OMNI
NEWSLETTER #1 ON AIR WAR, REVEALING REALITY OF US EMPIRE, May 12, 2008
Compiled by Dick Bennett
Contents
Bibliography
Dick’s Essay on US
Violence and Air War
“From
Guernica to Iraq” by Tom Engelhardt, The Nation (Feb. 25, 2008), discussion of
recent bombings in Iraq in context of
Guernica, London blitz, US firebombings of German and Japanese cities, N.
Korea, N. & S. Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia, Gulf War, and Iraq March 2003). A longer version appeared on his
website. Engelhardt runs The Nation
Institute’s Tomdispatch.com and is the author of The End
of Victory Culture now in a new edition, that deals with the crash-and-burn
sequel in
Your continued donations keep Wikipedia
running!
Sources:
Barash, David. Introduction to Peace Studies.
Branfman,
Fred. Voices from the Plain of Jars:
Life under an Air War.
New
York
Chomsky, Noam. World Orders Old and New.
____. Year 501: The Conquest Continues.
Colhoun, Jack.
“Gulf War Revives Myths About Vietnam
(Feb.
27, 1991) 10-11.
Coryell, Schofield. “The War Crimes Tribunal: Let the People
Judge.”
Minority of One 9.7-8
(July-August 1967) 14-15.
Daleiden, Joseph. The Final Superstition.
Dower, John.
War Without Mercy: Race and Power in the Pacific
War.
Engelhardt, Tom.
“From
Engelhardt,
Tom. The
End of Victory Culture: Cold War America America 's
"victory culture" returned in the George W. Bush era, only to crash
and burn in Iraq Hiroshima
Garrett,
Stephen. Ethics and Airpower in World
War II.
1993.
Grayling, A. C. Among
the Dead Cities: The History and Moral Legacy of the WWII Bombing of Civilians
in
Haught, James. Holy Horrors: An Illustrated History of
Religious
Murder
and Madness.
Knoll, Erwin, and Judith McFadden. War Crimes and the American
Conscience.
Leahy,
Michael. “Murky Truths of War Not So
Easy to Find.”
Gazette (August 13, 1995) 2J.
Lewis, Anthony. “The Bombing Ghost of Christmas Past.” New YorkTimes
News
Service, 1976.
Markusen,
Eric, and David Kopf. The Holocaust
and Strategic
Bombing: Genocide and
Total War in the Twentieth Century.
Melman, Seymour, et
al. In the Name of
Clergy and Laymen
Concerned About
Mumford, Lewis. The Pentagon of Power. San
Diego , CA
Jovanovich, 1970.
Omissi, David. Air Power and Colonial Control.
Pagels, Elaine. The Origin of Satan.
Planer, Felix. “Religion and Cruelty.” Superstition. Rev. ed.
Rosenberg, Stanley. “The Threshold of Thrill: Life Stories in
the Skies over
Miriam Cooke and Angela
Woollacott.
Russell, Bertrand. War Crimes in
1967.
Shaffer, Ronald. Wings of Judgment.
Sherry,
Michael. The Rise of American Air
Power: The Creation of
Armageddon.
Swomley, John.
“U.S.A.
(Sept.-Oct.
1995) 6-7.
Wetta, Frank, and Stephen Curley. Celluloid Wars: A Guide to
Film and the
American Experience of War.
Suggested Further Reading
Aron, Raymond. The Century of Total War.
The Air War and Political Developments in El Salvador
sional Hearing,
Western Hemisphere Affairs, May 14, 1986.
Barnet,
Richard. The Rockets’ Red Glare:
When America
War, The
Presidents & the People.
Blum, William. Killing Hope:
War
II.
Brightman, Carol, and
Michael Uhl. “Bombing for the Hell of
It.”
Nation 260.23
(June 12, 1995) 822-26.
Chomsky, Noam. Deterring Democracy. New York
tage, 1992).
____. Turning the Tide.
Clodfelter, M.
The Limits of Air Power: The American Bombing of
Cockburn,
Alexander. “Bombs and the Baroque.” Nation (September 30, 1996) 9-
10.
Doctorow, E.L.
“Mythologizing the Bomb.” Nation
261.5 (August
14/21, 1995).
Gerassi, John.
1968.
Griffin, Susan. A Chorus of Stones: The Private Life of
War.
Doubleday,
1992.
Guttmann, Allen. “’Mechanized Doom.’” Ernest Hemingway. Ed. Carlos Baker.
Harvey, Frank. Air War:
Hochhuth, Rolf. Soldiers; an Obituary for
Irving Orlando ,
FL
ston, 1963.
Kennett, Lee. A History of Strategic Bombing.
Korn, Peter. “The Persisting Poison: Agent Orange in
Nation
252.13 (April 8, 1991) 440-42.
Levinson,
J. L. Alpha Strike Vietnam
to 1973.
O’Neill, William. A Democracy
at War:
Paris, Michael. From the
Wright Brothers to “Top Gun”.
Reports. European War.
series on Pacific War.
Veale, F.J.P.
Advance to Barbarism: How the Reversion to Barba
rism in Warfare
and War-trials Menaces Our Future.
1953.
Vonnegut,
Kurt. Slaughterhouse-five; or The
children’s Crusade.
Delacorte,
1969.
Warner,
Rex. The Aerodrome: A Love Story
(1941).
Little,
Brown, 1966.
Zinn, Howard.
“Terrorism over
The following essay was published in PeaceWorks.
Bombing Iraq: United States Air Wars
“Beware
men untouched”
James R. Bennett
Blood
and destruction shall be so in use,
And
dreadful objects so familiar,
That
mothers shall but smile when they behold
Their
infants quartered with the hands of war.
Shakespeare,
Julius Caesar
Why is the White
House-Pentagon-Congressional complex bombing
Recent killings of children, teachers,
and parents by children have momentarily stunned a few leaders and a few
citizens into questioning the causes of
crimes in the
But are these the only questions? By its actions around the world, what do the
leaders of the
Few people include, in their anxious
questioning, the general acceptance—even the active promulgation--of mass
slaughter from the air, in violation of international law, as the official war policy of the
Why a violent nation? Why bomb and bomb
For most of my
life I thought the 1937 Nazi Condor Legion’s bombing of the Spanish town, Guernica
aerial bombing of an
unwarned civilian target in wartime.
Probably Picasso’s
powerful painting of
the incident, with its arms and legs and heads screaming against
the atrocity (I kept a
print of it on my office wall), and my dislike of Nazis, blocked
awareness of earlier
mass civilian bombings.
town for the Nazi
blitzkrieg bombing of
of
But it was not the first bombing of a
non-military city. Earlier, in 1932 in
From the beginning,
some
cities. [Addendum sent to me by a friend: At the US Air Force Academy,
they teach that the first use of military aircraft bombing on a civilian
population was during the 1919? race riots in
equipment to nations
using “airplanes for attack on civilian populations,” with the
Senate cooperating in
its own “unqualified condemnation of the inhuman bombing of
civilian populations”
(Sherry 59-60). Likewise, the Nazi and
Spanish Fascist
bombings (Franco’s
bombing of Barcelona in 1938) were universally condemned in
the
Strong arguments were adduced against
bombing cities on the argument
that it was
counterproductive, would not affect an enemy‘s warmaking powers, but in
fact would stiffen
resistance (62-3). Even Winston
Churchill took this position for
awhile, contending that
“air bombing of the noncombatant populations for the
purpose of slaughter”
would be counterproductive on both moral and practical
grounds
(64). Generally during the 1930s, the
distinction between combatant and noncombatant was officially maintained in
both countries.
Nevertheless, strategic air war was
becoming Anglo-American policy.
According to Markusen and Kopf, the hardening of RAF policy followed
Nazi bombing of
countercity
warfare was virtually taken for granted” (Barash 450). The
However, when the
The RAF Bomber
Command’s second
first
great firestorm (Sherry 153) by dropping thousands of incendiaries and high
explosives. The air heated to 800
degrees centigrade (1500 degrees F.), to bake and melt, explode and asphyxiate
40,000 people. It transcended all human
experience and imagination (153), and anticipated
Evils often derive from good motives, or
gradually, incrementally. The
Finally, the
Despite the continued claims of precision
bombing as the AAF’s mission, by the end of 1944, terror, not precision,
bombing constituted three-fourths of
In his book on the ethics of British bombing
of German cities, Stephen
Garrett
argues that after the spring of 1944 the assault on German civilians was “quite
without ethical
justification.” Yet “about 80 percent of all the bomb tonnage dropped
on
(183). Sir Arthur Harris, chief of
in the necessity of
indiscriminate bombings. But Garrett
points out
the power of
momentum. By mid-1944 Bomber Command had
over 1,000 heavy
bombers at its disposal
and “frequently more aircrew…than there were planes to fly”
(184). It was “unthinkable to allow this armada to
even partially stand down” (185).
In the meantime, in the Pacific,
scruples were even less important. While
it took several years to jettison moral restraint over bombing European
civilians, counter-city warfare was taken for granted against Japan U.S.
In Nov. 1944
time since Doolittle’s
raid. In Dec. 1944 Gen. Curtis LeMay
bombed Hankow,
destroyed in the spring
of 1945.
A climax was reached on March 9-10 when
Gen. LeMay burned up 100,000 people in 1800 degrees F., a million people were
wounded or made homeless, and sixteen square miles of the city burned out, in
“the great Tokyo Air raid.” As in
According to Stephen Ambrose, “From the
beginning, the Japanese-
American war in the
Pacific was waged with a barbarism and race hatred that was
staggering in scope,
savage almost beyond belief, and catastrophic in consequence.”
John Dower amply
demonstrates their mutual xenophobia.
In opposition, Lewis Mumford called the
saturation bombings of civilian targets the “unconditional moral surrender to
Hitler,” and David Lilienthal warned, “The fences are gone. And it was we, the civilized, who have pushed
standardless conduct to its ultimate” (Barash 450). But their voices were rare. Recently, Eric Markusen and David Kopf have
compared the Nazi Holocaust and the U.S./British strategic bombing of cities as
examples of how governments will resort to genocidal killing if it is perceived
to be essential to national security.
Mass killing is not mass murder when patriotic.
The utter brutal immorality of total war
by air was, of course, persistently denied and covered up by continued official
asseveration of precision bombing (Sherry288).
Thus morally numbed by unceasing, deceptive propaganda of patriotic
hatred, several years of incremental “area” slaughters, and the ferocious battles of Iwo Jima and
As Markusen and Kopf suggest, the
post-war reliance on nuclear weapons reflects a mindset similar to that which
justified strategic bombing of cities.
Moral and tactical objections were raised, particularly by Navy
officers, but soon the Navy accepted the air-atomic strategy of carrier planes
and submarines (Schaffer 192-8). And by 1948
the Strategic Air Command had selected urban targets in the U.S.S.R for nuclear
bombing “with the primary objective of annihilating population” (191). “Massive retaliation was [WWII] area bombing
vastly multiplied””(213). But concepts
of precision bombing from WWII continued influential too, though again the
precision was more in the claims than the performance.
And so air war continued: mass bombings
of
Secretly and against international law,
U.S. B-52s dropped over 75,000 tons of bombs (about six Hiroshima-size atomic
bombs) on one area of neutral
Ronald Schaffer observes with
breathtaking understatement: “Among postwar civilian strategic thinkers and
weapons designers there tended to be, as in World War II, mental detachment
from the objects of attack and unwillingness or inability to focus on moral
questions” (214). The
The Al Amariyah shelter bombing was not
an isolated atrocity. During the 1991
Persian Gulf War, the
Why has the
What
can we do? We must face the truth about U.S. aggression and tell others every way we
can, to counteract the jingoistic and politically self-serving exaltation of U.S. U.S.
of
battle’” (xv).
We must expose the hypocrisy which
enables the violence. While passing
judgment on
We must not be deluded into thinking a
“Christian” nation means a peaceful nation (Daleiden, Haught, Pagels, Planer,
Swomley).
We must hold
our government to the principles of international
law—of
World Court and the
International War Crimes Tribunal.
We
must listen to tribunals that have denounced
the basis of
international law (Coryell, Knoll, Melman,Russell).
We
must not make heroes out of pilots who bomb noncombatants indiscriminately and
then deny it happened through a code and language of warrior masculinity (
Anthony
Lewis summarizes much of what we must do: “Beware obsession. Beware secrecy. Beware concentrated power.” Particularly (my italics): “Beware men untouched by concern for the moral consequences of their
acts,” for they will make even mothers unable to see, hear, or feel
dreadful slaughter.
Shakespeare
has Macbeth express his emptiness, which is also that of the advocates of air
wars against civilians, so far are they morally lost in killing without remorse
in total war:
...I am in blood
Stepp’ in so far that,
should I wade no more,
Returning were as
tedious as go o’er.
While
we bewail our violent nation, and desperately seek some scapegoat or other
surface remedy, our preparation for ever more air wars reduces us to the level
of all mass murderers. What else can our
children think? What else can they do?
Works Cited
Arnove, Anthony,
ed.
Barash, David. Introduction to Peace Studies.
Bhatia, Bela, Jean
Dreze, and Kathy Kelly, eds. War and
Peace in the Gulf.
Blum, William. Killing
Hope:
___.
Branfman, Fred. Voices
from the Plain of Jars: Life under an Air
War.
New York
Chomsky, Noam. World Orders Old and New.
____. Year 501: The Conquest Continues.
Colhoun, Jack. “Gulf
War Revives Myths About Vietnam
(Feb.
27, 1991) 10-11.
Coryell, Schofield.
“The War Crimes Tribunal: Let the People
Judge.” Minority of One 9.7-8 (July-August
1967) 14-15.
Daleiden, Joseph. The Final Superstition.
Dower, John. War
Without Mercy: Race and Power in the Pacific
War.
Garrett,
Stephen. Ethics and Airpower in World
War II.
1993.
Haught, James. Holy Horrors: An Illustrated History of
Religious
Murder
and Madness.
Jacobs,
Andy. The 1600 Killers. Alistair, 1999.
Knoll, Erwin, and Judith McFadden. War Crimes and the American
Conscience.
Leahy,
Michael. “Murky Truths of War Not So
Easy to Find.”
Gazette (August 13, 1995) 2J.
Lewis, Anthony. “The Bombing Ghost of Christmas Past.” New YorkTimes
News
Service, 1976.
Markusen, Eric, and David Kopf.
The Holocaust and Strategic
Bombing: Genocide
and Total War in the Twentieth Century.
Melman, Seymour, et
al. In the Name of
Clergy and Laymen
Concerned About
Mumford, Lewis. The Pentagon of Power. San
Diego , CA
Jovanovich, 1970.
Omissi, David. Air Power and Colonial Control.
Pagels, Elaine. The Origin of Satan.
Planer, Felix. “Religion and Cruelty.” Superstition. Rev. ed.
Rosenberg, Stanley.
“The Threshold of Thrill: Life Stories in
the Skies over
Miriam Cooke and Angela Woollacott.
Russell, Bertrand. War Crimes in
1967.
Shaffer, Ronald. Wings of Judgment.
Sherry, Michael. The
Rise of American Air Power: The Creation of
Armageddon.
Swomley, John. “U.S.A.
(Sept.-Oct.
1995) 6-7.
Wetta, Frank, and Stephen Curley. Celluloid Wars: A Guide to
Film and the
American Experience of War.
Suggested Further Reading
Aron, Raymond. The Century of Total War.
The Air War and Political Developments in El Salvador
sional Hearing,
Western Hemisphere Affairs, May 14, 1986.
Barnet, Richard. The
Rockets’ Red Glare: When America
War, The
Presidents & the People.
Brightman, Carol, and
Michael Uhl. “Bombing for the Hell of
It.”
Nation 260.23
(June 12, 1995) 822-26.
Chomsky, Noam. Deterring Democracy. New York
tage, 1992).
____. Turning the Tide.
Clodfelter, M. The
Limits of Air Power: The American Bombing of
Cockburn, Alexander. “Bombs and the Baroque.” Nation (September 30, 1996) 9-
10.
Doctorow, E.L.
“Mythologizing the Bomb.” Nation
261.5 (August
14/21, 1995).
Gerassi, John.
1968.
Griffin, Susan. A Chorus of Stones: The Private Life of
War.
Doubleday,
1992.
Guttmann, Allen. “’Mechanized Doom.’” Ernest Hemingway. Ed. Carlos Baker.
Harvey, Frank. Air War:
Hochhuth, Rolf. Soldiers; an Obituary for
Irving Orlando , FL
ston, 1963.
Kennett, Lee. A History of Strategic Bombing.
Korn, Peter. “The Persisting Poison: Agent Orange in
Nation
252.13 (April 8, 1991) 440-42.
Levinson, J. L. Alpha
Strike Vietnam
to 1973.
O’Neill, William. A Democracy
at War:
Paris, Michael. From the
Wright Brothers to “Top Gun”.
Reports. European War.
series on Pacific War.
Veale, F.J.P. Advance
to Barbarism: How the Reversion to Barba
rism in Warfare
and War-trials Menaces Our Future.
1953.
Voices
in the Wilderness.
Vonnegut,
Kurt. Slaughterhouse-five; or The
Children’s Crusade.
Delacorte,
1969.
Warner,
Rex. The Aerodrome: A Love Story
(1941).
Little,
Brown, 1966.
Zinn, Howard.
“Terrorism over
Courage, 1993.
NEWS RELEASE JULY 25, 2011
Contact:
Gladys Tiffany, 935-4422; Dick Bennett, 442-4600
Subject:
OMNI’S ANNUAL REMEMBRANCE OF HIROSHIMA AND NAGASAKI BOMBINGS (August 6
and August 9, 1945)
Events to take place at OMNI,
Saturday, August 6 we will show, Grave of the Fireflies, a Japanese
animated film on the firebombing of
Sunday, August 7, a film on the bombing of
OMNI’s Open Mic will follow the film. Mark Prime will be our moderator. Music, poems, and prose about
Desserts and drinks will be available, and your
contributions are welcome.
At OMNI: Center for Peace, Justice, and
Ecology, August 6 and 7, 6:30 p.m.,
66th
HIROSHIMA-NAGASAKI (
SATURDAY
AUGUST 6, 2011
Compiled by Dick Bennett
Contents
Introduction
Grave of
Fireflies animated
film
This Remembrance is OMNI’s oldest action
(beginning in its first incarnation as the Peace Organizing Committee during
the Vietnam War). Because nuclear
bombings of
To read more about air war,
Hiroshima-Nagasaki, and related subjects, go to OMNI’s web site newsletters
http://www.omnicenter.org/newsletter-archive/
and
to Dick’s Blog, “It’s the War Department.”:
http://jamesrichardbennett.blogspot.com/
AIR WAR AGAINST
|
|
||||||||||||||
|
register You are not logged in. Log
in » Subscribe to weekly newsletter » related articles Forbidden
Games (Great Movie) » times
& tickets Fandango about
us About
the site » on sale
now
Buy now »
Buy now »
Buy now »
Buy now »
Buy now »
Buy now »
|
|
|
|
|
||||||||||
AIR WAR, HIROSHIMA-NEVADA TEST SITE ANNUAL
PROTEST WALK, 66TH ANNIVERSAY
ANNUAL PROTEST WALK NEVADA
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
||||||
|
|
|
|
|
||||||||
|
|
|
|
|
|
|||||||
|
|
|
|
|||||||||
|
|
home | issues | programs
& events | get
involved | history
| NDE Literature
| about us
|
|
|||||||||
|
|
|
|
|
||||||||
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
||||||
Bombing of Kobe
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Jump to: navigation,
search
|
|
On March 17, 1945, 331 American
B-29 bombers launched a firebombing
attack against the city of Kobe, Japan.
Of the city's residents, 8,841 were confirmed to have been killed in the
resulting firestorms,
which destroyed an area of three square miles and included 21% of
After the bombing
of
On June 5 that same year,
In addition to incendiary
attacks,
·
May
11, 1945: 92 B-29s hit Kawanishi aircraft industry
·
June
18, 1945: 25 B-29s laid naval mines in several areas including waters near
·
June
28, 1945: 29 B-29s laid naval mines in three harbors including
·
July
19, 1945: 27 B-29s laid naval mines in several areas including waters near
·
July
30, 1945: Fighters attack airfields, railroads and tactical targets throughout
Kobe-Osaka area
[edit] See also
Extent of
destroyed areas of
·
Pacific Theater of Operations
·
Bombing of Tokyo in World War II
·
Grave of the Fireflies (novel),
a novel set during the bombing.
o
Grave of the Fireflies, an anime film based on the novel.
[edit] Further reading
·
Edoin, Hoito (1987). The Night
·
Werrell, Kenneth P (1996). Blankets of Fire.
[edit] References
1.
^ Air
Force Historical Studies: U.S. Army Air Forces in World War II Combat
Chronology 1941 -- 1945
US AIR WAR
See Pentagon, MIC,
6-4 there are 7 items here, find 2 more and publish
And check the 2nd doc by this title
“The American Cult of Bombing and
Endless War” by William Astore . Common
Dreams (6-4-19). The very Dark Side of US
air power
From ROOTS ACTION 5-26-19
The F-35 is a weapon of
offensive war, serving no defensive purpose. It is planned to cost the U.S. $1.4
trillion over 50 years.
This is a new global/local
effort to cancel it now.
Ban Weaponized Drones from the World
Meticulous researchers have
documented that U.S. drones are killing many innocent civilians in Pakistan,
Yemen and elsewhere. Drones are making the world less stable and creating
new enemies. We're going to ban weaponized drones from the world.
Please add your name today, and
urge everyone you know to do the same.
“Boeing Ramps Up F-15 Line Near St. Louis.” NADG (4-23-19).
Boeing ramps up F-15 line near St.
Louis
ST. LOUIS -- Boeing is preparing to
build F-15 fighter planes for the U.S. Air Force at its St. Louis County plant
even though the military branch hasn't bought the jet in over a decade.
The Chicago-based company began ramping
up its F-15 production line near St. Louis after the Air Force submitted a
nearly $8 billion budget request last month that included eight F-15s next year
and 72 in the following four years. The request came as a surprise to many
since the U.S. military has moved toward stealth fighters, such as Lockheed
Martin's F-35, in recent years.
Prat Kumar, Boeing International's vice
president, told the St. Louis
Post-Dispatch that the company is investing before Congress
approves the budget request so it can respond quickly should the Air Force seek
rapid field deployment.
Engineers and manufacturing experts
recently met at the St. Louis County facility to determine how to efficiently
assemble the fighter jet with its modern defense, radar and operating systems.
The F-15 was first developed in the
early 1970s, and foreign orders from Singapore, South Korea and Saudi Arabia
have kept the Missouri manufacturing line running in recent years.
The line is equipped to build about one
F-15 a month, but Boeing officials believe that minimal modifications can
increase production to up to three of the jets each month. --
The Associated Press
(This report seems to cover up more than it reports. Boeing will fund building the planes before
Congress has authorized the money, taking a huge risk? Or does it know for certain it will get a
contract?)
Gerry Sloan while visiting Japan June 2017
Hope you are well. It's
our last day in Kyoto, a "tranquil city" (as one of my former
exchange students called it). Having a wonderful time so far but trying to
forget that we "fire bombed" (i.e. napalmed) 3 of the 4 cities
we are visiting. Which set a terrible precedent for targeting civilians instead
of soldiers in modern warfare. More than 10,000 victims in Osaka (where we
landed), more than 100,000 victims in Tokyo (where we depart), plus 10 other
cities in Japan. The Tokyo firebombing took a greater toll than the atomic bomb
we dropped on Hiroshima. General Curtis Lemay, who ordered the firebombing,
said he was glad we won the war or he would have been tried as a war criminal.
And what we're enabling the Saudis to do to Yemen RIGHT NOW is every
bit as horrific and shameful. Yet we promote this image of the USA as the
eternal good guys (Captain America bullshit). Sorry to dump this at your feet,
but I keep thinking of this whenever I see the Japanese school kids (about
Brendan's age) in their caps and backpacks at all the sites we visit. 6-15
|
WORLD FUTURE FUND, BOX 1829, OLD TOWN, ALEXANDRIA, VA. 22313
U.S.A. |
|
THE BOMBING
OF CIVILIANS IN WORLD WAR II "The Prime Minister said that we hoped to shatter twenty German
cities as we had shattered Cologne, Lubeck, Dusseldorf, and so on. More
and more aeroplanes and bigger and bigger bombs. M. Stalin had heard of
2-ton bombs. We had now begun to use 4-ton bombs, and this would be
continued throughout the winter. If
need be, as the war went on, we hoped to shatter almost every dwelling in
almost every German city. " (Official transcript of the
meeting at the Kremlin between Winston Churchill and Josef Stalin on
Wednesday, August 12, 1942, at 7 P.M.) "The destruction of German cities, the killing of German workers,
and the disruption of civilized community life throughout Germany [is the
goal]. ... It should be emphasized that the destruction
of houses, public utilities, transport and lives; the creation of a
refugee problem on an unprecedented scale; and the breakdown of morale both
at home and at the battle fronts by fear of extended and intensified bombing are accepted and intended aims of
our bombing policy. They are not by-products of attempts to hit
factories." --
"Air Marshal Arthur Harris, Commander in Chief, Bomber
Commander, British Royal Air Force, October 25, 1943 quoted in Tami
Biddle, Rhetoric and Reality in Air Warfare: The Evolution
of British and American Ideas about Strategic Bombing, 1914-1945(Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2002),
p. 220. Is the deliberate mass murder of civilians
on a huge scale ever justified? This article does not have an answer
for this question. However, it is important to note that this was
a very specific goal of England and America in World War II as the quotes above
show. Germany and Japan also bombed civilians but the scale of
what they did was a tiny fraction of their opponents. More people died
in the bombing of Hamburg alone that in the entire German bombing campaign
against England. Was the Anglo-American bombing necessary or
moral? Many serious military experts feel it was a poor choice in terms
of military priorities. What follows is documentation from both
sides. MORE http://www.worldfuturefund.org/wffmaster/Reading/war.crimes/World.war.2/Bombing.htm
|
|
|
(Following included in Nagasaki 2013)
Voices
from the Plain of Jars
Life under an Air War (SECOND EDITION)
Edited by Fred Branfman with essays
and drawings by Laotian villagers
Foreword by Alfred W.
McCoy
New Perspectives in Southeast
Asian Studies Alfred
W. McCoy, R. Anderson Sutton, Thongchai Winichakul,
and
Kenneth M. George, Series Editors
“A classic. . . . No American should be able to read [this book] without
weeping at his country’s arrogance.”
—Anthony Lewis, New York Times
During the Vietnam War the United States government waged a massive, secret air
war in neighboring Laos. Fred Branfman, an educational advisor living in
When first published in 1972, this
book was instrumental in exposing the bombing. In this expanded edition, Branfman follows the story forward in time,
describing the hardships that Laotians faced after the war when they returned
to find their farm fields littered with cluster munitions—explosives that
continue to maim and kill today.
“Today, the significance of this book’s message has, if anything, increased. As
Fred Branfman predicted with uncommon prescience, the massive
No comments:
Post a Comment