“The rights and wrongs of Hiroshima are debatable,” Telford Taylor, the chief prosecutor at the Nuremberg trials, once observed, “but I have never heard a plausible justification of Nagasaki”—which he labeled a war crime. Kurt Vonnegut Jr., who experienced the firebombing of Dresden at close hand, said much the same thing. “The most racist, nastiest act by this country, after human slavery, was the bombing of Nagasaki,” he once said. “Not of Hiroshima, which might have had some military significance. But Nagasaki was purely blowing away yellow men, women, and children. I’m glad I’m not a scientist because I’d feel so guilty now.”
Quote from:
http://www.commondreams.org/view/2011/08/09-7">The Crime of Nagasaki—The 'Forgotten' A-Bomb City by Greg Mitchell The Nation via Commondreams, August 9, 2011
Quote from:
http://www.commondreams.org/view/2011/08/09-7">The Crime of Nagasaki—The 'Forgotten' A-Bomb City by Greg Mitchell The Nation via Commondreams, August 9, 2011
I come and stand at every door
Uploaded by yakkrak on Aug 7, 2006
The duck and cover instruction film, set to the background of 'I come and stand at every door'.
I come and stand at every door
I come and stand at every door
But no one hears my silent tread
I knock and yet remain unseen
For I am dead, for I am dead.
I'm only seven although I died
In Hiroshima long ago
I'm seven now as I was then
When children die they do not grow.
My hair was scorched by swirling flame
My eyes grew dim, my eyes grew blind
Death came and turned my bones to dust
And that was scattered by the wind.
I need no fruit, I need no rice
I need no sweet, nor even bread
I ask for nothing for myself
For I am dead, for I am dead.
All that I ask is that for peace
You fight today, you fight today
So that the children of this world
May live and grow and laugh and play.
Pete Seeger: I come and stand at every door
Hiroshima - Nagasaki Atomic bombing 1945 Aug
Uploaded by anilghosh on Aug 1, 2009
The atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki were nuclear attacks near the end of World War II against the Empire of Japan by the United States at the executive order of U.S. President Harry S. Truman on August 6 and August 9, 1945, respectively. After six months of intense fire-bombing of 67 other Japanese cities, followed by an ultimatum which was ignored by the Shōwa regime, the nuclear weapon "Little Boy" was dropped on the city of Hiroshima on Monday, August 6, 1945, followed on August 9 by the detonation of the "Fat Man" nuclear bomb over Nagasaki. These are to date the only attacks with nuclear weapons in the history of warfare The bombs killed as many as 140,000 people in Hiroshima and 80,000 in Nagasaki by the end of 1945, roughly half on the days of the bombings. Amongst these, 1520% died from injuries or the combined effects of flash burns, trauma, and radiation burns, compounded by illness, malnutrition and radiation sickness Since then, more have died from leukemia (231 observed) and solid cancers (334 observed) attributed to exposure to radiation released by the bombs. In both cities, the majority of the dead were civilians. Six days after the detonation over Nagasaki, on August 15, Japan announced its surrender to the Allied Powers, signing the Instrument of Surrender on September 2, officially ending the Pacific War and therefore World War II. (Germany had signed its unavoidable[2] Instrument of Surrender on May 7, ending the war in Europe.) The bombings led, in part, to post-war Japan adopting Three Non-Nuclear Principles, forbidding that nation from nuclear armament.
Few journalists bother to visit Nagasaki, even though it is one of only two cities in the world to “meet the atomic bomb,” as some of the survivors of that experience, sixty-six years ago today, put it. It remains the Second City, and “Fat Man” the forgotten bomb. No one in America ever wrote a bestselling book called Nagasaki, or made a film titled Nagasaki, Mon Amour. “We are an asterisk,” Shinji Takahashi, a sociologist in Nagasaki, once told me, with a bitter smile. “The inferior A-bomb city.”
Yet in many ways, Nagasaki is the modern A-bomb city, the city with perhaps the most meaning for us today. For one thing, when the plutonium bomb exploded above Nagasaki it made the uranium-type bomb dropped on Hiroshima obsolete.
And then there’s this. “The rights and wrongs of Hiroshima are debatable,” Telford Taylor, the chief prosecutor at the Nuremberg trials, once observed, “but I have never heard a plausible justification of Nagasaki”—which he labeled a war crime. Kurt Vonnegut Jr., who experienced the firebombing of Dresden at close hand, said much the same thing. “The most racist, nastiest act by this country, after human slavery, was the bombing of Nagasaki,” he once said. “Not of Hiroshima, which might have had some military significance. But Nagasaki was purely blowing away yellow men, women, and children. I’m glad I’m not a scientist because I’d feel so guilty now.”
My Question and argument for the day. GORD.
Did the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki constitute a War Crime.
And now on the legality and morality of using Atomic Bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki- Were these War Crimes committed by America against innocent civilians
In the course of a war between nations or Empires are only armed combatants legitimate targets or are all citizens on the other side to be considered as legitimate targets as well
US continues cover up of the Atomic Bombs horrifying affects on people in Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
The public has a right to know .
Unfortunately given a choice the US public in particular prefers not to know if knowing means the questioning of the necessity and the morality of the use of these bombs on civilian populations in densely populated urban centers.
(For instance one plan included telling the Japanese high command to send observers to a particular area in the Pacific where they could see America's new secret weapon the Atomic bomb in action. The High Command would then be given a period of time to consider their options and if they continued fighting the next time a bomb would be dropped on a populated area. So the Atomic Bomb could have been dropped in the Pacific Ocen or on an unpopulated Island or Atoll or on an unoccupied region in Japan itself - these alternatives were discussed but abandoned in favor of a more dramatic show of overwhelming force by the obliteration of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
To put this another way the Japanese were being bullied into accepting peace based entirely on Americ and its allies interests. In even starker terms the Japanese were being shown that America was quite willing to kill every man , woman and cild in Japan if Japan did not capitulate immediately.
Americans would in essence prefer to believe that the use of these bombs was a necessity to end the war and in the long run to save American lives.
Whether necessary or justifiable the result or outcome is the same.
Hundreds of thousands of Japanese civilians were incinerated .
Two cities were literally wiped off the map.
The effects of these exploding bombs lasted long after the bombs fell.
The US government studied the effects of the bombs on the survivors.
Most of the survivors were left with massive burns flesh peeling off and the lingering effects of radiation poisoning.
These were well documented by American film crew in the hire of the US government.
But these color films of the carnage and horror were kept secret for decades.
The government officials, the Pentagon etc. feared that if American citizens and citizens of countries allied to the US saw such footage it would present a problem with developing a nuclear arsenal.
That is the citizens on seeing the real horror of the effects of these nuclear weapons might protest against the building and stockpiling of more nukes.
One of the issues raised is that if there was no reasonable or compelling rationale for the US to use these bombs on Japanese civilian targets then this showed a criminal and wanton disregard for Civilian non-combatants and therefore raised the issue of whether or not this could be classified as a war crime.
If the dropping of the Atomic bombs on these cities is considered a crime are all Americans to be held accountable?
Of course not .
Of course the building and the mission to drop these bombs were top secret so the public had no foreknowledge of the mission to obliterate several Japanese cities.
The public were not asked for their input or public discussions of whether or not it was legal and or moral to use these bombs.
So it is only those who actively took part in the ordering of the mission who can be held accountable .
So the public at large can not be held accountable for dropping these bombs anymore than that all the Japanese were accountable for their leaders decisions in their war of aggression against a number of countries including the United States and Japan's sneak attack on Pearl Harbor.
The US public has been sold the erroneous belief or propaganda that the dropping of the Atomic bombs on Japanese Civilian populations was necessary .
It was not necessary.
The war was coming to an end.
These days there is even more evidence that the Japanese were about to surrender to the Americans and its allies.
This fact undermines part of the rationale for the use of the Atomic bombs to hasten the end of the war
One of the other rationale's given is that if the war continued the death toll for US soldiers would have been in the tens of thousands but this is mere speculation and can not be known for certain.
Japan's airforce and navy were decimated at this point and the conventional aerial bombing of Japan by the allies had already left much of Japan in ruins.
The other problem with this bit of logic is that the deaths of several hundred thousand Japanese civilians is characterized by America and its allies as being better than the deaths of thousands of US soldiers if the war had continued.
So according to this logic one US soldier is more worthy of life than ten or a hundred Japanese civilians.
Anyone who dares to question America's use of these Atomic Bombs is considered disloyal as UnAmerican or a nutter .
We are told that all reasonable people agree that these japanese civilians had it coming.
And that's what's troublesome about the use of these bombs on non-military targets what is the rationale for such a barbaric act
In the end it boils down to revenge and retaliation for all those killed by the Japanes military.
This is referred to in international law as collective guilt.
That is each and every sing person in Japanis guilty of those crimes done by its Emperor, its government and its military.
Such retaliation against civilian populations is considered a war crime and a crime against humanity.
When the Nazi Germans would go to a village or town and kill 50 civilians for each soldier killed or 100 for each German officer killed the Allied nations condemned these retaliations as brutal barbaric crimes.
Yet when America or its allies commit such a crime we are told it waas necessary.
Besides being considered as a crime that is illegal such crimes are considered immoral.
Even in the so called Fog of War human beings must steel themselves not to become monsters but try to act like a decent human being.
There is no defending the Committing of various attrocities that is massacring innocent civilians or even POWs or so called detainees.
There is no excuse for committing rape or torturing enemy soldiers or civilians.
No matter what excuses America or Britain or Nato make a crime is still a crime morality is not suspended even on the battlefield.
If we commend soldiers for acts of bravery and self-sacrifice on the battlefield then we must condemn those who commit babaric acts who disregard the rules of war and basic morality.
The Logic of Terrorism
The logic of the mind set of the Terrorists is that they make no distinction between armed combatants and unarmed civilians that is all who are associated with the so-called enemy are guilty and therefore not deserving of life .
And the terrorists add to this that anyone who is sympathetic to the Terrorists cause can be willingly or unwillingly be called to sacrifice willingly or not.
So when they kill even their fellow citizens or those of the same ideology or religion the "Terrorists" argue that those killed were either enemies and therefore deserved to die or if not they were sacrificed for a higher good .
The Al Qaeda terrorists believes that even some innocent civilian working in an office in Manhattan is as guilty as the US soldier who even in a fair fight kills a Muslim soldier let alone kill innocent civilians.
In the Mass Murder that took place in the so-called Iraqi War conducted by America and Britian their soldiers were basically told Iraq was a free fire zone and they could kill Iraqis with impunity.
While American viewers sat at home or in bars watching the Shock and Awe campaign against Iraq it never seemed to occur to them that what they were witnessing was not just the destruction of buildings in Baghdad or elsewhere but also the killing of thousands of innocent Iraqi civilians.
This willful blindness to the horror visited upon civilians in Iraq still fills one with dread and horror and belies the amorality of the American government and military and its quisling media and a public all too eager for revenge and retaliation for the 9/11 terrorist attacks.
These soldiers were told they could rape and murder and torture to their heart's content as long as they covered their tracks CYA Cover Your Ass -don't take pictures don't take souveneirs such as ears or fingers etc. and always carry a few spare shovels and Kalishnikovs .
Man with shovel on side of road or in a field must be planting roadside bombs IEDs and a Kalishnikov means the individual was a terrorists, an insurgent, a Baathist .
These too are crimes but the US government , the military and the media coverup or ignore such crimes.
For instance the revelations about the Mi Lai massacre during the Vietnam War was not something Americans wanted to know about so they were not thankful that Seymour Hersh spent so much time and effort uncovering this American atrocity.
Hersh is still seen as anti-American by most Americans - they argue that only someone who hated America would go public with such a story or make up such a lie and besides they were Vietnamese and all Vietnamese were suspect.
On the other hand the officer in charge of the Mi Lai Massacre Lt. Calley was treated as a hero even with a song celebrating his heroism in taking toddlers and old men and women.
Later during the Reagan administration Olliver North who aided the Contras and approved of their atrocities was also made into a hero. He believed that it was his duty to obey the chain of command no matter how illegal, criminal or immoral an act might be.
And now we see the same attitude expressed about Wikileaks, Julianne Assange and Bradley Manning for leaking video of the Baghdad Massacre committed by US personnel.
And so anyone who dares suggest that an American president or others in the Whitehouse or the Pentagon or CIA or US soldiers should be prosecuted for their crimes is considered to be a wacko or just anti-American.
Afterall they argue the people killed or tortured etc. are the enemy and that includes all civilians in the enemy camp as it were.
So murdering Iraqis, Iranians, Afghanis , Pakistanis, Libyans or Vietnamese or Nicaraguans or El Salvadorians is they believe legitimate inorder to stop whomever they believe to be the enemy or those aiding the enemy.
The enemy is cunning and is everywhere and is always plotting and their children are discounted because they are the future enemy.
This is the sort of logic of madmen such as Stalin, Hitler, Mao, Pol Pott etc.
So people around the world have become more suspicious and wary of America's actions in its so called War on Terror .
As for Libya Nato is merely doing America's bidding in its show of force and to keep others in line -all must kow tow to America's interests and whims or else.
Yes there are terrorists but we consider them fanatics and madmen.
Their reasoning is erroneous illogical as they lash out at those who are weak because they fear they can not win on the battlefield or in the Halls of Justice or because they believe that it is just to kill any who live in the countries they hate or are of a religion that they hate.
The question is how many more innocent civilians are going to die at the hands of the American Empire.
When will America's bloodlust finally be satisfied.
I though wrongly that the mass murder of some 500,000 Iraqi civilians was enough but no the Empire needs more blood.
Wasn't Git-mo and Abu Ghraib enough no the wars continue providing work for soldiers and the military Industrial Complex.
The Machinery of death goes on 24/7.
and so it goes,
GORD.
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