MB DRO ROSHI

[Doug Millison]

"[...] Most of the news-broadcasters compared the shocking event to the
Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. Some others called it the biggest
terrorist attack of all time, an attack that was directed not only against
the United States but also against all humanity. They continue to say so.
It is, indeed, very unfortunate that not one of them from the major
broadcasting media - BBC, CNN, Fox News, etc. - compared the 11th September
attack to a very similar event but of far greater magnitude, a horrendous
one that was a turning point in the history of the twentieth century. How
is that even a passing reference to that unforgettable and earth-shaking
event has not been made by any one in the media or by any of the
spokespersons of the major governments? [[...]]

The entire gruesome event in Hiroshima was carefully filmed and the
physical effects of the attack accurately measured from airplanes
accompanying the bomber that had dropped the atom bomb. The blinding flash,
the reverberating blast, the mushroom cloud, the flattening of almost all
standing structures (according to later estimates over 92 per cent of the
76,000 buildings that lay within four kilometers of ground zero had been
destroyed), and the entire city being engulfed in a devastating fire in a
short time must have all been a terrific sight to watch from the airplanes.
However, it is not clear whether the audio system with the film crew on the
accompanying aircraft was powerful enough to pick up the agonizing cries of
those trapped in the falling debris and about to be devoured by the
advancing fire. Also the rising smoke from the raging fire must have hid
from view the thousands of screaming men, women and children - many with
deep burns sustained from direct exposure to the scorching flash - jumping
into the various rivers running through the city in order to escape from
the searing heat. Few of them may have managed to get back on to the banks
for most of them surely met a watery death. But for the smoke the
happenings on the riverside would have been yet another spectacle to watch!
Of course, effects of ionizing radiation were not yet apparent but the
smell of burning human flesh was certainly in the air. Unfortunately,
television and cable networks were not in vogue at that time; otherwise the
entire world could have watched the "spectacular" event live! Terrorism had
never tasted such success before or after! With the U.S. President in the
lead, the destruction of Hiroshima and its people was a great occasion to
celebrate with gay abandon! The "civilized" conduct of the U.S. President
must have put even the worst barbarians to shame!

No, that was not the end. Three days later on 9th August 1945, an identical
exercise - film crew et al included - was re-enacted over the city of
Nagasaki. This time a more powerful atomic bomb was used. But, thanks to
the hilly terrain, the fate of only 140,000 of the city's total population
of 270,000 was sealed. Meanwhile the city of Kyoto with a population of
over 1,000,000 had a providential escape. Kyoto had been replaced with the
ill-fated Nagasaki at the last minute after the intervention of the then
U.S. Secretary of War, Henry Stimson. (It is not clear why Stimson did not
prevent the attack altogether.) Despite strong opposition from Lt. Gen.
Leslie Groves, Chief of the Manhattan (atomic bomb) Project, Stimson was
able to strike Kyoto off from the list of atomic targets and, thus,
succeeded in miraculously saving no less than 800,000 Japanese lives.
However, Gen. Groves, who was clearly disappointed, later wrote in his
memoirs thus: "I particularly wanted Kyoto as a target because, as I have
said, it was large enough an area for us to gain complete knowledge of the
effects of an atom bomb. Hiroshima was not nearly so satisfactory in this
respect." [Leslie Groves: Now It Can Be Told (Story of the Manhattan
Project), Andre Deutsch, London, 1963, p.275]

[[...]] The objective of the above argument is only to drive home the point
that one terrorist attack on the people of the United States should not
erase the memory of the countless acts of state terrorism perpetrated by
successive U.S. Administrations over the years. The victims of U.S. state
terrorism have also undergone or are still undergoing the same pain, trauma
and agony that the victims of the 11th September terrorist attack are now
experiencing. In a very unfortunate way, the people of the United States
for the first time have had a bitter taste of what their own Government has
been doing to people across the world for years in different forms. The
atomic bombing on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the massive and indiscriminate
bombing of Vietnam (including use of thousands of tons of incendiary napalm
bombs), the innumerable My Lai* type massacres, the use of chemical weapons
such as the highly toxic defoliant Agent Orange** over Vietnam, the massive
and indiscriminate bombing of Iraq and Yugoslavia, etc., are just a few
examples of acts of U.S. state terrorism that people of other nations have
had to endure.

[* On 16 March 1968, 80 soldiers of Charlie Company, First Battalion, 11th
Light Infantry Brigade of the U.S. Army, under the command of Lt. William
Calley, went on a 'search and destroy' mission to the village of My Lai in
the South Vietnamese district of Son My. In the process over 300 unarmed
civilians, mostly women, children and the elderly, were massacred. Ronald
Heaberle who had accompanied the soldiers photographed the entire killings,
which were published much later in the U.S. magazine Life on 5th December
1969. This was one instance where there was irrefutable proof and when
several Vietnam War veterans in the U.S. came forward to testify about the
perpetration of that mindless terrorist act.

** 11 million gallons of Agent Orange were sprayed over South Vietnam
between 1961 and 1970 covering 10 % of the country' land area and exposing
millions of Vietnamese to its toxic effects. It has reportedly killed or
seriously injured over 400,000 people and has already contributed to birth
defects in over 500,000 children. The international reaction to the human
tragedy resulting from this U.S. chemical warfare has been appalling. For
details see the article by Robert Dreyfuss titled 'Apocalypse Still' in the
U.S. magazine Mother Jones, January 2000.]

What rational explanation can the U.S. terrorists offer for targeting Iraqi
civilian population with precision-guided and earth-penetrating cruise
missiles while they were taking refuge in air-raid shelters to escape U.S.
aerial bombings? Is not the U.S. Administration squarely responsible for
the death of over 500,000 children in Iraq due to the untold suffering that
the Iraqi people are forced to undergo as a result of the strict economic
sanctions imposed on that country? Is not the U.S. Administration aiding
and abetting the Zionists in systematically carrying out terrorist attacks
on the people of Palestine in order to deprive them of their homeland? Is
it not the CIA (Central Intelligence Agency of the United States) along
with the ISI (Inter Services Intelligence of Pakistan) that encouraged,
armed and funded "Islamic" terrorists in the 1980s to overthrow the then
government in Afghanistan? Are they not the same terrorists who have been
wreaking havoc in Kashmir with the same arms and funds? (Interestingly,
while the Government of India repeatedly blames the ISI for aiding and
abetting terrorism in Kashmir, it maintains total silence about the
treacherous role of the CIA. Similarly, the Government of Pakistan blames
RAW [Research and Analysis Wing of India] for the numerous acts of
terrorism in Pakistan, while the CIA's devious role there is kept under
wraps.) It should not be forgotten that the pain and suffering inflicted on
the people of the other affected countries by acts of terrorism are also as
real as that which is being experienced by people in the United States now.
Therefore, retribution cannot be a one-way process. All acts of terrorism
should be condemned and all those responsible for terrorist acts should be
brought to book and punished irrespective of creed or nationality. [...] As
to who planned the attack on 11th September it is still not very clearly
evident, but the "barbarian" Osama Bin Laden continues to be the prime
suspect. However, there is no doubt that it was the "civilized" U.S.
President and his ilk that had ordered the wanton destruction of Hiroshima
and Nagasaki. Strange as it may seem, while there is world-wide hunt for
the perpetrators of the heinous crime in New York, Washington-DC and
Pittsburgh, neither President Truman nor anyone else in the U.S.
Administration ever had to face any such threat for their dastardly act.
They managed to get away scot-free on the spacious plea that the use of
atomic bombs were necessary in order to end World War II and, as President
Truman put it, "save American lives". The fact is there was not a grain of
truth in the justification that the U.S. President had offered. (For
details see N.D. Jayaprakash, The Meaning of Hiroshima Nagasaki, Delhi
Science Forum and Kerala Shastra Sahitya Parishad, New Delhi, 1990.) But
how many people across the world know the real facts even today? Do they
know that several contemporary U.S. and British statesmen totally disagreed
with President Truman's lame justification?

Fleet Admiral W.D. Leahy, Chief of Staff to Presidents Roosevelt and Truman
successively and the top ranking officer in the entire military hierarchy
then, was quite blunt in his criticism. According to him:

"The use of this barbaric weapon at Hiroshima and Nagasaki was of no
material assistance in our war against Japan. The Japanese were already
defeated and ready to surrender because of the effective sea blockade and
the successful bombing with conventional weapons."

He went on to add:

"My own feeling is that in being the first to use it we had adopted an
ethical standard common to the barbarians of the Dark Ages."

[W.D. Leahy: I Was There: The Personal History of the Chief of Staff to
Presidents Roosevelt and Truman, Victor Gollencz Ltd., London, 1950, p.429
and p.514]

Interestingly, Winston Churchill, Prime Minister of Britain during the
major part of World War II and a willing accomplice to the crime, has
nevertheless made a frank admission. In his voluminous work on the history
of the War, he has stated:

"It would be a mistake to suppose that the fate of Japan was settled by the
atomic bombs. Her defeat was certain before the first bomb fell and was
brought about by overwhelming maritime power." [Winston S. Churchill: The
Second World War, Vol. VI: Triumph and Tragedy, Houghton Mifflin Company,
Boston, 1953, p.646]

What is intriguing is the fact that Gen. Douglas MacArthur, Supreme
Commander of the Allied Forces in South West Pacific Area during World War
II, was not even consulted about the decision to use atom bombs although
the selected targets fell within the area of his command! Gen. MacArthur
was no pacifist. He was an arch right-winger. Yet he admitted during a
press conference years later that: "We did not need the atomic Bombagainst
Japan." [New York Times, 21 August 1963, p.30]

Gen. MacArthur subsequently went on to add that by June 1945: "My staff was
unanimous in believing Japan was on the point of collapse and surrender. I
even directed that plans be drawn 'for a peaceful occupation of Japan'
without further military operations." [Douglas MacArthur: Reminiscences,
McGraw Hill Book Company, New York, 1964, p.260]

Another critical voice was that of Gen. Dwight Eisenhower, Supreme
Commander of the U.S. forces in Europe during World War II and later
President of the United States from 1953 to 1960. Recounting his reactions,
Gen. Eisenhower wrote in his memoirs that at the Potsdam Conference of
Heads of Governments of USA, UK and USSR in July 1945:

"I voiced to him [Stimson] my grave misgivings, first on the basis of my
belief that Japan was already defeated and that dropping the [atom] bomb
was completely unnecessary, and secondly because I thought that our country
should avoid shocking world opinion by the use of such a weapon whose
employment was, I thought, no longer mandatory as a measure to save
American lives. It was my belief that Japan was, at that movement, seeking
some way to surrender with a minimum loss of 'face'." [Dwight D.
Eisenhower: Mandate for Change: 1953-1956, Doubleday & Company Inc., New
York, 1963, pp. 312-313]

--from
Hiroshima to New York
By N.D. Jayaprakash

N.D. Jayaprakash is a member of the Delhi Science Forum, an anti-nuclear
weapons group. He lives in New Delhi, India. This is the first part of a
two-part essay.

http://www.counterpunch.org/jayaprakash1.html



Doug Millison - Writer/Editor/Web Editorial Consultant
millison at online-journalist.com
www.Online-Journalist.com