PBS Liberals Interpret History

You know, shows like "American Experience: The Living Weapon" is why Democrats get the label of being peacenik anti-war apologists for U.S. military positions. That, and allowing Jane Fonda to join Iraq war protests marches (big mistake). I watched the PBS special on Monday night, and I was very disappointed in the twisted depiction of the military's offensive BW program. However, I'm not going to let Dave Shiflett off with his review of the special.

The special fails primarily by relying on scientist-authors, arms control experts, and media interpretations of public events to offer a slanted view of the military's offensive BW program. By doing so, they shortchange the viewer by not demonstrating the true motivations of the military, the active threat they were trying to deter, and the defensive efforts developed during this timeframe. All you get is "Biological warfare is BAD. Misguided scientists FOOLISH." Let me run you through this one-hour special to demonstrate.

• Intro pitch - Jeane Guillenim (sociologist) says how BW could have changed the course of World War II. Too bad no one with a military history background agrees.
• Nice color film of the anthrax tests on Gruinard Island - sheep tied to a rope die in a few days. A few corpses wash onto the mainland, and the British govt has to "cover it up." Whoop-tie do.
• Britain realizes they need American production power to make BW bombs. Ira Baldwin, the father of the U.S. offensive BW program, starts his work at Detrick. I've never heard of this scientist/manager, but the WWII BW program was kept very quiet.
• Richard Preston (author) describes the horrible, deadly botulinum toxin. Never used in combat.
• We backtrack to World War I, where the use of chemical warfare was seen as "outrageous, against the norms of war." This "perversion of science" causes the nations to sign the Geneva Protocol. The protocol doesn't stop any nation from producing chem weapons.
• Preston - "What BW wants to do is survive and reproduce itself" thus the living weapon title. As I've previously stated, why is this strange for a biological organism?
• Admiral William Laehy (naval aid to Roosevelt) was against US BW program - but the film neglects to note the strong surge of civilian and military support (and funding) for CB weapons
• Japan surrenders prior to the start-up of BW production at Vigo, Indiana. Nuke use "made BW look not as good - but Stalin saved the Chemical Corps."'
• Now we get into Unit 731 - Japanese use of anthrax, bombing cities, human tests. General McArthur works the Ishii defection deal
• Guillenim - the US govt "benefited" by the lack of publicity on the Japanese BW use, because the "public would have been revolted"
• Halfway through the show, Bill Patrick finally gets to talk about the Soviet program - but not in depth. Matthew Meselson (arms control) says it was "logical" for us to develop bombs.
• Special unit conducts tests on the Pentagon to "determine human exposure." I thought it was more as a building vulnerability study. Meselson says that large area coverage tests were necessary to determine value of BW.
• Guillinem says perhaps the most stupid thing in the film: "in using BW, you have to consider civilians as aiding and abetting the enemy since you are now attacking civilians." What, is attacking civilian centers unique to chem-bio warfare?
• San Francisco and St. Louis chosen to be tested with non-lethal BW simulants. "Only a few select congressmen know about the BW tests. Meanwhile, civil defense films warn the public of the possibility of Soviet BW attacks." Wow, the govt hid things from the public? That just isn't supposed to happen.
• Operation Whitecoat - the human volunteers were told they were helping to make vaccines, instead they were "calibrating a weapon to take lives." Except for the non-lethal BW agents... Nice pictures of the Ft Detrick eight-ball.
• Open air trials at DPG - the Adventists are exposed to Q fever, along with cute monkeys. They get sick, all recover fully. Preston emphasizes myth that "BW burdens armies with sick soldiers." No, the intent of non-lethal BW was to incapacitate the adversary's army without causing massive Korean Conflict-like casualties on both sides. It was just one tool - there were lots of lethal BW agents, too.
• Army tests tularemia in the Pacific, killing 50% of monkeys on sea barges. Preston -  "Detrick scientists are jubilant, but they may have succeeded too well." Ridiculous. It merely shows that we could in fact develop and control the use of a BW agent to expectations.
• The US govt doesn't want to publicize this because it will show the world that BW works and that it was easy to develop." This was Meselson's rationale, not the military's, why the US govt ought to unilaterally kill its program. Too bad the rest of the world disagreed.
• Film says that the use of tear gas and Agent Orange in Vietnam and Dugway sheep incident in 1968 influenced the public to protest BW development at Detrick - bullshit. It was Vietnam in large, and the locals were just acting up. It was not a "movement."
• The DPG incident "reinforced the military's need for secrecy. Germ warfare could not survive the sunlight" - absolute bullshit. It reinforced the media's desire for sensationalistic journalism and less fact-finding, causing the CBW people to withdraw into a shell, because they couldn't afford to even talk to the media.
• Nixon is convinced by Meselson and co that because BW was cheaper than nukes, a "cheap WMD" was not a good investment because it would influence other countries to duplicate the program. And yep, right when the US govt stopped, the Soviets increased their pace of research, convinced that we had gone deep undercover.
• Preston - Nixon enabled us to take the moral high ground (but actually it was a calculated move to embarrass the left wing). Meselson - it was good for us (because we really didn't need to counter the Soviet strategic threat of BW agents).
• The BWC is signed. "Biological warfare created its own monster - it increased the threat to the United States." In what fantasy world did this happen?
• Gillenim - "It's like dirty weapons, there was a lack of honor." Meselson - "we don't fight with poisons, it's an alien concept." Oh come on. That has nothing to do with the efficacy of biological weapons or the need to understand a weapon that could be used against us.

This is the problem with having scientists and arms control experts try to explain why the military developed biological weapons. They ignore the actions of adversarial countries, and discount every action that the U.S. military wants to do. They ignore the concept of strategic deterrence and the pros and cons of developing unconventional weapons. They paint pictures of conspiracies and congressional dodges, when the actual situation was that we were at the height of the Cold War, and secrecy was necessary.

This film had two objective experts who actually worked the program and understood the issues. They had maybe three or four opportunities to talk in this hour.  Everything else was badmouthing the U.S. offensive BW program, an effort which successfully had developed a predictable and controllable weapon system (since we didn't develop contagious BW agents). The implication that the US military was somehow "leading" other countries to develop this weapon system is crap. Every nation with enemies seeks an edge, and unconventional weapons were one avenue, especially as each nation developed its life sciences.

My favorite line was from Mike Foster, Captain, Chemical Warfare Service: "Do I find anything morally wrong with biological warfare as compared with other warfare? No. I don't see where there's any difference. The purpose is the same in every case. Kill 'em." Yep. It's a weapon system. All this "oh, it's dirty, it's a perversion," is bullshit.

We need much more honest and unbiased evaluations of military issues on both sides of the political spectrum. The idea that BW is somehow inherently evil as opposed to the political directions to start a war and military use of conventional weapons against noncombatants has always puzzled me. Scientists are no less guilty in the development of high-energy lasers, thermobarics, and non-lethal weapons for military purposes as they were in chem or bio weapons development. But again, this lack of analytical rigor and over-emotional twisting of history has always plagued the CB warfare program. Still does today. This film gets a C- from me. The only thing good, as I said before, is the Q&A between the two experts. And the shiny, color films...

Comments

[No Longer a Urinated State of America]

J., don't know why you're as down with the program. On a straight factual basis (though not the opinions by the talking heads), it pretty much concurred with open-source material you'd find in SIPRI or in Mark Wheelis' recent book. [Guillemin's recent book was pretty disappointing - not much new in there.]

There was some material that I'd never heard before - like I didn't know Meselson was in US ACDA at the time the program was stopped. It didn't let Patrick talk much about the Soviet program - so what? The name of the program is "The American Experience". [Frontline did a whole program on the Soviet Program a few years back.]

"The idea that BW is somehow inherently evil as opposed to the political directions to start a war and military use of conventional weapons against noncombatants has always puzzled me."

I think you'd need to take that up with Wilfred Owen rather than with the producers of the program.

"Gillenim - "It's like dirty weapons, there was a lack of honor." Meselson - "we don't fight with poisons, it's an alien concept." Oh come on. That has nothing to do with the efficacy of biological weapons or the need to understand a weapon that could be used against us."

Yeah, but the feeling of revulsion towards use of toxins (and, by extension, germs) goes back to, ohh, the time of Greeks. After all, that's the origin of the work toxin comes from "toxon" or arrow. Use of poisons was judged dishonorable (but they went ahead and used them anyway).

The fact that we've established a firmer norm against BW, is something to be celebrated, not condemned. And if the program reflected this norm, well, that's a price worth paying.

[J.]

Well you have to answer one thing for me, why is giving up biological weapons a good thing when other countries continue to develop them? What's so bad about biological or chemical weapons? The fear that noncombatants might get hurt (like they do in every war)? That these weapons aren't "honorable" (say, like using jets to knock out snipers or overwhelming artillery fire in a city block)?

Most journalists and scientist/authors cop out and don't do objective research to understand why the US military developed CB weapons, why arms control efforts evolve the way they do, or how effective they are. They rely on myths, exaggerations, emotions, such as in that film. Barely any military viewpoints at all. And I would argue, without talking more about the Soviet BW program, one fails to understand why the US military wanted a BW program to deter it.

Read "Chemical-Biological Warfare: A Reference Handbook" and become educated, my friend.

[ry]

LOL. I do love it when you pop a can of whoopass, J.

Only one problem. It isn't just bringing scientists into the discussion. It's bringing scientists with an agenda/polemicist scientists into the discussion that creats problems.

Is it fair ground to consider the law of unintended consequences wrt CBW? I think so. I just don't think we should start with the 'Frankenstein' syndrome as a given.

Nice entry.

[No Longer a Urinated State of America]

"Read "Chemical-Biological Warfare: A Reference Handbook" and become educated, my friend."

You know better than to be patronizing, J. We'll leave it at that.

[J.]

I beg pardon - I don't mean to lecture. But I do still suggest that your point of view on this program's "facts" is not as clear as it could be. I'm sure you would agree that relying on "open-source material" that one finds on the internet and in the media is not trustworthy. There is another point of view which strips away the emotion and loaded rhetoric of the traditional source material, much of which has been unchallenged for decades. That's where I'm coming from.

[Maxtrue]

Nice thread J. Germs are less honorable than molten metal? Perhaps another thread should discuss the art of WMC negotiation and the non-equivalence between today's (and yesterday's) regimes.

[J Thomas]

"Well you have to answer one thing for me, why is giving up biological weapons a good thing when other countries continue to develop them?"

I think most people agree that biological weapons should not be used. Probably a majority would agree that we shouldn't use biological weapons even if they gave us a quick easy victory when the alternative wouldn't be quick or easy.

And strategic bioweapons are a bad thing. Should we be the best in the world at making new worse strategic weapons, or is it enough to play catch-up and simply have weapons bad enough to deter our enemies?

Similarly with military bioweapons. Why should we be the best in the world? That does encourage others to try to catch up. Are military bioweapons really so effective against a prepared enemy? If not, do we need a deterrent? We need defenses, but let the other guy waste his strength using things that don't work well, and we'll use what works better.... And if we do need a deterrent, it doesn't have to be the best deterrent in the world.Just enough to show the enemy they don't get enough by using their stuff to make up for what our stuff costs them....

I don't claim these arguments are decisive, but I think a case could be made. If we're arguing about what works as opposed to what's moral, then the answer depends on the details -- some of which are secret and some aren't known by anybody.

If it's a moral question, even if we had a national consensus that bioweapons are immoral and must not be used, we could practically get by with one solid ally who provided a deterrent we could use. Britain or australia, say. We share some other military R&D with them, officially out of the goodness of our hearts, and they produce bioweapons that we officially deplore. In a pinch we'd have a deterrent without having to admit it. Not ideal by anyone's standards, but we could get by.

We might be better off without having strategic bioweapons under our direct control. When we have them, we have to let ignorant politicians decide whether to use them. If we believe we don't have them and the politicians are denied that choice, then we avoid some temptations that are worth avoiding. We're best off if we can somehow have a solid deterrent that we have no temptation to use first.

[J.]

Okay JT, short answers - given a scenario where an adversarial nation uses a biological weapon such as SEB toxin or tularemia (pick something other than anthrax) against US military forces in an overseas theater, would you recommend using nukes to retaliate? What's your deterrence policy against nation-states other than massive conventional retaliation, which may in fact imperil more forces?

In a time where the Bush administration wants to modernize nukes, are you going to disagree that the standard policy approach is to build bigger and better strategic weapons capabilities? Why the double standard?

Right now, we don't have a clear idea of how weaponized BW agents work on the battlefield or in limited domestic terrorism scenarios. All the experts who actually worked on BW agents and delivery systems are dead or retired. Without an active offensive BW program, we have very little insights on how to develop and field effective countermeasures to combat said adversarial use - other than hope that our lab-bench analysis and limited field chamber tests are adequate.

[J Thomas]

J, I can make arguments opposing you but my heart isn't in it I see real serious problems with any approach we take. It isn't just bioweapons, it's the whole concept of total war. Once we accept that we have to do whatever it takes to win, then wars get a lot worse and maybe a lot more negative-sum. But we don't want to take the chance that somebody else will take that route and hurt us. It's a dilemma, we're likely to lose big either way.

Ideally we'd turn the wars into a ritual activity, something where we don't lose a lot. Ideally the rules of the ritual game would be set up so that the losers are the people who probably would have lost a bigger war, so they won't be so much tempted to put aside the ritual and fight anyway. I don't know how to do that.

So biowarfare is just a specific case. Unless we prepare carefully, we might be vulnerable. But if we do prepare carefully, we advance the technology more and faster than others would, and they'll copy us. We make it worse if it happens and we make it more likely. And we give stupid politicians the choice to use the stuff first, ourselves.

There's a reason we don't have any good data about use of bioweapons. So far, nobody wants to risk using them. I'd like to keep it that way. But how?

Having a strong deterrent doesn't necessarily deter. And it does very strongly encourage everybody else to get deterrents. That isn't good, but maybe it's the best we can do.

Say a country doesn't have a deterrent at all. And somebody who wants to make war on them, uses bioagents. Nobody in their right mind is going to use things that look real contagious. Talk about blowback.... So by developing things that aren't supposed to be contagious, we make their use far more likely. But then, we don't know whether they'll really be contagious because we don't have big field trials. Make a lot of a bioagent and use it, and it mutates on the spot. Say you use an arbovirus or something else that you think has no route of transmission once your initial stocks are deactivated by sunlight etc. Are you sure that a mutant won't arise that does spread? Shit happens. (Evolution happens. This time around it's shit.) A risk. But OK, you take the risk and you win. The enemy armies collapse in fear. You win the war. Now what? When will your next war against somebody else be? Two years? Ten years? The next army you fight is going to expect you to use the stuff. And they'll know all about what you used this time. They might be better at dealing with it than you are. And they'll be more ready to try out other unconventional weapons on you, they have an excuse. They can say, "Our enemy was the first to use bioagents. Whatever we do to them is justified." Is this little temporary advantage worth it? So far, it hasn't been. To anybody except maybe south africa or rhodesia.

This is all hypothetical. The whole thing is hypothetical. We don't want anybody to use bioweapons on us or on anybody else, and so far they haven't. What's the best way to keep them from doing it? No data except what we've done so far has worked so far. When we did active deterrence against the russians that worked. When we did treaties with the russians banning the stuff that worked. (Maybe they massively broke the treaties. They didn't use it.) When we let our bioweapon programs decay, that worked -- so far. We threatened Saddam with nukes to keep him from using his bioweapons, and surprise! He didn't have bioweapons. That worked. Not real good data.

Ideally we'd go to war for specific objectives. Things that most of the enemy would almost rather give up than fight over. And we'd do our best to get a victory that's mild, decisive and quick. We move in and achieve our objectives without hurting them much and we offer favorable peace terms, and they get to decide whether they want it to turn ugly with them at a disadvantage, or make a good deal and quit without a lot of hard feelings. We might have it to do over again, but better a quick war now that we might have to finish later, than have the bad war now. A scuffle among friends, we're doing it because they insisted, we don't really want to hurt them but we will if they insist on that. But somehow we keep getting into moral crusades where the other side is ultimate evil and deserves whatever we do to them. That's the sort of thing that slides toward total war. The sort of thing where things that ought to be deterrents turn into first-line weapons.

I don't really care whether we have offensive bioweapons or not, provided we never feel like it's time to use them. So long as it's just R&D with no field trials, it's just money. We have plenty of money, we can afford it. The important question is how to keep them from being used. And I don't know the answer.

It's kind of plausible to me that if we don't have bioweapons we won't use them. That's a plus. And if we have a small active research program and we often announce that we haven't found anything that looks like a workable bioweapon but we're still working on it, maybe some other nations will decide not to go that route. And if some other nation threatens to use bioweapons on us, we can say something like "Do as you think best. But if you lose the war you'll face a war crime trial for doing that." Is it better to hope that bioweapons will win the war -- not just the first year, but the whole war? Or is it better to fight until honor is satisfied and then arrange somewhat-favorable terms?

Anything we do has a chance it won't work. So far we've been lucky and everything we've tried has worked.

[J.]

JT,it's all academic. Pleasure discussing the finer parts of this issue with you.

[J Thomas]

J, I'm afraid it may not be academic. We're flying blind. Anything we do might be absolutely the wrong thing that will result in highly-contagious strategic biowarfare agents getting released on the world population.

But you're right that discussing it is academic. US citizens have no input into what happens in our biowarfare programs, and they have no input in whether we use the result as a first strike. The decisions are probably getting made mostly be default, with nobody in the chain of command actually thinking about the bigger issues.

Like, for decades we made nukes with no thought to how many nukes we needed. The production lines were operating, and the guys who assigned targets just assigned targets to whatever came off the lines. Once we'd assigned multiple nukes to each city, and each known military site, and each strategic bridge, we eventually reached the point we were assigning nukes to russian crossroads. Nobody had the job of deciding when we had enough nukes, it just ran on momentum. There was of course the chance we'd lose some nukes in an enemy first strike so we needed spares. But we didn't estimate how many spares we needed, we just ran the production lines.

I don't know secrets, but I see little signs that it's the same way with bioweapons. We felt like we need to work with retroviruses, not because there was a potential use for them but just to make sure mobody else got ahead. Then the russians claimed that HIV was accidentally released by our programs, and some people found it believable.

Once we accept the basic principles that we need offensive bioweapons for deterrents, and our deterrent bioweapons have to be at least as good as anybody else's offensive weapons, and we need new and better offensive bioweapons so we can tune our defenses, then there's no end to it. It will suck up as much budget as it can get, and by Parkinson's Law the natural tendency is always to expand the budget. It will go in every direction including things that no sane person would want.

That isn't academic at all. But attempts to do something about it are probably academic.

[J.]

I meant more our debate, rather than solving the issue of government development of BW agents. We aren't making any, claims to the contrary by critics out at Detrick. Live goes on.