Gość: JohnStanton
IP: 168.103.126.*
08.07.03, 21:26
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“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—who now likes to be addressed as General
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 never 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 th
