A Challenging Meditation on the Moral Dilemma of Staging Wars

 "The Bomber Mafia" (Malcolm Gladwell): A Challenging Meditation on the Moral Dilemma of Staging Wars

(Book Review)

I've been a big fan of Malcolm Gladwell ever since I first encountered him writing for the "New Yorker" (my favorite magazine of all time, by the way -- I should have been a New Yorker). And especially when he came out with his first books, "The Tipping Point" and "Outliers."

As usual, Gladwell surprises here with his choice of subject.

I also surprised myself because I couldn't imagine that, one day, I'd be reading something about the technicalities of bombing in wartime.

Yet as soon as I began reading, I was unstoppable. Gladwell made me want to know more about a subject I have never considered thinking about.

What a rewarding experience reading this because I was confronted with conflicting ideas about war, particularly how it should go about in the best way possible. Should bombing only target the most specific 'weakest points' to avoid collateral damage? Or should destruction be as widespread as possible if only to end the war most quickly? (I don't know about you, but I prefer the former to the latter.)

But what is not discussed at all, and only implied, is the most gripping part: the indescribable human cost of going to war at all.

I read "The Bomber Mafia" differently because I happened to have watched Hayao Miyazaki's "Grave of the Fireflies," the best antiwar movie (an anime at that) I have ever seen. So while reading through the science of bombing, I was also replaying in my mind the heartbreaking scenes involving the siblings Seita and Setsuko and other poor unfortunate victims of the atom bomb in Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

And yet, I couldn't afford to "hate on" these American wartime bombers or their exploits, for their aim was to make war as humane as possible (however strange that sounds), especially after I recalled which side was the villain (the enemy) during WWII through our eyes as Filipinos.

At any rate, war is never ever welcome, especially for innocent casualties on the ground -- only ever a necessary evil in the face of aggression, or perhaps only as a holy crusade against unambiguously devilish enemies.

(Grateful acknowledgment: Joey Ferrer)