Selves and Others

The decision to incinerate Hiroshima and Nagasaki was not taken in anger. White men in grey business suits and military uniforms, after much deliberation, decided the US “could not give the Japanese any warning; that we could not concentrate on a civilian area; but that we should seek to make a profound psychological impression on as many of the inhabitants as possible... [and] the most desirable target would be a vital war plant employing a large number of workers and closely surrounded by workers’ houses.”[i] They argued it would be cheaper in American lives to release the nuclear genie. Besides, it was such a marvelous thing to show Soviet leader Josef Stalin.

Headlines like “Jap City No More” soon brought the news to a joyous nation. Crowds gathered in Times Square to celebrate; there was less of the enemy left. Rarely are victors encumbered by remorse. President Harry Truman declared: “When you have to deal with a beast you have to treat him as a beast. It is most regrettable but nevertheless true.”[ii] Not surprisingly, six decades later, even American liberals remain ambivalent about the morality of nuking the two Japanese cities. The late Hans Bethe, Nobel Prize winner in physics of Manhattan Project fame and a leading exponent of arms control, declared that “the atom bomb was the greatest gift we could have given to the Japanese”[iii]. (...)

Hiroshima, Japan — The day has grown dark and so has the river but the sky has remained luminous and clear.

Cyclists zip intermittently past empty benches and pedestrians walking along the bank of the gently flowing Motoyasu river. A few meters away, a heavy tram rumbles across the steel bridge, past the room-less windows and windowless rooms of the Genbaku Dome-mae. The Atom Bomb Dome. A skeletal reminder of what has been and what may yet be.

A man with a camera has already circled the Dome thrice, kneeling, twisting his body, crouching, constantly snapping pictures yet never seeming to find the right angle. Who knows if there really is one?

The Atom Bomb Dome is the ruins of the former Hiroshima Prefect Industrial Promotion Hall. At 8:15 in the morning of August 6, 1945 a weapon of mass death was detonated in the air 600 meters right above the hall which reduced to ashes nearly all the buildings within two kilometers of the bomb’s hypocenter and which eventually claimed around 200,000 lives. Hiroshima’s population at the time of the atomic bombing was approximately 350,000.

"In order to have this tragic fact known to succeeding generations and to make it a lesson for humankind," prayed the memorial plaque installed at the Atom Bomb Dome on August 6, 1967, the "ruins shall be preserved forever."

Forever may be too brief a reminder. (...)

It has been 60 years since the U.S. government used atomic bombs to destroy Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The weapons killed 200,000 people outright and left tens of thousands of others dying of radiation-induced cancers or afflicted by birth defects, immunological disorders and psychological traumas. It was a grim beginning to the nuclear age and led millions of people around the globe to conclude that the world stood on the brink of destruction.

Fortunately, since 1945, we have managed to avert that fate. Thanks to widespread public pressure and the efforts of some far-sighted statesmen, governments around the world have exercised a surprising level of nuclear restraint. They have resisted the temptation to carry their quarrels to the level of nuclear war and have agreed to important nuclear arms control and disarmament measures. (...)

[August 5, 2005]

The explosions in London are a reminder of how the cycle of attack and response could escalate

This month’s anniversary of the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki prompts only the most sombre reflection and most fervent hope that the horror may never be repeated.

In the subsequent 60 years, those bombings have haunted the world’s imagination but not so much as to curb the development and spread of infinitely more lethal weapons of mass destruction.

A related concern, discussed in technical literature well before 11 September 2001, is that nuclear weapons may sooner or later fall into the hands of terrorist groups.

The recent explosions and casualties in London are yet another reminder of how the cycle of attack and response could escalate, unpredictably, even to a point horrifically worse than Hiroshima or Nagasaki. (...)

Clinton’s assertion of a right to respond to violence with violence was the ethos of a vigilante

In February 1998, Bill Clinton proclaimed the doctrine that his successor, George Bush, would adopt enthusiastically in 2001: "The US and hopefully all our allies have the unilateral right to respond at any time and in any manner of our choosing."

Clinton’s assertion of a right to respond to violence with violence expressed the ethos of the vigilante rather than a constitutional government. It was only a matter of time until the other side claimed the same right. On Thursday, four weeks after the suicide bombings in London, Osama bin Laden’s Egyptian deputy, Ayman al-Zawahiri, recast on television the Clinton-Bush Doctrine in his terms to the Americans and British: "You, however, shed rivers of blood in our land, so we exploded volcanoes of blood in your land." (...)

While it is undoubtedly true that Presidents Eisenhower and Kennedy were opposed to Israeli acquisition of nuclear weapons (How the UK gave Israel the bomb, August 4), later US administrations and their Nato allies have adopted policies of secret, and then more overt, cooperation with Israel. Knowing nuclear weapons are only as effective as their delivery systems, they have made sophisticated systems available to Israel. According to the Monterey Institute, as well as 50 Jericho 2 missiles targeted at the Middle East, Israel has also Ra’am planes (range 4,500km) and Shavit space launchers (4,800 km) that have the capability to strike targets in the EU, western Russia and north Africa, as well as central and south Asia.

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During his presidency, Clinton allowed Israel to acquire the supercomputers needed to operate these delivery systems. In addition, Israel has recently purchased from Germany Dolphin submarines that could be used to provide a second-strike nuclear capability. Israel already has some cruise missiles and is seeking long-range Tomahawk weapons from the US. On past form, it will probably be successful in acquiring or developing these. There has also been intensive cooperation between Israel and the US on militarisation of space programmes, such as Arrow. (...)

[page 21 | Letters]

Israel describes it as a vital security barrier, while the UN says it’s illegal. But as far as the guerrilla graffiti artist Banksy is concerned, the 425-mile long barrier that separates Israel from the Palestinian territories is a vast concrete canvas too tempting to resist.

The subversive dauber, who has terrorised galleries on both sides of the Atlantic and who last year installed a very sexed-up bronze spoof of the Old Bailey’s statue of Justice in central London, has ventured further afield for his latest project. (...)

[Friday August 5, 2005]