That Trump's "fire and fury" statement yesterday was delivered as an answer to a reporter's question tossed out during a forum on opioid addiction at a golf course in New Jersey caused me to wonder whether it might not be best understood as another embarrassing Trumpean "riff" of the kind Trumpologists explain with disquisitions on the difference between taking him "literally" versus taking him "seriously," etc. Now, however, I've seen the tape, and it appears to me that the question was anticipated and that his statement was a prepared, considered answer. Ever the poor student, he recited the script imperfectly, which made it sound improvised, but, nevertheless, the answer was prepared.
Prepared by whom? It's not the way any of his generals talk, so natural suspects like Kelly, McMaster, and Mattis are out. The words sound like they are Trump's own, especially the grandiloquent "the likes of which the world has never seen," which he has deployed previously when he clearly was "riffing"--for example, when he has described himself as the founder of "a movement the likes of which the world has never seen before." (Only three million fewer votes than his vanquished opponent! A movement never seen before!)
So I continue to credit the notion that the statement is more the improvisation of a megalomaniac than the policy of our government. And indeed today we have heard from people in the administration who sound as if they are trying to walk back Trump's statement without being too obvious about it. Secretary of State Tillerson told reporters that Trump's language was meant for Kim Jong-un, who, he says, "does not understand diplomatic language." This raises a few questions, including why in that case the message was not communicated privately to Kim Jong-un instead of to an American reporter at a forum on opioid addiction. It makes sense, however, if you take the view that Tillerson's objective is to excuse Trump's histrionics while suggesting that our government isn't actually as crazy as the president sounds.
Perhaps the craziest aspect of Trump's statement is the way in which it threatens North Korea with "fire and fury" merely for feints and maintaining an aggressive posture. You'd think a response the likes of which the world has never seen would be reserved for an actual attack on us or our interests. By immediately issuing threats against Guam, North Korea has shown that Trump's talk was bluster. I take it on faith that we aren't going to war over a threat to move against Guam. Tillerson says Kim doesn't understand the dance but he's not doing any worse than Trump.
Today is the 72nd anniversary of the atomic bombing of Nagasaki, which, coming as it did just three days after the destruction of Hiroshima, has always seemed to me even harder to defend. If the whole idea is to get Japan to surrender, give them a week or a month to take in the effect of the first explosion. Why so eager to achieve another six-figure body count of Japanese civilians? But the real reason for history's only atomic bombings probably has less to do with the moral depravity of President Truman, or with the diabolical Japanese who are invoked by those who argue on the other side, than it has to do with more ordinary human failings. People, especially when organized in bureaucracies, drift toward portentous "decisions" without being entirely conscious of it. Questions are settled by an irresistible bureaucratic momentum, the force of which is augmented by the weariness of the individuals who have participated in the long process. They just want to be done with it. This case was made years ago by the social scientist Kai Erickson (pictured above), whose essay "Of Accidental Judgments and Casual Slaughters" argues that war weariness and the tremendous expense of labor, treasure, and talent devoted to the Manhattan Project made the use of the atomic bomb a foregone conclusion. It is impossible not to take the last few steps if the road already travelled is very far. Erickson took his title from the penultimate speech in Hamlet, Horatio's interpretation of what happened at the end of that play:
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