April Issue Shipped

The April Issue was printed, cut, and shipped at the beginning of last week. Distributors should be receiving it soon. A huge thank you to all of our supporters!

April PDF Available

On the right. As usual, it’s locked from printing. This issue is 12 pages, up from the usual 8. To get an unlocked version, just ask.

The PDF for the cartoon flyer is also still available. It’s not locked.

You Can Still Order

Due to some ambiguities at our printer, you can still order copies of the April issue for another couple of days.

Update: Here’s the new cover to entice you into ordering:

Cartoon Flyer

I delinked it, but it’s still on the server here. (I’ll find a more permanent home for the link sometime soon.)

Correction

In the online edition of our April issue, the article “Self-Censorship Epidemic on College Campuses” misquoted Tom Bruno as being critical of the Daily Illini. The online version has been corrected and the print version was fixed before it went to press. Our apologies to Mr. Bruno for the error.

April Issue Available for Viewing

On the right. Check it out and order some copies for distribution. The PDF is forthcoming next week. (There will be some finishing editing done between the versions you see and the final print edition.)

Incidentally, this is TU’s anniversary issue: we’ve now been publishing for a year, averaging an issue every 2 months. Happy birthday to us!

Death to “Diplomacy” With Iran

European diplomats, who courted Iran in an attempt to halt its suspected nuclear weapons program, regret that “diplomacy” did not dissuade Iran from its plans. But this failure was foreseeable.

That diplomatic effort was touted as a reasonable way to settle the dispute over Iran’s suspected nuclear weapons program without any losers. By enticing Iran to the negotiating table, we were told, the West can avoid a military confrontation, while Iran gains “economic incentives” that can help build its economy. But the negotiations–backed also by the Bush Administration–only strengthened Iran and turned it into a greater menace.

The proposed deal–which was said to include the sale of civilian aircraft and membership for Iran in the World Trade Organization–rested on the notion that no one would put abstract goals or principles ahead of gaining a steady flow of economic loot. And so, if only we could have negotiated a deal that gave Iran a sufficiently juicy carrot, it would forgo its ambitions.

But to believe that Iran really hungers for nuclear energy (as it claims) is sheer fantasy. Possessing abundant oil and gas reserves, Iran is the second-largest oil producer in OPEC. To believe that it values prosperity at all is equally fantastic; Iran is a theocracy that systematically violates its citizens’ right to political and economic liberty.

What Iran desires is a nuclear weapon–the better to threaten and annihilate the impious in the West and in Iran’s neighborhood. Iran declares its anti-Western ambitions stridently. At an official parade in 2004, Iran flaunted a missile draped with a banner declaring that: “We will crush America under our feet.” (Its leaders, moreover, have for years repeated the demand that “Israel must be wiped off the map.”)

A committed enemy of the West, Iran is the ideological wellspring of Islamic terrorism, and the “world’s most active sponsor of terrorism” (according to the U.S. government). A totalitarian regime that viciously punishes “un-Islamic” behavior among its own citizens, Iran actively exports its contempt for freedom and human life throughout the infidel world. For years it has been fomenting and underwriting savage attacks on Western and American interests, using such proxies as Hezbollah. Like several of the 9/11 hijackers before them, many senior Al Qaida leaders, fugitives of the Afghanistan war, have found refuge in Iran. And lately Iran has funneled millions of dollars, arms and ammunition to insurgents in Iraq.

It’s absurd to think that by offering Iran rewards to halt its aggression, we will deflect it from its goal.

The only consequence of engaging such a vociferously hostile regime in negotiations is the whitewashing of its crimes and the granting of undeserved legitimacy. The attempt to conciliate Iran has further inflamed the boldness of Iran’s mullahs. What it has taught them is that the West lacks the intellectual self-confidence to name its enemies and deal with them accordingly. It has vindicated the mullahs’ view that their religious worldview can bring a scientific, technologically advanced West to its knees.

Whether or not negotiations yield a deal, “diplomacy” abets Iran. The deal would have sustained Iran’s economy, propped up its dictatorial government and perpetuate its terrorist war against the West. But even without a deal, simply by prolonging “negotiations,” Iran grows stronger because it gains time to continue covert nuclear-weapons research.

This approach of diplomacy-with-anyone-at-any-cost necessarily results in nourishing one’s enemy and sharpening its fangs. That is what happened under a 1994 deal with communist North Korea. After endless negotiations and offers of aid, North Korea promised not to develop nuclear weapons. When the North was caught cheating on its pledge, the West pursued yet more negotiations, and the North eventually promised anew to end its nuclear program. In February 2005 North Korea declared (plausibly) that it had succeeded in building nuclear weapons.

Another, older attempt to negotiate with an avowed enemy was a cataclysmic failure. In 1938 the Europeans pretended that Hitler’s intentions were not really hostile, and insisted that “peace in our time” could be brokered diplomatically (by letting him take Czechoslovakia). The negotiations afforded him time to build his military machine and emboldened him to launch World War II.

Ignoring the lessons of history, the Europeans embarked on negotiations with Iran that likewise sought the reckless pretence of peace today, at the cost of unleashing catastrophic dangers tomorrow.

To protect American (and European) lives, we must learn the life-or-death importance of passing objective moral judgment. By any rational standard, Iran should be condemned and its nuclear ambition thwarted, now. The brazenly amoral European gambit has only aided its quest–and will entail a future confrontation with a bolder, stronger Iran.

Elan Journo is a junior fellow at the Ayn Rand Institute.

This article is reproduced with permission from the Ayn Rand Institute. Copyright 1995-2006 Ayn Rand Institute (ARI). Its inclusion in The Undercurrent does not represent an endorsement of The Undercurrent by either the author or the Ayn Rand Institute.

Domestic Security Secures our Demise

In recent months, Congress has raised concerns over the president’s use of warrantless wiretaps and his approval of a proposed take-over of major U.S. sea ports by a United Arab Emirates-owned company. In the case of warrantless wiretaps, the president is criticized for the excessive use of power. In the case of his permissive handling of the ports deal, the president is criticized for the failure to use power.

The president’s critics never seem to be satisfied, yet they never identify a principle that should guide his use of power: Should his powers to protect our security be open-ended, or should they be restricted? If restricted, restricted by what principle? This question needs to be answered to settle any of the ongoing post-9/11 debates about the proper use of the homeland security department, the Patriot Act, immigration restrictions, border security, airport security, cockpit security, intelligence reform, etc.

Furthermore, while it is important to define the president’s proper powers concerning domestic security, it is even more important to realize that domestic security measures are not our best means of securing our freedom against foreign terrorists. What is needed is a foreign policy that aggressively pursues them and their state-sponsors.

In practice, the strategy of securing our freedom with domestic security has led to an unprecedented growth in the state’s policing powers. The president enjoys the freedom to grant warrantless wiretaps, to use secret military tribunals with lower standards of proof to try suspects of his own choosing, to indefinitely detain immigrants, and to limit intelligence briefings to Congress by exercising greater secrecy. With the recent renewal of the Patriot Act, law enforcement agencies will continue to enjoy the freedom to conduct espionage with impunity and to conduct secret, essentially warrantless records searches, physical searches, and many other things.

The president often justifies his powers by citing the Congressional authorization given to him on September 18th, 2001 authorizing the president to “use all necessary and appropriate force against those nations, organizations, or persons he determines planned, authorized, committed, or aided the terrorist attacks that occurred on September 11, 2001.” Furthermore, the Patriot Act authorizes the FBI to engage in certain investigative activities provided that they are “for purposes of protecting against terrorism.”

Many have raised concerns over the threat these new law-enforcement powers pose to the very freedom they are intended to secure. Some of these concerns are not legitimate, but some are. The legitimate concerns demonstrate that, in the long-run, no amount of police-state power will prove adequate for preserving our freedom.

Some fear that these police-state powers unjustifiably infringe on our civil liberties. Posing as defenders of freedom, these critics confound civil liberties with fundamental rights, demanding that civil liberties be preserved at all cost. But civil liberties are derivatives of fundamental rights–they are not fundamental themselves.

Take trial by jury as an example. The principle underlying trial by jury is procedural: because man has a fundamental right to life and liberty, the state cannot punish him for a crime until objective evidence of his crime has been identified. This is because under normal, peacetime circumstances, trial by jury improves the chances that a suspect’s fate will be reviewed by at least one objective observer. Under normal circumstances, high standards of evidence are required because it is worse to punish an innocent man than to fail to punish a guilty one.

In order for the state to be able to implement these procedures, it must have the time to find people who are able to be jurists, the time to collect high levels of evidence, the time to present every shred of relevant evidence in trial, etc. In a time of war, however, such extensive procedures become a threat to the freedom they are meant to uphold in a time of peace. When the loss of a single second of time could result in the loss of many lives, governmental actions must be expedited, for the sake of protecting the fundamental rights to life and liberty that civil rights are designed to protect. This same consideration justified warrantless searches and wiretaps, secret trials, and any number of emergency powers–provided that these powers are temporary and their purpose is clearly defined.

But are the president’s current powers temporary or delimited to a clearly defined purpose? The answer is “no,” and it is here that critics of the president raise a legitimate concern.

The president’s powers allegedly deriving from the September 18th, 2001 resolution exist “in order to prevent any future acts of international terrorism against the United States.” It does not specify which terrorists must be stopped or how many of them must be stopped until their threat has been removed with satisfaction. In essence, it leaves open the possibility of an open-ended, ongoing “War on Terrorism,” motivated by little more than the potential for attacks. Without a clear objective, the “War on Terrorism” will become permanent and the president’s emergency powers will become dictatorial.

Of more pressing concern, however, is that any genuine threat these new police-state powers pose to our freedom pales in comparison to the danger of relying on such powers for the preservation of our freedom from foreign threats.

Consider what the guaranteed long-term success of such a policy requires. In a world where there are major foreign governments such as those of Iran, Syria, and Saudi Arabia, supporting those who are plotting to circumvent these measures (to say nothing of Iran’s attempt to acquire nuclear weapons), America is simply too big and too free for police-state powers to prevent every possible attack. The state would have to have everyone wiretapped, check every single container that enters our ports, detain every single person at our borders, have cameras on every street corner, etc. The continuance of this policy, while foreign threats are allowed to exist, will most certainly fail to prevent all future attacks.

In order to end the threat of future attacks and to delimit the life and scope of new police-state powers, we must therefore demand a war declaration, not further open-ended law-enforcement measures. Rather than worrying about how and when we place individual terrorists on trial, Congress must place regimes who support terrorists “on trial,” declare them to be enemies of the United States, and demand their unconditional surrender as the objective of war. At this point the proceedings would be a mere formality: we are already in a de facto state of war with multiple regimes, so Congress has the duty to make it a speedy trial.

If we declare war, some emergency domestic security measures will be required. But we will have no legitimate reason to fear them, as long as they do not violate fundamental rights and as long as we know when the emergency will come to an end. Congressional critics of the president should realize that our Constitution gives them the power to rein in the president through a war declaration. Thus, if we are to protect our liberty from an unlimited, ever-encroaching police-state–and from foreign enemies who would impose their own police state on us–nothing short of a clear, confident declaration of war will suffice.

Felipe Sediles is a Ph.D. student in aerospace engineering at Syracuse University.

Campus Commentary: The Self-Censorship Epidemic on College Campuses

The recent cartoon controversy has tested America’s willingness to defend one of its constitutionally protected rights: the right to speak freely. In recent months, the Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten published twelve cartoons depicting Mohammad and ridiculing the teachings of Islam. Islamic fundamentalists responded with violent protests, death threats, and demands for apology. In a valiant effort to express solidarity and support for the principle of free speech, other newspapers across Europe joined the crusade by republishing the cartoons. Sadly, American publications like The New York Times and The Washington Post succumbed to the religious sensitivities of Muslims and declined to proudly assert their rights.As ardent defenders of free speech, we at The Undercurrent wondered how campus publications were addressing this issue. We were thrilled to learn that the Daily Illini, the student newspaper at the University of Illinois, was first to reprint the controversial caricatures. But like many Americans around the country, students and faculty at the U of I failed to understand the true nature of free speech–and thus failed to support the DI.

Fifteen campus organizations expressed their disapproval in a DI article: “It is unacceptable to use free speech as a platform for Islamophobia…Free speech is not a license to propagate content that is deliberately incendiary and serves no constructive purpose. We are not asking for censorship. We are asking for responsible journalism.”

Humair Sabir communicated a similar view in his guest column in the DI: “According to the constitution, the editor in chief’s decision was legal and he had full rights to print the cartoons. But that does not exclude him from the responsibility he has towards his community: a community that reads the DI, and lets it be a part of their daily lives.”

What Sabir and campus associations euphemistically called “responsibility” is in fact the greatest threat to free speech in our present society. There is indeed a distinction between responsible and irresponsible use of freedom. The press has a constitutional and legal right to publish uncouth obscenity, but that does not necessarily mean that the decision to do so is moral. Critics such as Sabir associate the cartoons with precisely this kind of irresponsibility. What they refuse to consider is the fact that the cartoons are accurate representations of many adherents of Islam. What more proof do Americans need than the images of Muslims burning down the Danish embassy, killing innocent victims, and publicly chanting death threats to America and her supporters? Truth is “offensive” only to those who refuse to accept it because of their blind adherence to mystical doctrine. Because it is the primary responsibility of journalists to report the truth, it would be irresponsible not to publish them.

Regrettably, views antagonistic to free speech are common in intellectual circles. A Daily Californian interview with political science lecturer Darren Zook revealed his sentiment that “Journalists have a right to publish political cartoons…There should, however, be self-censorship, not out of fear, but out of cultural sensitivity.”

In a panel discussion at UCLA, Khaleel Mohammed, assistant professor of religion at San Diego State University, made clear that free speech is subordinate to religion: “If this is your idea of freedom, if you take the religious values of 1.4 billion people and demonize them, we don’t call that freedom. We don’t want that freedom.”

Zook and Mohammed candidly support self-censorship, the notion that the right to think and express one’s ideas freely is subordinate to the sensitivities of the offended party. It is ultimately the sacrifice of one’s autonomous mind to the irrational demands of another. But just as man is not the slave of his brother, a publication is not the slave of its readership. This does not mean that a newspaper should publish anything and everything. The press can voluntarily choose not to publicize something, but the decision to do so or not should remain insensitive to the emotional demands of the public. If a reader finds something offensive, he has the option to avert his eyes.

Sadly, those responsible for educating the new generation try to justify self-censorship on the grounds that it is beneficial to learning. Professor Mobin Shorish, who was present at the U of I rally, articulated his views in a DI article. He claimed that “the cartoons go against the mission of the University” because “good learning cannot take place in a hostile environment.”

In essence, Shorish expresses the view that political correctness fosters a prosperous learning environment. But does “good learning” require students to surrender their reasoning minds and their right to freely express their thoughts in order to appease those potentially offended? Can a student learn the difference between right and wrong by holding the view that all cultures and ideologies merit equal treatment? How will Americans hold their heads up high and denounce their enemies if they are taught to tolerate everything and anything? Ideas such as those championed by Shorish have one purpose: to thwart the very process a University is meant to promote.

Other newspapers refused to follow the DI’s example. The Harvard Crimson justified their refusal to reprint on the grounds that it “would neither further inform the public nor the debate.” Similarly, the Chicago Maroon editorial board determined that reprinting was not necessary to fulfill their “primary responsibility…to provide news that adds to [their] community’s discourse.” What these commentators fail to realize is that the main purpose of free speech is to defend an individual’s right to express his thoughts independent of another’s desire to discuss them with him. Yet discourse cannot arise under the muzzle of a gun–one can only support the beleaguered Danish cartoonists, not attempt to initiate “discourse” with the thugs who terrorize them. Nor can rational discussion take place in an environment that subordinates an individual’s independent judgment to the “feelings” of those who follow religious doctrine.

Offended students at the U of I participated in a peaceful demonstration against the cartoons. Many described them as blatant manifestations of hatred and racism. Fortunately, protesters did not go unchallenged. Two students rallied in front of the protesters while holding enlarged reproductions of the Muhammad cartoons for all to see. In his DI column, Jeff Myczek challenged the reasoning behind the Quad demonstration. He addressed the protesters directly: “If it is the negative stereotype of Islam that you are trying to fight, why was there not a single poster condemning the acts of rampant Muslim mobs in the Middle East?”

The Harvard Salient raised similar questions when they republished four of the Danish cartoons, claiming that they would not “[cater] to a sensitivity borne of fear of death that has plagued many would-be critics of radical Islam.” Below these were two “vile cartoons” representative of the kind published in “state-run newspapers throughout the Islamic Middle East.” The juxtaposition is clear: while Islamic fundamentalists can and do pillory their enemies, they do not respect others’ right to do the same.

Why don’t Muslims denounce the Arab cartoons? Likewise, why don’t they protest the violence in Denmark? Their silence can be interpreted objectively to signify a tacit agreement with the critics of America and an implicit sanction of violence. As Dr. Wafa Sultan said in an interview published in The New York Times, Muslims “are hostages to [their] own beliefs and teachings.” Muslims do not protest violence because freedom of speech does not exist within Islamic dogma. They do not believe in free speech, but in self-censorship–as Khaleel Mohammed himself makes clear.

Despite our enemies’ persistent attacks on free speech, we have not lost the war. Unwavering defenders of free speech are starting to fight at the forefront in this battle between East and West. The Undercurrent recently published a special cartoon flyer that has been distributed at major universities, such as Columbia, Yale, and the University of Chicago.

The Ayn Rand Institute also launched “a campaign to bring the Danish cartoons to the widest possible audience–and to arrange a series of lectures to discuss the vital need to defend free speech.” ARI has already participated in panel discussions at UCLA and Johns Hopkins University. LOGIC, the Objectivist group at UCLA, hosted a civilized discussion between four panelists that took place in front of an audience of approximately 180 people. The JHU Objectivist Club decided to sponsor the discussion after they distributed a poster showing a Muhammad cartoon and a stamp reading “I too am Spartacus.” The club learned later that day that angry student groups had removed the posters without their consent.

The list of freedom fighters is not limited to the Objectivists. Other campus newspapers published the cartoons after the Daily Illini took the initiative. Among these are publications such as Primary Source at Tufts University, the Northern Star at Northern Illinois University, and the California Patriot at UC Berkeley.

Chicago Maroon writer Teresa Mia Bejan realizes that now is not a time for toleration: “To advocate censorship and issue apologies…sends a message to the world that the free press is somehow responsible for these atrocities, not the radical imams who stir up hate, or the violent mobs who murder.” For this reason, Americans must stand united in our battle to defend one of our most important founding principles: freedom of speech.

According to Hasan Ali, president of the Muslim Students’ Association at the University of Chicago: “You don’t fight fire with fire…You fight it with understanding.” We at The Undercurrent offer an alternative: fight fire with reason.

Kelly Cadenas is a second year undergraduate at Harvard University where she currently pursues a degree in biochemistry.

The Moral Goodness of the Atomic Bombing of Hiroshima

On August 6, 1945 the American Air Force incinerated Hiroshima, Japan with an atomic bomb. On August 9, Nagasaki was obliterated. The fireballs killed some 175,000 people. They followed months of horror, when American airplanes firebombed civilians and reduced cities to rubble. Facing extermination, the Japanese surrendered unconditionally. The invasion of Japan was cancelled, and countless American lives were saved. The Japanese accepted military occupation, embraced a constitutional government, and renounced war permanently. The effects were so beneficent, so wide-ranging and so long-term, that the bombings must be ranked among the most moral acts ever committed.

The bombings have been called many things–but moral? The purpose of morality, wrote Ayn Rand, is not to suffer and die, but to prosper and live. How can death on such a scale be considered moral?

The answer begins with Japanese culture. World War II in the Pacific was launched by a nation that esteemed everything hostile to human life. Japan’s religious-political philosophy held the emperor as a god, subordinated the individual to the state, elevated ritual over rational thought, and adopted suicide as a path to honor. This was truly a Morality of Death, which had gripped Japanese society for nearly three generations. Japan’s war with Russia had ended in 1905 with a negotiated treaty, which left Japan’s militaristic culture intact. The motivations for war were emboldened, and the next generation broke the treaty by attacking Manchuria in 1931 (which was not caused by the oil embargo of 1941).

It was after Japan attacked America that America waged war against Japan–a proper moral response to the violence Japan had initiated. Despite three and a half years of slaughter, surrender was not at hand in mid-1945. Over six million Japanese were still in Asia. Some 12,000 Americans had died on Okinawa alone. Many Japanese leaders hoped to kill enough Americans during an invasion to convince them that the cost of invasion was too high. A “Die for the Emperor” propaganda campaign had motivated many Japanese civilians to fight to the death. Volunteers lined up for kamikaze–”Divine Wind”–suicide missions. Hope of victory kept the Japanese cause alive, until hopeless prostration before American air attacks made the abject renunciation of all war the only alternative to suicide. The Japanese had to choose between the Morality of Death, and the Morality of Life.

The bombings marked America’s total victory over a militaristic culture that had murdered millions. To return an entire nation to morality, the Japanese had to be shown the literal meaning of the war they had waged against others. The abstraction “war,” the propaganda of their leaders, their twisted samurai “honor,” their desire to die for the emperor–all of it had to be given concrete form. This is what firebombing Japanese cities accomplished. It showed the Japanese that “this“–point to burning buildings, screaming children scarred unmercifully, piles of corpses, the promise of starvation–”this is what you have done to others. Now it has come for you. Give it up, or die.” This was the only way to show them the true nature of their philosophy, and to beat the truth of the defeat into them.

Yes, Japan was beaten in July of 1945–but had not surrendered. A defeat is a fact; an aggressor’s ability to win is destroyed. Surrender is a decision, by the political leadership and the dominant voices in the culture, to recognize the fact of defeat. Surrender is an admission of impotence, the collapse of all hope for victory, and the permanent renunciation of aggression. Such recognition of reality is the first step towards a return to morality. Under the shock of defeat, a stunned silence results. Military officers no longer plan for victory; women no longer bear children for the Reich; young boys no longer play samurai and dream of dying for the emperor.

To achieve this, the victor must be intransigent. He does not accept terms; he demands prostrate surrender, or death, for everyone if necessary. Had the United States negotiated in 1945, Japanese troops would have returned to a homeland free of foreign control, met by civilians who had not confronted defeat, under the same leaders who had taken them to war. A negotiated peace would have failed to discredit the ideology of war, and would have left the motivations for the next war intact. We might have fought the Japanese Empire again, twenty years later. Fortunately, the Americans were in no mind to compromise.

President Truman demonstrated his willingness to bomb the Japanese out of existence if they did not surrender. The Potsdam Declaration of July 26, 1945 is stark: “The result of the futile and senseless German resistance to the might of the aroused free peoples of the world stands forth in awful clarity as an example to the people of Japan…Following are our terms. We will not deviate from them. There are no alternatives. We shall brook no delay…We call upon the government of Japan to proclaim now the unconditional surrender of all Japanese armed forces…The alternative for Japan is prompt and utter destruction.”

The approach worked brilliantly. After the bombs, the Japanese chose wisely. The method was brutally violent, as it had to be–because the war unleashed by Japan was brutally violent, and only a brutal action could demonstrate its nature. To have shielded Japanese citizens from the meaning of their own actions–the Rape of Nanking and the Bataan Death March–would have been a massive act of dishonesty. It would have left the Japanese unable to reject military aggression the next time it was offered as an elixir of glory. After the war, many returning Japanese troops were welcomed by their countrymen not as heroes, but with derision. The imperial cause was recognized as bankrupt, and the actions of its soldiers worthy of contempt. Forced to confront the reality of what they had done, a sense of morality had returned to Japan.

There can be no higher moral action by a nation than to destroy an aggressive dictatorship, to permanently discredit the enemy’s ideology, to stand guard while a replacement is crafted, and then to greet new friends on proper terms. Let those who today march for peace in Germany and Japan admit that their grandparents once marched as passionately for war, and that only total defeat could force them to re-think their place in the world and offer their children something better. Let them thank heaven–the United States–for the bomb.

Some did just that. Hisatsune Sakomizu, chief cabinet secretary of Japan, said after the war: “The atomic bomb was a golden opportunity given by Heaven for Japan to end the war.” He wanted to look like a peaceful man–which became a sensible position only after the Americans had won. Okura Kimmochi, president of the Technological Research Mobilization Office, wrote before the surrender: “I think it is better for our country to suffer a total defeat than to win total victory…in the case of Japan’s total defeat, the armed forces would be abolished, but the Japanese people will rise to the occasion during the next several decades to reform themselves into a truly splendid people…the great humiliation [the bomb] is nothing but an admonition administered by Heaven to our country.” But let him thank the American people–not heaven–for it was they who made the choice between the Morality of Life and the Morality of Death inescapable.

Americans should be immensely proud of the bomb. It ended a war that had enslaved a continent to a religious-military ideology of slavery and death. There is no room on earth for this system, its ideas and its advocates. It took a country that values this world to bomb this system out of existence. For the Americans to do so while refusing to sacrifice their own troops to save the lives of enemy civilians was a sublimely moral action. They destroyed the foundations of the war, and allowed the Japanese to rebuild their culture along with their cities, as prosperous inhabitants of the earth. Were it true that total victory today creates new attackers tomorrow, we would now be fighting Japanese suicide bombers, while North Korea–where the American army did not march–would be peaceful and prosperous. The facts are otherwise. The need for total victory over the Morality of Death has never been clearer.

Dr. John Lewis is Assistant Professor of History at Ashland University. He has a PhD in Classics from the University of Cambridge, and has written for numerous academic and Objectivist publications. His book, Nothing Less than Victory: Military Offense and the Lessons of History, is forthcoming.