Harsh Lessons

© Dale Franks, 2002

Sixty years ago, we were at war with fanatics who thought it was an honor to blow themselves up for their divine Emperor, who was, it was said, descended directly from the sun.

They strapped themselves into airplanes loaded with bombs, and with only enough fuel for a one-way flight. They searched for American ships, and dove into them, dying in earth-shattering explosions in the hope of taking as many Americans with them as possible. They were the original "suicide bombers".

The Japanese believed in a special destiny for themselves that led them to think they were chosen for a great mission to lead all of Asia. They believed in a special brand of Japanese exceptionalism that would allow them to take all they wanted without having to pay the price for their actions. Most importantly, they believed that America was essentially timid, and would not in the end exert herself to defeat them.

In short, the Japanese people had fallen under the spell of dangerous illusions.

For a decade prior to World War II, those illusions led them ever closer to conflict with the United States. They invaded Manchuria, renamed it Manchukuo, and called in the last emperor of china to serve as the ruler of their new puppet state. They campaigned against Nationalist China, in an attempt to destroy the Kuomintang government.

Soon, Japanese thoughts turned to the Pacific Ocean, and the United States, which was the main obstacle to creating their dream of a Greater Southeast Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere. Inevitably, their illusions led them, in the fullness of time, to Pearl Harbor. Within the space of a few short weeks afterward, the Japanese seemed unstoppable. Their armies conquered Burma, drove the French out of Indochina, destroyed and captured the British army in Singapore, and the American army in the Philippines. They invaded New Guinea, and threatened Australia. They held nearly all of the Pacific Ocean under their sway.

Yet, three years later, Japanese fanaticism had been extirpated, their country lay in smoldering ruins, and the Kamikaze were gone. In a few brief years, we utterly defeated and disbanded their military, occupied their country, re-wrote their constitution, and imposed upon them a peaceful, democratic government that exists to this day.

We did not wish to go to war against the Japanese. They bought the war to us, confident in their ability to prevail and to humiliate us.

But war is, as historian Victor Davis Hanson tells us, the ultimate destroyer of illusions. War distills military and political reality into its harshest form. Beliefs that cannot stand the harsh light of truth that is exposed by this reality are left shattered by the experience. War teaches hard lessons about reality, and the dangers of unrealistic and irresponsible political ideologies.

Japanese confidence in victory was built on the shaky foundation of illusion. When that foundation was exposed to the ultimate reality of war, their illusions collapsed, and with it went the entire edifice upon which they had built their society for a generation.

Those who tell us that we cannot defeat fanatics and impose democracy upon them need to look no further than Tokyo--or Berlin--to see the complete disproof of such arguments.

Today, we face the possibility of conflict with other people, in another part of the world, who also have been increasingly blinded by dangerous illusions. Just as the Japanese felt that the presence of the Divine Emperor made them invincible, the Arab Muslims believe that they live under the protection of Allah. Just as the Japanese thought that whatever they wished to do was acceptable simply because they were children of Nippon and, hence, were heirs to Japanese exceptionalism, so do Arab Muslims believe that whatever they wish to do is acceptable, simply because they are Muslims. But, most ominously, just as the Japanese believed that America was too effete to defend itself, so do the Arab Muslims.

America is a peaceful nation. We have no wish to go to war against the Arab world. In the end, though, we may have no more choice now than we had in 1941.

If the Arab Muslims do not have the capability to recognize their illusions for what they are, then they will, in the near future, need to be taught the same harsh lessons that the Japanese received. Not because we wish to teach them those lessons, but because they will force us to.

Perhaps then they can join the rest of us in the 21st century.

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