August 6th, again

So, it's that day of the year again.





On August 6, 1945, about a month after I was born, my country committed what has to be by any logic or reckoning the most egregious single-event war crime of all time. And then, a couple days later, we did it again. Hiroshima and Nagasaki. People are still living with the effects of these two atomic bombs being dropped on their cities.


And yet, we continue to behave as though these weapons are rational, and we may even elect a President one of whose midnight twitter-fests could easily result in a nuclear weapon being sent on its way to Russia or North Korea, or somewhere.

August 6, 2015

It's that time of year again, but this time it's special: This is the 70th anniversary of the bombing of the Japanese city of Hiroshima, followed a couple of days later by a similar bombing of Nagasaki.  As I'm sure I've mentioned before, this event resonates with me; perhaps a little more so this year, since I also turned 70 a month back.

And as before, I will state that I think these bombings represent the most egregious war crimes ever carried out by humans against other humans.  Of course whenever I do this, I get blowback from (usually) well-meaning friends who have learned over the years that these bombings saved many lives by bringing Japan more quickly to the point of surrender.

Most of what I have read about this suggests that this was not the case, and that in fact the main reason the bombings were carried out was to show the world, and especially the Soviet Union, that we had these weapons and we were crazy enough to use them.   Howard Zinn, the People's Historian, agrees with this, so I'll let him have the brief last word:

September 11, again

OK, for the past two years I wrote posts on this date referring to various dissatisfactions, frustrations, etc. that have developed since the original September 11, 2001.  I'm pretty much doing the same thing this year.  Please go and have a look at the previous ones:

September 11, 2011.

September 11, 2012.

So, what's new this time?  Yet again we are debating the idea of bombing Middle Eastern people.  Except, this time we are thinking of bombing Syrians as punishment for Syrians bombing Syrians.  Yeah, it doesn't make sense to me either.  Just the same old same old.  Fortunately, there appears to be a semi-plan in the works that might allow us to avert what will almost certainly be a disaster if the strikes our leaders are planning are carried out.  We just have to wait and see.

The most disturbing part of this is that there is floating around out there a whisper of a suggestion that the chemical weapons attack we are justifiably worked up about might- just might- not have been carried out as an attack by the Syrian regime, but rather an accident of sorts caused by the incompetence of people handling these weapons.  Again, we have to wait and see.  But the apparent absence of discussion of this possibility brings to mind...

• The Gulf of Tonkin "incident" used as justification for our involvement in Vietnam, later turning out to be a fabrication;
• The fabricated "danger" to American medical students posed by the coup in Grenada in late 1983, which provided justification for the US invasion of that country;
• The fabricated "evidence" of WMD in Iraq, which provided justification for the invasion of that country.

I can't speak to the Tonkin thing, but in the case of both Grenada and Iraq, US officials had made up their minds to do what they were going to do, and they were explicitly unwilling to "hear" any evidence that might have derailed their plans, even when such evidence was offered to them.

And now, we have Syria.  Are we absolutely, positively, 100% certain that our leaders' claims about the cause of those deaths from chemical agents, which clearly did happen, are accurate?  Accurate enough to warrant killing Syrians to teach Assad a "lesson?"

I don't know.

August 6, 1945

From the Zinn Education Project:  "On Aug. 6, 1945, the U.S. dropped the world's first atom bomb over the city of Hiroshima. Shinichi Tetsutani (then 3 years and 11 months) loved to ride this tricycle. That morning, he was riding in front of his house when, in a sudden flash, he and his tricycle were badly burned. He died that night."

Memorial Day, again...

OK, once again it's Memorial Day, the day when we "honor" and "thank" those who have lost their lives in our many military adventures over the years.  And, as usual, I post a photo of my Mom and Dad, getting married during World War II.

WWII may or may not have been a war that we entered for good reasons.  After all, the event that put us in the game, the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, was an attack on an American colonial outpost in the Pacific, not on America itself.  But I'll leave that discussion, if I may, for another time.

If we grant ourselves WWII, that still leaves numerous activities that are far more easily labeled "wars of choice": Korea, Vietnam, Grenada, Panama, the first Gulf War, Afghanistan, Iraq...  In every case, many many lives and much resources could have been saved if our involvements in these places had been carried out differently. In some cases, if not all or at least most, we are looking at war crimes and crimes against humanity.  Do we really want to keep sending people to be maimed or die while committing such crimes, crimes ordered by people who who are taking no risk themselves since they don't recognize the jurisdiction of the relevant international judicial bodies?

It just seems to me that rather than "honoring" and "thanking" our fallen, we should be apologizing to them and their families and friends, telling them we are sorry that we have done this to them.  And then we should stop doing it.

Veterans Day

Mom and Dad were married during World War II, and they both did their part to help defeat fascism and genocide in Europe and Asia.  If they were still around, I would want them and all veterans to be honored for their service, and I would also want them to have what, really, everyone ought to have:  health care, education, and all the other things that only an entity like the state can provide for all its citizens.

What I would not want, necessarily, is the hyperbolic near-deification that we seem to want to bestow on our military folk, past and present, regardless of what they did or where they did it.

I'm willing to go the extra mile in giving props to the generation that beat Hitler and his ilk; I am less comfortable with the hero-worship of more recent veterans of places like Vietnam, Grenada, Panama, Iraq, and Afghanistan.  Did they do hard work in difficult places?  Of course.  But were they really fighting for "our freedom," as the speeches and declarations assert?  The evidence is not there.  None of these "enemies" were even close to being a threat to the United States.  None of them were in a position to attack and occupy the US, none could have subjected us to their will.

Virtually every military adventure undertaken by the US since WWII has been a "war of choice," nearly always for the purpose of shoring up some capitalism-friendly dictator (for a long list go here; for just a sample of the current ones, go here). Very often these people have committed egregious criminal acts against their own people. Very rarely have they been the kind of leaders we should be supporting: people with a sincere desire to improve the conditions in which their people live.

What we have really done, since World War II, is create a class of citizens who are, from some perspectives, unindicted war criminals.  Do I want them to be indicted?  No, I don't (some of our leaders who sent them into these situations should be, though).  But no, what I want is for them to be taken care of, to be given whatever they need to deal with the physical and mental injuries they have returned with, to be provided access to the education and training they need to rebuild their post-military lives.

And we should promise them that we will never again betray the folks who, for whatever reason, enter our military by sending them into these spuriously manufactured and often no-win conflicts that, objectively, have little or nothing to do with our own security, and everything to do with the feeding of our vast military-industrial complex.

As a culture, we are addicted to warfare and violence.  The first step in conquering addiction is to admit there's a problem.  The Veterans Day "celebrations," in their present form at least, do not help.

Yet another August 6th

Every year, I post a little something about this anniversary. This is from last year's:

Once again, the anniversary that affects me more than almost any other has rolled around.  On August 6th, 1945, just shy of a month after I was born, the US dropped the first atomic bomb on Hiroshima, Japan.  This was, at the time, the most deadly use of a weapon of mass destruction ever inflicted by humans on other humans.  A few days later, on August 9, we repeated the experiment with a newer and "improved" bomb dropped on Nagasaki.  At least 150,000 and more likely over 200,000 people were either killed immediately or died from injuries caused by the explosions.  In later years, many people suffered from the aftereffects of radiation exposure; this includes birth defects.

Chris Hayes tells truth; then apologizes

MSNBC commentator Chris Hayes has gotten into some trouble for comments he made yesterday about the use of the word "hero" in reference to US military personnel. The relevant segment begins around 6:30:

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

In essence, Hayes thinks the word is overused; the overuse makes it too easy to justify wars that have no justification (think all the wars the US has been involved in since WWII).  Hayes is right of course, and it was good to see fellow linguist John McWhorter and other panel members agreeing.

The fact that he felt a need to apologize reflects the fetishization of the military and war that permeates US culture.  We dare not question the actions of our Dear Leaders without feeling the consequences.

Memorial Day

Here's my Memorial Day offering: Pete Seeger sings "Bring Them Home," probably sometime in the 1970s.

Since WWII, virtually every military action carried out by the US has been an action of choice. None have involved the threat of invasion or even attack. Think Korea, Vietnam, Grenada, Panama, the Balkans, and all of what has happened in the Middle East. Add to this our military "advisors" in Central America and elsewhere, who have been busy training the military in these areas in the arts of intimidation, torture, and disappearance.  We are a nation addicted to War.  We use the manufactured separations and homecomings to promote a false sense of solidarity and to give ourselves feel-good moments, especially around major holidays (think Thanksgiving, Christmas). In our highly independence-trained, individualistic culture, War becomes the drug that feeds our buried need for sociality.

I didn't write anything for 9/11

Well, I didn't.  I did spend both yesterday and today actively avoiding mention of 9/11 on the TV, so as to be reminded as little as possible of the Tuesday ten years ago when our Marine son, Tommy, stationed at The Pentagon, was out of our reach for nearly the whole day.  I watched Ivan Reitmann's silly science-fiction comedy Evolution (David Duchovny, Julianne Moore, etc.), and I watched the first two parts of Lord of the Rings (the extended version!).  I also managed some of Avatar.  I played banjo. I walked with Tinker the Terrier.  Whatever, anything to avoid what I was sure would be the grotesque "commemoration" of an obscene event (I'm pretty sure I was right).

But inevitably, in checking my usual news and information sources on the web, I did come across several essays that come as close as I could, without doing it myself (which I didn't feel like doing), to expressing the swamp of ideas and feelings I have about 9/11 and its aftermath.  And not just the aftermath, but also the run-up.

The first is an essay by Tom Engelhardt titled Let's Cancel 9/11: Bury the War State's Blank Check at Sea.  One of the salient paragraphs from this essay is this one:

Ask yourself this: ten years into the post-9/11 era, haven't we had enough of ourselves?  If we have any respect for history or humanity or decency left, isn’t it time to rip the Band-Aid off the wound, to remove 9/11 from our collective consciousness?  No more invocations of those attacks to explain otherwise inexplicable wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and our oh-so-global war on terror.  No more invocations of 9/11 to keep the Pentagon and the national security state flooded with money.  No more invocations of 9/11 to justify every encroachment on liberty, every new step in the surveillance of Americans, every advance in pat-downs and wand-downs and strip downs that keeps fear high and the homeland security state afloat.

A second essay titled Generation 9/11: History will be embarrassed by us, is by fellow anthropologist Greg Laden, and appeared on his blog The X Blog.  Greg's essay contains this, which spoke nicely to my own thoughts:

And now might be a good point to ask the question, “What has risen from the ashes of the 9/11 attacks?” There was much talk at the time, and since then, and again today, about how great America is, how great Americans are, and how we will move forward and become better and stronger and so on and so forth. But it is just talk. What has happened instead is something entirely different.

And what happened has been a social and political disaster, as Greg points out:

The Tea Party and things like the Tea Party. Strongly held anti-social illogical destructive beliefs with no hope of critical self evaluation, in a large and organized part of the population. It is obvious why this happened in the Republican Party and not the Democratic Party, but people on both sides of the political aisle have contributed. Literalist, libertarian, paranoid, self-centered, easily frightened, reactionary, sub-average in intelligence, deluded in self worth and unmovable in conviction and belief despite all evidence to the contrary.

Moving on.  The last is from one of my favorite online essayists, William Rivers Pitt, who posts at Truthout.org.  His essay, called The Children of Aftermath, focuses on the fact that there are children in the 5th grade now who have known no other country, no other world, than the one 9/11 gave us:

All across America, there are classrooms filled with fifth graders who only know the World Trade Center from pictures. They have achieved the final perfection of George Orwell's vision - we have always been at war with Eurasia - because they have never known a world where their country has not been at war in Iraq and Afghanistan.

I hope you will read these essays.  Meanwhile, I'm waiting for 9/12/2011.

Another August 6th

Once again, the anniversary that affects me more than almost any other has rolled around.  On August 6th, 1945, just shy of a month after I was born, the US dropped the first atomic bomb on Hiroshima, Japan.  This was, at the time, the most deadly use of a weapon of mass destruction ever inflicted by humans on other humans.  A few days later, on August 9, we repeated the experiment with a newer and "improved" bomb dropped on Nagasaki.  At least 150,000 and more likely over 200,000 people were either killed immediately or died from injuries caused by the explosions.  In later years, many people suffered from the aftereffects of radiation exposure; this includes birth defects.

Apologists for the bombings claim that they were needed to bring Japan to an earlier surrender than might have happened otherwise.  Such an action taken today would without doubt be considered collective punishment under Article 33 of the Fourth Geneva Convention, and thus a war crime.

To be reminded of the effects of the bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, have a look at these photos at Life.com.  Some are disturbing enough to be accompanied by a warning, but anyone who thinks that the bombings were justified should have a look, and ponder.

The day after the 4th of July

Ok, so I didn't write anything on the 4th; I was busy starting the job of cleaning out our horribly overcrowded garage, which I did after walking 4 miles with Tinker the Terrier.  I worked on the garage until it got too hot, and then got busy with some other things.  So, I didn't get around to writing a 4th of July post.

And anyway, last year's post is still valid.  We still labor under the same misconceptions about what our country is really about, the same disconnect between what we say we are and what the evidence suggests that we actually are. No need to rebelabor the points.

I will say that it continues to frustrate and disappoint me that our President, the one we elected under a banner of "hope and change," continues to behave pretty much as a Bush Lite on two major points:

• Our ongoing and never-ending wars.  Not only do continue massive troop presence in Iraq and Afghanistan, but now we've added Libya and Somalia to the list of countries we are either occupying or terrorizing from the air. I wrote about our national war-addiction back in May, so I won't repeat it here.
  
• The continuing absence of punishment for war crimes and crimes against humanity perpetrated by former "president" Bush and his administration.  President Obama and his DOJ continue to acquiesce to claims of immunity on the part of members of the Bush administration who suggested, allowed, ordered, justified, and otherwise participated in Bush's Torture Regime.  People who should be in jail by now are walking the streets, enjoying their retirement from what can only be called the most immoral administration in the history of the United States.

One thing I am pretty sure of is that things are not going to change much between now and July 4, 2012.

Another song for Memorial Day

For Memorial Day last year, I posted Pete Seeger's "Bring them Home."  This year, I give you his "Waist Deep in the Big Muddy," which he sang on the Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour on February 25, 1968 (he had sung it on an earlier show, but CBS censors cut it).  It was aimed at the Vietnam War then, but it's still plenty relevant.

Blog: Anthropologists for Justice and Peace

There is (or will be shortly) a link on the left to a relatively new blog, Anthropologists for Justice and Peace.  Here's how they describe themselves:

AJP joins the academy to building non-state and non-market solutions to social injustice.

The most destructive use ever of weapons of mass destruction

This is the 65th anniversary of the US's bombing of Hiroshima, followed shortly after by a repeat on Nagasaki. As I wrote last year:

I was just under a month old on August 6, 1945. On that day, a US bomber dropped the bizarrely named nuclear bomb "Little Boy" on Hiroshima, Japan, killing up to 140,000 people, 80,000 of them instantly. Three days later, US forces dropped a second bomb, "Fat Man," on Nagasaki, killing another 80,000. Besides those who died, many survivors lived with terrible injuries, and for many years babies were born deformed by the lingering effects of the radiation.

So, in less than a week 64 [now 65] years ago, the United States of America committed the two most destructive uses of weapons of mass destruction in the history of humankind. The usual defense is that it was necessary to end the war, but this is subject to debate. There is also evidence that the real purpose was to show the Soviet Union that we had the Bomb and we were crazy enough to use it, needed or not. I don't know which is true, perhaps both are. What I do know is that possession of nuclear weapons by the US makes me just as nervous as their possession by any other nation. And why shouldn't it, given that we are the only ones who, so far, who have actually used them?

This year, Life.com has posted a gallery of unpublished images.

A song for Memorial Day

'Tis the season to be cranky...

It's another holiday season, and I have many things to be happy about: a loving wife of 35 years, a son back safely from Iraq, a daughter with my love of animals, and lots of good friends, a reasonably satisfying career. But there is something that's been bothering me the last few Decembers, and Tom Englehart of TomDispatch has posted an year-end essay that fleshes out my vague and somewhat diffuse unease.
My unease is rooted in our (and by "our" I mean the US's) apparent state of perpetual war. Every holiday season, especially around Christmas time, I am reminded of this by the seemingly countless stories about families here at home coping while a mother, father, sister, brother, daughter, or son is "on duty" somewhere. The most poignant of these stories involves the family at home having the chance to communicate, perhaps over tv or videophone, or some other way, with their far-off military relative, while the country looks on. We forget for a moment that in almost every case, the far-off soldier, sailor, or Marine is not in fact "defending our freedoms," but instead providing a raison d'etre for the bloated, greedy, and insatiable Military Industrial Complex.

Or, we try to forget. My problem is that I am getting the impression these feel-good moments are designed to distract us from the enormity of our addiction to sending our people into harm's way in far-off places. I even wonder, at times, whether the wars themselves are intended to provide a reason for providing these moments. So what if thousands have to die so we can have a few special moments, moments that, I suspect, are manufactured for the purpose of damping down whatever dissent might be mustered against our addiction to war.

Too cynical? Maybe. Near the end of his essay Englehart offers this:

None of what’s happening in the world of American war may make much sense any more, not even in terms Washington’s foreign policy power brokers understand, but no matter.  They -- and so all of us -- are already in the grip of a nightmare, and nothing, it seems, can wake us.  So, for the last days of this year, as for the days that preceded them, as for all the days of next year, it’s full drone ahead and damn the torpedoes.  That’s our American world, and Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year to you.   

So, I will enjoy the holidays, but I will also remain somewhat cranky, and I will continue to sign petitions and write letters urging an end to our national addiction. I hope you will join me.

Obama's speech

Senator John McCain just told NBC News's Brian Williams that he supports President Obama's decision to send more troops to Afghanistan. As far as I'm concerned, that is the best evidence I can imagine that Obama's decision is the wrong one.

Message to Obama: No, we shouldn't

If all goes as pre-reported, President Obama will announce tonight that he is recommending an increase of US troops in Afghanistan, a "surge" that supposedly will put an end to Al Qaida and the Taliban in that country. In what can only be described as a surfeit of symbolism, the announcement will be made at the US Military Academy at West Point.

If this happens, Obama will become, in effect, an accomplice after the fact in the war crimes and crimes against humanity initiated by the Cheney/Bush regime before him. And in doing so, he will have made the wrong choice in what might have been the transformational moment of his presidency. He could have turned the US away from its historical path of military interventionism and American exceptionalism. Instead, he will join the ranks of US presidents who, all else being equal, should have been tried at The Hague–that is, pretty much all of them beginning with Truman.

Some will argue that he has to do this to clean up the mess left by Cheney, Bush, Rice, Powell, Rumsfeld, and the rest; that to stop a forest fire, you sometimes have to light some fires. The analogy is not compelling for me. I still think that our response to 9/11 was, and continues to be, immoral as well as illegal, and I maintain that the best response would have been, should have been, one made through the courts, not by treating it as a "war" to be engaged in by armies.

Maybe Obama will surprise us, or maybe he can make us feel better about this action. But I don't think so.

Tommy is home!

Our son Tommy, the Marine Gunnery Sergeant, got home last night from a 10-month deployment to Iraq. We talked to him this morning before heading for work, and he sounds healthy and happy. He, and we, are very lucky; things could have been so much worse, as they have for so many families.

I urge everyone who reads this to contact President Obama and ask him to bring all the troops home, both from Iraq and Afghanistan. Ask him to begin to bring an end to the culture of war that has for so long, but especially since World War II, been central to the American way of life. Ask him to stop the use of our military for the benefit of the military-industrial complex, which President Eisenhower warned us about decades ago. Ask him to stop sending our military people to die for the profits of oil company executives. Ask him to use our wealth, human and otherwise, to provide our people with what they need: education, health care, jobs with living wages, security in their retirement.

Ask the President to end the Endless Wars.