Hunting bin Laden: Part 2 - Regruping

After the mishandled attempt at capturing bin Laden so shortly after his attacks, al-Qaeda managed a bit of a resurgence. They began recruiting oversees, showing they can hit targets abroad and not just in their territory. The most notable attack was in 2005 when suicide bombers attacked the people of London on the trains for their morning commute, killing dozens. Especially in recent years, that's kind of the tone for terrorism; crazed individuals killing typically less than a hundred (well, at least in the Western world), but increasingly large amounts due to the fact that weapons are more dangerous than ever and the only major hinderance to committing atrocities is a sense of basic morality.

America's response to this has been to amp up the drone program, effectively increasing what Osama claimed he was trying to prevent - an increased presence of Americans in the Middle East. Eventually, around 2007-2008, America simply stopped asking Pakistan for permission to drone-strike certain areas and began doing it on their own accord. Bringing out more controversy was their decision to also do a cross-border raid that killed mostly women and children, damaging relations with Pakistan and covering the face of the Americans with many an egg. However, at the core of it all they were still eliminating al-Qaeda leaders left, right and centre all from the safety of places hundreds of miles away. It suddenly became very dangerous to be a leader al-Qaeda, but the most important one was nowhere to be found. All the while, terrorists were citing him as their major influence the way rock stars say they learned from some past musician. Osama was the Beatles of modern terrorism.

The search for him never died down, in spite of the fact that they had very little evidence on

Osama bin Laden's father; siring 55 kids. It was
his winning smile and devout religious extremism
that his wives just couldn't resist.

where he might be residing. It mostly came down to where he couldn't be. Initially they believed it couldn't be Yemen as he would be too recognizable, and most likely Afghanistan or Pakistan. From there they searched the history books. They searched where his father hid when he was on the run, hoping he would be in a similar situation (in searching up his father I discovered that bin Laden's dad had over twenty wives and 55 children, which would make keeping track of birthdays a tiresome issue). They discovered he had a network of safehouses everywhere, leading them to believe he could very well be in an urban centre.

From there, they looked for what they referred to as "four pillars" - his family, hints in his messages to the media (if there was a plant, a bird, voices in the background, anything that could lead them in a direction), communication with the other leaders, and his courier network. It was the lattermost of these pillars that eventually led to his capture.

Aguilera: proudly doing her part in the
war on terror.

We know now that bin Laden was holed up in a compound in a quiet town in Pakistan (more on that later). It was isolated; with cell phones being tracked, messaging was very slow in the al-Qaeda world. That meant that much of the messaging had to be done by a courier, transporting whatever had to be transported in and out of the compound to the beck and call of Osama. The courier himself, Abu Ahmed al-Kuwaiti, with his real name being Ibrahim Saeed Ahmed (we'll refer to him as the Kuwaiti for brevity, and so I don't have to keep double checking the spelling) had been close to bin Laden for ages. Eventually, the U.S. Jack Bower'ed just the right people - meaning torture - until a few coughed up information about the Kuwaiti and what he might be doing.

So, does that mean that torture works?
Sort of. First off, it was pretty brutal; one man was kept awake twenty hours a day, stripped nude, left cold and isolated, and, interestingly enough, subjected to hours of blaring Christina Aguilera music - a fate typically reserved for suburban fathers of white teenage girls in the 2000-2010 decade. Another man, also tortured (although not as heavily - perhaps with smooth jazz) led to the Kuwaiti as well. Certainly, it looks promising; that is, until you consider that another high ranking member was waterboarded almost two hundred times and still told the Americans the Kuwaiti had retired - another provided only disinformation. So, the answer to the original question is... maybe?

Barack, after being asked where the drone strikes
 are coming from.

It was right around this time finds the end of the George Bush era. New to the warfront is Barack Obama, the first black president that has one letter off the name of the terrorist he's hunting (considering how America looks currently, that's nothing short of a miracle). Being fiercely anti-war on the campaign trail and before, he shifts the tone from saying "war" to "policing", putting a fresh new spin on it. He then took the drone program, amped it up to never before seen levels, and declared stronger than ever that it's Osama season. After what seems like ages, they have their first real lead, and he was feeling like they just might get 'im. American style.

American Counter-Terrorism: Opinions

This is my third post putting my personal opinions on whatever subject I may be delving into up for you to read, and it's the first time I'm not entirely sure how to feel. Regardless, I'll do my best to put my spin on the tough questions, as who else would be more qualified than a twenty-five year old who has read one book on the subject? Well, at least that makes me more qualified than the average internet opinion.

Should the U.S. and the rest of the world continue to use drone strikes?

This is a complicated one. I hope I've helped show that drone strikes are left wanting in accuracy and purpose, frequently hitting targets they don't wish to hit and removing the valuable asset of information from captured terrorists, as capturing someone after a drone strike is far less beneficial. However...

Looking from the States' perspective, sending troops is bad for business. No one wants fallen soldiers and it's hard to deny a process that removes the risk. They are still effective at hitting their targets, just not so great at hitting only their targets. For that reason I'd say they should probably keep using them, but perhaps a little less recklessly and a little less often. The problem is they've put themselves in a tough position, lending itself to a drone-strike heavy option. Obama has been big on the idea of keeping soldiers out of the war zones, which, in a roundabout way, indirectly states they'll be up in the sky rather than on the ground. However, with fewer forces on the ground, accuracy for drone strikes decreases due to a lack of information coming in (coming back to the lack of prisoners, thus a lack of interrogation). It seems drone strikes are things to be used in tandem with regular forces. A weapon to be used to hit specific targets that cannot be safely (well, at least relatively) reached otherwise. Let's not ignore the fact that drones are high powered death machines that above all else get the job done.

Going all-out on drone strikes seems like it won't really solve the problem, and if anything, it'll perpetuate it. Taking out groups of people that may or may not be enemy combatants is going to inevitably rile up an already strong anti-American (anti-western world, really) sentiment. You may kill a terrorist, but you make him a martyr and two pop up in his place. Taking out soldiers who are shooting back is one thing, but a flying death machine wiping out a building is another. It'll breed hatred, and it's a nasty cycle. However, they can't really back out now so it looks like it'll just continue for a while.

Yeah, it's a downer.

Final answer? Yes. Use drone strikes. But stop using them all the freaking time. 

So what really is the civilian count on the death toll?

This seems to vary widely. Like, ridiculously widely. We're talking some sources saying 2% of the kills are terrorists, while others say 2% of the kills are civilians. This is due to a number of factors, and the answer probably lies in a middle, shady grey, as most things in life tend towards. First off, it's incredibly hard to actually count up who is being killed. Typically a drone strike is done because they don't have any forces near it, meaning they can't just waltz in afterwards and count out who's dead. That means it comes through other sources, often local ones, and numbers can be fudged to push an agenda - positive or negative, depending on where you sit. So, that's problem number one - the info is loose, at best.

Problem number two is deciphering who is a terrorist. In my first blog in this series I spoke on the The Economist. It's a year old now, but it details (with cool graphics!) the drone deaths in Pakistan from when they started to now (if now was a year ago). In case you can't read the picture on the right, the numbers at the end are as follows: 190 children, 534 civilian, 52 high profile, and - here's the big one - 2565 other. What the heck is other? Other could mean so many things.

The prettiest way to demonstrate a massive death toll.

fact that any male of a certain age that's caught talking to a terrorist and gets caught in the blast of a drone strike blast is labeled as an "enemy killed in action", or more honestly, "probably an enemy because of association."  The problem is that final category is massive, making up the majority of drone strike deaths and it's not really clear who exactly they are. Watch the video on this article from

From what I can tell, it's the vague "enemy killed in action" designation with maybe a few unclear hits mixed in. All of these numbers are fairly unreliable so they have to be taken with a grain of salt, but it does paint a fairly clear picture - they don't really know who they're killing, but they're probably bad. The question is, are they right to believe so?

Once more, it's a shade of grey. I'm going with a hardline stance on this one, and saying "yeah, probably".

Let's go through an example. They hit a terrorist training ground, hoping to kill one well known, verified terrorist. They blow it up, killing, say, fifty people. They're all males, between 18-35 years of age, and thus get tossed in to the "enemy killed in action" category, explaining why that's huge in comparison to the rest. If they're there, with a known terrorist, and they're all males of a certain age, there's a pretty good chance they're not exactly good-guys. Of course, this isn't always true - and they definitely make mistakes. Plenty of them. Once more, it's hard to form an opinion without all the information on the table - but I guess that's part of the problem, isn't it?

But they need to be verified or else it's an assassination. Right?

A big complaint is drone strikes shirk international law as the enemy is frequently not in a designated war zone and they're not brought to a full trial, deeming it an assassination and thus against whatever codes are in place for that. The response to this from the United States is a bit of a shrug, a bully on a schoolyard saying "well, what are you going to do about it?".

Anyways, I don't really buy this argument. There is always going to be collateral damage, always going to be unwanted, unjustified deaths and there will always be mistakes. It's the sad, terrible truth of war. The goal is to minimize these risks while still being able to achieve the goals the military is putting forth, but minimizing them is not a perfect science. (If I sound callous, remember I'm in favour of reducing drone strikes, just not eliminating them entirely.) Giving every enemy combatant a fair trial would be the ideal, but an impossible one considering the circumstances. As for hitting them outside of designated war zones... well, I hope they vet their targets well. Sadly that's not always true. But, that's not an inherent problem with drone strikes - that's a problem with using them too recklessly.

*I published this, thought on it harder, and immediately came back. To really make an educated statement on this, I feel you have to know so many outside factors. How do they designate war zones? What are the international laws in place? How are they enforced? Is the U.S. breaking them, and if they are do they do it brazenly? Battles are complicated, and nothing is ever as obvious as it seems. However, at the core, if they know a know there's a terrorist that's planning something and they have an opportunity to act on it... well... that's a tough one.*

Hey, we talked about surveillance, too.  What's up with that? Is it bad? Will Edward Snowden soon be canonized?

You know, I'm going to take an unpopular opinion here and say that much of the surveillance technology is overall positive, although not necessarily used particularly well. Yeah, I know, I'm a government shill.

I'm not in the slightest worried about anyone reading, storing, or hacking my emails, texts, or what-have-you. Mass data collection means that inevitably no one will actually read it, save for if they're searching for someone or something more specifically. The more information there is, the less likely someone is going to see me text whatever mundane garbage I'm sending that day to my friends or the emails I keep getting from that shoe store I got something from that one time. I know it could have deeper consequences later, but the fact of the matter is it's not there yet. It's not that much of an issue for the average person right now, and honestly, I don't believe it will be. Yes, slippery slope and what not, but we can cross that bridge if we get there. If it legitimately helps to keep the peace I'm all for it.

However, it does have to be kept in check. Warrants should be needed, laws should be made for it, blah blah blah. Anything new will come with difficulties. As for the eight year old who was the suspected terrorist? Well, people just need to use some common sense and we'll all be fine.



Closing it out, a summary:

Drones are effective military technology, used far too often.
Bombing the middle east isn't really going to solve anything, but we're pretty much all in on it now so there's no way out now.
The surveillance state issue is an unnerving one but ultimately it just doesn't effect me enough to care.
The United States is probably evil, but not as evil as we're making them out to be most of the time.

Admittedly, I'm probably wrong on all of this, but I'm blessed with the knowledge that no one really cares what I think on it anyways. Nice.

American Counter-Terrorism: Part 2 - Watchlists and Surveillance

In 2013 talking about government surveillance was all the rage. Edward Snowden had just spread leaks like a drunk at a urinal, and while the general public didn't really read any of the papers (there are thousands of them, so I hope there's a sparknotes somewhere) the main point of it was the American government is spying on you. Americans were angry, they felt betrayed, and the sales of George Orwell's 1984 shot up. (I looked it up - that's actually true.) Unbeknownst to the American public, the National Security Agency - the dreaded N.S.A. - has been collecting telephone messages, emails, and, I don't know, maybe Tinder profiles, all under the blanket purpose of fighting terrorism.

An American spy rocket chose this as their logo.
It looks like it belongs to the stereotypical evil
organization in a Michael Bay movie.

I'm talking about this in a drone strikes blog because finding terrorists at home and abroad falls to many of the same agencies with many of the same lists and programs. Further, military technology oftentimes gets passed down to local police departments, and counter-terrorism stuff is no exception. No, it's not the missiles (although taking out drug lords with drone strikes sounds kind of cool, albeit in a terrifying way). We're talking the surveillance equipment; they have the technology to retrieve deleted text messages, spy on SMS (essentially texts), eavesdrop on calls, extract media files, address books and notes, and so forth. Most of it is done through cell-site simulators (also called StingRays, if you want to sound cool) which function as a mobile cell tower that people can inadvertently use, thus allowing them to track the information coming in. Initially this was used to target the terrorists' devices, thus allowing for more information, locations, and so forth. However, since 2007 they've been used on American soil 4,300 times - and that's just the Baltimore Police Department. I'm glad the only text messages I send are either mundane or childish. I'm also glad I live in Canada.

The problem with this technology is it tends to drag a net across an area and brings in way more information than it wants or needs. They don't specifically target one phone; it'll sweep, meaning whomever happens to be using their phone around a StingRay will suddenly have their information put into the system. While that sounds pretty doom and gloom (I'll admit it's a little disconcerting) let's not forget that no one's really reading any of it, unless they're hunting you specifically. I sincerely doubt there are a bunch of CIA guys reading your stuff and laughing at you - unless you said something really embarrassing, (and you know what that is!) in which they totally are for sure.

So yes, a lot of data is being collected (all but an infinitesimal percentage surely completely useless). However, if they do find something about you - either at home or abroad - there's a chance you'll be placed on the terrorist watchlist. You've probably heard the terms "no-fly list" and that sort, and that's basically what we're talking about here. You would think that it would be fairly hard to get on the watchlist - and to be fair if you're a law-abiding citizen, again, the chances you'll be on it are so, so small - but in countries the States is casually bombing you have a pretty decent chance. The laws at home don't apply to the U.S. overseas (or more accurately they just kind of ignore them most of the time) so the whole "fair trial" idea doesn't really hold water. Concrete facts and irrefutable evidence would be nice, but they're far from necessary and pretty rare, meaning that if you're suspected in any way you're essentially seen as guilty enough to be placed on it. That's why there are so many on the watchlist; 680,000 as of 2014, 280,000 of them not belonging to a terrorist organization. The no-fly list is smaller, but rising at the same dramatic rate over the past ten or so years.

This is Marvel's logo for Hydra, the
fictional terrorist organization. Now, my
question is does this look more or less
evil than the world-consuming octopus?
My follow up question is how disturbing
is it that it's a tough call?

TIDE, or the Terrorist Datamart Environment, (not to be confused with the rise and falls of sea levels, or detergent) is even larger - holding over a million names. Basically everything gets funneled through TIDE, splitting into different organizations, groups, programs, etc. - some of them with names that are seemingly designed to sound as villainous as possible. The best example is Hydra, which "utilizes clandestinely acquired foreign government information" to find more info on TIDE members. Holy crap. Type "Hydra" into google and the first thing that comes up is the Marvel universe's terrorist organization of the same name. That's unfortunate.

So what we've established here is the databases are huge, the networks for collecting information are

Cub Scout Mikey Hicks immediately
regretted getting his merit badge in
bomb-making.

 massive and wide reaching, and reasonable doubt is an archaic method of justice. What we haven't talked about yet is how you get on the no-fly list while being a resident of the United States. Fortunately, it's not particularly easy to do, and I'm sure that most of the people on there are written up for a good cause - but errors do happen, like the case of Mikey Hicks. Hicks shared the name of a known terrorist and was mistakenly put on the no-fly list (so I guess there was a terrorist named Mikey out there) and was taken aside for a pat down at an airport. At first that sounds upsetting and inconvenient, but there's a troubling twist.

Mikey Hicks was two years old. They gave a pat down to an infant. (I really hope whoever gave the pat-down said "he's clean - except his diaper" once they were done.) By the time he was eight, he was still on it - and still receiving pat-downs at the airport - and that's mostly because once you're put on it it's awfully hard to get taken off. You can apply, get your information put through and so forth, but there's no actual confirmation if you're removed, leaving the possible watchlisted to sit in a state of unknowing whether or not the government sees them as potential mass murderers. Obviously with Hicks it was a case of mistaken identity, but it's not entirely uncommon if you share a name. If anything, that exposes a problem with the system where they're accepting so many names and not properly vetting them or knowing what exactly to do with them. In 2013, 468,749 "Known Suspected Terrorist" nominations were put forth, and all but 4,915 were accepted, putting it at about 99%. It certainly makes you wonder.

I know I've already used one picture of this poor kid,
but this has got to be the funniest picture I've ever seen.

Now, I tried to keep this neutral, although I'll readily admit that the book I got this information from is obviously leaning. Personal opinions on this will come in the next post, but at the very least it's information that the falls in that category of "you should probably know this is happening".

___________________________________



The information for this blog has been taken from "The Assassination Complex: Inside the Government's Secret Drone Warfare Program" by Jeremy Scahill. It's... OK. The problem is it's written as a number of news stories compiled into one volume, meaning plenty of the information doubles up and makes for a frustrating read. Nevertheless, it's an interesting one.

American Counter-Terrorism: Part 1 - Drone Strikes

We're in the age of splits: American politics has become so vitriolic that both sides not only disagree but seem to vehemently hate each other; police shootings, and by that I mean both parties being shot, has furthered a racial divide (well, in the U.S. specifically); the UK leaving the EU hoping to stimulate their GDP through DIY self-reliance, causing the PM, AKA David Cameron, to step down ASAP; but most importantly is the age old battle between east and west, sparking the worst tragedies. Terrorist attacks are becoming disturbingly common, and the world can only change the lighting on buildings in solidarity so quickly.

The response from the United States, the self-proclaimed police of the world, is to bomb the enemies with precise missile strikes from unmanned aircraft because, yes, we live in the future. The bombings happen frequently, most often with little to no media reporting, and a public that knows little beyond the fact that they are indeed blowing things up and that they're probably killing the right people.

"No! More drones!"

or...

These people drone on and on.

Drones have come out of a time where warfare isn't what it used to be. No longer can a country defeat another simply by having more men and greater firepower. If that were case, considering the size of the U.S.'s arsenal, we would possibly be having Trump running for World Emperor rather than president. Instead, they're fighting not against a unified country but smaller forces working within it, making the victory much more complicated. If Vietnam taught America anything it's that you can't win off strength alone. The result is an American turn to technology to do their bidding.

The purpose behind drone strikes is fairly simple. America has grown weary of war, and no one wants more "boots on the ground". They want as little American blood spilt as possible, and drone strikes seem to be that solution. Attacks can occur without any risk to friendly forces, they can be swift and massively destructive, and the prospect of being just about anywhere and having no warning before being suddenly deleted from the planet is surely a worrying one for any who would poke the American bear. To ensure that they hit exclusively the right targets Obama released policy guidelines stating they'll only hit "continuing, imminent threat[s] to the American people" and that the strikes will only happen with "near certainty" that no civilian casualties will occur. Honestly, at the core this sounds darn near perfect. Minimal risk, low civilian casualties, and surgical strikes that knock out exactly who you're gunning for. The problem is that's not really how it goes down.

In 2015 information was leaked to the website The Intercept about the drone program in Yemen, Somalia and Afghanistan. It showed the manner in which drone strikes were carried out, the casualty counts, how the targets are vetted, and how often drone strikes occur. The results were not what one would call inspiring.

Wait, there are drones with guns on them too?!
Is this one real? Wikipedia wouldn't lie to me,
would it?

Civilian casualties can be as high as 90%. Operation Haymaker, a series of drone strikes in Afghanistan, killed over two hundred between January 2012 to February 2013, but only 35 of those were intended. One study states that unmanned aircraft are ten times more likely to kill civilians than traditional methods. Now, a simple google search will look as if those are incorrect statistics, but there's a reason behind it. If it's a male of the right age among the dead they're labeled "enemies killed in action" regardless of a lack of evidence against them, skewing the statistics. Essentially they don't know all that much about the people around their target but they get a post-mortem decree of guilt by association. This works out beautifully for the government: it allows them to put out at least relatively pleasant sounding statistics; there's a good chance that if the men killed are hanging out with terrorists they are terrorists themselves; and they can justify their drone strikes if they use words like "enemy combatant" even if they're not sure if there's truth behind it. However, this gets a lot of blowback from human rights groups and international bodies because most of those killed in drone strikes have not received a proper judgement. The information on them is limited (in part due to the strangling of information from drone strikes, as I'll explain later). The judicial process has basically come down to "you're near someone that's bad, so you're bad". But, to be fair, it's war. I'll give my thoughts on it in the third blog of this series.

So let's say it hits the target - called a "jackpot" if it's successful - what happens then? Unfortunately, strictly killing terrorists causes problems in and of itself. Drone strikes leave no chance for captures, which means that interrogations are all but impossible. Information on the ground is a critical component, and with a lack of prisoners coming in knowledge is in short supply. Dead terrorists can't speak, can't make deals, can't really do much of anything except serve as a martyr.

Ah, drone classic. Like most young men I know how these
look because of Call of Duty.

At this point you must be wondering how the targeting can be so unreliable, and if you're like me, you're surprised at just how often it hits civilians instead of who is being intended (or both). The reason being is it all comes down to fairly unreliable data. As it turns out, they're not really doing what you would expect them to do - spot a terrorist, say "bomb him with the aerial death robot" and then move on to the next. Instead, it's more like "this is probably that guy's cellphone, and we haven't seen him use it in a while but it's his cellphone so he's probably there with it, so bomb that." Really, they're not bombing people - they're bombing phones, specifically their SIM cards. The information comes through "metadata", which is essentially cell phone records and who they're linking them to. This of course lends itself to a whole world of problems, from people lending out their phones, to leaving them somewhere, to terrorists getting smarter and having sometimes as many as sixteen separate SIM cards to throw the Americans off the trail. (We'll delve more deeply into how they find out who is a terrorist, but that'll have to wait until the next blog.)

So what we've established here is drones are far from surefire. Well, in the sense that it might not always work as intended, but they are surefire in the sense that they'll certainly annihilate what you lock them on to. They have high civilian casualties, prevent the use of interrogation techniques, and it's reasonable to say that they're fueling the fires of hatred. However, it helps keep the numbers of soldiers on the ground and in danger to a minimum and specific known terrorists can be taken out quickly and effectively.

Right or wrong, their use is not only increasing, but skyrocketing. Obama has made drone strikes a commonplace part of his foreign policy in spite of railing against it as a senator, claiming there needs to be judicial process and that America can't be an executioner. He took what Bush laid out and then stepped it up. Unfortunately, the drone strike process is simply not as clear-cut as we would like it to be.

The War of 1812: Opinions

It's a little out of the norm for me to give opinions as I regularly deliver only purely factual information (historical stuff doesn't give me all that many opinions anyways). However, 1812 brings up a number of questions that I would like to answer. So, if you're in for moderately informed opinions from someone on the internet, you're in for a treat.

So, who actually won the war?

"They have killed our drummer! All is lost! Sound the
retreat!"

I think this one is fairly simple; the British/Canadians won. I know it sounds very kindergarten-y to say "yeah, well, they started it" but the core of it is true here. The Americans did start the war. They engaged with the intention of expelling the British from North America, taking the land as their own, and ending impressment. They went 0/3 on those goals. Canada, at the onset of the war, was hoping simply to keep their stuff. Yes, those goals may have changed throughout the campaign when the British started to push back, but I feel that's mostly irrelevant; the goals of the war were completed for the British and not at all for the Americans. Had the British only done well enough to just barely stymie the American assault, it would have never been a question. However, with their success in pushing into American territory, those goals changed and suddenly it wasn't as clear cut. But, we have to remember how it started out - the British defended their territory, completing what they sought to do in the war.

The Americans didn't lose too much either, but more so maintained a status quo. Impressment started to pass by the wayside, but that was due to circumstances oversees rather than anything they did personally. They may have defended valiantly at the end but their purpose in entering the war was to take territory, not prevent losses.

The only one who really lost in this case were the native tribes in the area surrounding the fighting (Ohio and so forth). The native state was not established, they lost what they held previously, and many were sent to reserves or continued being kicked off the land they previously held.

Why do Americans think they won it?
Americans believe they won the war because of a number of decisive battles close to the end that all went the way of the stars and stripes. However, these battles were used as leverage when peace talks were already occurring. The British hoped to continue pushing into American territory to have a greater say in how the treaty went, planning to score a few extra points by saying "hey, we can still blow up your crap if we want to". Losing in New Orleans (and losing in a rout, at that), a defeat in a major naval battle, and failing to take Baltimore culminated in a strong end for the Americans - but the final score still weighed in favour of the British North Americans.

Can we say Canada won?
This is a tricky one.

The argument for no:

One could easily say it was all the Brits. The generals, military leaders, and backbone of the army (the British regulars, the highly trained military) were all British. It was, without question, British territory. Canada wasn't even a country at that point, and wouldn't be for another half century - and even then, it would still be under British command for some time. Even now we love hearing about the Royal Family for reasons beyond my understanding (I'm a touch confused why the British care either). Everything about it screams Britain since the spoils of war went to them, the command came from across the ocean, the best soldiers were British born, and ultimately it was America vs. Britain. If it's Britain, it's not officially Canadian, no matter how linked it may be.

Brock, thinking the battle a lock, found shock in the shot
from the glock that pierced his smock. He took his knock
on his walk to squawk at the War Hawk, alongside the Mohawk,
wielders of the tomahawk.  

The argument for yes:

No, Canada wasn't a country - but it's called Upper and Lower Canada. It's the same territory and while many of the British regulars would have gone on home, many of those that fought were those settling into that territory. Their children (well, grandchildren mostly) would be those that would grow up there and later become, unequivocally, Canadian.  And while the British regulars and generals may have been leading the fights, a massive number of soldiers were militiamen of Canada - meaning those that had settled into the lands around there and signed up to defend. These were Canadian militiamen who were British subjects.

In my mind, this absolutely was Canada, just the same as it was Britain. It was a shared victory through and through. Through the occupation of towns by the States (and, in truth, harbouring an anti-Americanism that still shines through at times today) we began to develop our own cultural identity. 1812 was one of the first steps to move from being British living overseas to true Canadians, and because of that, we can find a part in it. It was those fighting on behalf of Upper and Lower Canada who won the war, and many of whom were the basis for the country as it stands. Without them the face of Canada would be littered with American flags instead of the maple leaf.

Were the British the "good guys"?

"Oh man oh man oh man we've got to get that piece back
before the President noticed or we are so dead."

This isn't Star Wars. There's no Dark Side, pure good or evil, or Jar Jar Binks (there's only Manley Power). Everything here is rather muddled. Both sides, in a sense, are underdogs. America is the young upstart, but with the British across the ocean, they outnumbered them - making them the heavyweight in this fight if not the world. America may have declared war, but it was the British who goaded them into it with impressment and disrupting their trade. Neither side really wanted to enter the war, but felt they had to. So, all in all, the answer is clear.

Maybe?

Lasting Legacy:
With a lack of territory change, would things really have been that different if the War of 1812 didn't happen? Well, that's all conjecture. But... It showed that Canada wasn't a pushover. We may have been fewer in number, but that doesn't mean we would allow outsiders to come into our territory and set up camp. Through shirking American influence we chose to be uniquely ourselves, rather than another State, or America's hat. (Yes, still a British colony, but sort of unique.) In fact, both sides seemed to find some new identity through it - the Americans describe it as their Second War of Independance (finding independence through attacking another, but still) and it pushed us one step closer to Confederation years down the line.

The War of 1812: Part 3 - Back to Normal

With Brock's death, Tecumseh's dream of a native state largely went with him. Brock was ever the supporter of Tecumseh, both having a mutual respect through the fact that both men were, objectively speaking, awesome. However, without Brock in his corner, he lacked the cohesion he once had with the British forces.

Some time after Brock's death, a fierce battle raged between River Raisin and Frenchtown, a Canadian settlement. After a number of skirmishes back and forth, the Canadian forces (along with their native allies) retaliated and defeated the American force. They killed many Americans, some of which were surrendering. Worried about the consequences of staying too long and having American reinforcements turn the tide, the British retreated. With them, they took any able bodied prisoners and left the wounded, unable to bring them along. The native force, however, stayed behind and massacred the remaining Americans, leaving severed heads on sticks as a warning. This served to fuel resentment (and recruitment) for the Americans, furious at the treatment of their wounded. 

Afterwards, the American forces settled themselves and pressed forwards towards a new land, in Fort Meigs. If they succeeded in holding the fort and repelling any assaults in the times ahead, it would serve as a landing point to attack Upper Canada. Therefore, Tecumseh and the British knew that taking the fort, and quickly, would be of the utmost importance. Over two thousand were part of the assault, and... well, it started OK. Tecumseh brilliantly lured out a  large number of Americans under a false retreat, making the soldiers believe they were poorly prepared. The result was a large scale capture. A number of native warriors, with the British sitting idly by, began killing some of the prisoners. Fortunately, Tecumseh, ever the high-moraled hero, returned and put a stop to it. He did this with many of the warriors not speaking the same language as him - bear in mind they came from a number of tribes - making the feat all the more impressive. The British likely pulled on their collars a little and felt a wee bit embarrassed.

Fort Meigs reenactors firing time appropriate
muskets. The Americans in the background
are so comfortable with guns they declined to turn
around.

In the end it wasn't enough. The fight resulted in an American victory, pushing back the Canadians 'n' Friends contingents. They tried again - and failed. Then they tried taking a smaller position and failed there as well, which is kind of like flunking out of university, going to community college, and picking up a C-. Worse yet, they followed up with losing a major naval battle at Lake Erie (which equates to losing your job at Safeway after your failed stints at post secondary, if we're continuing with the metaphor). The failures caused the British commander, Henry Proctor, to panic and plan a hasty retreat. Proctor had such a terrible run that his wikipedia states he's "best known as the commander who was decisively defeated in 1813 by the Americans and left western Ontario in American hands." Poor Proctor. As inconsequential as my life may be, at least I don't have a wikipedia entry dedicated to how bad I suck. And it only gets worse. Tecumseh got word of this proposed retreat (Proctor didn't tell him) and Tecumseh began shaming him in front of the rest of his officers and officials. He compared him to a "fat animal, that carries its tail upon its back, but when affrighted, it drops between its legs, and runs off." It was the early 1800s equivalent of a mic drop. To further press the point, Tecumseh highlighted his own fearless nature, claiming he was "determined to defend our lands, and if it is his [the Great Spirit's] will, we wish to leave our bones upon them."

Sadly for Tecumseh, he got his wish. Sorely disappointed by the preparations Proctor had made in preparing to defend against the Americans, he fought on anyways. He was soon killed in battle, dying the way he lived; fiercely fighting for his cause, he himself a rallying cry for all the native tribes he had under his command. Unfortunately, he was so integral to holding them all together his death dealt a massive blow to the Native Confederacy, effectively ending the hope of native territory in the Ohio area.

The war, however, wasn't over. With Fort Meigs defended the U.S. was free to make their push into Canada. The Americans moved to attack the critical point of Montreal in the predominantly French Lower Canada. The attack there would cut off the St. Lawrence River, and without that Canada would be thrown into disarray. The defense of Montreal was absolutely critical to success, and both sides amped up the numbers of military forces. The Americans planned to attack with Major General Wade Hampton at the helm, with a pincer movement by General James Wilkinson attacking from the south. Hampton began the assault with attacking a defensive position he believed was only sparsely defended. While attempting to sneak up in the dead of night, they got lost in the trees and came out in broad daylight. The resulting attack hardly made a dent, and they retreated with many casualties and an equal amount of shame due to losing a battle on the grounds of getting lost in the woods. Better yet for Canada, it showed that the French would not only stand with them, but would hold their own. Wilkinson, not getting word of this, attacked a short time later and found no support when he had planned to have a flanking American fighting force. They bid a retreat, burning villages along the way, and the Canadians followed in pursuit.

This depiction of the death of Tecumseh was later used as the
Facebook cover art of the American generals. It averaged eight 'likes'.

With the Americans defeated in their advances into Canadian territory, the British entered into negotiations. Hoping to win some favour in the proceedings, they hoped to put the Americans on their heels and attacked into their territory. In the summer of 1814 they made their way into Chesapeake Bay, and found themselves with two options - meaning the Americans had to defend two routes. One, they could take the large and important city of Baltimore, or they could move on Washington and get revenge for York. They chose the later, and while there were American defenses along the way they couldn't hold off the powerful Canadian advance (you don't hear that often anymore except for perhaps from a hockey announcer with a flair for grandiose language). They set fire to the White House and other government buildings along the way, as an eye for an eye sounds a whole lot better than an eye for a diplomatic negotiations to be held in response. 

That was, however, the last major success of the campaign. They moved on Baltimore, but upon the death of their general, the advance slowed and the city held. From there, the States' national anthem was born out of the fighting, so... you're welcome, America.

This British military leader was named - and
I'm not joking here - Manley Power.
His name was Manley Power! How did
the British not win the war instantly?
He was even knighted, making him Sir
Manley Power!

The Americans continued their victories at Lake Champlain where Prevost, outnumbering his opponents, lost due to bad decision making and military tactics. Prevost was later court martialed, but died ten days before it occurred which saved him the humiliation. This helped the Americans in their negotiations greatly, with the British realizing that the shoddy tactics and poorly trained soldiers of the Americans was a thing of the past. They found their way as the war progressed, and became a honed, successful fighting force where once the British were defeating them, outnumbered, with fair frequency.

The Treaty of Ghent was signed shortly after. The boundaries between the two countries effectively didn't change. Impressment stayed (although was not as necessary due to Napoleon's war ending). The British gave up on the idea of a native state. After all the war, the bloodshed, the taking of territories and the burnings of towns and villages and government buildings, the two sides pretty well broke even and packed their bags. That is, of course, except for the natives - they got the short end of the stick. America was free to take their lands, and no territory was really anything they could call home. After all of this, pretty much nothing changed.

Oh, and one more thing happened. 

While I'm confused as to how or why this occurred (perhaps they didn't get the memo? maybe we can blame a lack of email?) the British attacked New Orleans after the treaty was signed. The casualties were about as one-sided as you would imagine; about twenty to one. It was a disastrous, shameful defeat - and one that occurred when all was said and done anyways. So if you're wondering why the Americans so strongly believe they won 1812, you're looking at it. A decisive win in a pointless battle.

______________

The information for this blog was taken from the book Tecumseh and Brock: The War of 1812 by James Laxer. It's a fairly quick read and covers what you want to know. If you're interested in 1812 and this blog series just didn't do it for you, give it a go.

The War of 1812: Part 2 - War Declared

We left off with emotions running high, and shortly after the president declared war on the British, claiming they were taking their men from their very ships, and inciting the natives to go to attack. This they were mostly correct on, and justifiably upset about it. However, they weren't right about everything; Thomas Jefferson believed that taking Canada would be a "mere matter of marching". They were thinking they would bring their ideals to the oppressed citizens of a British colony and tell them how lovely life is in America, and the inhabitants would throw out their tea sets, grab a beer, and settle into being American for the rest of their lives. It's to be noted that it wasn't called "Operation Enduring Freedom", but at times eerily familiar.

Meanwhile, Canada was preparing to defend itself under the watchful eyes of Isaac Brock (our aggressive, 6'2" hero) and governor general and military commander George Prevost. Their army consisted of well-trained British regulars serving as the backbone of the army, a number of militiamen, and a large number of native warriors. They didn't really want to fight this war, but the Americans didn't really want to either; the States only passed the decision to go to war with a win of 19-13 votes, making it the least popular war in American history. Even as far as wars go, people barely wanted to fight.

Prevost was a little dumpier than I expected.

Leading the advance into Canada was 59 year old William Hull, striking out from Fort Detroit. He walked into Sandwich - yes, the town of Sandwich - and asked for the British subjects to join. To be fair, many of them did. It seemed like the Americans might just be the winning side, and it would be wise to be on the right side of history. However, once the American soldiers started taking provisions from the town, many of them no longer saw them in a positive light. At best, they were poor quality guests; at worst, they were considered thieves.

Once Tecumseh arrived to really bring the fight to them (at this point resistance was pretty much nothing thus far, at least in this segment of land) Hull began to worry. Fighting small skirmishes with hit-and-run tactics, the native force showed that the inevitable takeover of Canada just might not be so. With a number of advantages in the field (a fast, mobile force allowing them to skirt around the larger American army and take shots at their supply lines and stymie their advance with skirmishes and other such tactics that don't involve a large scale assault) Hull stopped moving quickly and adopted a much more cautious approach. Not only was he frightened about his supply lines being hit, but he was worried about what the natives would do if they captured his forces. They had a reputation of scalping and torturing their prisoners, and his fears of being overcome by them played heavily in the events to come.

The fast moving native army meant that open terrain and ambushes weighed heavily in their favour, and they used them to great effect. One such ambush carried out by Tecumseh's men found a note written by Hull detailing his fears of a large scale native attack. Not only was this of critical importance to supporting the morale of the warriors, but it would play into the strategy of the British in the weeks to come. However, lacking artillery meant that approaching a fort would be certain death. If they were to truly break defensive fortifications, that would require a combined effort of British and native armies, rather than simply one or the other. A critical part of the War of 1812 is the degree in which the two sides utilized their native allies - the British particularly well, and the Americans not so much.

Brock arrived a short time later to bring the British into the fight for the land around Niagara. His first meeting with Tecumseh seems like something out of an action movie; two very different soldiers, both leaders, meet and unite against a common foe, sizing each other up and developing a mutual level of respect. Tecumseh saw him as a brave, respectable man, and Brock saw his counterpart as both critical to his success and a wise leader. Brock would say this about Tecumseh:
"A more sagacious or a more gallant warrior does not, I believe, exist. He was the admiration of everyone who conversed with him. From a life of dissipation he is not only become in every aspect abstemious but likewise prevailed on all his Nation, and many other Tribes, to follow his example." After some dictionary searching, I was pleased to see it was very complimentary.   I assume it went something like when Arnold and Carl Weathers met in Predator - you can watch the scene here.

Both believed that an aggressive assault on the American fort would be necessary, in spite of their inferior numbers. They had just above half the forces of the enemy, and they were also playing with the defender's advantage of sitting in a fort. What won the battle for Tecumseh and Brock was nothing short of brilliant military deception. Playing on the fears of Hull, he sent warning of a native force coming to the fort and advising them to surrender or prepare for war. Upon arrival, he moved his native warriors just within eyesight of the fort, and having them double back through the trees and pass the same stretch of land time and time again to make them appear like there was a much larger force than there actually was. He also gave old British regular uniforms to his militiamen to, again, deceive the enemy into thinking they were a more daunting fighting force than they actually were. Had they attacked they would have been slaughtered, but fearing for the lives of not only the men of Fort Detroit, but the nearby village of Detroit itself, 2,500 Americans under Hull surrendered. The surrender was so shameful Hull was  forced to attend a court martial and was nearly convicted of treason. A newspaper hilariously titled the National Intelligencer described the event as such: "The nation had been deceived by a gasconding booby."

Portrait of William Hull. Not pictured:
white flags of surrender.

America, filled with anger over the surrender of Fort Detroit, sought to quickly retaliate in the Battle of Queenston Heights at the foot of Niagara. Large forces came to battle on both sides: 2,300 regulars and 4,000 militia for the U.S., and 1,200 regulars, 800 militia and 600 native warriors for the British North Americans. The Americans took the offensive but poor coordination and a lack of respect between the first and second in command resulted in the forces not attacking in conjunction with each other. The British held, and nearly a thousand U.S. soldiers deserted, resulting in a victory for the defenders. However, the British lost a key component of their military force - the man of the hour, the inspiring, tactically strong Isaac Brock was shot in the chest and killed during the battle. Brock was knighted before he died, but the word didn't reach him in time.

After licking their wounds the Americans attacked again, and this time took the capital (albeit the lowly populated and not-of-critical-strategic-importance capital) of York. The British, in retreat, set off an explosion of their gunpowder that killed a few of the invaders, including their beautifully named commander Zebulon Pike. That same commander had been the one demanding his forces refrain from pillaging and looting the town, so upon his death, that order seemed to pass by the wayside. Government buildings and parliament were burned, and the government's ceremonial mace wasn't returned until 1934. It does make me wonder what the Americans were doing with that mace for so long. Did they have it in a museum? Did they crack walnuts with it? Perhaps they returned it thinking that we might need a weapon for the war in a few years time.

Meanwhile, one of Canada's great women, Laura Secord (now lovingly associated with being chocolatastic) overheard discussions of a surprise attack by some American soldiers and warned of the coming assault. The news allowed for a rout of the attacking American force, making her one of Canada's first heroines. She's Canada's Paul Revere!

"Blimey! The Yankees want a scuffle? We'll give them
the what for, we will!" the British soldiers said to Laura Secord.

In spite of a number of battles, for the next while the fighting seemed to reach a stalemate. Land was taken, then returned, taken again, and pressed further elsewhere. However, an event oversees that could very well change the tide. Napoleon had, as the French say, screwed le pooch, attacking Russia and losing pretty darn close to his whole army. This meant that the British no longer had to worry about the French as much as they had, freeing up their forces for overseas interests. That means you, North America! Bring a sweater, British soldiers. You'll be moving to Canada.

The War of 1812: Part 1 - Tecumseh and the Aboriginals

Two things have occurred since the War of 1812 that are, one, so very Canadian and the other so very American. For the former, two great Canadian heroes are neither Canadian nor did they really wante to be a part of Canada (Tecumseh, a First Nations leader, wanting a separate native state and British military leader Isaac Brock desperately wished to return to Europe to live and fight there). As for the later, the fact that the U.S. invaded and came away with no territory and nevertheless claimed victory by saying "yeah, well, we won that fight at the end, so, America!" feels just about right as well. But that's a long way off - we have to start a little over fourty years earlier, just after the States told the British that they were going to be moving out of their parents' place and declaring independence.

Back then, land was of the utmost importance. Expansion and the retention of taken lands was critical to the plans of all three parties: the British wanted to establish a colony oversees, hoping to drink tea in a decidedly colder climate; the Americans, again typically American, wanted pretty well everything - land, power, wealth, and future fast food destination spots; the natives really just wanted to rewind things at least to a time where things were somewhat less bleak. The British were kind of on board with the natives' plan, deciding that they would give them a large section of reserved land. This would do two major things for the British colonies of Upper and Lower Canada; one, it would placate the large number of aboriginals that didn't seem on board with the whole "we're taking your stuff" strategy of the newcomers, and two, it would create a buffer zone between the increasingly large and menacing American threat that may just decide to step over into their yard and plant their flag in Canadian lands.

Tecumseh dressed like a modern day hipster,
and looked good doing it.

Tecumseh, the hero of the native peoples, was born around this time into the Shawnee people. The Iroquois just took over their Ohio land, displacing them and later selling it to the Americans - something that the Shawnee would not honour as it was not them that had sold it. The next decades of his life were predominantly focussed on surviving constant displacement by settlers forcing them out or surviving raids by the same on his newfound towns. His father died in one of these raids in a last, desperate stand of the dwindling numbers of warriors that were defending. Tecumseh was born into war, and it would be that war that he would eventually die in.

By the time he was eighteen, Tecumseh became a leader of his tribe. He was a great hunter, a provider, handsome and charming, and seemed to be the kind that would do well in the war with the Americans. His first taste of battle, however, didn't go exactly as one would hope. Upon joining the fray, he panicked and ran, deserting the fight. He vowed never show such fear again, but considering the method of warfare at the time was standing some distance from the enemy, loading your rifle, firing at him, and repeating the process until enough are dead that you can cause a retreat or be the one to turn tail, I can't say I blame him for getting out of there. Nevertheless, he returned and started causing quite the raucous - he staged hit and runs, became a respected warchief, and a proven warrior. In spite of his father (and his brother) being killed by the Americans, he still showed restraint when dealing with the enemy. There are a number of accounts of Tecumseh stopping tortures or slaughters of prisoners. However, being a respectable warrior and excellent leader could only go so far. Having so many disparate tribes within the native armies, they lacked a cohesive leader to properly mobilize their forces. If one leader disagreed, he could simply bring his people with him, meaning that without a head the tribes lacked a united front.

But the War of 1812 was between the British and the Americans, with the natives allying with one side or the other, and therefore not the focal point. So what caused them to have such bad blood? The fighting started with more than just a disagreement over what, exactly, is "football". The roots of it began over in Europe, and oddly enough, with Napoleon. The French leader was at war with Britain, and America could obviously trade with both sides, which when left to their own devices was quite lucrative. However, they were playing both sides of the war between the two, and this meant that the European powers would take out American ships that weren't going to a friendly port to stifle supplies to their respective enemy countries. Worse yet, the British would often board these American ships and bring back former British subjects that had deserted and joined the United States, placing them once more in the military of the British crown. The process of taking these soldiers, called impressment, was critical to supplying the large British navy with men to run the ships - regardless of the low morale that must have caused.

Impressment and reduced trade enraged many Americans. A group titled the Warhawks, led by Henry Clay, saw Upper Canada not only as great farmland rife for the taking but also as a means of taking some revenge on those that put a blockade on the trade goods of the U.S.. They thought they could clear the British out of all of America.

An early version of Mortal Kombat. Player one chose Tecumseh.
Player two chose William Henry Harrison.

Meanwhile, Isaac Brock, a British soldier, was placed in charge of the army and sought to defend Canada. However, he wasn't a big fan of the place. He frequently wrote letters wishing to return to England, thinking of the Canadas as some kind of backwater - and he wasn't even placed in Newfoundland. Nevertheless, he worked tirelessly shoring up the defences and preparing for a war that very well may be coming. At 6'2", Brock was an imposing and inspiring man, and if there was a Brit that could get the job done it would be him.

His worries came to fruition when Tecumseh met with the Americans, claiming they were taking their land by force and he wouldn't stand for it. He informed them they were going to be accepting gunpowder from the British, and with that, the chances of ending the disputes without bloodshed were effectively ended. War was coming. A large number of natives sided with the British on the grounds that they were friendlier to their plight, but many others went the American route hoping to be on the winning side. The British refused to back down on their methods of impressment, believing it necessary to fuel the war effort in Europe. The Americans had enough of these pushy, snobby Brits. Fortunately for Canada, this happened before America's bloated military budget came to be.

The Atomic Bomb: Part 3 - Nuclear Stockpiling

A picture the Tsar bomb from (literally) 100 miles away.
Hippies everywhere flocked to the explosion upon seeing
the 'shroom, but were disappointed to discover
it was only a cloud. 

We left off with Russia having the bomb, America having the bomb, and both of them staring at each other flexing like two of the toughest guys at the bar who have had a bit too much to drink, believing that they are indeed the strongest. Now, don't get me wrong, nukes are strong - but are they strong enough? The scientists apparently looked at the bomb and thought, yeah, it can blow up a city, but can't it get any bigger? Well, the answer is yes - it certainly can. You just need to use the power of the sun, but not in some sissy "solar power saving the world" type way. We want the "solar power annihilating the crap out of everything" way! Now, it's not putting a solar panel on a bomb, it's fusing hydrogen atoms in a similar manner to how the sun produces energy. Or exactly the same manner on a smaller scale - I don't know. Either way, the result is an explosion that dwarfs the previous ones.

The hydrogen bomb was developed just a few years after Hiroshima and Nagasaki, but it wasn't the end of ever increasing bomb sizes. Bombs kept getting larger until the Russians developed the Tsar Bomb, a hydrogen bomb that was (and still is) the most powerful nuclear bomb ever created. The Tsar was dropped in 1961 as one of many nuclear tests. The blast was fifty megatons, or fifty million tons of T.N.T., well over a thousand times more powerful than the ones dropped on the Japanese. 

Well, it's a graph. It explains itself. I don't need a caption
for it, but I would feel so empty without one.

Bomb production skyrocketed as well. The idea was mutual for each superpower; if their enemy had a lot of nukes then they could destroy their country, so they had to ensure that they in turn held enough nukes to destroy them back, thus preventing them from firing in the first place. So on they built, ensuring that even if the Russians wanted to bomb Buford, Wyoming (wikipedia tells me it's the smallest town in America, with a population of one, somehow) they could do it, and if America wanted to bomb the smallest Russian town right back they certainly could as well. It was an arms race, which works perfectly with my metaphor of the two tough guys in the bar, but I'll pass on adding another pun to this blog series.

So just how many bombs did they build? In 1947 the U.S. had 13. 1953 saw that number up to 1,100. Late '60s, 31,000. Between the two of them there were 60,000 nuclear weapons with 36 different types hanging around in the world. 

The nukes weren't just sitting there, though; plenty of them were being used for testing, just not on people. A few hundred were tested but the environmental effects were worrisome, causing the signing of a treaty in 1963 to no longer test the bombs in the atmosphere, space, on the ground or underwater. Great! That just meant that they would test them underground, where another eight hundred or so were tested until they stopped in 1992. Take that, mother Earth!

A crater left by a nuclear test, awaiting the winter to be
once more used as a hill for tobogganing.

While I won't delve deeply into the happenings of the Cold War, both sides eventually pulled out and didn't bomb each other to smithereens, leaving us in some post-apocalyptic video game world. But what would have happened had the bomb not been there in the first place? Would the Soviet Union and the United States have fought with troops instead? It could very well have caused another colossal war. Since, the number of nuclear bombs has decreased greatly, but the number of countries that own them hasn't. The U.S. and Russia obviously still have them, but add to that list India, Israel, China, France, Pakistan and North Korea, according to the Huffington Post. Now, those countries have a very, very small piece of the pie, but Japan would be the first to remind you of what just two nuclear bombs, much smaller than what we have now, can do. 

__________________________________________

The information for this blog was taken from the documentary The Bomb, a PBS program. 

The Atomic Bomb: Part 2 - The Bomb in Use

"Hooray," thought the Americans. "We have the bomb! So... now what?"

What happens when you detonate a nuke underwater.
The centre is a massive column of water. They sought to test
"what happens when we blow up a bomb under the ocean?"
and came up with "it explodes". 

Bombing Germany was no longer necessary. They had just surrendered a few months prior to the full development and trial of the nuke, and unless the Americans wanted to prove a point, they weren't planning on using it on them anytime soon (unless in an unlikely Zombie Hitler scenario). So that leaves Japan, the never surrender, everything for the Emperor fighters that in spite of everything around them refuse to back down. The scientists were fifty-fifty with the rather obvious moral implications. Dropping a bomb on a Japanese city is no longer attacking soldiers - it's all civilian casualties, and a massive number of them in one fell swoop. However, to perpetuate the war for however long the Japanese were planning on holding out for (which may well have been to the very last able bodied soldier went down) would have meant losing a great number of American soldiers and postponed the end of the horrors of war. That might not play well with a public (and army) that is weary of battle and believes they have an option to eliminate the enemy without the loss of their own. It's a loaded question with no easy answer - but that's not what we're here to discuss.

Years later, Apollo Creed called out the
Russians in a similar fashion. Living
in America...

The much better route would have been negotiating an unconditional surrender. There was just one burning word in there that the Japanese couldn't accept; "unconditional". They wished to oversee their own war crimes trial, to keep their Emperor, and avoid occupation. The Americans disagreed with the terms, and the "Little Boy" was placed in a B-29 bomber and dropped over Hiroshima. Exploding well above the ground, a ten thousand degree blast levelled a whole quarter mile with a shockwave that pushed out much further. 80,000 die in something that has never been seen in war before; that many losses from one person flying one bomb with one plane - it wasn't an army and there were no risks, but that level of destruction was now on the table at a moment's notice. Even then, the Japanese would not surrender and the "Fat Man" bomb was dropped on Nagasaki. 70,000 were killed. 

This is all common knowledge. What isn't as well known is that Nagasaki wasn't the original target; Kokura was meant to be the victim of the Fat Man but a cloudy day prevented it. Clear skies in Nagasaki is what doomed those people to a fiery death, the blast strong enough to sometimes leave haunting shadowy imprints from where their bodies absorbed the heat. The Japanese Army still did not wish to surrender, but deferred to the Emperor's wishes to finally give in. President Truman says it was unconditional in a speech to the public, but that isn't entirely true - they accepted the condition of keeping their Emperor in which the Japanese held so dear.

The arms race officially begins once Stalin sees pictures of the devastation wrought at Hiroshima. Stalin was not surprised at the knowledge that the Americans had the bomb as he had not one but two men on the inside at Los Alamos. Klaus Fuchs was a communist that sent information back to Stalin. One could say he was Klaus to Fuchs-ing up the operation until the Americans focussed on Stalin the flow of information to the Soviets. (YES!) A second soviet in disguise, Theodore Hall, was also found to be sending information. He must have had a Hall of a time explaining that one. (DOUBLE YES!)

"Sweet Enola Gay, son!"
It was said the bomb was detonated from the height of the man's
shorts on the left.

The post-bombing world effectively started the Cold War, full of proxy battles, Doomsday Clocks, and a whole bunch of movies about Vietnam (Platoon, Apocalypse Now, Full Metal Jacket, Apocalypse Now 2: Apocalypse Yesterday). Russia was eager to get the bomb and had their own team working on it, and the Americans were eager to perfect it. The Los Alamos lab grew rapidly and tests become far more common. The first mass produced bomb is created, and suddenly you have something capable of dealing out massive quantities of death indiscriminately and all the time it takes to make them is about a week (or half a fortnight). 

To make matters worse, and when the Cold War really kicks off, is when Russia produces their first atomic bomb. Suddenly, they're on the same level as the U.S. again, capable of destroying them just as surely as the States could destroy the Soviets. Nuclear arsenals mount for decades, and fear becomes the predominant emotion of the civilian population as the idea that their lives could be snuffed out at any given moment. That prospect is not only a possibility but a very real and not unlikely one. 

Plus, in the early '70s, Canada heroically defeated the Soviet Union in hockey, which left them really cheesed off. 

The Atomic Bomb: Part 1 - Putting it Together

Thankfully, there aren't a lot of things in the world that could wipe out humanity. Sure, nature has a few tricks up her sleeve (I'm looking at you, Yellowstone National Park) but we've for the most part limited our self-destruction to non-human-race-ending mechanisms. That is, until the bomb. No, not the classic Nintendo game Bomberman 64 - nor Bomberman Ultra, nor Bomberman Jetters, Bomberman Generation, Bomberman Hero, Bomberman Quest or... well, any of the Bomberman series that's put together in the 40 minute YouTube clip about the series' history. I mean the atomic bomb, the one that is capable of knocking out cities and irradiating what it doesn't flatten. The kind of bombs that the world had 60,000 of at one time, and still has well over 10,000. It wouldn't be the blast that would kill the Earth - more so, it would the the drastic changes it atmosphere. Think of global warming, but sped up, but only after a nuclear winter. Similar to volcanoes, dust would cloud the sky and block out the sun, lowering the Earth's temperature enough to cause crop yields to drop, leading to horrible famines. It would also knock out the o-zone, which, if you haven't been listening to the news lately, is really nothing but a negative. 

So how did we come to possess these weapons, and why?

Robert Oppenheimer with Albert Einstein, working
diligently on a crossword puzzle.

In Germany, 1938, scientists discovered they could split the nucleus in the uranium atom - discovering fission. Out of a very small amount of material, they could now produce an absolutely enormous amount of energy. Out of that information, the Allied countries feared that the Nazis were on the verge of creating an atomic bomb. Nazi atomic bombs is about as fear-inducing a stretch of words that could be said while on the brink of a world war. (It would also make a great band name!) Even the U.S., despite not entering the war for some time, were wary of this. Any major power with an unmatched weapon is going to cause an alarm. Right away, Roosevelt authorized a project to get down and dirty with uranium in an attempt to get that bomb before anyone else could. He tasks General Leslie Groves to do this, although it seemed at the time like an impossible task, and perhaps a bit of a career killer. Regardless, Groves then scoured the U.S. in an attempt to round up the best scientists America had to offer, choosing to place Robert Oppenheimer at the helm. It was a team of America's best and brightest, with the average age being... wait, 25?! Groves must have chosen the scientists like television would have cast them - choose mid-twenty year olds regardless of whether it makes sense or not.

Originally thought to be a picture taken within the first
few milliseconds of the Trinity Test, this photo has
been proven to be a pimple.

They took the team of scientists and sent them to Los Alamos, a place built for them to work on the bomb in solitude. The British sent over a number of scientists as well, one of them a German-born communist by the name of Klaus Fuchs. (Remember him for future blogs; I'll likely make a pun on his last name.) They had to be isolated and completely in secret because any slip of information could turn the tide of the whole war. Communication with the outside world was minimal, as there had to be no distractions. This is where the this rag-tag bunch of youngsters begin to build what they refer to only as "the gadget" - the bomb's blueprint and shell, as well as the method in which it detonates. After a while, they figured out how it would work but they had one major hang-up; what are they going to put in it that was actually going to explode?

What they used to drop the bomb in the Trinity
Test. The clouds, sensing the danger, are
bidding a hasty retreat.

It was no easy task; fuel for these explosions was not very easy to come by. Uranium was the prime candidate, but it takes a very long time to strip what you need from it to make it useable. Naturally occurring uranium doesn't cut it (because science) and you need this special kind of uranium that is within regular uranium. Or something. Again, science. Anyways, Groves had a giant complex built to extract it but when you're getting this stuff one atom at a time, it wasn't going to be able to destroy anything any time soon - even if you only needed a few pounds of it. Out of luck on that front, they searched for a new substance to replace uranium and arrived at the more spacey sounding plutonium, which would serve the same explosive purpose. However, plutonium can be manufactured (harvested? created? conjured? I'm not sure how plutonium comes to be) much faster, so Groves went and had another set of buildings created to produce plutonium instead. Remember that this is wartime here; if something needs to get done, it gets done. Cost is irrelevant. It's like giving a credit card to a teenage girl in a shopping mall; you're going to have a lot more things, a lot less money, and you're not entirely sure if you need any of it.

The bomb was created and ready for testing after three years and two billion dollars (but old two billion dollars, so think of a much larger number to convert it to modern day currency, then add a zero). The Trinity Test was the first run at a nuclear bomb, and it was hoisted up a short drop from the ground - notably without the explosive inside (they had mattresses underneath it in case it fell - the whole operation costs billions and they use the same method of cushioning that boys use to practice backflips as teenagers). They then brought in the plutonium, delivered by car in the most casual fashion, and placed the explosive material inside. They retreated to a safe distance and ran the test.

From there, they watched a monumental moment in history. Now, I know, I know, that's a cliche - but if ever there's a time to use it it's then. The atomic age was upon them in a massive blast of ash and fire, and from then on war would never be the same.