John Yoo Distorts History on Nuclear Weapons Authorities
A few political blogs have noted John Yoo, the guy who made torture legal for the Bush administration, also has some thoughts about nuclear weapons.
Look at the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. … Could Congress tell President Truman that he couldn’t use a nuclear bomb in Japan, even though Truman thought in good faith he was saving millions of Americans and Japanese lives? … My only point is that the government places those decisions in the President, and if the Congress doesn’t like it they can cut off funds for it or they can impeach him.
Any sane review of Truman's decision to use the atomic bomb in 1945 will show that Truman recognized that plans to use the device were already in motion, and he in fact was very deliberate about consulting with scientists, the military, State Dept, and Congress before making the heavy decision to drop the bomb. Yes, this is a controversial topic, but let's not suggest that Truman made a unilateral decision based on his executive authority to conduct this action. And in fact, one of the first things Truman did after dropping the bomb was to tell Congress that it was up to them to create an Atomic Energy Commission and to take over responsibility for nuclear weapons.
Although the idea of the president hitting the red button to launch a nuclear strike is popular for movies, the significant impact that such a decision would entail ensures make one hope that this is not a unilateral decision, unless Russian nukes are inbound and our government leadership has only minutes to decide whether to retaliate in kind. So I wonder what Professor Yoo thinks about President Ronald Reagan's view on nuclear weapons?
“A nuclear war cannot be won and must never be fought. The only value in our two nations possessing nuclear weapons is to make sure they will never be used. But then would it not be better to do away with them entirely?”
President Reagan in his 1984 State of the Union address.
UPDATE: Good point by bloglogger, Yoo couldn't even get the numbers right. The proposed US invasion force was numbered in the low hundreds of thousands, not to mention the Japanese who would have resisted the landings on Japan. Certainly it was not millions of Americans and Japanese lives at stake.
UPDATE 2: Commenter John Purdue and others are convincing me that the president does in fact have the power to unilaterally pop a nuke. Let me suggest that the ethical thing that the president would do is to consult with his staff and Congressional leaders before unilaterally causing a pre-emptive strike. And I still wonder as to his interpretation of Truman's actions... Thanks commenters for the discussion.
it discusses how Truman really had no choice because the secret apparatus that was created to test and produce the bomb was so intense that there was never really any choice. Even after Germany (the intended target) already surrendered.
The question is not "did Truman have a right to do it"
The question is "was the Presidents order defined as a war crime?"
The only relevant question in all this rhetorical nonsense is: "does the President have the power to order war crimes?"
But after the Pacific campaigns march north. All the way into Okinawa. And the loss of American lives. Some as high as a few thousand in the first days.
On Iwo Jima, the kia's total of US troops was 6821
The injured was 19,217. And this was out of a total of 100k US troops. The battle lasted 35 days.
Okinawa. Kia's were 12,513.
The injured were 38,916.
Non combat related losses were 33,096
This lasted 82 days.
I think invading the home islands of Japan would have been disastrous. We have to remember what was going on back then.
And we have to remember the competition with Russia for the power grab.
I'm not condoning the use of the bomb on the Japanese.
I'm just trying to put this in a context. I guess we'll never know.
Being that none of us were there. That none of us would have to be the ones who would be landing on Japan with a war to fight.
The speculation (IIRC) at the time was a projected loss of over 1/4 of a million American lives would be needed to take Japan.
I do know this. I wouldn't want to be in that number.
What is your conceptual, continuity?
The bulk of the KIAs in Okinawa were Navy personnel killed by kamikazes. A large number of ships were sunk by these crude "cruise missiles."
The
Kamikazes didn't do as much damage and death as they were reported to have done.What I'm referring to is the battles on the islands. But yes, the Divine Wind did reek havoc. It was primarily used as a device of terror. Much like today's suicide bombers in Central Asia.What is your conceptual, continuity?
US Navy losses were.At sea 368 Allied ships (including 120 amphibious craft) were damaged while another 28, including 15 amphibious ships and 12 destroyers were sunk during the Okinawa campaign. The U.S. Navy's dead exceeded its wounded with 4,907 killed and 4,874 wounded, primarily from kamikaze attacks.[16] The Japanese lost 16 ships sunk, including the enormous battleship Yamato.
What is your conceptual, continuity?
I hate to say it, but Truman made the right decision.
What is your conceptual, continuity?
A lot of the history I've read concludes that the Japanese were finally ready to surrender. Especially with the Russians coming into the war. If I recall the sticking point was that the Japanese wanted to keep the emperor, which we let them do anyway.
However, hindsight is 20/20. As I said above I recognize how fanatical the Japanese military was and how little they cared about taking their civilian population with them. I also think its hard to appreciate the mind set of a country at war the way the US was then. My father was a sailor in the Pacific. He never had any doubts that Truman did the right thing.
I mean yes it inspired terror in the sailors, marines, etc. but to me a terror weapon is one that targets civilians. The Kamikazes were always used against military targets. The major reason was that the pilots that the Japanese had left were completely untrained. Also, the US anti-aircraft weapons, especially proximity fuses, and Combat Air Patrol were so improved that the Japanese pilots had no chance to get through using conventional bombing or torpedo attacks.
The pacific campaigns march north.
14,000 US troops were retired due to nervous breakdowns. Just from Okinawa alone.
What is your conceptual, continuity?
While you have a head of steam on you should read "Day One" by Peter Wyden. It is the history of the Manhattan Project and the dropping of the two bombs in WWII. Wyden is the late father of Sen. Ron Wyden of Oregon.
"Even after Germany (the intended target) already surrendered."
This is what scares the crap out of me. If we had nuked the Nazis how much of central Europe would we have irradiated? Denmark, Poland, Spain, the Swiss, the Alps, the Balkans...Just would have depended of the prevailing winds on the particular day we chose and who we were mad at I suppose. This is why it is so horrendously comical when India and Pakistan, or Isreal and a Muslim state start talking about tossing nukes at each other.
How did that old Tom Lehrer song go..."oh we'll all go together when we go. All suffused in an incandescent glow. When the world becomes Uranius, we will all go simultaneous, There'll be nobody left to bar the door." Or something like that.
events, that's for sure.
“Why would anyone with a functioning brain believe this guy?”
Some guy with an eating disorder
Thanks for that. I think we share the same love of dark humor.
The fallout wouldn't have been close to Chernobyl. The radioactive isotopes released at Hiroshima and Nagasaki remained relatively localized.
Hypothetically, Little Boy is dropped on Dresden (assuming it hadn't been hit by the firebombing in Feb. of '45, it would have been, like Hiroshima and Nagasaki at the time they were A-bombed, a mostly unharmed city), the prevailing winds might have caused fallout in northern Czechoslovakia and/or western Poland, but only because of the city's proximity to the borders. A drop on Berlin might have brought some fallout to what's now northwestern Poland. But, again, in either case, not much fallout.
Don't try to confuse the issue with half-truths and gorilla dust.
"Not much fallout..." Well, I am so relieved...and only a bit of Cechoslovakia and western Poland. Now that is assuming you might know what you are talking about. I am glad the films and pictures of Nagasaki and Hiroshima's devastation showed a "mostly unharmed city." Comments like this cause me to not trust your analysis.
Actually, Andy K's analysis sounds reasonable. I think you may have misread his point; “a mostly unharmed city” referred to the fact that Hiroshima/Nagasaki hadn’t been firebombed previously, unlike most other Japanese cities (Google “Tokyo firebombing” and check out the Wikipedia article). Also, compared to modern weapons, the ones used in Hiroshima and Nagasaki were low yield (Google “Nagasaki atomic bomb yield” and check out the Wikipedia article that has a table of various bomb yields).
Swiss6 and AndyK.
On re-reading Andy's comments I did indeed misread his point and appreciate your pointing this out to me. My apologies Andy.Thanks Swiss6.
And thank you, Swiss6, for clarifying that. That's exactly what I was trying to say. I had to run to work as soon as I hit enter.
One other point: Hiroshima and Nagasaki were chosen as targets because they hadn't been hit by firebombing raids. The idea was to show the absolute devastation that those new weapons could wreak.
Don't try to confuse the issue with half-truths and gorilla dust.
I didn't follow that at all. What does the "the secret apparatus that was created to test and produce the bomb" have to do with it? (Not saying it isn't true I just don't follow the argument)
I think in retrospect Truman didn't have to bomb it but I also think people on the left often overlook that it wasn't a black and white decision. The Japanese military were the most fanatic enemy we've ever faced. Their Bushido culture made it an honor to die for the emperor and a shame worse than death to surrender and the worst shame imaginable to surrender, far worse than death.
should be immortalized by naming something in his honor. Like an airport or something.
“Why would anyone with a functioning brain believe this guy?”
Some guy with an eating disorder
As a matter of fact, I only refer to the Washington National Airport by its former name (I live in the DC region). The Metro and DC authorities may have to call it after Ronnie Raygun, but I don't.
And whitey's on the moon.
“Why would anyone with a functioning brain believe this guy?”
Some guy with an eating disorder
Whoever would have thunk a few people with smaller bombs would become a bigger threat than MAD?
..that he really shouldn't be allowed to make any decisions more significant than "paper or plastic?" and "would you like fries with that?"
"In theory theory and practice are alike. In practice they are very different."
If God didn't want us to nuke people, why would he have given us nukes?
God just gave us the component atoms.
Musta been early on Monday because they were the building blocks for oceans, paramecia, and more complicated stuff.
Did he think up the days of the week before he knew what he was going to make the next day?
“Why would anyone with a functioning brain believe this guy?”
Some guy with an eating disorder
You would think that he would have thought of a special name for the day he made atoms. You know like Atomicday or Boomday or Nukemday or Stuffeverythingismadeofday.
Say what you mean. Mean what you say. But don't say it mean.
.
“Why would anyone with a functioning brain believe this guy?”
Some guy with an eating disorder
On Matterdays I touch myself to remind me of me.
What did you expect from a Christian?
Intellectual dishonesty....it's the American way.
Vote GOP and move forward to the 18th Century.
He's such a rude and clueless pig.
Goebbels had the decency to off himself.
It's called the American Dream because you have to be asleep to believe it.
-George Carlin
You have to some degree of self respect to have the class to off urself.
Vote GOP and move forward to the 18th Century.
that.
“Why would anyone with a functioning brain believe this guy?”
Some guy with an eating disorder
What was that thing about WMDs again?
This man has no heart.
Say what you mean. Mean what you say. But don't say it mean.
Man Tin Yoo?
“Why would anyone with a functioning brain believe this guy?”
Some guy with an eating disorder
Have you been drinking?
Say what you mean. Mean what you say. But don't say it mean.
but I wasn't going to imagine you missed Toto too.
"In The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, Dorothy Gale befriends the Tin Woodman and he follows her to the Emerald City to get a heart from The Wizard of Oz."
“Why would anyone with a functioning brain believe this guy?”
Some guy with an eating disorder
Oh, okay. Maybe I should be drinking.
Say what you mean. Mean what you say. But don't say it mean.
Or claim a degree. Like our departed friend Tyler.
“Why would anyone with a functioning brain believe this guy?”
Some guy with an eating disorder
What happened to Tyler? Did he run out of insults to toss your way?
Say what you mean. Mean what you say. But don't say it mean.
had gained employment overseas. He did not specify where. Like the nice lady Peggy, who wrote speeches for Reagan says, it would be irresponsible not to speculate. I specualte it is where doctors perform surgery dangerously, without the safety of internets.
“Why would anyone with a functioning brain believe this guy?”
Some guy with an eating disorder
Yoo is clooless.
Yoo...a capitalist success.
In America, crime does pay.
Vote GOP and move forward to the 18th Century.
criminal background or credit history checks.
“Why would anyone with a functioning brain believe this guy?”
Some guy with an eating disorder
........ that people as reprehensible and as thoroughly discredited as Yoo, Bolton, Cheney or Ollie North are consistently sought out for their "wisdom"? We are doomed.
two words:
corporate
media
if they always referred to him as "Cheeeney's Torture Lawyer."
Truman only consulted Jimmy Byrnes and never really considered not dropping the bomb. Stimson was pretty much cut out of the loop except on target selection where he managed to save Kyoto from the Army. It was their first choice. I heartily recommend The Making of the Atomic Bomb. It is fascinating.
Hasa Diga Eebowai
And then he dropped them.
“Why would anyone with a functioning brain believe this guy?”
Some guy with an eating disorder
there were only three weapons available at the time due to a shortage of polonium for the initiators. So Truman had three. The third didn't descend.
Hasa Diga Eebowai
He still had one stored up inside! Take a lesson Obama.
“Why would anyone with a functioning brain believe this guy?”
Some guy with an eating disorder
If you want to try to justify something horrid, call Yoo, he's your man. Just ask george bush.
Say what you mean. Mean what you say. But don't say it mean.
. . . from Congress?
Corruption favors the wealthy.
We don't need no stinkin decaration of war.
Now we might be attacked unprovoked without warning.
“Why would anyone with a functioning brain believe this guy?”
Some guy with an eating disorder
Um, everyone does remember that we were actually in an official state of war, as in the Congress actually did their constitutional duty by declaring war. I think dropping the A bomb on an enemy with which we were officially and legally at war is quite a bit different then the POTUS just deciding at any old time to use nuclear weapons, which is, I believe, the position Yoo is taking.
And, no, the war on terror doesn't count.
I don't think it would take a hell of a lot for a Presiden Cheney to hit the red button. He would say later that he was actually aiming at a flock of geese.
Say what you mean. Mean what you say. But don't say it mean.
To eat with potatoes and tomatoes and a bowl of clamatoe soup.
In the privacy of his man sized safe in a place the location of which has been deferred five times due to other careeer plans and a couple of girls.
“Why would anyone with a functioning brain believe this guy?”
Some guy with an eating disorder
with large flying objects, sometimes the geese bring down the large flying object.
That was also in the good 'ol days when Congress held the soul authority to declare war against another country. Congress abdicated that authority with the War Powers Act giving the President (or Vice President)the authority to declare a perpetual Orwellian war against the emotion terror.
John Yoo has no heart. Completely true.
But, unfortunately, he does a solid, if completely unethical, reading of the law. The only public figure that could best him would be David Attington (Cheney's attorney). It is as if Goebbels was lecturing on Constitutional Law.
An excellent discussion of presidential power regarding the bomb that backs up Yoo can be found in this transcript of Terry Gross' Fresh Air where she interviewed Prof. Gary Willis, author of "Bomb Power: The Modern Presidency and the National Security State." Here is the link:
http://weblogs.npr.org/templates/transcript/t...
Unfortunately, Yoo is legally correct. The President can drop the bomb on anyone at any time without Congressional consent, whether the Department of Energy has congressional oversight or not. The Executive Office at this moment has this power and this specific power has not yet been checked. If this action were to be taken, there is minimal chance that legal action could or would be taken against the Executive Office or the personnel attached to it, whether impeachment, criminal, or civil. Rather than be tried ex post facto, it would be checked at the moment and any future action would be held accountable.
Instead, if the bomb were dropped on the president's order alone and a check was called for by another branch then this power may be taken away at that time, but it is clear that the "red button" scenario from the Cold War continues to provide the Executive Office with this power.
Yoo, in his many renderings, has provided solid legal rationals for many of the Bush Administration's more disturbing actions, and to say that he distorts the history of nuclear weapons authorities is incorrect. True, Truman was washed away with the tide when he dropped the bomb. Also true that Reagan didn't think the bomb could ever be an answer. But using these examples as proof that Yoo is wrong on the President's out-sized authority to begin war, nuclear or other, is not germane to the argument itself. Instead, it should be argued that the Executive retains the power, but the use of that power remains unethical.
Following upon this is the finding on John Yoo: He is profoundly unethical. Again, I stated above that his readings of the law are solid, but that does not mean they are ethically sound. US case law could be twisted to support waterboarding and torture . It could probably even be twisted to support genocide and execution camps on US soil. But that does not mean that it should be done.
At some point, the rule of ethics enters the determinations of an attorney when the law is read. When ethical considerations fail to enter deliberations that is when you are disbarred. At the least, this is what should have happened to Yoo.
Interjected cold, clear facts to a topic of a serious nature. You speak intelligently of ethics, then engage in dangerously thoughtful unthreadsmanlike conduct.
“Why would anyone with a functioning brain believe this guy?”
Some guy with an eating disorder
I disagree, however, that Yoo's writings were unethical but legally sound. The reason Yoo's writings were unethical is precisely because they were so legally unsound.
Yoo ignored clear and unambiguous precedent including the post WWII war crimes trials and domestic precedent wherein the Reagan Justice Department prosecuted and convicted police officers for torture in their use of the water cure.
While simultaneously ignoring obvious precedent, Yoo twisted existing precedent to declare a scope of unlimited executive power that is simply not legally permitted by obvious (and similarly ignored) precedent.
In Yoo's position at the OLC, his memoranda were not to be advocacy pieces for a particular position, but instead were to be neutral statements of what the law required. He obviously failed in that duty.
However, even as an advocate, Yoo went far beyond the boundaries permitted an attorney. An attorney is required to zealously represented a client, but that attorney is not permitted to misstate or mislead on the law. In some instances, this can be a difficult distinction to make, but not here.
Regarding the dropping of a nuke. I only repeat my contention that it is illegal without a congressional Declaration of War.
Thanks again for the post.
Corruption favors the wealthy.
The President cannot order the use of nuclear weapons, he can only authorise the release of those weapons when requested to by the Joint Chiefs of Staff.
Cheney(s), Dubya, Rice, Rumsfeld, this sick fuck Yoo, etc. don't give a shit about anything but saving their asses and insulting the Hell out of everyone.
. . . that Truman was considering the lives of "millions." Truman started using the millions figure in his autobiography. At the time, the Allied casualty estimates were under 50,000 for an invasion, and he had little idea of the number of civilians the bomb would actually kill. The enormity of his crime made him inflate that casualty estimate again and again in the years following the war.
At the time the bombs were dropped, the Japanese had been trying to surrender but were being ignored. They were dropped anyway to impress the Russians. Truman thought it was the only option, but even that motivation was a lie foisted on him by his generals. They told Truman that the Russians were close to having a bomb. That's what really happened.
Groves assumed that by getting a lock on the world's major sources of uranium that the Russians were at least a decade behind. He was wrong, of course. The Japanese were, as you say trying to negotiate a peace but it was hardly a surrender and the allies had already committed to unconditional surrender. In the final treaty the surrender was not unconditional and Hirohito was permitted his prerogatives.
Hasa Diga Eebowai
The behavior of the Japanese before Pearl.
If my memory serves me correctly, they were stalling and talking peace with the US before the attack.
What is your conceptual, continuity?
What do you base your information on? I read "Day One" by Peter Wyden and there was no mention of any of this. Initial casualty assessments for Operation Coronet was in excess of 500,000 for the Allies. The invasion point was to be the Plains of Honshu. Civilian deaths for the Japanese were estimated to be in excess of 750,000. And, they were not expected to give any quarter. Please remember, when Japan surrendered, she had more than a million men under arms just in her Army.
wish to degrade their program by employing a POS like Yoo? Is it some kind of plot?
me-oww!
I've been working through the OPR Report from 7/29/09 (the 3/4 that isn't redacted, anyway..). Even to a non-lawyer, Yoo's utterly craptacular, legalistic sophistry is hard to bear. It's written at a high school level of reasoning (if that!). Only someone at the intellectual level of Fredo Gonzalez would fail to be deeply shamed at producing such a horrendous series of opinions - and in support of what?! To read that "[we] conclude that Yoo put his desire to accommodate his client above his obligation to provide thorough, objective and candid legal advice, and that he therefore committed intentional professional misconduct" is bad enough. To work through the detailed, carefully documented evidence for that conclusion (and with the understanding that much of the evidence had been "lost", and many of the interviewees were 'restrained' in their responses), and then realize that Mr. Obama's man has now declared that Yoo and Bybee were merely a bit confused, is to despair. And remember that this was all done to allow Cheney, through Addington, to commit the US to a course of essentially unbridled Presidential power, which included the power to have ordered in his name what the rest of the world (and formerly the US) regard as the most terrible things that can be done. Cheney at least is a monster; Yoo hardly even measures up as a monster's sycophant. Renfrew would rightfully despise him.
Notice how you never see John Yoo and Imelda Marcos in the same place?
Yoo is a nasty man who, like all neocons, uses history a lot but who doesn't use a lot of history -- because, like all neocons, he doesn't know a lot of history.
That, however, does not make him -- at least on the face of it -- empirically wrong.
Congress' legislative oversight on the Cabinet secretariats does not confer on Congress an inherent veto over Executive decisions except, as Yoo and other right-wingers like to point out, by voting to cut off funding -- and even then that really only takes effect in the next fiscal year, since (especially in 1945) most wars don't run on continuing resolutions like Iraq has done.
Jason writes that Truman consulted with Congress, among others, on the A-bomb decisions. If you re-read the linked article, though, you see that's not quite the case -- the Congressional consultations were over the forthcoming direction of the war, the question of Soviet intervention in the Japanese war, and on an invasion of the Japanese home islands. Truman only consulted with his own (i.e., Executive branch) people on the bomb itself -- the Special Committee, the War and Navy Departments, Jimmy Byrnes, and the like.
The uniqueness of the atomic bomb did not confer on Congress additional war powers; Congress is empowered by Article I, Section 8, of the Constitution to make laws regarding the military (i.e., the Uniform Code of Military Justice); to provide funds for the military; to provide for a standardized training regimen for the Militia (part of its authority to regulate the laws of the military) -- but the Constitution confers on Congress no operational authority. That is the Commander-in-Chief power.
But what about declaring war? By most analyses, it isn't even clear that the "declaration of war" actually exists as an obligation of states. And many legal scholars in the past made the argument that the function of the declaration of war was to put your own society on notice that new demands would be made of them.
Historically, the declaration of war originated in Roman times as a religious ceremony marking the transition of the Republic from a state of peace to a state of war. In the Medieval period it was a function of the chivalric code but, and this is something that got lost in translation, it was a challenge -- the diplomatic equivalent of slapping one's glove across the face. [So Yoo, et al., would likely argue that, when Bush gave Saddam & Sons 'till sundown to hi-tail it outta town yeehaw, and Congress voted to authorize force, the challenge had been made and endorsed.]
By the 18th-century, contemporary legal scholars viewed the declaration of war as an honorable thing to do -- but not an obligatory (i.e., "legal") thing to do. Fewer than 10% of wars between 1700 and 1900 were declared, for example.
The idea of an obligatory declaration came back into discussion at the Second Hague Conference in 1907; there, however, the function was largely to notify powers not party to the conflict that war was coming. Arguably that function no longer needs apply since there is global communications -- no one could possibly not know that a war was coming.
The important point, as Eagleton wrote in "The Form and Function of the Declaration of War" (32 Am.J.Int'l.Law 19 (1938)), is that we have no answer for whether the substantive meaning of the absence of a declaration of war is that a war is illegal or that it is not a war (there having been no statement that says it is).
the war in Iraq is illegal since it is a war of aggression.
"the president does in fact have the power to unilaterally pop a nuke"
then in theory the Constitution gives We the People the power to pop a nuke on the President.
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