|
War
Crimes in the Name of Freedom
July
2, 2003
By John Stanton
"Great power imposes the obligation of exercising restraint,
and we did not live up to this obligation." That according
to Leo Szilard, the Manhattan Project physicist commenting
on the United States and its decision in August of 1945 to
obliterate non-military targets Hiroshima (70,000 dead instantly
with 210,000 total deaths) and Nagasaki (40,000 dead instantly
with 200,000 total deaths) in Japan. When the United States
of America takes its place in the graveyard of empires, its
tombstone will display Szilard's words alongside the inscription,
"Born in violence, practiced violence and came to a violent
end." Americans fancy their society as a peaceful, freedom
loving enterprise when the reality is that Americans are brutally
competitive and adversarial in every aspect of their lives.
And they are warlike to the core. Is it any wonder that in
America, the easiest act for the US government to carry out
is war?
As Americans prepare to celebrate their Independence Day
this July 4, 2003, with a grandiose glorification of ongoing
wars in Iraq and Afghanistan - and wars from days past - it's
worth remembering those millions of civilians and/or non-combatants
who have died at the hands of unconstrained and psychopathic
American power. The US government has a long history of reengineering
and downsizing populations that get in the way of freedom
loving Americans and their business interests. Each and every
American has the blood of the world on his/her hands. And
freedom is going to get even bloodier as history, it turns
out, is an excellent guide.
Kill 'Em All
Prior to those fateful days in August of 1945, the US Target
Committee met in May of 1945 and discussed the need for following
up those two days of nuclear infamy with B-29 incendiary raids.
"The feasibility of following the raid by an incendiary mission
was discussed. This has the great advantage that the enemies'
fire fighting ability will probably be paralyzed by the gadget
[atomic bomb] so that a very serious conflagration should
be capable of being started." The US Target Committee, anxious
to collect data on the "gadget's" performance recommended
a 24 hour waiting period before letting loose the B-29's to
vaporize any humans or structures that might have survived
the "gadget's" output.
In February of 1945 in Dresden, Germany, the United States
- and its coalition partner Great Britain - were engaged in
the firebombing slaughter of scores of German civilians and
refugees fleeing the Soviet Army's advance. According to rense.com.
"Dresden was a hospital city for wounded soldiers. Not one
military unit, not one anti-aircraft battery was deployed
in the city. Together with the 600, 000 refugees from Breslau,
Dresden was filled with nearly 1.2 million people. Churchill
had asked for "suggestions on how to blaze 600,000 refugees.
He wasn't interested in how to target military installations
60 miles outside of Dresden. More than 700,000 phosphorus
bombs were dropped on 1.2 million people. One bomb for every
2 people. The temperature in the center of the city reached
1600 degrees centigrade. More than 260,000 bodies and residues
of bodies were counted. But those who perished in the center
of the city could not be traced. Approximately 500,000 children,
women, the elderly, wounded soldiers and the animals of the
zoo were slaughtered in one night.Others hiding below ground
died. But they died painlessly - they simply glowed bright
orange and blue in the darkness. As the heat intensified,
they either disintegrated into cinders or melted into a thick
liquid - often three or four feet deep in spots."
Writing in World War II magazine, Christopher Lew points
out that the Americans incinerated Tokyo, Japan in March of
1945 via firebombing raids killing 100,000 civilians. The
US government engaged in military campaigns such as Operation
Starvation meant to deny food supplies to the population.
Every city in Japan was targeted in a ruthless, murderous
and calculated manner. Yet, the Emperor of Japan's residence
was considered off limits by US commanders (the rationale
being he would be an asset in the post-war era). "For three
hours over Tokyo, 334 B-29s unleashed their cargo [including
napalm] upon the dense city below. The fires raged out of
control in little less than 30 minutes, aided by a 28-mph
wind. Even the water in the rivers reached the boiling point.
The fire was so intense that it created updrafts that tossed
the gigantic B-29s around as if they were feathers. Officially
the Japanese listed 83,793 killed and 40,918 injured. A total
of 265,171 buildings were destroyed, and 15.8 square miles
of the city were burned to ashes. It was the greatest urban
disaster, man-made or natural, in all of history." The slaughter
of the Japanese and their cities was unrelenting and so insidiously
effective that the US military ran out of targets.
Of course, the US government has never been content just
to annihilate those pesky civilians in other lands. There's
always work to be done right here in the United States. Whether
rounding up Arabs in 2003 and locking them away or engaging
in genocide in the 1800's, the US government has a long history
of reengineering and downsizing populations that get in the
way of freedom loving Americans. For example, in 1830 the
Congress of the United States passed the Indian Removal Act
according to understandingprejudice.org. President Andrew
Jackson quickly signed the bill into law. In the summer of
1838, US Army General Winfield Scott led his men in the invasion
of the Cherokee Nation. In one of many bloody episodes in
US history, men, women, and children were taken from their
land, herded into makeshift forts with minimal facilities
and food, then forced to march a thousand miles - some made
part of the trip by boat in equally horrible conditions. Under
the indifferent US Army commanders, an estimated 5,000 native
Americans would die on the Trail of Tears.
The Tradition Continues: Make War Not Love
Thanks to its penchant for war and belief in its divine
invincibility, worldwide polls now show that the United States
is a reviled nation. Little surprise there. Secretary of Defense
Donald Rumsfeld shrugs off the deaths of 10,000 civilians
in Iraq and Afghanistan. He is equally without pity for the
American troops now dying each day in both failed military
campaigns. Attorney General John Ashcroft presides over an
American justice system which has stripped away the rights
of all Americans to due process and other rights formerly
guaranteed under the Bill of Rights. In the US, accused serial
killers and rapists have more access to legal assistance than
an individual suspected of terrorism. And for the first time,
America has more of its citizens incarcerated and executed
than any nation on the planet. "With liberty and justice for
all" seems meaningless as the United States flaunts the fact
that it runs a death camp in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and that
its foreign and domestic policies include torture, assassination,
and eavesdropping on any person it deems a threat to national
security.
America has been at war since 1775. Indeed, the US has rarely
been at peace. The following are considered major conflicts:
Revolutionary War (1775-1783), War of 1812 (1812-1815), Mexican
War (1846-1848), Civil War (1861-1865), Spanish American War
(1898), World War I (1917-1918), World War II (1941-1945),
Korean War (1950-1953), Vietnam War (1964-1972), and the Gulf
War I (1990-1991). And that list excludes the invasion of
Panama, Grenada, Serbia, Gulf War II and a whole slew of covert
actions that overthrew governments the world over. The future
holds Iran, North Korea, Syria, Colombia, Nepal, Sri Lanka
and, arguably, the entire planet.
Unfortunately, war is the defining characteristic of the
US government and a majority of its people. American freedom
depends on war and their economic system demands it. "Under
capitalism, corporations that produce weapons make huge profits
from these weapons of war and therefore are happy both to
prepare for war and to engage in war. You prepare for war,
you have all these government contracts, and make all this
money, and you engage in war and you use up all these products
and you have to replace them," according to Howard Zinn.
Is there any hope of breaking away from a bloody history
celebrated mindlessly each July 4th? Will Americans ever live
up to the ideals set forth in the US Constitution? Can they
break the habit of war?
"War has always diminished our freedom," says Zinn. "When
our freedom has expanded, it has not come as a result of war
or of anything the government has done but as a result of
what citizens have done. The best test of that is the history
of black people in the United States, the history of slavery
and segregation. It wasn't the government that initiated the
movement against slavery but white and black abolitionists.
It wasn't the government that initiated the battle against
racial segregation in the 1950s and 1960s, but the movement
of people in the South. It wasn't the government that gave
the people the freedom to work eight hours a day instead of
twelve hours a day. It was working people themselves who organized
into unions, went out on strike, and faced the police. The
government was on the other side; the government was always
in support of the employers and the corporations.
The freedom of working people, the freedom of black people
has always depended on the struggles of people themselves
against the government. So, if we look at it historically,
we certainly cannot depend on governments to maintain our
liberties. We have to depend on our own organized efforts."
Only the American people can stop war.
John Stanton is the author (along with Wayne Madsen) of
America's Nightmare: The Presidency of George Bush II,
May 2003, available at booksurge.com
and barnesandnoble.com.
Reach him at cioran123@yahoo.com
|
