.  Historians do not dispute that the primary reason for the bombs was to destroy the morale of Japan by killing its civilians, thereby hastening the end of the war.  Killing non-combatants – murder – was a means to an end.  The same reasoning had underlaid the United States’ obliteration bombing of Japanese cities, including Tokyo, as well as the Allies’ bombing of Hamburg and Dresden, Germany, earlier in the war.

Armchair analysts! will come the response.  Professors with their principles looking back 71 years later may well condemn the bombings but have considered little the pressures that President Harry Truman was under when he had to make his terrible decision of summer 1945.  Nor have the denizens of the faculty lounge come to grips with the number of lives of U.S. soldiers that would have been lost in a conventional invasion of mainland Japan, which some historians estimate to be 500,000, the charge will run.

The history of what did not happen, though, is always debatable.  Historical counterfactuals – what would have happened if X did not occur – are notoriously uncertain, perhaps just as uncertain as predictions about the future.  Even the assumption of a colossally bloody invasion of Japan rests upon the fixity of U.S. war aims such as unconditional surrender and the deposing of Japan’s Emperor.  Had war aims been relaxed, might an alternative peace have been possible?  The answers can only be speculative.

Far more certain is the moral law, which the Apostle Paul taught is inscribed on the heart.  If it is wrong without exception to kill civilians as the object of one’s action, then targeting the residents of Hiroshima and Nagasaki must be ruled out apart from how persuasive this or that historian’s counterfactuals may be.  The principle of non-combatant immunity is not the conclusion of a speculative university seminar but is rather a law that every soldier, including the commander in chief, is expected to know and follow.  General Curtis Le May, the architect of the campaign to bomb Japanese cities – no armchair analyst he – acknowledged as much when he quipped after the war that “if we’d lost the war, we’d all have been prosecuted as war criminals.”

While the arguments against the bomb can be rendered through reason, it is worth noting that those reasoning from the heart of the same tradition as Archbishop Sheen – the Catholic tradition – have reached the same conclusion that he did.  Courageously, theologian John Ford, S.J. wrote an article in 1944 – during the throes of the war – explaining why obliteration bombing could never pass moral muster.  Oxford philosopher Elizabeth Anscombe, a Catholic and one of the greatest philosophical minds of the twentieth century, refused to attend the ceremony when Oxford awarded President Truman an honorary degree, explaining her decision in a pointed essay.  The great document of the Second Vatican Council, Gaudium et Spes, the “magna carta” of modern Catholic social and political thought, condemned the bombing of cities outright, indenting the text, “[a]ny act of war aimed indiscriminately at the destruction of entire cities of extensive areas along with their population is a crime against God and man himself. It merits unequivocal and unhesitating condemnation.”  Pope John Paul II, in his encyclical of 1993, Veritatis Splendor, rejected the proportionalist method of moral reasoning that would replace moral absolutes with a weighing of goods – the kind of reasoning that is required to justify the bombings.  John Paul II spoke about Hiroshima directly when he said to the Japanese ambassador to the Holy See in 1999, ““The cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki are a message to all our contemporaries, inviting all the earth’s peoples to learn the lessons of history and to work for peace with ever greater determination. Indeed, they remind our contemporaries of all the crimes committed during the Second World War against civilian populations, crimes and acts of true genocide.”

War crimes leave wounds.  When a nation places its patriotism and its policy behind a gravely immoral deed and continues to justify this deed, it invites its citizens to commit further grave wrongs on the proportionalist rationale.  Not long after Hiroshima, the U.S. government rested the nation’s very defense on the threat to kill innocents in its policy of massive retaliation.  Again, Anscombe diagnosed the problem in an essay, “War and Murder,” which she concluded by writing, “[t]hose, therefore, who think they must be prepared to wage a war with Russia involving the deliberate massacre of cities, must be prepared to say to God: ‘We had to break your law, lest your Church fail. We could not obey your commandments, for we did not believe your promises.’”

In renouncing a moral wrong and inviting citizens to share in the contrition, a head of state can help to heal historical wounds and to nullify historical rationales for future crimes.  President Abraham Lincoln exercised such moral leadership when he called Americans – from both North and South – to repent for slavery.  More recently, President George H.W. Bush officially apologized to Japanese-Americans interned in World War II and President Bill Clinton apologized to Guatemalans for U.S. complicity in human rights violations during the Cold War.

The U.S. also has every right to ask Japan to apologize for its attack on Pearl Harbor and its atrocities during the war.  Such an apology from Japan may well be unlikely.  The apologies that Japanese prime ministers voiced in the 1990s for Japan’s crimes in the 1930s and 1940s provoked a nationalist backlash and public controversy as much as they did greater national contrition.

A U.S. president’s apology for the atomic bombs is also likely to provoke opposition from many American citizens, who will say that an apology for Hiroshima and Nagasaki breaks faith with the U.S. soldiers who fought and died in World War II.  An apology, though, does no dishonor to these soldiers, who fought a war whose cause was just.  Contrition would not detract in the slightest from the imperative of remembering and honoring their sacrifice.

Rather, were the lone superpower to apologize for its violations of the law of nations, it could set an example for other nations to follow.  It might deprive Japan’s latter day nationalists of some of their best arguments for rejecting contrition towards their own country’s history and make it easier for Japanese prime ministers to extend apologies to the U.S. as well as to China and Korea.  An apology for the dropping of the atomic bombs would elicit ire and fury in the short run, but with the passing of time may come to be seen as one of President Obama’s greatest acts of leadership.

China’s Coming Clampdown on Religion

The Chinese government’s demolition of churches and removal of crosses over the past couple of years are a run-up to a much more systematic, nationwide clampdown, a New York Times piece reports today.

Here is how the piece describes the coming change:

But people familiar with the government’s deliberations say the removal of crosses here has set the stage for a new, nationwide effort to more strictly regulate spiritual life in China, reflecting the tighter control of society favored by President Xi Jinping.

Photo

In an image from video, a Catholic church’s cross was toppled by a government worker in Zhejiang Province last year. Over the past two years, officials and residents said, the authorities have had crosses from 1,200 to 1,700 churches torn down.CreditDidi Tang/Associated Press

In a major speech on religious policy last month, Mr. Xi urged the ruling Communist Party to “resolutely guard against overseas infiltrations via religious means,” and he warned that religions in China must “Sinicize,” or become Chinese. The instructions reflect the government’s longstanding fear that Christianity could undermine the party’s authority. Many human rights lawyers in China are Christians, and many dissidents have said they are influenced by the idea that rights are God-given.

In recent decades, the party had tolerated a religious renaissance in China, allowing most Chinese to worship as they chose and even encouraging the construction of churches, mosques and temples, despite regular crackdowns on unregistered congregations and banned spiritual groups such as Falun Gong.

Hundreds of millions of people have embraced the nation’s major faiths: Buddhism, Taoism, Islam and Christianity. There are now about 60 million Christians in China. Many attend churches registered with the government, but at least half worship in unregistered churches, often with local authorities looking the other way.

But Mr. Xi’s decision to convene a “religious affairs work conference” last month — the first such leadership meeting in 15 years — suggested that he was unhappy with some of these policies. People familiar with the party’s discussions say it intends to apply some lessons from the campaign in Zhejiang to rein in religious groups across the country.

Bracing news.

 

Religious Freedom Is For Muslims

This blog has given much attention to the religious freedom of Christians.  A human right, religious freedom is for everyone.  Dignitatis Humanae, the Second Vatican Council’s Declaration on Religious Liberty — whose 50th anniversary was celebrated in December in Rome at the conference of Under Caesar’s Sword — teaches that religious freedom arises from human dignity.

Today, the religious freedom of Muslims merits attention.  U.S. politicians direct angry rhetoric against Muslims for political gain.  Donald Trump has called for an end to Muslim immigration into the United States.  He extolled an early twentieth century incident where an American general summarily executed Muslim prisoners in the Philippines with bullets “dipped in pigs’ blood.”  31 governors have refused to allow Syrian refugees into their state, often appealing to anti-Muslim sentiment.  In 2009, Tennessee residents sought to block the building of a mosque in Murfreesboro, Tennessee on the grounds that Islam is a violent philosophy, not a religion (while others supported the Mosque).  The list goes on.

Two recent pieces are worth reading on this issue.  One is by Chad Bauman, professor of religion at Butler University in Indianapolis, one of our Under Caesar’s Sword scholars, and an expert on the religious liberty of Christians in India.  Writing for Religion Dispatches, he recounts an incident at a backpacker’s hostel where a Hindu proprietor, seeking to elicit solidarity, said to him and his friends, “Americans hate Muslims, too.”

Bauman explains:

Still today, when I travel in India, Hindus presupposing my agreement frequently make off-handed and derogatory comments about their Muslim neighbors. For those concerned about the effectiveness of the United States’ advocacy for religious freedom around the world, the perception that “Americans hate Muslims, too” should be a matter of great concern.

As I have written elsewhere, India’s Christians suffer from various forms of social and legal discrimination, and are vandalized, kidnapped, or attacked (occasionally even fatally) about 250-350 times a year. This is a serious problem, and one deserving international approbation. However, the repression and persecution of India’s Christians pales in comparison to that of its Muslim minority.

The perception that “Americans hate Muslims, too” helps to feed the view that American advocacy of religious freedom is little more than Christian advocacy:

In fact, Indians are also widely aware of the problem of hate crimes committed against Muslims in America, where, according to FBI statistics, and proportional to the respective national populations, they are roughly as common as attacks on Christians in India. (One of the reasons that this problem is of particular interest in India, of course, is that those intending to attack Muslims in America often mistakenly attack Indian American Sikhs or Hindus, as reported in this Times of India story.)

All of this, of course, simply serves to confirm the impression of many Indians that “Americans hate Muslims, too,” and that our advocacy for religious freedom is really just Christian advocacy. Overcoming this impression, so that the United States might become a more effective, credible advocate for religious freedom in India will require consistent, intentional work.

In my view, it is worth stressing that U.S. religious freedom policy is not just for Christians. By law and in practice, the U.S. government offices that promote religious freedom cover all religions, everywhere, and do a remarkably thorough job of it.  The annual reports of the U.S. State Department Office of International Religious Freedom and of the United States Commission on International Religious Freedom are the best reports of international religious persecution and discrimination that one will find anywhere.  Bauman’s point is well taken.  For the U.S. to merit an international reputation that matches the balance of policy, it must publicly denounce the curtailment of the religious freedom of Muslims — and of everyone — with focused effort.

The other piece, by Laurie Goodstein in yesterday’s New York Times, details the efforts of imams in the West to teach a theology that counters that of ISIS.  At a time when so much attention is focused on ISIS and when such attention reinforces a view held by many that Islam is hard-wired for violence and intolerance, the piece documents intensive and courageous efforts by imams to offer a different voice.  The imams have suffered death threats from ISIS:

It is a religious rumble that barely makes headlines in the secular West since it is carried out at mosques and Islamic conferences and over social media.The

Islamic State, however, has taken notice.

The group recently threatened the lives of 11 Muslim imams and scholars in the West, calling them “apostates” who should be killed. The recent issue of the Islamic State’s online propaganda magazine, Dabiq, called them “obligatory targets,” and it said that supporters should use any weapons on hand to “make an example of them.”

The danger is real enough that the F.B.I. has contacted some of those named in the Islamic State’s magazine “to assist them in taking proper steps to ensure their safety,” said Andrew Ames, a spokesman for the F.B.I.’s field office in Washington.

It is critical that we hear all Muslim voices and encourage those who take risks for peace.  To do so will not hurt, but rather will give credibility to, the cause of persecuted Christians.  And, on account of human dignity, it is just the right thing to do.

 

Religious Freedom As Endangered as Ever, Says New Annual Report

The United States Commission on International Religious Freedom has just issued its new annual report, dated April 2016.  See here.  Its first six pages are a colorful and stark account of the vast endangerment of religious freedom around the world.  It covers repression against people of a wide variety of religions committed by governments and non-state actors of a wide variety of religions.  One of the pernicious myths that the report puts to rest is that religious freedom is little more than a manifestation of the new “cold war” aka “clash of civilizations” between the Christian West and a stylized Muslim enemy.  Violations of the religious freedom of Muslims themselves are widespread, the report shows, sometimes at the hands of other Muslims, sometimes at the hands of secular governments, sometimes at the hands of governments of other religions.

Sharp Video on Religious Freedom

The United States Conference of Catholic Bishops has come out with a new video on religious freedom.  It stars Tom Farr, Director of the Religious Freedom Program at the Berkley Center at Georgetown, a partner in the Under Caesar’s Sword project with Notre Dame, as well as my colleague here at Notre Dame, Rick Garnett of the Law School.  It is short, sharply made, and worth watching.

Video Report of Under Caesar’s Sword Rome Conference

I am pleased to share this video report of the conference Under Caesar’s Sword: Christian Response to Persecution.  It’s 12 minutes and is on Vimeo.  I present it on behalf of the conference’s two hosts, the Center for Civil and Human Rights at the University of Notre Dame and the Religious Freedom Project at the Berkley Center for Religion, Peace, and World Affairs, Georgetown University.

Kerry Designates Christians, Yazidis and Shia Muslims as Genocide Victims

Today Secretary of State John Kerry designated ISIS’s violence against Christians, Yazidis, and Shia Muslims as genocide.  Nina Shea of the Hudson Institute captures it well:

Secretary of State John Kerry officially recognized that ISIS is waging genocide against Christians, Yazidis, and Shiites in the areas under its control. This is only the second time the U.S. government has condemned an ongoing genocide: In 2004, Secretary of State Colin Powell designated what was going in Darfur as genocide. And today’s declaration, as I wrote yesterday, almost didn’t happen — owing to resistance from some quarters. Kerry’s announcement was a surprise, one that defied deliberately lowered expectations. There was a State Department notice just yesterday that any such designation required longer deliberation and wouldn’t be made in time to meet the March 17 congressionally mandated deadline. But at 9 a.m. Eastern, Secretary of State Kerry took to the podium and asserted: “In my judgment, Daesh is responsible for genocide against groups in areas under its control, including Yazidis, Christians, and Shia Muslims. Daesh is genocidal by self-proclamation, by ideology, and by actions — in what it says, what it believes, and what it does.” This official American genocide designation is a critically important step. Genocide is internationally recognized as the most heinous human-rights offense. Legally, it is known as the “crime of crimes.” And while the Genocide Convention does not prescribe specific action to “prevent and protect” against genocide, the conscience does. RELATED: Witnessing the Genocide in Iraq This designation will not only lift the morale of these shattered religious groups, it also has the potential of serving justice through the prosecution of those who aid and abet ISIS as fighters, cyber recruiters, financiers, arms suppliers, and artifact smugglers.

Other good pieces on why the designation is rightly deserved have come out in the past couple of days by Anne Corkery and Kirsten Powers.

Memo to State: Christians are Suffering Genocide, Too

Christians in the Middle East are suffering genocide.  This is the compelling conclusion of a report issued this past Thursday by the Knights of Columbus, written in collaboration with In Defense of Christians.  The report arrives on the eve of a deadline for the U.S. State Department to issue a finding about whether ISIS is committing genocide and which groups are victims.  This past October, officials at State suggested that their department might make a genocide determination on behalf of Yazidis but not of Christians.

Yazidis are suffering genocide, no doubt about it.  So are Christians, though: the Knights report leaves little doubt about this.  Intrepid journalist John Allen agrees.  The same conclusion has been voiced by Pope Francis, the United States Commission on Religious Freedom, the European Parliament, the Government of Iraq, the governing authority of Kurdistan, German Chancellor Angela Merkl, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, and the office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights.  Let’s hope Secretary of State John Kerry joins his voice to this chorus.

But would a genocide determination change U.S. policy?  Would a resolution declaring genocide being passed by the House of Representatives make a difference?  John Allen posts again today on what real hope for genocide victims would look like.

 

 

Donald the Dictator: Take Note, Catholics

Following up on my last post on Donald Trump’s dictatorial inclination, I appreciated The Washington Post‘s Dana Milbank’s piece voicing the same theme.  I was also happy to see a common letter signed by prominent Catholics urging Catholics not to vote for Trump, citing his promises to carry our torture and reprisals against terrorists’ families.  But a poll of Michigan voters, where primaries are being held today, shows Catholic Republicans favoring Trump disproportionately.  Let’s hope they will read the letter and listen to their church.