I deal with the consequences of what you posted.
What you say would very likely result in things you're not anticipating.
This means that your position is "really weak" due to lack of consideration.
-
Welcome to Religious Forums, a friendly forum to discuss all religions in a friendly surrounding.
Your voice is missing! You will need to register to get access to the following site features:- Reply to discussions and create your own threads.
- Our modern chat room. No add-ons or extensions required, just login and start chatting!
- Access to private conversations with other members.
We hope to see you as a part of our community soon!
Overly Glorified or Idealized Historical Figures
- Thread starter Debater Slayer
- Start date
What you say would very likely result in things you're not anticipating.
This means that your position is "really weak" due to lack of consideration.
I don't find your premises cromulent either.
Don't forget that I too opposed the invasion of Iraq & Afghanistan.
You must realize that those invasions were different for USA from
waging war against Japan. To treat them as equivalent is wrong.
The Kilted Heathen
Crow FreyjasmaðR
No, you really aren't. You've thus far misrepresented what I've said, opting with this narrative that I suggested the US told Japan "You're not allowed to surrender until we commit this atrocity", you're actively ignoring historical documentation that the war crime was not popular even among US officials and was not necessary, and now you're trying to frame our condemnation of the active slaughter of an estimated 200,000 innocent people as "Oh, well then you're in favor of our soldiers dying in land invasions!" Which is also actively ignoring that such action was not necessary to end the war either.
Should I estimate within how many posts you throw out the "you're not interesting enough" dismissal?
An important issue is what the ends are.
Putin invading Ukraine for the purpose of conquest
is vastly different from USA warring with Japan to
stop its conquest in the Pacific.
As for the "ends", the tools of war are terrible things. What
matters is their usage resulting in an outcome that's better
than not using them. We can argue about which tools are
right or wrong, eg, frangible bullets vs ball ammo, nuclear
weapons vs firestorms, dirty bombs vs neutron bombs,
justifiable level of civilian deaths.
Terrible things will be done so as to win....or to not lose.
We can only strive to minimize the carnage toward that end.
The tools of war will also vary with the plight of the defender,
ie, if one's non-existence looms nigh, then more extreme
tools will be employed, with arguable morality. If one is
relatively powerless against a larger foe, then tools such
as terrorism will be employed...even though we call them
immoral, it's what happens in such circumstances.
Morality is highly relative.
The reality of war is that the ends do justify the means
to varying degrees, depending upon circumstances.
Putin's proffered reasons for invading Ukraine are
dishonest, so he needs no pretext based upon anything
USA did. He will do what he will do.
In our age, with the benefit of hindsight, I favor using
nuclear weapons solely as a threat, ie, the MAD strategy.
But during WW2, I see different circumstances for the
decision to use nuclear weapons.
Last edited:
I've tried to be accurate.
Your quotes attributed to me aren't.
We must agree to disagree about the usefulness
(not necessity, as you say) of the 2 bombs.
The Kilted Heathen
Crow FreyjasmaðR
I absolutely doubt that.
No, we must not. You are wrong in that it was useful in that it is a historical fact that Japan's surrender was underway. It was an inevitability before the US decided to make our atrocious power move, and it save exactly zero lives.
Well bless your heart.
The Kilted Heathen
Crow FreyjasmaðR
If you've attempted to be accurate, Revolting, you would acknowledge and address the historical facts, rather than build up an army of strawmen to knock down.
Consider that you aren't sole owner of The Truth.
Your posts aren't as cogent or clear as you believe.
More reason....less passion.
The Kilted Heathen
Crow FreyjasmaðR
Oh, and this tired bit of coal. Here you are, again; all facts, zero emotion.
Augustus
…
The problem with something like this is that the effort needed to contextualise is exponentially higher than providing an out of context quote or two and saying this meant Churchill was a hateful and murderous racist.
The first thing to note is that Churchill would make hyperbolic and offensive statements he didn't really mean. The quotes can certainly be read, out of context, as hateful statements, but they were significantly tongue in cheek from someone with a bit of a petulant and juvenile temper and sense of humour. Most such comments are made in response to specific people in specific situations yet are presented as general statements of hate:
For example:
“When Butler argued that the Raj had always stood for
Indian unity, Churchill replied, ‘Well, if our poor troops have to be
kept in a sweltering, syphilitic climate for the sake of your precious
unity, I’d rather see them have a good civil war.’ At this, [his wife] Clementine
protested that he didn’t mean what he was saying, and Churchill
admitted this was true: ‘but when I see my opponents glaring at me,
I always have to draw them out by exaggerated statements’.”
[most quotes in this thread are from the book cited in your article - Churchill's Empire]
Regarding “I hate Indians. They are a beastly people with a beastly religion.” (again what someone else said he said rather than a direct quote). This was said in anger when he viewed the Hindu nationalist leaders, unlike the Muslim ones, as trying to sabotage the war effort
He seems to have favoured Muslim Indians over Hindu Indians, at least in part due to his hostile interactions with upper-caste Hindu independence leaders (some of whom favoured the Nazis during the war).
What kind of things shaped his idea about Hinduism?
“Brahmins who mouth and
patter the principles of Western Liberalism’ were in fact resolved to
keep the Untouchables in ‘sub-human bondage’.”
“Dominion status can certainly not be attained by a community
which brands and treats sixty millions of its members, fellow
human beings, toiling at their side, as ‘Untouchables’, whose
approach is an affront and whose very presence is pollution.
Dominion status cannot be attained while India is a prey to
fierce racial and religious dissensions and when the withdrawal
of British protection would mean the immediate resumption
of mediaeval wars. It cannot be attained while the political
classes in India represent only an insignificant fraction of the
three hundred and fifty millions for whose welfare we are
responsible.”
“ would have no mercy with the Hindus who
marry little girls aged ten”
He's not going to win any awards for nuance and cultural sensitivity, but he was more anti-upper caste Hindu than hatefully anti-Indian. He clearly cared about 'untouchables', who tended to support the Raj as they could serve in the army, etc. He believed nationalist policies would lead to oppression and a terrible war (which they did) and he saw himself as being responsible for.
His racialist paternalism is indicated by:
“his fundamental message remained consistent: India was not a
nation but a ‘geographical abstraction’,42 home to multitudes of
competing races and religions. Only the rule of disinterested white
officials, ‘quite impartial between race and race’, could hold the ring
between them.43 (He claimed that the deadly Hindu–Muslim riots
of 1931 were the result of the belief that the British were about to
leave the country.) Britain had brought enormous material and
social benefits to the toiling Indian masses; these would be horribly
jeopardized were she to depart, as would the economic welfare of
Britain as a self-governing India closed its markets. Gandhi’s financial
backers, the wealthy Indian mill-owners, were hoping to benefit
from this at the expense of both the British and the Indian masses.
Britain, for its part, had no desire to exploit India, he claimed; the
existing relationship was one of mutual benefit, “although the British
extracted ‘only a fraction of the blessings’ that the Indians got.”
With more context it's clear he didn't have a genocidal hatred for Indians. On the Amritsar massacre:
“That is an episode which appears to me to be without precedent or parallel in the modern history of the British Empire…. It is an extraordinary event, a monstrous event, an event which stands in singular and sinister isolation…. We have to make it absolutely clear, some way or another, that this is not the British way of doing business.”
But the anti-Churchill polemics tend to rely on the following formula [taken from the article you quoted]:
As the resistance swelled, he announced: “I hate Indians. They are a beastly people with a beastly religion.”
This hatred killed. To give just one, major, example, in 1943 a famine broke out in Bengal, caused – as the Nobel Prize-winning economist Amartya Sen has proved – by the imperial policies of the British. Up to 3 million people starved to death while British officials begged Churchill to direct food supplies to the region. He bluntly refused. He raged that it was their own fault for “breeding like rabbits”. At other times, he said the plague was “merrily” culling the population.
This is a perfect example of the kind of misleading polemic that is all to common.
Start with context free racist comment, present complex historical event, blame Churchill's racism for causing/exacerbating event.
The juxtaposition implying Amartya Sen blamed Churchill for the famine is dishonest. Sen’s argument (from his book Poverty and Famines) is that there should have been enough food to feed everyone but a poor understanding of available food supply led to underestimating the severity of the famine and poor understanding of famine dynamics meant, for example, local officials (both British and Indian) weren't doing enough to restrict the price speculation of Indian merchants, restrict the calorific intake of wealthier Indians, etc.
Churchill is never mentioned, and the main criticism of London is that they could have responded quicker once those in India recognised they had significantly underestimated the problems they were facing.
Also saying Sen "proved" this is not correct, he proposed a widely accepted theory that others have challenged.
And he didn't simply "bluntly refuse", he was getting different and contracdictory information from different people and having to prioritise very limited resources based on this. He did send food there which eventually ended the famine, tried to get the US to send food there, etc. but, unlike people like Wavell who were requesting more food aid, he had to sacrifice one theatre to help another.
[continued in next post]
Augustus
…
And this leads to misconceptions like this:
What do you think he did to "specifically prolong and worsen it"?
He was being told the famine wasn't that bad, and when he discovered it was he took steps to mitigate it, although given it was in the middle of WW2, there was a shortage of shipping and Japan had conquered most of the places where food could easily be imported from it wasn't as easy as simply saying "here's some food". There was starvation in many places from Java to Greece .
It's easy with the benefit of hindsight knowing the full scale of the famine and that the Nazis were defeated to say he should have prioritised famine relief over other military or civilian objectives, in real time having to make real sacrifices and take real risks it's not quite a simple as moralistic literary posturing.
Leading Indian historian Tirthankar Roy:
Madhusree Mukherjee in her book, Churchill’s Secret War (2010) lays the blame at the door of London. She says that Winston Churchill, the British prime minister, held racist views about Indians which prevented Britain from supplying enough relief to Bengal in time. As political history, the argument is naïve. There is little evidence that Churchill’s personal views about Indians influenced the policies of the War Cabinet. With Japan’s entry into the war and the fall of Singapore in February 1942, the British Empire’s resources were a critical asset for Britain to fight a war that stretched from Europe to North Africa to Asia. A potential obstacle to using this resource was the local nationalist movement. Churchill’s reactionary views on the empire notwithstanding, the con- text for almost everything he said about Indians and the empire was related to the Indian nationalist movement.
Negotiating with the Indian nationalists during the War could be pointless and dangerous because the moderate nationalists were demoralized by dissensions and the radical nationalists wanted the axis powers to win on the eastern front. Racist or not, no Prime Minister would be willing to fight a war and negotiate with the nationalists at the same time.
What has any of that to do with the famine? Very little. The War Cabinet did not divert enough ships from the theatres of war to Bengal or order India to divert army rations to feeding people because the Cabinet believed what the Bengalis told it: there was no shortage of food in Bengal. The Cabinet took decisions in the knowledge that the axis powers were sinking one ship every day and had sunk around a million tons of shipping in 1942. The regions where rice might be available were the most dangerous waters to enter. Army rations were already reduced. Further cuts could risk a mutiny.
Administration, London, the Famine Inquiry Commission—and Amartya Sen—believed that grain merchants were hoarding food. It is not surprising that merchants were blamed during famines.
How British Rule Changed India’s Economy The Paradox of the Raj - Tirthankar Roy
I could go on, but as you can see it gets pretty lengthy.
The same is true for most of the "gotcha" anti-Churchill memes are similarly misleading, for example "I am strongly in favour of using poisoned gas against uncivilised tribes" conveniently misses out the next bit which clarifies he was talking about tear gas, and citing it as a method that could be less deadly.
He was a paternalistic, white mans burden racialist with a rose tinted view of empire, and who did many things that can be criticised in an incredibly long career that spanned very different historical epochs and moral sensibilities, but the "one of history's greatest monsters" memes just are highly ideological polemics that care little for historical accuracy.
There is a cycle we are currently working through: Churchill hagiography was followed by anti-Churchill polemic and eventually followed by a more nuanced and balanced views.
The same is true for many imperial issues. Biased and self-congratulatory Western narratives were "corrected" by anti-colonial (often Marxist) polemic and we are in the stage of getting some more nuanced views.
The pendulum swings from one extreme to the other, especially as there is a lot of demand for "Isn't the west super super evil type narratives" and many people will uncritically lap them up (my favourite is the fantastical idea that Britain stole $45 trillion from India which is widely parroted despite being based on the worst and most obviously dishonest accounting trick).
What do you think he did to "specifically prolong and worsen it"?
He was being told the famine wasn't that bad, and when he discovered it was he took steps to mitigate it, although given it was in the middle of WW2, there was a shortage of shipping and Japan had conquered most of the places where food could easily be imported from it wasn't as easy as simply saying "here's some food". There was starvation in many places from Java to Greece .
It's easy with the benefit of hindsight knowing the full scale of the famine and that the Nazis were defeated to say he should have prioritised famine relief over other military or civilian objectives, in real time having to make real sacrifices and take real risks it's not quite a simple as moralistic literary posturing.
Leading Indian historian Tirthankar Roy:
Madhusree Mukherjee in her book, Churchill’s Secret War (2010) lays the blame at the door of London. She says that Winston Churchill, the British prime minister, held racist views about Indians which prevented Britain from supplying enough relief to Bengal in time. As political history, the argument is naïve. There is little evidence that Churchill’s personal views about Indians influenced the policies of the War Cabinet. With Japan’s entry into the war and the fall of Singapore in February 1942, the British Empire’s resources were a critical asset for Britain to fight a war that stretched from Europe to North Africa to Asia. A potential obstacle to using this resource was the local nationalist movement. Churchill’s reactionary views on the empire notwithstanding, the con- text for almost everything he said about Indians and the empire was related to the Indian nationalist movement.
Negotiating with the Indian nationalists during the War could be pointless and dangerous because the moderate nationalists were demoralized by dissensions and the radical nationalists wanted the axis powers to win on the eastern front. Racist or not, no Prime Minister would be willing to fight a war and negotiate with the nationalists at the same time.
What has any of that to do with the famine? Very little. The War Cabinet did not divert enough ships from the theatres of war to Bengal or order India to divert army rations to feeding people because the Cabinet believed what the Bengalis told it: there was no shortage of food in Bengal. The Cabinet took decisions in the knowledge that the axis powers were sinking one ship every day and had sunk around a million tons of shipping in 1942. The regions where rice might be available were the most dangerous waters to enter. Army rations were already reduced. Further cuts could risk a mutiny.
Administration, London, the Famine Inquiry Commission—and Amartya Sen—believed that grain merchants were hoarding food. It is not surprising that merchants were blamed during famines.
How British Rule Changed India’s Economy The Paradox of the Raj - Tirthankar Roy
I could go on, but as you can see it gets pretty lengthy.
The same is true for most of the "gotcha" anti-Churchill memes are similarly misleading, for example "I am strongly in favour of using poisoned gas against uncivilised tribes" conveniently misses out the next bit which clarifies he was talking about tear gas, and citing it as a method that could be less deadly.
He was a paternalistic, white mans burden racialist with a rose tinted view of empire, and who did many things that can be criticised in an incredibly long career that spanned very different historical epochs and moral sensibilities, but the "one of history's greatest monsters" memes just are highly ideological polemics that care little for historical accuracy.
There is a cycle we are currently working through: Churchill hagiography was followed by anti-Churchill polemic and eventually followed by a more nuanced and balanced views.
The same is true for many imperial issues. Biased and self-congratulatory Western narratives were "corrected" by anti-colonial (often Marxist) polemic and we are in the stage of getting some more nuanced views.
The pendulum swings from one extreme to the other, especially as there is a lot of demand for "Isn't the west super super evil type narratives" and many people will uncritically lap them up (my favourite is the fantastical idea that Britain stole $45 trillion from India which is widely parroted despite being based on the worst and most obviously dishonest accounting trick).
Wildswanderer
Veteran Member
Amusing. History isn't there for you to judge. It just is. Everyone had faults but there were plenty with good intentions. Kinda like most people today that judge past figures for their Minor flaws ....
The Kilted Heathen
Crow FreyjasmaðR
False. History is absolutely there to judge, and to learn from. Would you call Hitler's actions a "minor flaw"?
Unfortunately, the "informative" rating is not there anymore, so I have to settle for liking the posts. Thanks for the immensely detailed thoughts.
Do you have any recommended online sources from which to read about Churchill's career as British prime minister?
This thread is not about people with minor flaws, though. It is specifically about idealized or overly glorified historical figures.
I'm also not sure what you mean by "judge." Of course we judge a lot of historical figures and events in the sense of learning from them or analyzing them in hindsight. That's how those in positions of power can benefit from historical wisdom or avoid repeating historical mistakes.
Augustus
…
The book that was reviewed in the article you quoted, Churchill and Empire by Richard Toye, is a pretty good start for his views on empire and how they relate to the various contexts of the time. It's easy to read and fairly balanced.
It shows how his views aren't really easy to pigeonhole, but as @exchemist noted previously he had such a long career that even if he was a man of his time, 'his time' wasn't necessarily the same as some of his colleagues and rivals.
He was old enough to fight in several wars in the 19th C, and served through 2 world wars, massive social change and decolonisation and served as an MP right up until the swinging 60s of the Beatles and Rolling Stones.
Heyo
Veteran Member
I'm far from defending @Revoltingest's patriotism but technically the nukes were not war crimes. There was no international law under which they could have been prosecuted (without also prosecuting thousands of other acts by both sides).
Were they really necessary or conducive to end or shorten the war? Debatable, especially for the bomb on Nagasaki. Were they, at the time, anything other than just another type of bomb, only bigger? No.
Patriotism?
No one here is less patriotic than this draft-dodging big-government-hating janitor!
So halt yer fresser, ya snivel'n, drivel'n, stink'n, fink'n, miserable excuse for a nerdel clutcher!
This is solely about a decision made at that time.
Note that when I say "useful", some mischievous wags
change it to "necessary", to erect a straw man. Such
people should respond to what's posted....not to their
own triggered-by-emotional-baggage inference.
BTW, kudos for your even handed approach to this
contentious issue.