Last month, I touched on a fraction of February's forgotten history
vis-à-vis America's long history of global brutality. Here's a small taste
of March's madness:
March 1945
In WWII's Pacific theater"cheered on by the likes of Time magazine,
which explained that "properly kindled, Japanese cities will burn like
autumn leaves" U.S. General Curtis LeMay's Twenty-first Bomber Command, laid
siege on the poorer areas of Japan's large cities. On the night of March
9-10, 1945, the target was Tokyo, where tightly packed wooden buildings took
the brunt of 1,665 tons of incendiaries. LeMay later recalled that a few
explosives had been mixed in with the incendiaries to demoralize
firefighters (96 fire engines burned to ashes and 88 firemen died). The
attack area was 87.4 percent residential. By May 1945, 75 percent of the
bombs being dropped on Japan were incendiaries and LeMay's campaign took an
estimated 672,000 lives. In a confidential memo of June 1945, Brigadier
General Bonner Fellers, an aide to General MacArthur, called the raids, "one
of the most ruthless and barbaric killings on non-combatants in all
history." Secretary of War Henry Stimson declared it was "appalling that
there had been no protest over the air strikes we were conducting against
Japan which led to such extraordinarily heavy loss of life." Stimson added
that he "did not want to have the United States get the reputation for
outdoing Hitler in atrocities." After the "good war," LeMay admitted: "I
suppose if I had lost the war, I would have been tried as a war criminal.
Fortunately, we were on the winning side."
March 1946
After learning of the horrors his bomb had wrought on Japan, atomic
scientist J. Robert Oppenheimer began to harbor second thoughts, and he
resigned in October 1945. In March of the following year, Oppenheimer told
President Truman: "Mr. President, I have blood on my hands." Good ol' Harry
replied, "It'll come out in the wash." Later, the president told an aide,
"Don't bring that fellow around again."
March 1968
"In all my years in the Army I was never taught that communists were human
beings," said U.S. Lieutenant William Calley. "We were there to kill
ideology carried by-I don't know-pawns, blobs of flesh. I was there to
destroy communism. We never conceived of people, men, women, children,
babies."
The date was March 16, 1968. "Under the command of Lieutenant William L.
Calley, Charlie Company of the Americal Division's Eleventh Infantry had
'nebulous orders' from its company commander, Captain Ernest Medina, to
'clean the village out'," explains historian Kenneth Davis. All they found
at My Lai were women, children, and old men...no weapons, no signs of enemy
soldiers. Calley ordered villagers to be killed and their huts destroyed.
Women and girls were raped before they were machine-gunned. By the end of
the massacre, hundreds of villagers were dead.
When the truth about My Lai was eventually revealed by reporter Seymour
Hersh, Henry Kissinger sent a note to White House Chief of Staff H.R.
Haldeman: "Now that the cat is out of the bag, I recommend keeping the
President and the White House out of the matter entirely." Nixon, for his
part, blamed the New York Times, what he called "dirty rotten Jews
from New York," for covering the story. Perhaps what had the White House on
edge was best articulated by Colonel Oran Henderson, charged with covering
up the My Lai killings, who explained in 1971: "Every unit of brigade size
has its My Lai hidden someplace."
March 1988
While it was subsequently cited as one of the many spurious pretexts for the
second Gulf War, the U.S. and Britain did not call for a military strike
after Iraq's gassing of Kurds at Halabja in March 1988. "When Saddam bombed
Kurdish rebels and civilians with a lethal cocktail of mustard gas, sarin,
tabun, and VX in 1988, the Reagan administration first blamed Iran, before
acknowledging that the culprits were Saddam's own forces," explained
reporters Christopher Dickey and Evan Thomas. "There was only token official
protest at the time. Saddam's men were unfazed. An Iraqi audiotape, later
captured by the Kurds, records Saddam's cousin Ali Hassan al-Majid talking
to his fellow officers about gassing the Kurds." On that tape, al-Majid,
a.k.a. Chemical Ali, asks: "Who is going to say anything? The international
community? Fuck them!" Right on cue, Washington stepped up arms supplies to
and diplomatic activity with Iraq.
March 2003
March 17: President George W. Bush declares, "The United States and other
nations did nothing to deserve or invite this threat, but we will do
everything to defeat it."
March 18: On Good Morning America the president's mother asks: "Why
should we hear about body bags and deaths and how many, what day it's gonna
happen? It's not relevant. So why should I waste my beautiful mind on
something like that?"
March 20: The day mistakenly considered the "beginning" of the Iraq War.
This "war" began when the Security Council imposed comprehensive sanctions
against Iraq on August 6, 1990, four days after Iraq invaded Kuwait...and
has continued unabated (via bombings, sanctions, invasion, and occupation)
since then.
Postscript:
Some of the reactions to my February article demonstrated
shameful ignorance of and/or tacit support for transparent crimes against
humanity. Many chose to fall back on excuses along the lines of "every
country has such episodes in its history" and/or "you have to break some
eggs to make an omelet." For example: "What modern nation state isn't like
this? If a nation has power, it abuses it. Why would we be any different?"
It seems the decency bar has been lowered (to say the least). Also, since no
other nation claims moral superiority with more frequency than the U.S., to
nonchalantly absolve America of its myriad transgressions is to conveniently
disregard such reprehensible rhetoric and arrogance.
Mickey Z. can be found on the Web at http://www.mickeyz.net.
It's a dam shame why the security council or should i say WESTERN ALLIANCE COUNCIL held iraq under seige for 13 years (1990-2003). Lets not FORGET about the untold suffering and murder of those innocent civilians who REBELLED against the saddam regiem just after the american forces sent the republican guard licking their wounds in a blitzgrieg style operation. The american government supported the REBELLION at the time but would rather ACT military when their economic intrests at heart were threatened, as we all know the iraqi invasion of Kuwait. My question is: Why did the UN security council still impose sanctions on an impoverished iraqi population which had been through a major war with iran and a phony war with the west, when they (the west) sat back watched a anti-sadam rebellion with no military substance collaspe because of no western involvment?
I am no scholar or expert when it comes to the war in Iraq-all I know is that only kindness, forgivness and acceptance of all humanity will end this. This must stop! Our men and women out there are true heroes but let's bring them home! There has to be an end to all this. 9/11 was unthinkable but this War won't bring back those who lost their lives-you can't fight violence with violence. Look at the examples of Gandhi, Mother Theresea, Martin Luther King, Jr. and Christ- the greatest example of all. Let's start joining hand to hand before this hatred roams-we need less heroes in the ground and more heroes in the home. Pray and let's keep praying for World Peace-it can be done! When WILL the meek inherit the earth? There will be a price to pay for all of this that none of us will see coming. Let's end it now!!!! Michelle Fotheringham
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February 28, 2007
a guest: The fookechee'a yoooa' ...lizards are here again. http://Art James
The Title: There was a beautiful 2-3 foot lizard in the jungles of Vietnam that would seem to play, 'hide and seek,' The beautiful lizard was outrageously bright, colorful, shiny and entertained the infantry soldiers, literally, trapped in war. If American mothers and fathers really knew what son/daughter and beautiful unarmed peasants' were trying to endure, a massive movement in America would have demanded, immediate withdrawal of troops from harms way. At times we 'drafted' grunts would question if the lizard (there is a green trout-back 'latucca sativa' lettuce, by the way for nature's calm-taste, and the herb is sweet as breast milk) was making a sound, 'love you, love you, loooveia'yooua'.' Seriously. This beautiful lizard hidden via Nam's bushes made a 'fookechee'a yooa' sound. The noise is a sacred 'text.' The sentiment sound and universal lesson (no ingles) is open for private interpretation.
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February 28, 2007
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Last month, I touched on a fraction of February's forgotten history
vis-à-vis America's long history of global brutality. Here's a small taste
of March's madness:
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