“The Hiroshima myth fosters a depraved indifference to civilian casualties associated with US actions abroad, whether it’s women and children slaughtered in a drone strike in Afghanistan, hundreds of thousands dead in an unwarranted invasion of Iraq, or a baby who dies for lack of imported medicine in US-sanctioned Iran.
Ultimately, to embrace the Hiroshima myth is to embrace a truly sinister principle: That, in the correct circumstances, it’s right for governments to intentionally harm innocent civilians … That’s not the only thread connecting 1945 to 2023, as Truman’s insistence on unconditional surrender is echoed by the Biden administration’s utter disinterest in pursuing a negotiated peace in Ukraine.”
Oppenheimer is a well crafted movie but my enjoyment of it was marred by its parroting of the widely believed fiction – I too believed it until a friend put me straight on the point a few years ago – that the dropping of two atomic bombs on Japan followed soul-searching and agonised debate on the corridors of America power, and was decisive in ending WW2.
That was not the aim. Writing on August 1 for Defend Democracy Now, Brian McGlinchey sets out the real objective in Hiroshima, Nagasaki Bombings Were Needless, Said World War II’s Top US Military Leaders.
As does CounterPunch editor Jeffrey St. Clair in a more whimsical piece, Little Boy and Fat Man Earrings: a Nuclear Parable
As does WSWS’s David Walsh in a piece whose header invokes Rosa Luxemburg’s words as cited in my last post but one. See 78th anniversary of US atomic bombing of Hiroshima: In 2023, socialism or barbarism
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Yeah. Shock and Awe for the USSR. At least, I presume that’s what they say. I’ll read them both. Thanks Phil.
I’ve just added a third read, Jams, today from WSWS.