Celebrating nuclear terror with amnesia and techno-lust

August 19, 2003

The Smith­son­ian Muse­um in Wash­ing­ton has “reassem­bled the eno­la Gay, the plane that dropped the atom­ic bomb on the Japan­ese city of Hiroshi­ma in 1945”:www.nytimes.com/2003/08/19/national/19MUSe.html. Try­ing to avoid the con­tro­ver­sy that accom­pa­nied a 1995 exhi­bi­tion, the cur­rent muse­um direc­tor says this exhib­it will:
bq. “focus on the tech­no­log­i­cal achieve­ments, because we are a tech­no­log­i­cal muse­um… This plane was the largest and most tech­no­log­i­cal­ly advanced air­plane for its time.”
This con­tin­ues the moral blind­ness that cre­at­ed the blood­i­est cen­tu­ry in human his­to­ry. Instead of look­ing at how pol­i­tics, war and tech­nol­o­gy inter­sect­ed in an event that instant­ly killed 80,000 peo­ple, we shine up the met­al and blab­ber on about tech­nol­o­gy. The bomb­ing’s death count far over­shad­ows the 3,000 deaths at the World Trade Cen­ter two years ago. If the sight of the tow­ers col­laps­ing is a hor­ror we can nev­er for­get or min­i­mize, then so too is Hiroshi­ma’s mush­room cloud.
The only way mil­i­tarism and nation­al­ism sur­vives is by abstract­ing war and ignor­ing the very real death, blood and tragedy. The Japan­ese peo­ple caught up in their coun­try’s lust for war were vic­tims as soon as the fight­ing start­ed. Their par­tic­i­pat­ing in their coun­try’s war was a result of pro­pa­gan­da and nation­al­is­tic fer­vor, the same mix that led so many Amer­i­cans to sup­port the war in Iraq.
The over­whelm­ing major­i­ty of peo­ple killed on August 8, 1945 were peo­ple who nev­er fired a gun. They were sim­ply try­ing to stay alive in a world full of human-made ter­ror. They were ordi­nary peo­ple who watched as their coun­try’s lead­ers plot­ted and warred. Most were afraid to say no to war, to unite with paci­fists around the world, or to denounce mil­i­tarism wher­ev­er it exist­ed and with what­ev­er excuse it gave for its horror.
The roots of World War II were oil and ter­ror: Japan­ese lead­ers attacked its neigh­bors to gain con­trol of the indus­tri­al resources the home islands did­n’t have. Amer­i­can lead­ers (indus­tri­al and polit­i­cal) had waged war against Hawaii and the Philip­pines for con­trol of Pacif­ic ship­ping lanes. The plot­ting for war start­ed long before Pearl Har­bor and involved the lead­ers in both coun­tries. In a very real way, the war in Iraq is just the lat­est chap­ter in the century-long war over oil.
But his­to­ry, truth and moral­i­ty will all be stripped out of the Smith­so­ni­an’s new exhib­it, as spokes­peo­ple for the Amer­i­can Legion and Air Force have declared:
bq. “As long as the eno­la Gay is pre­sent­ed in the light that it was used — to end the war and save lives — that’s fine.”
bq. “We are sat­is­fied that it is in his­tor­i­cal con­text this time and does not make com­ments about U.S. aggres­sion in the Pacific.”
No, school­child­ren vis­it­ing Wash­ing­ton won’t learn the truth about the bomb­ing. Anoth­er gen­er­a­tion will be spoon-fed pro­pa­gan­da about its coun­try’s great­ness and good­ness. Anoth­er gen­er­a­tion will not pause to con­sid­er its coun­try’s old sins and trag­ic mis­takes. A typ­i­cal blog entry about the Smith­son­ian exhib­it that claims “no sin­gle plane did more to save lives in World War II”:http://www.hobbsonline.blogspot.com/2003_08_01_hobbsonline_archive.html#106130896137661056 . Abstract death and claim right­eous­ness to your coun­try, keep mil­i­tarism going and keep peace­ful peo­ple from unit­ing across nation­al boundaries.

Confessions of an Anti-Sactions Activist

July 30, 2003

There are a bunch of fas­ci­nat­ing rants against the con­tem­po­rary peace move­ment as the result of an arti­cle by Charles M. Brown, an anti-sanctions activist that has somewhat-unfairly chal­lenged his for­mer col­leagues at the Nonviolence.org-affiliated Voic­es in the Wilder­ness. Brown talks quite frankly about his feel­ings that Sad­dam Hus­sein used the peace group for pro­pa­gan­da pur­pos­es and he chal­lenges many of the cul­tur­al norms of the peace move­ment. I don’t know if Brown real­ized just how much the anti-peace move­ment crowd would jump at his arti­cle. It’s got­ten play in InstaPun­dit and In Con­text: None So Blind.
Brown’s cri­tique is inter­est­ing but not real­ly fair: he faults Voic­es for hav­ing a sin­gle focus (sanc­tions) and sin­gle goal (chang­ing U.S. pol­i­cy) but what else should be expect­ed of a small group with no sig­nif­i­cant bud­get? Over the course of his work against sanc­tions Brown start­ed study­ing Iraqi his­to­ry as an aca­d­e­m­ic and he began to wor­ry that Voic­es dis­re­gard­ed his­tor­i­cal analy­sis that “did not take … Desert Storm as their point of depar­ture.” But was he sur­prised? Of course an aca­d­e­m­ic is going to have a longer his­tor­i­cal view than an under­fund­ed peace group. The sharp focus of Voic­es made it a wel­come anom­aly in the peace move­ment and gave it a strength of a clear mes­sage. Yes it was a prophet­ic voice and yes it was a large­ly U.S.-centric voice but as I under­stand it, that was much of the point behind its work: We can do bet­ter in the world. It was Amer­i­cans tak­ing respon­si­bil­i­ty for our own peo­ple’s blind­ness and dis­re­gard for human life. That Iraq has prob­lems does­n’t let us off the hook of look­ing at our own cul­ture’s skeletons.
What I do find fas­ci­nat­ing is his behind-the-scenes descrip­tion of the cul­ture of the 1990s peace move­ment. He talks about the roots of the anti-sanctions activism in Catholic-Worker “dra­matur­gy.” He’s undoubt­ed­ly right that peace activists did­n’t chal­lenge Baathist par­ty pro­pa­gan­da enough, that we used the suf­fer­ing of Iraqi peo­ple for our own anti-war pro­pa­gan­da, and that our analy­sis was often too sim­plis­tic. That does­n’t change the fact that hun­dreds of thou­sands of Iraqi chil­dren died from sanc­tions that most Amer­i­cans knew lit­tle about.
The peace move­ment does­n’t chal­lenge its own assump­tions enough and I’m glad Brown is shar­ing a self-critique. I wish he were a bit gen­tler and sus­pect he’ll look back at his work with Voic­es with more char­i­ty in years to come. Did he know the fod­der his cri­tique would give to the hawk­ish groups? Rather than recant his past as per the neo-conservative play­book, he could had offered his reflec­tions and cri­tique with an acknowl­eg­ment that there are plen­ty of good moti­va­tions behind the work of many peace activists. I like a lot of what Brown has to say but I won­der if peace activists will be able to hear it now. I think Brown will even­tu­al­ly find his new hawk­ish friends are at least as caught up in group-think, his­tor­i­cal myopia, and pro­pa­gan­da prop­a­ga­tion as the peo­ple he critiques.
Voic­es in the Wilder­ness has done a lot of good edu­cat­ing Amer­i­cans about the effects of our poli­cies over­seas. It’s been hard and often-thankless work in a cli­mate that did­n’t sup­port peace work­ers either moral­ly or finan­cial­ly. The U.S. is a much bet­ter place because of Voic­es and the peace move­ment was cer­tain­ly invig­o­rat­ed by its breath of fresh air.

Betting on Terror

July 29, 2003

The news sites are all report­ing a Pen­ta­gon plan to bet on future ter­ror­ist activ­i­ty (BBC). It’s report­ed as a stock market-style sys­tem in which sucess­ful pre­dic­tions by investors would win them money.
Some­one at the Pen­ta­gon has read a lit­tle too many books about the infi­nite wis­dom of the free mar­ket. There are those who have a reli­gious faith in the pow­er of unfet­tered cap­i­tal­ism, who posit it as a kind of all-knowing, self-correcting God. With the input of enough self-interested actors, the truth can be dis­cerned. I’d argue that stock mar­kets are more like blogs (the highly-linked New York Times ver­sion of the arti­cle), with every­one rush­ing to make the same links (Asso­ci­at­ed Press).
The truth of the mat­ter is that recent intel­li­gence laps­es have been the result of polit­i­cal med­dling in the col­lec­tion and ana­lyt­i­cal process­es. When the boss wants a cer­tain result (proof of weapons in Iraq, proof of Al Qae­da links), then the group-think pres­sure to con­form will warp the sift­ing process. A stock market-style sys­tem for pre­dict­ing ter­ror would be about as accu­rate as a poll of CNN and Fox News watch­ers – it will tell you what every­one thinks but it prob­a­bly won’t tell you the truth.

Blunt assertions, no evidence, no investigation

July 21, 2003

The Wash­ing­ton Post has an arti­cle about the Bush White House­’s com­mon prac­tice of mak­ing unat­trib­uted state­ments about Iraq with­out get­ting CIA feed­back. Some of the whop­pers include:

Sept 26: Iraq “could launch a bio­log­i­cal or chem­i­cal attack 45 min­utes after the order is given.“Sept 28: “there are al Qae­da ter­ror­ists inside Iraq”

Oct 7: “Sad­dam Hus­sein aids and pro­tects ter­ror­ists, includ­ing mem­bers of al Qaeda.”

All of these claims were strong­ly dis­put­ed by intel­li­gence experts at the time and only the most die-heart Adminstration-booster would want to claim now that any of them are true.

The 45 minute claim has got­ten a thor­ough rebuk­ing in the U.K.

This is the sec­ond time in as many weeks where a Bush quote has sud­den­ly tak­en me back to the Rea­gan years. That 45 minute claim just echos in my head of Rea­gan’s “the San­din­istas are just two days dri­ve from Har­lin­gen, Texas.” They both have that “oh my god, the bar­bar­ians are at the door” urgency. Both also posit an arch-enemy that turned out to be a paper tiger when all the pro­pa­gan­da was peeled back. (For the young’ins out there, Rea­gan respond­ed to the two-drive fear by min­ing Nicaragua’s har­bors, an act which was lat­er declared ille­gal by the World Court).

White House smear campaign: Gay and Canadian

July 18, 2003

This would be fun­ny if it weren’t seri­ous. This would be seri­ous if it weren’t pathet­ic. A few days ago ABC News cor­re­spon­dent Jef­frey Kof­man ran a sto­ry about low morale among U.S. troops sta­tioned in Iraq. The next day some­one in the White House tipped off gos­sip king Matt Drudge that Kof­man was open­ly gay and (maybe worse) a Cana­di­an. Lap­dog Drudge com­plied with the head­line “ABC NEWS REPORTER WHO FILED TROOP COMPLAINT STORY IS CANADIAN.” It’s amaz­ing what tid­bits the White House thinks are news­wor­thy. You’d think the mile­stone that U.S. casul­ties in Iraq have sur­passed those of the 1991 War might just get the Pres­i­den­t’s attention.

“Have you ever felt like the fall guy?”

July 18, 2003

In strange and sad news, the man who was prob­a­bly the unnamed “senior offi­cial” who first told the BBC that Britain “sexed up” its Iraq weapons dossier has turned up dead in the woods near his home. Dr. David Kel­ly gave evi­dence to the UK for­eign affairs com­mit­tee just days ago, where he asked the com­mit­tee “Have you ever felt like the fall guy?” One mem­ber of the com­mit­tee told the Guardian that “We thought he’d been put up quite delib­er­ate­ly to dis­tract us from the case of the gov­ern­men­t’s case for war.

David Kel­ly has been described as a “soft spo­ken” man not used to the pub­lic glare he’s been under. Reports haven’t even giv­en the cause of death, so con­spir­a­cy the­o­ries will have to be put on hold. It’s quite pos­si­ble that this faith­ful civ­il ser­vant and sci­en­tist final­ly cracked under the pres­sure of the media onslaught and took his life. It is a tragedy for his family.

North Korean nukes and cowboy politics

July 16, 2003

Yes­ter­day North Korea claimed that it has processed enough plu­to­ni­um to make six nuclear weapons. I’ve often argued that wars don’t begin when the shoot­ing actu­al­ly begins, that we need to look at the mil­i­taris­tic deci­sions made years before to see how they plant­ed the seeds for war. After the First World War, the vic­to­ri­ous allies con­struct­ed a peace treaty designed to humil­i­ate Ger­many and keep its econ­o­my stag­nant. With the onslaught of the Great Depres­sion, the coun­try was ripe for a mad dem­a­gogue like Hitler to take over with talk of a Greater Germany.
In his Jan­u­ary 2002 State of the Union address, Pres­i­dent Bush’s team added North Korea to the “axis of evil” that need­ed to be chal­lenged. By all accounts it was a last minute addi­tion. The speech­writ­ing team nev­er both­ered to con­sult with the State Depart­men­t’s east Asia experts. In all like­li­hood North Korea was added so that the evil three coun­tries would­n’t all be Mus­lim (the oth­er two were Iraq and Iran) and the “War on Ter­ror” would­n’t be seen as a war against Islam.
North Korea saw a bull­dog pres­i­dent in the White House and judged that its best chance to stay safe was to make a U.S. attack too dan­ger­ous to con­tem­plate. It’s a sound strat­e­gy, real­ly only a vari­a­tion on the Cold War’s “Mutu­al­ly Assured Destruc­tion” doc­trine. When faced with a hos­tile and militaristically-strong coun­try that wants to over­throw your gov­ern­ment, you make your­self too dan­ger­ous to take on. Let’s call it the Rat­tlesnake Defense.
Mil­i­tarism rein­forces itself when coun­tries beef up their mil­i­taries to stave off the mil­i­taries of oth­er coun­tries. With North Korea going nuclear, pres­sure will now build on South Korea, Chi­na and Japan to defend them­selves against pos­si­ble threat. We might be in for a new east Asian arms race, per­haps an east Asian Cold War. Being a paci­fist means stop­ping not only the cur­rent war but the next one and the one after that. In the 1980s activists were speak­ing out against the bru­tal regime of Sad­dam Hus­sein, an Amer­i­can friend who was gassing his own peo­ple. Now we need to speak out against the cow­boy pol­i­tics that is feed­ing insta­bil­i­ty on the Kore­an Penin­su­la, to pre­vent the hor­ror and mass death that a Sec­ond Kore­an War would unleash.