Barbarism and Terrorism of the U.S.
in Atom Bombing Civilian Populations
(In
Commemoration of the 60th Anniversary of the Atom Bombing of Hiroshima
and Nagasaki)
By Prof. Jose
Maria Sison
Chairperson, International Coordinating Committee
International League of People’s Struggle
Posted by Bulatlat
The International League of Peoples’
Struggle (ILPS) joins the Japanese people and all other peace-loving
peoples in commemorating the 60th anniversary of the atom bombing of
Hiroshima and Nagasaki. We condemn these barbaric and terrorist acts of
mass murder against civilian populations and the continuing policy of the
US to use nuclear weapons as well as nuclear blackmail in carrying out
imperialist plunder, wars of aggression and military intervention against
the world’s peoples.
On August 6, 1945, a single bomb dropped
from an American plane exploded 600 meters above
Hiroshima,
creating a huge fireball that incinerated the city and massacring more
than a hundred thousand innocent civilians. Another bomb was detonated
over Nagasaki three days later causing similar devastation and massacring
tens of thousands of civilians. The immediate death toll in the two atom
bombings came to nearly two hundred thousand. Tens of thousands more died
later, after suffering excruciating pain due to the effects of
radiation.
Without doubt, these atom bombings are
among the most dastardly war crimes and crimes against humanity ever
committed in history. These atrocities are all the more condemnable as
they were absolutely unnecessary in terms of winning the war. The war in
Europe had ended and Japan was already defeated and was negotiating
surrender. The US and its apologists have given such cynical
rationalizations as that the atom bombings were meant to preempt the
Soviet invasion of Japan and to save American and Japanese lives.
Clearly, by these bombings the US meant to
demonstrate its absolute military superiority over all other
countries—allies and enemies alike--in the whole world -- and to establish
itself as the preeminent and unrivalled postwar superpower. The bombings
were also a “live experiment” to measure the actual devastating power of
the atomic bomb, with the people of Hiroshima and Nagasaki chosen as
guinea pigs. They were special targets because supposedly they had been
unscathed by previous allied bombings.
The US meant to intimidate and blackmail
the whole world into submission to its wishes. But by producing its own
atomic bombs, the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) frustrated
the US design and ended US monopoly of these weapons of mass
destruction. A nuclear stalemate ensued and deterred the US from further
using its atom bombs. Later, Britain, France and China were able to
produce their own atomic weapons.
The US has produced some 70,000 nuclear
warheads since 1945. It engaged the USSR in a strategic arms race even as
it waged in nonnuclear wars of aggression and military intervention
worldwide to expand and consolidate global hegemony. However, under the
intimidating shadow of the US nuclear umbrella, hundreds of millions of
people came under the oppression and exploitation of the US and local
reactionaries. Tens of millions were killed in US wars of aggression and
intervention in Korea, Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia, and elsewhere.
Millions of people were also massacred in Indonesia and other countries
under puppet regimes of terror directed by the
US.
The US forces invaded Iraq in 2003 under
the pretext of destroying mythical weapons of mass destruction allegedly
possessed by the Saddam regime. But it is the US, which has the largest
stockpile of weapons of mass destruction, biological, chemical and
nuclear. The US has nuclear weapons with no less than 10,600 nuclear
warheads intact, 8,000 of which are considered active or operational and
3,000 ready to deploy from its "Enduring Stockpile".
The US has also used 320 tons of depleted
uranium artillery in the 1990 Gulf war. This has accounted for the
eventual illness and death of tens of thousands of US troops after the
war. Depleted uranium has also been used in the US wars of aggression
against Yugoslavia. It is still being used in the renewed US aggression
and occupation of Iraq despite the deadly effects and numerous health
risks to soldiers and civilians.
US imperialism has long been the top
World Merchant of Death. It amassed immense profits from selling
armaments to both sides in the two world wars of the 20th century before
joining the fray and collecting further spoils. Since 1990, the US has
exported USD 152B worth of weapons in the form of sales and assistance.
In 2001, it exported war material to no less than 170 nations and has
earned USD 13.1B in that year alone, under the aegis of the “war on
terror”.
The ILPS joins the world’s peoples in
resolutely and militantly condemning and opposing the US imperialists’
continuing use of nuclear blackmail as the US escalates its wars of
aggression and military intervention. Despite widespread global
opposition and in contravention of international norms, treaties and laws,
the US is going ahead with plans to build an anti-ballistic missile
defense system and produce tactical nuclear weapons. The US Senate
last July allocated USD 100M for research and production of a tactical
nuclear weapon, the first of its kind, for use against underground
bunkers. Plans for this “bunker buster” will be pursued despite thorough
studies showing the immense danger and harm to the civilian population as
a result of the radioactive fallout.
The US has no qualms in building the
capacity to inflict barbarities more horrible and catastrophic than
Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Even now it is feverishly pushing on with plans
to secure military control over outer space and develop space-based and
space-launched weapons systems. These include projects such as “Global
Strike” with a space vehicle that could strike in 45 minutes from halfway
around the world, carrying precision-guided weapons with the capability to
destroy command centers or missile bases "anywhere in the world", and
"Rods From God" which aims to hurl cylinders of tungsten, titanium or
uranium from the edge of space to destroy targets on the ground, striking
at speeds of about 7,200 miles an hour with the force of a small nuclear
weapon.
Furthermore, the US
has unilaterally rejected the Biological Weapons and Toxins Convention
treaty and its protocols in 2001 on the grounds that inspections of
facilities would jeopardize US national security. Since then, it has
engaged in developing small weapons delivery devices for biological and
chemical weapons as well as biodefense research activities. The Pentagon
now considers bioweapons work acceptable as long as "non-lethal" is
appended to its activities.
The US, which is the
only country that has used nuclear weapons in war, has not minced any
words about conducting preemptive strikes at "dedicated proliferators",
which supposedly threaten US interests. The US threatens Iran and the
Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK) with aggression, unless
they give up any plan or project to produce their own nuclear weapons
in self-defense. Since the end of the
US
war of aggression in Korea, the
DPRK has continuously faced US economic blockade, military encirclement
and nuclear threats. The US has shown that it is more aggressive and
reckless towards countries that have no nuclear weapons while it is more
cautious and more diffident toward those that have such weapons.
In at least two
regions in the world today, the US and its allies are conspicuously using
nuclear blackmail in order to get the political and economic results that
they want. In the Middle East, the US and its European and Zionist allies
are constantly threatening the Arab and other peoples with the use of
nuclear weapons . In East Asia, the US and Japan refer to the US nuclear
umbrella under the US-Japan security treaty and the security guidelines as
the ultimate weapon against those opposed to US imperialist hegemony and
against the demands of China and DPRK for the return of Taiwan to its
motherland and for the reunification of Korea, respectively.
But far more powerful
than any weapon of mass destruction are the peoples rising up against
imperialism and its puppets. The ILPS calls on all the world’s peoples to
intensify their struggle against US imperialism and its barbaric and
terrorist policy of producing, maintaining, using and threatening to use
nuclear weapons and other weapons of mass destruction, and to expose and
oppose the “war on terror” as nothing but a pretext for expanding and
consolidating US hegemony. Posted by Bulatlat
August 6, 2005
Posted by
Bulatlat
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