Peter N. Kirstein » External Affairs

Hiroshima 65 Years On: “Hiroshima and Spinning the Atom: America, Britain, and Canada Proclaim the Nuclear Age, August 6, 1945.”

Peter Kirstein — Fri, 06 Aug 2010 11:20:35 +0000

This is the 65th anniversary of the atomic holocaust over Hiroshima, the most important event of the Second World War if not world history. Major General Leslie Groves wrote his memoir Now it Can be Told on his role as director of the Manhattan Engineer District. Now it is being told that the A-bomb was a public relations gimmick in which 250,000 died as a consequence! Other scholars have written about pre-carnage efforts to manage the public relations of the A-bomb but, except for Gar Alperovitz, not in the detail of my article and certainly not as comparative history. Until my article, nothing had been written that demonstrates efforts to manage the fallout from the genocidal use of these weapons began during the Roosevelt Administration. Only the Truman administration had been assessed. This is the article, published last winter and previously available on Academic Search Complete, that is now full text online below:

“Hiroshima and Spinning the Atom: America, Britain, and Canada Proclaim the Nuclear Age, 6 August 1945,” The Historian, Winter 2009: 805-827.

PETER N. KIRSTEIN

When the Manhattan Project accelerated from theoretical physics to the actual engineering phase of the atomic bomb, Washington policy makers were determined to gain a propaganda advantage. Although no one knew precisely when the atomic bomb would be introduced into the Pacific War, senior civilian and military elites had resolved that, once that fateful decision was executed, they would inundate the American public and the international community with extremely positive and jingoistic justifications for the cataclysmic arrival of the nuclear age. In the United States, nuclear propaganda preparations began during the Roosevelt administration and intensified during the first months of the Truman presidency. The United States carefully orchestrated with the United Kingdom and Canada the release of multiple statements extolling the magnificence of the new epoch. When the atomic bomb destroyed Hiroshima on 6 August 1945 and World War II became a nuclear war, senior leaders of all three countries delivered five carefully coordinated announcements on that same day.

In the United States, the many drafts of presidential and secretary of war statements initially recognized the global peril of nuclear weapons’ proliferation. As the day of atomic bombing approached, however, the drafts increasingly envisioned that America would enjoy a prolonged atomic monopoly and barely mentioned the need for international arms control. Starting in 1945, the proposed public rhetoric of the drafts became wartime propaganda, increasingly

Peter N. Kirstein is a Professor of History at St. Xavier University and Vice President of the American Association of University Professors, Illinois. He is the author of ^“Challenges to Academic Freedom since 9/11,^” in The Impact of 9/11 and the New Legal Landscape, ed. Matthew J. Morgan (Palgrave Macmillan, 2009). The author would like to thank Judith A. Dwyer for granting him a sabbatical to write this article and the anonymous reviewers for their constructive comments.

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less reflective, and more exterminationist in substance. This aggressive language was consistent with a brutal and merciless war in which entire populations of burning cities were uprooted or wholly destroyed as if they were combatants.

Almost a year before the first atomic bomb detonated in the air over Hiroshima on Japan’s Honshu Island, the Roosevelt administration was preparing official statements that would accompany the first fission bomb attack in the air over Japan.¹ As early as 18 September 1944, President Franklin D. Roosevelt considered a nuclear warfare option against Japan when he privately told visiting British Prime Minister Winston Churchill that “after mature consideration,” Japan should endure a nuclear “bombardment [that] will be repeated until they surrender. ”2

While the historiography of atomic bomb announcement preparations includes only the Truman administration, documents contained in the National Archives reveal that the process developed rapidly during the last months of Franklin D. Roosevelt’s presidency. Several records from the Roosevelt years reveal a growing preoccupation within the administration about managing the dissemination of information on the development and use of the atomic bomb when it became likely that the Pacific War was to turn into a nuclear war.

Among the key players in the administration were Vannevar Bush and James B. Conant. Bush was director of the Office of Scientific Research and Development (1941–1946), president of the Carnegie Institution in Washington, D.C., and, later, member of the eight-person Interim Policy Committee on Atomic Energy (Interim Committee). Conant, on leave from his presidency at Harvard, was chair of the National Defense Research Committee and would serve on the Interim Committee.³ In their joint memorandum to the Secretary of War Henry L. Stimson on 19 September 1944, Bush and Conant recommended establishing a process of informing a global audience that nuclear weapons were under development. They did not promote a propaganda statement of triumphalism, but a “detailed history” of the Manhattan Project that was to provide “scientific facts” and credit

V. Bush and J. B. Conant to the Secretary of War, 19 September 1944; Roll 6, File 76, Harrison–Bundy Files Relating to the Development of the Atomic Bomb, 1942–1946, Records of the Office of the Chief of Engineers, Record Group 77; National Archives—Great Lakes Region (Chicago) (hereafter referred to as H–B Files).
Aide Memoire of Conversation between the President and the Prime Minister at Hyde Park, 18 September 1944; Roll 3, H–B Files.
Bush–Conant File Relating to the Development of the Atomic Bomb, 1940–1945, National Archives Microfilm Publications Pamphlet Describing M1392 (Washington, DC: National Archives Trust Fund Board, 1990), 1.

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those atomic scientists involved in the A-bomb project.⁴ The two scientists urged the Roosevelt administration to announce the development of the atomic bomb even if the Pacific War were to end before the weapon could be deployed.

Expressing concerns about nuclear proliferation, they wanted to dispel the illusion that an indefinite American monopoly was possible. Bush and Conant urged Stimson to inform Roosevelt “as soon as possible” that “progress is bound to be so rapid in the next five years it would be extremely dangerous for this government to assume that by holding secret its present knowledge we should be secure.”⁵ Ten months later, on 16 July 1945, Manhattan Project scientists conducted the world’s first nuclear explosion with a plutonium-core “Gadget,” during the oddly named “Trinity” test in New Mexico. Conant and Bush stopped short of advocating an international control regime or even engaging the Soviet Union in postwar nuclear arms control talks. They recommended only a tripartite treaty arrangement with the United Kingdom and Canada, the junior partners in the Manhattan Project.

There is an ominous tone in the Bush-Conant memorandum. They stood in awe of this revolutionary technology that “gives rise to the heat of the sun” and anticipated the effects of nuclear weapons on Japan’s civilian population.⁶ They predicted that “radioactive poisons” would sicken those “in the immediate vicinity.” They expressed alarm about unauthorized dissemination of nuclear materials and urged strict governmental controls, fearing that “within a few years someone might devise an experiment which could wreck a considerable portion of a city.” The uranium-core “Little Boy” and plutonium-core “Fat Man” atomic bombs were indeed to “wreck” two urban population centers within eleven months of their prescient analysis.⁷

Although the Enola Gay did not release its one-bomb nuclear payload over Hiroshima for six more months, in February 1945, Stimson’s War Department began preparing Roosevelt’s announcement describing the “amazing force” of the nuclear weapon.⁸ Well before “Trinity,” the public relations campaign was gathering speed with F.D.R.’s planned announcement asserting that the harnessing of

4. Bush and Conant to the Secretary of War, 1.

5. Ibid., 2.

6. Ibid., 4.

7. United Nations Department of Public Information, The Nuclear Threat to our World, Pamphlet (New York: United Nations Department of Public Information, 1982).

^{8. “}Possible Statement by the President,^” War Department, 13 February 1945, 3; Roll 6, File 74, H–B Files.

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the power of the atom had “changed the very nature of warfare [and] carries with it possibilities of the most vital importance for the future peace of the world.”⁹

The same draft also projected a US atomic monopoly “for some time to come.”¹⁰ It suggested a “handling” of its impact on international relations and warned that nuclear weapons technology must not be shared with developing countries. Because the author(s) of this draft proclamation did not know that World War II would become a nuclear war, they gave minimal attention to postwar domestic and international controls of this strange transformative force. The draft recommended that Roosevelt request the Senate and House leadership to appoint “small bi-partisan committees,” which were to consult with his national security team. Legislation should follow establishing centralized domestic sources of nuclear technology, which the Bush–Conant memorandum had also declared a major area of concern. International control of nuclear properties was another objective for “the field of international relations,” when a treaty might emerge from the proposed international organization that was soon to emerge as the United Nations. The Roosevelt administration draft was meant to reassure the international community that the United States “hoped” that the atomic bomb would not only confer “the greatest benefit of our own people but to help assure the future peace of the world and the greater happiness of mankind.”¹¹ The subsequent proliferation of these systems and the persistent challenge of nuclear fuel rod waste management and unintended radioactive release from nuclear power plants dashed such hopes. While key scientists and War Department personnel somewhat understood the dangers of nuclear proliferation, relatively few specifics were to accompany the president’s revelation that the world had entered the nuclear age.

In a memorandum to Army Chief of Staff George Catlett Marshall on 26 March 1945, Major-General Leslie R. Groves expressed concerns about leaks to the press and noted that the Office of Censorship was concerned that a loss of centralized control was inevitable following the use of the bomb.¹² Groves also

^{9. “}Possible Statement by the President,^” 1.

10. Ibid., 1.

11. Ibid., 3.

12. Peter N. Kirstein, “False Dissenters: Manhattan Project Scientists and the Use of the Atomic Bomb,^” American Diplomacy (2001), University of North Carolina, March 2001. After the Manhattan Project began its secret pursuit of the atomic bomb on 13 August 1942, Major-General Leslie R. Groves, an army engineer, became its director and remained so throughout the war.

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worried that scientists claiming proprietary rights of discovery might disseminate information that would eviscerate government efforts to monopolize all aspects of the nuclear enterprise. While Bush and Conant recommended that the Roosevelt administration disclose many details of the Manhattan Project, Groves was alarmed “that the president might decide that it was wise to release certain facts; the follow up stories and comments to such a release could well be ruinous.”¹³

Stimson established the Interim Committee on 4 May 1945 in order to “survey and make recommendations on postwar research, development and controls, as well as legislation necessary to effectuate them.”¹⁴ Besides Stimson, Bush, and Conant, the Interim Committee’s membership consisted of Secretary of State James F. Byrnes, Assistant Secretary of State William L. Clayton, former Undersecretary of the Navy Ralph Bard as of July 1945, Karl T. Compton of the Office of Scientific Research and Development (and president of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology), and Stimson’s Special Assistant George L. Harrison (who was president of New York Life Insurance Company).¹⁵ The Interim Committee also provided recommendations on the use of the atomic bomb, suggesting options on how (rather than whether) the atomic bomb should be introduced into the Pacific.¹⁶

Groves recognized that the Interim Committee must approve any presidential or secretary of war statement but did not want it micromanaging subsequent publicity after the president’s planned broadcast. Groves told Harrison that the committee should not be “burdened with preparing or correcting” subsequent “publicity releases,” despite their importance to the nation and world.¹⁷ His real intent was maintaining as tight a loop as possible in the dissemination of the Manhattan Project information. While no evidence has surfaced that any Interim Committee member actually wrote an A-bomb draft announcement, Groves

13. Leslie R. Groves to the Chief of Staff (George C. Marshall), 26 March 1945; Roll 1, File 5, Subfile 5b, Correspondence (^“Top Secret^”) of the Manhattan Engineer District, 1942–1946, Records of the Office of the Chief of Engineers, Record Group 77; National Archives—Great Lakes Region (hereafter referred to as ^“Top Secret Files^”).

14. Bush–Conant File, 6.

15. Correspondence (^“Top Secret^”) of the Manhattan Engineer District, 1942–1946, National Archives Microfilm Publications Pamphlet M1109 (Washington, DC: National Archives and Records Service, 1982), 3; Walter Millis, ed., The Forrestal Diaries (New York: Viking Press, 1951), 54, 560.

16. Notes of the Interim Committee Meeting(s), 31 May 1945 and 1 June 1945, cited from Michael B. Stoff, Jonathan F. Fanton, and R. Hal Williams, eds., The Manhattan Project: A Documentary Introduction to the Atomic Age (New York: McGraw-Hill, Inc., 1991), 117, 127–28; Howard Zinn, Postwar America: 1945–1971 (Indianapolis, IN: Bobbs-Merrill, 1973), 9–10.

17. Groves to George Harrison, 21 June 1945; Roll 6, File 75, H–B Files.

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reported to Marshall on the day of the Hiroshima explosion that the Interim Committee did “prepare” such documents.¹⁸

In March 1945, the Army Corps of Engineers general had stated that nothing should be “published until direction had been secured from proper authority” and proceeded to implement his obsession with press manipulation.¹⁹ Groves informed Marshall that he wanted to hire a “suitable newspaperman” as the press corps’ sole pool correspondent to orchestrate any release of information. He also wrote that the Office of Censorship “very strongly” approved of his recommendation and, in a handwritten note on the right side of the memorandum, indicated that Marshall was on board: “This was shown to the C[hief] of S[taff] on 27 March and received his acquiescence. LRG.”

In early April, Groves hired William Leonard Laurence, a New York Times science reporter, whose articles on atomic energy for the Saturday Evening Post had caught his attention.²⁰ Laurence continued writing for the New York Times, although working for Groves as an embedded reporter without the independence normally associated with journalistic reportage. Laurence visited each of the Manhattan Project’s major installations, gained access to major military and scientific figures, and witnessed the first nuclear atmospheric test at “Trinity.”²¹ The journalist described himself as “official historian of the atomic-bomb project,” but served in effect as its chief propagandist.²² While Laurence “was in despair” that he could not observe the atomic destruction of Hiroshima, he was on the Pacific Island of Tinian in the Marianas when the atomic bomb was loaded into a strategic bomber. He described the B-29 Enola Gay’s return from its nuclear mission “as a thing of beauty . . . its great silver body shimmering in the sun.”²³ Laurence did witness the “Fat Man” destruction of Nagasaki on 9 August 1945 while flying on The Great Artiste, one of two instrument planes that accompanied Bockscar. Its one-bomb payload was also inserted at Tinian.

Yet, in a caption underneath a photo of Hiroshima, Laurence expressed surprising ambivalence about the atomic conflagration. He described the ruins as “a toy

18. Groves to the Chief of Staff, 6 August 1945, 1; Roll 1, File 5, Subfile 5b, ^“Top Secret Files.^”

19. Groves to the Chief of Staff, 26 March 1945.

20. Gar Alperovitz, The Decision to Use the Atomic Bomb (New York: Vintage, 1996), 594.

21. Peter Bacon Hales, Atomic Spaces: Living on the Manhattan Project (Urbana, IL: U. of Illinois P., 1997), 350.

22. William L. Laurence, Men and Atoms: The Discovery, the Uses and the Future of Atomic Energy (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1959), 96.

23. Laurence, Men and Atoms, 146–48.

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city ruthlessly trampled on.”²⁴ As he approached Ground Zero over Nagasaki, Laurence resisted compassion for the “poor devils about to die,” which would number about 50,000–75,000 civilian casualties.²⁵ He referred to Japan’s air raid on Pearl Harbor and its inhumane treatment of American prisoners of war during the April 1942 Bataan Death March in the Philippines as deserving atomic revenge.

Meanwhile, Groves had deflected Marshall’s request for less braggadocio in the president’s statement given the horrific number of casualties that were anticipated. Instead, Groves also emphasized the need for vengeance in the name of the Bataan Death March casualties.²⁶ After the war, Laurence described, in a less sanguine manner, the mushroom cloud enveloping Nagasaki as a “decapitated monster. . . a monstrous prehistoric creature.”²⁷ Groves later took great pride in Laurence’s receiving a Pulitzer Prize for his dispatches that described the destruction of Nagasaki as “a justly deserved award.”²⁸

Roosevelt died on 12 April 1945 in Warm Springs, Georgia, before unconventional weapons of mass destruction entered the arsenal, and was unable to proclaim their contribution to the “happiness of mankind.” Vice President Harry S. Truman was unaware of S-1, one of several code names for the Manhattan Project. On 25 April 1945, barely two weeks after Roosevelt’s death, Stimson briefed the new president on “the most terrible weapon ever known in human history, . . . one bomb [that] could destroy a whole city.”²⁹ Stimson noted ruefully in this memorandum that the moral advancement of humanity was less developed than its technological achievements and that “modern civilization might be completely destroyed.” He warned Truman that the weapon was “a menace” and that America’s atomic monopoly would not last “indefinitely.” The beginning of the nuclear era would, therefore, require “a certain moral responsibility” to manage proliferation and avert “disaster to civilization.”³⁰

24. William L. Laurence, Dawn over Zero: The Story of the Atomic Bomb (New York: Knopf, 1946), unnumbered photo caption.

25. Bataan Death March, cited at http://history.sandiego.edu/GEN/st/~ehimchak/deathmarch.html, accessed 6 December 2008; Laurence, Dawn, 234.

26. Leslie R. Groves, Now It Can Be Told: The Story of the Manhattan Project (New York: Harper, 1962), 324; Tom Zoellner, Uranium: War Energy, and the Rock That Shaped the World (New York: Viking, 2009), 91.

27. Laurence, Men and Atoms, 160.

28. Leslie R. Groves, Now It Can Be Told, 326–27.

29. ^“Memo: Discussed with the President,^” 25 April 1945; Roll 4, File 64, H–B Files.

30. Ibid.

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The Department of War now began drafting numerous presidential statements announcing the anticipated atomic bomb attack against Japan. Laurence’s duties expanded in importance as he composed several drafts of presidential radio comments. Laurence’s job title of “consultant” or “consultant to General Groves” belied his emergence as the principal public relations official of the Manhattan Project.³¹ Somewhat less charitable assessments described Laurence as the “mythmaker-in-chief” of the atomic age and “prophet of Atomic miracles.”³² In a twenty-nine-point public relations blitz, Laurence urged a full spectrum of public announcements that would accompany Truman’s radio remarks. Referring to the “Age of Atomics,” Laurence wanted to plant an article emphasizing the idea of progress from the “the various Cultural Ages from pre-historic through historic times.”³³ In point nineteen, Laurence called for the publication of an article on “protection against radiations [sic],” which reaffirmed the Bush–Conant memorandum warning about radiation disease. These documents confirm that prior to the Hiroshima and Nagasaki hibakusha sufferers, radiation effects from neutrons bombarding uranium and plutonium nuclei were understood. After the explosion of the gravity bomb in the skies above Hiroshima, however, Laurence planted stories denying that radiation disease was a grave component of nuclear weapons effects.³⁴

On 17 May 1945, the same day Laurence sent his twenty-nine-point memorandum to Groves, the indefatigable journalist also completed a seventeen-page presidential statement. Incorporating the fourth point of those proposed to Groves, he counseled Truman to survey historic epochs from the Iron Age and Bronze Age, and conclude that the Nuclear Age was to be “the greatest age of all.” With unrestrained hyperbole, Laurence predicted that this era “will inevitably mean the increase of the wealth, health and happiness of mankind. . . as to challenge the most vivid imagination.”³⁵ As Bush and Conant had previously urged Stimson,

31. ^“Memorandum for General Groves,^” from Laurence, ^“Plans for Future Articles on Manhattan District Project,” 17 May 1945, 3; Roll 1, File 5, Subfile 5A, “Top Secret Files;” “Tentative Draft of Radio Address by President Truman to be Delivered after the Successful Use of the Atomic Bomb overJapan,” from Laurence, 17 May 1945, 17; Roll 1, File 4, “Top Secret Files.”

32. Michael D. Gordin, Five Days in August: How World War II Became a Nuclear War (Princeton, NJ: Princeton UP, 2007), 109; Spencer R. Weart, Nuclear Fear: A History of Images (Cambridge, MA: Harvard UP, 1988), 98.

33. Laurence to Groves, ^“Plan,^” 17 May 1945, 1–2; ^“Top Secret Files.^”

34. Mark Selden, ^“Introduction: The United States, Japan, and the Atomic Bomb,^” in The Atomic Bomb Voices from Hiroshima and Nagasaki, eds. Kyoko and Mark Selden (Armonk, NY: M.E. Sharpe, 1989), xxxii–xxxiii.

35. “Tentative Draft of Radio Address,” 2 (emphasis added).

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Laurence presented a scientific history of the Manhattan Project for inclusion in the post-atomic bomb encomium. In it, he summarized how uranium enrichment occurs when the concentration of the fissionable rare isotope U-235 dramatically increases in relation to the abundant U-238 isotope, which will effectuate a self-sustaining nuclear chain reaction. The enrichment of U-235 for weapons-grade purposes must obtain about 90 percent concentration. The most successful uranium-enrichment process that achieved this was the gaseous diffusion method, developed at the Clinton Engineer Works (Oak Ridge) K-25 plant in Tennessee. Reaching this capacity was breathlessly declared to be “by far the greatest achievement ever attained by man.”³⁶ Referring to “cosmic fire” descending from heaven to earth, Laurence’s exuberance led to repeated claims that God and/or Providence were responsible for America becoming the first nuclear weapons state. Laurence presented the Manhattan Project as the consummate confirmation of American exceptionalism with its implicit ethnocentrism of superior intelligence. Laurence’s draft predicted that no other nation would possess either the scientific or engineering expertise to create nuclear fission “from ten to twenty-five years.”³⁷ Unlike Bush and Conant, Laurence was obsessed with maintaining an Allied atomic monopoly and eschewed international efforts at nuclear nonproliferation. Only “peace loving nations” should dominate the nuclear age and prevent the nuclearization of “warlike nations,” which “will insure the peace of the world for decades to come and possibly many generations.”³⁸ Laurence believed that God ordained that only certain ethically superior nation-states should acquire a nuclear weapons capability. On 29 August 1949, however, the Soviet Union conducted an atmospheric atomic bomb test, only four years after “Trinity.”

As Allied indiscriminate strategic bombing increasingly dominated military strategy during the Second World War, it triggered highly disparaging language that reflected a general disdain for other nationalities. No longer directed at government or military elites, “war rage” encompassed stereotypical characterization of entire ethnic groups. Allied discourse about the Pacific War was laced

36. Peter R. Beckman, et al., The Nuclear Predicament: Nuclear Weapons in the Twenty-First Century, 3rd ed. (Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall, 2000), 68–69.

37. “Tentative Draft of Radio Address,” 2, 4, 17.

38. ^“Tentative Draft of Radio Address,^” 3–4, 15. The United Kingdom exploded its first atomic bomb on 3 October 1952, followed by France on 13 February 1960, China on 16 October 1964, and India^’s ^“peaceful^” test on 18 May 1974. Israel and apartheid South Africa conducted a joint test on 22 September 1977, Pakistan on 28 May 1998, and the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea on 8 October 2006.

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with the use of “Japs” or “Nips.” Racist pro-war songs became popular in the United States, such as “They’re Gonna Be Playing Taps on the Japs,” and “We’re Gonna Have to Slap the Dirty Little Jap.”39 In the Toronto Globe and Mail appeared, above a page-one column, a racialised headline with typical dehumanizing war rage “Quit or Die, Only Things Left to Japs.”40

Laurence’s 17 May draft also reflected the war’s growing exterminationist rhetoric that accompanied indiscriminate bombing: “We can produce enough [atomic] . . . bombs to lay waste every one of their cities and . . . their country. . . will be a wilderness for generations to come. We therefore put this choice squarely before them: ‘Either surrender unconditionally or be destroyed.’”41 The precedent of conventional indiscriminate strategic bombing was amplified with the kiloton yields of atomic weaponry. Laurence’s “peace loving nations” waged a war from the air that eviscerated the Just War Principle of discrimination between combatants and civilians.

Three weeks later on 7 June 1945, another much shorter draft of seven pages appeared with the startling assumption that Nagasaki was the first atomic-bomb target.42 Its first sentence declared: “Two hours ago an American airplane dropped one bomb on the Nagasaki Naval Base and destroyed its usefulness to the enemy.”43 The draft, of course, did not explain that atomic bombs are inherently indiscriminate. The actual operation would not be a surgical strike against a military target such as a “naval base,” but was to target an entire city.

During the summer of 1945, Arthur W. Page, an assistant to the Secretary of War (and public relations vice president of American Telephone and Telegraph), increasingly assumed the responsibility as chief speech writer of these ongoing

39. John W. Dower, War Without Mercy: Race and Power in the Pacific War (New York: Pantheon, 1986), 81.

40. Globe and Mail (Toronto), 9 August 1945, 1.

41. “Draft of Radio Address,” 7.

42. Subsequently, Kokura was selected as the primary target for the second atomic mission on 9 August because, unlike Nagasaki, it was not surrounded by hills that would contain the damage of a nuclear explosion (Thomas F. Farrell, “Report on Overseas Operations—Atomic Bomb,” 27 September 1945, 2; Roll 13, Manhattan Engineer District History, Records of the Defense Nuclear Agency, Record Group 374, National Archives—Great Lakes Region). Cloud-covered Kokura was spared destruction at the last moment when the B-29 Bockscar crew could not confirm the required visual sighting of ground zero. Nagasaki was then attacked as the secondary target because the aircraft, which was running out of fuel, nearly crash-landed on Okinawa (The Beverly Review [Chicago], 16 August 1995, 10).

43. “Draft” of Truman statement, 7 June 1945, 1; Roll 6, File 74, H–B Files.

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A-bomb account revisions.⁴⁴ Like Laurence, Page exhibited the growing exterminationist impulse against a nationality that was deemed subhuman. Page referred elsewhere to the “Jap” as a “savage” and, with stereotypical contempt, charged that he “cares little for human life. . . don’t trust them for a second.” These outbursts appeared on the letterhead from the ironically named Joint Army and Navy Committee on Welfare and Recreation.⁴⁵

From June 1945 onward, revenge explicitly appeared as a motivating factor behind the rapidly approaching one-sided nuclear war. The 7 June draft specifically cited the Japanese raid on Pearl Harbor and sardonically noted that in dropping the atomic bomb, “[t]hey have been repaid a thousandfold.”⁴⁶ Referring to the putative arms race between Germany and the United States as the “battle of the laboratories,” Providence was cited once again as the causal agent for America’s triumph in being the first to develop weapons of such unprecedented mass destruction. The 7 June statement celebrated how “marvellous” it was that American industrial prowess created the hardware that enabled scientists to unleash the energy of uranium and plutonium fission. The draft grossly exaggerated Germany’s progress toward developing a nuclear capability. In his memoirs, Laurence was one of the first to concede there had been no “battle of the laboratories,” because Germany could not produce sufficient nuclear materials through either enrichment of uranium or reprocessing of plutonium. It had a few piles of uranium and heavy water but no fission was achieved.⁴⁷

The linguistic “war rage” was pronounced in the third revised A-bomb announcement, which warned Japan either to surrender or to face greater devastation than Germany had suffered. With barely concealed sarcasm, the draft contained an invitation to Japan’s leaders to visit atomic-ravaged Nagasaki, which was still only projected as the primary target. Upon their findings, they were to contemplate whether to stay in the war. The exterminationist threat of a nuclear “rain of ruin” appeared here for the first time in the determination to destroy Japan’s “industrial civilization.”⁴⁸

44. “Arthur W. Page Biography,” Arthur W. Page Society, cited at http://www. awpagesociety.com/site/about/page_biography/, accessed 28 February 2009.

45. Arthur W. Page to Harrison, 18 July 1945; Roll 6, File 74, H–B Files.

46. “Draft” of Truman statement, 7 June 1945, 1–3.

47. Laurence, Men and Atoms, 51. On the German nuclear program see David C. Cassidy, Uncertainty: The Life and Science of Werner Heisenberg (New York: W. H. Freeman and Co., 1992); David Irving, The German Atomic Bomb: The History of Nuclear Research in Nazi Germany (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1967).

48. “Draft” of Truman statement, 7 June 1945, 5.

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Another A-bomb statement draft appeared on 23 July, seven days after the “Trinity” test. It basically edited the June draft but strikingly maintained the projection that Nagasaki would be the first atomic sacrifice in the war of burning cities. It incorporated many of the prior handwritten emendations that appeared on the 7 June draft. Blank line spaces on the previous draft, meanwhile, contained specific Manhattan Project personnel statistics. It indicated a current workforce of 65,000, which had been as large as 125,000 during the construction of two major sites at the Washington State Hanford Plant (Richland) and at Clinton.⁴⁹ Directed by Robert Oppenheimer, the nerve center of the Manhattan Project was the Los Alamos Laboratory, code-named Project Y; here, the Hiroshima and Nagasaki atomic bombs were assembled prior to shipment to Tinian.⁵⁰ Yet there is only an oblique reference to “an installation near Santa Fe, New Mexico.”⁵¹

The statement proclaimed the purported virtues of the aborning nuclear age as “understanding. . . nature’s forces” and predicted that nuclear power might supplement oil, hydropower, and coal-fired energy plants as possible commercial sources of energy. As with prior Truman statement drafts, the 23 July version coveted an atomic monopoly by keeping secret “the greatest achievement of organized science in history.” While claiming that American scientists were disinclined to withhold vital scientific knowledge from the international community, its last paragraph requested that Congress establish an atomic regulatory “commission” to harness nuclear materials “within” the United States.⁵² Unlike the Roosevelt administration draft, there is no hint of pursuing international arms controls or using the newly established United Nations to constrain nuclear proliferation.

A week before Colonel Paul Tibbetts would fly the Enola Gay to Hiroshima and target and deploy the world’s first nuclear payload, another revised presidential statement appeared.⁵³ The statement suggested that the time between nuclear detonation and presidential proclamation was no longer set at “two hours,” and a blank appeared for Truman to indicate the actual time lapse. It estimated the “Little Boy” bomb’s yield at 20,000 tons of TNT (20 kilotons) as more powerful

49. ^“Draft of 23 July 1945,^” of Truman statement, 3; Roll 6, File 74, H–B Files. At the Hanford Plant, plutonium was reprocessed from spent irradiated uranium fuel.

50. Los Alamos 1943–1945, The Beginning of an Era (Los Alamos, NM: Los Alamos National Laboratory, 1984), 3.

51. ^“Draft of 23 July 1945,^” 5.

52. ^“Draft of 23 July 1945,^” 5–6.

53. “Draft of 30 July 1945,” of Truman statement, 1; Roll 6, File 74, H–B Files.

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than an armada of conventionally armed B-29 strategic bombers. Another blank now replaced Nagasaki as the first nuclear target. The president was to identify the actual doomed city after the mushroom cloud appeared. Four Japanese cities were ranked in order of priority on a revised target list. The sequence of preflight target selection had Nagasaki fourth in line after Hiroshima, Kokura, and Niigata, but was predicated on weather conditions and revised combat operations.⁵⁴

The July draft predicted nuclear weapons modernization and “[i]mprovements” in deployed systems that dwarfed the yield of the “best” nuclear weapons currently being developed.⁵⁵ The threatening nature of these presidential drafts intensified. Prior references to a weapon that “can” destroy Japan’s “docks . . . factories . . . and communications” were now substituted with “shall,” accompanied by heightened exterminationist rhetoric: “Let there be no mistake; we shall completely destroy Japan’s power to make war.”⁵⁶

Truman and Churchill: Advocates of strategic bombing during World War II: a barbaric, insensate war of burning cities. From Google Images, “Truman War Criminal.” I would remove the question mark under the image.

In the following weeks, the United States, Britain, and China issued the Potsdam Declaration.⁵⁷ This tripartite document demanded “the unconditional surrender of all Japanese armed forces. .. . The alternative for Japan is prompt and utter destruction.”⁵⁸ The presidential draft message of 30 July asserted how “[i]t was to spare the Japanese people that the ultimatum of July 26 was issued at Potsdam.”⁵⁹ This claim belied the fact that the Potsdam Declaration lacked an atomic warning. Moreover, Stimson did not succeed in modifying unconditional surrender with a guarantee that Japan could retain its emperor. The American occupation force, under the command of General Douglas MacArthur, was to leave Emperor Hirohito on his Chrysanthemum Throne once the Pacific War ended. It is conceivable that Japan would have surrendered prior to its becoming the first nuclear battleground, if it had been promised that it was allowed to maintain its emperor.⁶⁰ Secretary of State James F. Byrnes, however, rejected such assurances and treated the tripartite declaration as a formality and a prelude to the

54. Harry S. Truman, Year of Decision, vol. 1 (New York: Doubleday & Company, 1955), 420.

55. ^“Draft of 30 July,^” of Truman statement, 1.

56. Ibid., 4.

57. The Potsdam Conference outside Berlin convened from 17 July to 2 August 1945.

58. Richard Rhodes, The Making of the Atomic Bomb (New York: Touchstone, 1986), 692.

59. ^“Draft of 30 July,^” of Truman statement, 4.

60. Gar Alperovitz, Atomic Diplomacy: The Use of the Atomic Bomb and the American Confrontation with Soviet Power (New York: Penguin, 1985), 27–28.

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use of the atomic bomb. Together with a general threat of wholesale destruction if Japan did not unilaterally cease fighting, the Potsdam Declaration did not contain any suggestion that the signatory powers would allow anything less than unconditional surrender.⁶¹

Six copies were produced of the six-page 30 July draft. One contains significant handwritten editing, making it into a virtual new (sixth) draft. Words are crossed out and interlinear revisions abound. Deleted sentences are excised with diagonal lines in both directions and entire lines are scratched out with horizontal strikethrough marks. The official White House release of Truman’s Hiroshima blast statement incorporated these emendations word for word.⁶² It was Lieutenant R. Gordon Arneson, secretary of the Interim Committee, who had hand delivered Page’s final draft from Washington for Truman’s approval. Although Truman did not yet know the precise date of the dropping of the bomb, it was during the Potsdam Conference that he authorized its combat deployment against Japan.⁶³

Truman learned about the Hiroshima explosion aboard the cruiser U.S.S. Augusta while returning home across the Atlantic after Potsdam. His first announcement of the decision to use the atomic bomb against Japan was extemporaneous remarks to the ship’s crew, in which the president exclaimed, “this is the greatest thing in history.”⁶⁴ The White House released the formal statement the day before Truman returned to the United States, on the evening of 7 August.⁶⁵ Under the existing conditions of maritime communications, the long-prepared radio address could not immediately be delivered, and it was the Associated Press that ran the first news bulletin about the explosion at 11:03 am, Eastern War Time.⁶⁶ As with earlier A-bomb drafts that had depicted Nagasaki as an important military asset, the presidential statement described Hiroshima as a strategically

61. Ronald E. Powaski, March to Armageddon: The United States and the Nuclear Arms Race, 1939 to the Present (New York: Oxford UP, 1987), 24–25.

62. “Draft of July 30,” edited version of Truman statement; “Statement by the President of the United States,^” 6 August 1945, Roll 6, File 74, H–B Files.

63. Oral History Interview with R. Gordon Arneson by Niel M. Johnson, Harry S. Truman Library and Museum, 21 June 1989, http://www.trumanlibrary.org/oralhist/ arneson.htm.

64. Allan M. Winkler, Life Under a Cloud: American Anxiety About the Atom (New York: Oxford UP, 1993), 24.

65. Truman, Year of Decision, 334; Peter Wyden, Day One: Before Hiroshima and After (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1984), 229; New York Times, 8 August 1945, 1.

66. Paul Boyer, By the Bomb^’s Early Light: American Thought and Culture at the Dawn of the Atomic Age (New York: Pantheon, 1985), 3.

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“important Japanese Army base.”⁶⁷ On 6 August, Truman no longer compared “Little Boy’s” destructive capacity to that of a fleet of B-29s, but instead noted how this new weapon was 2,000 times more powerful than the largest conventional British “Grand Slam” bomb. Edward Teller, as if downplaying this ghastly destructive force, smugly objected to Truman’s description of the nuclear weapon as “an atomic bomb” by observing that all matter consists of atoms and is atomic in nature.⁶⁸ The prediction in the second paragraph of the 30 July draft that improved nuclear bombs were to surpass exponentially the destructive power of the current “best” atomic bombs was removed. The desire to maintain secrecy probably induced this deletion.

The British also participated in the drafting of Truman’s statement. In the seventh paragraph, they inserted an acknowledgment that the early pooling of the countries’ nuclear resources within the United States resulted from the United Kingdom’s duress of being “exposed to constant air attack [when it] was still threatened with the possibility of invasion.”⁶⁹ The final White House release retained the threat of a “rain of ruin” atomic warning should Japan not accede to the unconditional surrender terms of the Potsdam Declaration.⁷⁰ Truman charged that “[t]heir leaders promptly rejected that ultimatum. If they do not accept our terms” was followed with the “rain of ruin” exterminationist threat that seemed to carry echoes of the 1944 Morgenthau Plan to pastoralize Germany:

We are now prepared to obliterate more rapidly and completely every productive enterprise the Japanese have above ground in any city. Let there be no mistake; we shall completely destroy Japan’s power to make war. We shall destroy their docks, their factories, and their communications. . . . If they do not accept our terms they may expect a rain of ruin from the air, the like of which has never been seen on this earth.⁷¹

Hanson W. Baldwin, the New York Times military affairs reporter, was less sanguine than his colleague William Laurence about the decision to use the atomic bomb. Writing two days after Hiroshima, he claimed that it “blasted. . . many of our previously conceived military values.” Baldwin feared that the atomic bomb

67. New York Times, 7 August 1945, 4.

68. Edward Teller, Memoirs: A Twentieth Century Journey in Science and Politics (Cambridge, MA: Perseus Publishing, 2001), 214.

69. ^“President^’s Statement,^” n.d., 1; Roll 6, File 73, H–B Files.

70. ^“Draft of 30 July,^” of Truman statement, 4.

71. “Statement by the President,” 3.

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“suggests the end of urban civilization as we know it,” and that humankind, to avoid destruction, would be “tunneling into the earth rather than reaching upward into the skies.”⁷²

Laurence’s May draft suggested that Truman describe in detail the principal installations of the Manhattan Engineer District.⁷³ Later drafts (spanning over several months) transferred this depiction of the atomic bomb program to Secretary of War Stimson. By early June, presidential drafts projected that Stimson’s remarks on the arrival of the nuclear age would appear the day following Truman’s statement. The secretary of war was to describe the role of two major Manhattan Project sites, including the Hanford Plant and the Clinton facility. The 23 July draft and Truman’s actual announcement both indicated that Stimson was to deliver a statement “immediately” following the president’s. Stimson’s account now included mention of the Los Alamos bomb assembly facility and was one of the five coordinated atomic bomb statements.⁷⁴

American and British personnel vetted the Stimson statement. Among the Americans were Interim Committee secretary Arneson and Lieutenant Colonel William A. Consodine, a public relations officer, who supervised the process.⁷⁵ Consodine objected that a previous Stimson statement draft cited the nuclear physicist Enrico Fermi as a leading figure in the development of atomic fission. Fermi was a Nobel Laureate in physics and, when working at the University of Chicago’s Metallurgical Laboratory (Metlab), constructed the first atomic pile in a graphite-moderated nuclear reactor. On 2 December 1942, it produced a self-sustaining nuclear chain reaction that would accelerate the hunt for a deliverable atomic bomb. Fermi’s wife was Jewish and they had escaped Mussolini’s oppressive fascism by emigrating to America.⁷⁶ The nativist Consodine objected to any mention of Fermi because of his alien émigré status and bizarrely speculated that the Italian physicist might accept a cabinet-level appointment in a future Italian government.⁷⁷ Stimson’s actual remarks removed

72. Hanson W. Baldwin, “The New Face of War,” New York Times, 8 August 1945, 4.

73. ^“Tentative Draft of Radio Address by President Truman,^” 17 May 1945, 8–11.

74. Truman statement Drafts of 7 June, 6; 23 July, 5; 30 July, 5–6; ^“Statement by the President,^” 3.

75. Oral History Interview with Arneson.

76. John Morton Blum, ed., The Price of Vision: The Diaries of Henry A. Wallace, l942–1 946 (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1973), 472.

77. William A. Consodine to George Harrison, 20 June 1945; Role 6, File 73, H–B Files; Alperovitz, Decision, 171, 596.

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a lengthier acknowledgment of Fermi’s contribution to the Manhattan Project, but retained his ongoing advisory role to the Interim Committee.⁷⁸ Consodine was also irritated that too many civilian scientists were lauded for their work on the Manhattan Project and wanted greater acknowledgment of the army’s role. Attesting to the limits of transparency the authorities were comfortable with, Consodine deleted from the 20 June Stimson draft an extensive reference to thorium, a radioactive chemical element that was known to have nuclear energy potentialities.⁷⁹

After consulting with Groves and his deputy Brigadier General Thomas Farrell, Consodine recommended to the Interim Committee additional changes in the Stimson declaration. He urged accolades for private enterprise, in particular singling out General Electric, Chrysler, Allis-Chalmers, and Westinghouse for providing equipment to the Manhattan Project sites scattered across the United States.⁸⁰ Consodine appeared concerned about the potential criticism of the Manhattan Project’s secret funding of two billion dollars of secret expenditures and wanted to remove the definitive statement that scientists and engineers were consulted so “no expenditures were made which were unwarranted.”⁸¹ Consodine substituted a more nuanced process by indicating how “the expenditures were warranted by the potentialities of the program.” In his statement, Truman would bluntly announce that “we have spent two billion dollars on the greatest scientific gamble in history—and won.”⁸²

The British continued to press for greater recognition of their role in the Manhattan Project. Lord Halifax, the British ambassador to the United States, wanted Stimson’s announcement to render spacious treatment of the British

78. “Statement of the Secretary of War,” n.d., Roll 1, Subfile 5B, “Top Secret Files.”

79. Consodine to Harrison, 20 June 1945; ^“Atomic Fission Bombs^” (Stimson Draft), 20 June 1945; Roll 6, File 73, H–B Files; William Sweet, The Nuclear Age: Atomic Energy, Proliferation, and the Arms Race (Washington, DC: Congressional Quarterly Inc., 1988), 36–37.

80. Consodine to Harrison, 29 June 1945.

81. Ibid.

82. Prior to his conditional misgivings about deploying the bomb while working at Metlab, Leo Szilard was a seminal figure in persuading Roosevelt to launch the Manhattan Project; after the war, he disparaged the material triumphalism that Truman expressed here as failing to comprehend the deeper meanings of the atomic age (Peter N. Kirstein, “False Dissenters: Manhattan Project Scientists and the Use of the Atomic Bomb,^” American Diplomacy [2001], University of North Carolina, March 2001; Leo Szilard, ^“President Truman Did Not Understand,^” U.S. News & World Report, 15 August 1960, 71; Lawrence S. Wittner, One World or None: A History of the World Nuclear Disarmament Movement [Stanford, CA: Stanford UP, 1993], 8–9).

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and Canadian scientific contributions.⁸³ In recognition of them, the 20 June and 30 June drafts had described Ernest Rutherford’s bombardment of a nucleus with its subsequent release of energy, and James Chadwick’s discovery of the neutron. But the British wanted greater attribution of British scientists who “fully participated in the development of the project in the U.S.A.”⁸⁴

Ultimately, references to Rutherford and Chadwick were excised from the final draft of 6 July, and “fully” was removed. Stimson merely observed that “British scientists . . . participated in the development of the project in the United States.”⁸⁵ While the British government lobbied ineffectually for recognition of British science, Stimson spared no praise for the Americans. He claimed no other nation’s scientists “performed so successfully” during war and they have earned “the very highest expression of gratitude.”⁸⁶ Stimson repeated in the officially released statement in his name in August the erroneous assumption that Germany was “feverishly” engaged in developing weapons of mass destruction, but he was forthright in noting that Japan did not possess a nuclear deterrent.⁸⁷ While admiring Oppenheimer’s “genius” in assembling nuclear bomb components at Los Alamos, the complex’s name does not appear but for a furtive reference to an “isolated area in the vicinity of Santa Fe, New Mexico.”⁸⁸

Atomic nationalism or the desire to remain the world’s only nuclear power fueled the secrecy in the official rhetoric about the Manhattan Project. The secretary of war specifically mentioned uranium as the ore of choice in achieving atomic fission and affirmed that the United States had and would secure adequate supplies of this essential nuclear fuel. He tried to reassure war-weary Americans that nuclear combat was not the only application of this technology and that “our civilization will be enriched when peace comes.”⁸⁹ Stimson speculated that the atom might be harnessed for nuclear energy and power transmission at some

^{83. “}British Suggestions: Mr. Stimson^’s Statement,^” n.d., 1–3, Role 6, File 73, H–B Files.

84. “Atomic Fission Bombs,” Stimson Draft, 30 June 1945, 3; Role 6, File 73, H–B Files.

^{85. “}Draft of 6 July 1945,^” Stimson statement, 3–4; Role 6, File 73, H–B Files.

86. Ibid.

87. New York Times, 7 August 1945, 4. The White House also released Stimson’s statement while he was away from from Washington while visiting his home on Long Island (see Herbert Feis, The Atomic Bomb and the End of World War II [Princeton, NJ: Princeton UP, 1966], 123–24).

88. New York Times, 7 August 1945, 4.

89. Ibid.

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future date. Both Truman’s and Stimson’s statements emphasized the importance of maintaining an atomic monopoly and vaguely addressed nonproliferation efforts to cleanse the burgeoning nuclear menace from the world. Many in the government agreed with Groves that the United States could maintain its nuclear monopoly for at least ten years.⁹⁰ While choosing to ignore the Interim Committee’s pre-bomb targeting role and even creating the false impression that it was in the early stages of formation, Stimson announced that this committee would provide the president with “recommendations with regard to the problems of both national and international control.”⁹¹ This was the only reference to international nuclear arms control in the secretary’s declaration, the longest of those issued subsequent to the Hiroshima attack.

The United States, the United Kingdom, and Canada jointly revealed the arrival of the nuclear age on 6 August in a carefully choreographed propaganda blitz. Truman and Stimson would issue their statements first, followed in London with new Prime Minister Clement Attlee’s brief introduction of Churchill’s remarks, and conclude with Canada’s announcement from Ottawa. Groves informed General Marshall that “these statements are satisfactory to us.”⁹² C. D. Howe delivered the Canadian message. Howe was born and educated in the United States and, as Minister of Reconstruction, was the chief planner of Canada’s significant contribution to the Manhattan Project.⁹³ It is evident that both Britain and the United States were intimately involved in the editing of Howe’s statement. The British Embassy staff member Roger Makins inquired from George Harrison at the Pentagon if it was “acceptable to you” that Howe “wishes” to make some changes in the opening lines of paragraph fourteen.⁹⁴ Even though these redactions were relatively minor (the substitution of the United States, United Kingdom, and Canada for the names of their heads of state during the critical years of the top secret program), Makins sought Harrison’s approval.

90. Groves to the Chief of Staff (George C. Marshall), 6 August 1945, 2.

91. New York Times, 7 August 1945, 4.

92. Groves to the Chief of Staff, 6 August 1945, 1.

93. Susan Monroe, ^“C.D. Howe,^” Canada Online, cited at http://canadaonline.about.com/od/ canadaww2/p/cdhowe.htm, accessed 7 October 2009.

94. Roger Makins to George Harrison, 4 August 1945, Roll 6, File 75, H–B Files. British efforts to clear Howe^’s statement with the Department of War reflected Canada^’s more junior status in the tripartite development of the atomic bomb.

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Major-General Groves sent a memorandum to Harvey H. Bundy, Stimson’s special assistant (and a former assistant secretary of state during the Hoover administration), requesting further revisions to Howe’s A-bomb message. In Howe’s eighteen-paragraph draft, Groves objected to the repeated use of the phrase “international agreement is reached” to control this quantum leap in destructive power.⁹⁵ This phrase is twice crossed out; the edited phrases of “arrangements are made” and “appropriate methods are devised” are scrawled above the original typed entries. Groves felt that the Canadian minister’s advocacy for an internationalist approach to the challenges of the nuclear era should not be “demanded” or “sought,” but proceed only after the United States, Great Britain, or Canada declared it as official policy.

Howe’s draft, however, contained no demand for an international control regime of nuclear fissile materials or weapons, but presented a carefully crafted and circumspect approach to the looming challenge of nuclear proliferation. In its ninth paragraph, Howe’s statement suggested that “all supplies of uranium might be obtained for the Crown and ultimately used under whatever international agreement is reached for controlling the release of atomic energy in the interests of mankind.”⁹⁶ In paragraph fifteen, Howe modestly observed that “until some international agreement is reached to control this new source of energy that has been developed[,] it will not be possible to divulge the technical processes of production or of military application.”⁹⁷

The Canadian announcement was more nuanced and analytic than Truman’s militaristic gusto. Howe hoped that the atomic age would produce “paths of peace” following the birth pangs of its “incredible feat of destruction.”⁹⁸ He avoided exterminationist rhetoric. Howe’s statement does not even mention Japan, even though Canada suffered casualties in Asia during World War II.⁹⁹ Howe emphasized the need to move beyond the wartime deployment of nuclear arms and seek alternative nuclear outcomes “for the benefit of mankind… [and] the maintenance of peace.”¹⁰⁰ Describing the nuclear age as “one of the major

95. Groves to Harvey H. Bundy, 3 August 1945; Roll 6, Target 4, File 75, H–B Files.

^{96. “}Draft Statement By the Hon. C. D. Howe,^” n.d., 2–3, Roll 6, Target 4, File 75, H–B Files.

97. Ibid.

98. Ibid.

99. Minister of Supply and Services Canada, ^“Canada and the Second World War Valour Remembered, 1939–1945,^” Veterans Affairs, Canada: Catalog No. V32-26/1981, cited at http://www.vac-acc.gc.ca/remembers/sub.cfm?source=history/secondwar/Canada2.

100. “Draft Statement By the Hon. C. D. Howe,” 3–4.

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scientific advances in history,” he rather idealistically, if not naively, concluded that the momentous development of nuclear fission could be separated “from the political and military aspects.”¹⁰¹

Howe humbly recognized that the role Canadian scientists played in the development of the atomic bomb “cannot be compared. . . with the truly stupendous effort” of the United States.¹⁰² Without posturing, he summarized the Canadian role in the Manhattan Project and praised the National Research Council’s staff of 140 scientists for their applied technical achievements. Canada tasked many of its universities to work on nuclear fission research, as the United States had done with Metlab at the University of Chicago. Howe revealed how Canada built a pilot plant dedicated to producing nuclear materials, for which 10,000 acres were expropriated to accommodate its residents and industrial infrastructure.¹⁰³ Press accounts were ecstatic over the revelation of Canada’s possession of uranium ore, which bestowed upon the country a status as one of “the most vital areas in the world.”¹⁰⁴ While the Howe statement has been virtually ignored in the historiographical literature of the atomic bomb, it represented a striking contrast to the bombast of Truman and Churchill.

When Clement Attlee became prime minister on 26 July, the day of the Potsdam Declaration, he replaced Churchill at the Potsdam Conference.¹⁰⁵ Attlee’s comments on 6 August were only two paragraphs in length, which was still longer than an earlier draft contained within the H–B Files.¹⁰⁶ Attlee’s laconic statement matter of factly observed that an atomic bomb had been dropped on Japan and that British scientists had participated in its development. He informed the inter-national community that Churchill had prepared a much longer statement prior to leaving 10 Downing Street (at the same time, therefore, when American officials were finalizing the Truman drafts in Washington). Given his fondness for expansive oratory, Churchill’s remarks were not surprisingly some five hundred words longer than the president’s. Churchill’s statement is conceptually similar to

101. Ibid.

102. Ibid.

103. Ibid., 1–2.

104. “A New Force in the World,” Globe and Mail, 7 August 1945, 6.

105. In a stunning defeat less than two months following Victory in Europe Day (V-E Day), Attlee^’s Labour Party^’s victory in the 5 July 1945 election drove Prime Minister Churchill^’s Conservative Party from power.

106. Untitled and undated Attlee Draft, Roll 6, File 75, H–B Files; New York Times, 7 August 1945, 8.

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Truman’s. The invocation of God’s agency in marshalling Anglo-American scientific exceptionalism appears in both announcements. The former prime minister wrote: “By God’s mercy British and American science outpaced all German efforts which might have altered the course of the war.”¹⁰⁷ In a similar vein, Truman averred that Providence should be praised because the Germans could not “enslave the world” and lost the “battle of the laboratories.”¹⁰⁸ The similarity of both statements resulted perhaps bilateral nuclear collaboration and Truman and Churchill’s belief that an Anglo-American exceptionalism created a chosen people destined to possess an atomic monopoly. While not as openly exterminationist as Truman’s “rain of ruin,” Churchill threatened additional nuclear attacks should Japan not leave the war, warning that “[i]t is now for Japan to realize in the glare of the first atomic bomb which has smitten her what the consequence will be of an indefinite continuance of this terrible means of maintaining a rule of law in the world.”¹⁰⁹

Both Truman and Churchill concluded their announcements with some measure of hope for world peace following the apocalyptic birth of the nuclear age. Truman sought Congressional cooperation on “how atomic power can become a powerful and forceful influence towards the maintenance of world peace.”¹¹⁰ Churchill “pray[ed]” that nuclear Armageddon would be averted and “peace among the nations, and. . . a perennial fountain of world prosperity” would result from this “revelation of the secrets of nature.”¹¹¹

Neither Truman nor Churchill, in contrast to Howe, suggested an urgent need for nuclear nonproliferation under international treaty. In his speech, Truman seemed to relish the atomic power at his disposal. Churchill saluted America for achieving “one of the greatest triumphs. . . of human genius of which there is record.”¹¹² Other than their joint desire for an eventual nonmilitary application of atomic power, no policy initiatives appeared that would enhance international control of fissile materials, provide safeguards for the inspection of atomic reactor facilities, and account for nuclear weaponry. Truman merely wanted public con‑

107. James Sloan, “By God^’s Mercy It^’s Our Bomb, Churchill Says,^” Chicago Daily Tribune, 7 August 1945, 4. The New York Times and Harrison–Bundy Files^’ versions do not contain ^“…which might have altered the course of the war.^”

108. ^“Statement by the President,^” 1.

109. New York Times, 7 August 1945, 8.

110. ^“Statement by the President,^” 4.

111. New York Times, 7 August 1945, 8.

112. Ibid.

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trols over the nuclear enterprise “within the United States.”¹¹³ This preference for an atomic monopoly likely stimulated other countries to develop their own nuclear arms.

World War II accelerated the rise of the national security state with its nuclear triad adorning a military–industrial complex that President Dwight D. Eisenhower denounced three days before leaving office in his iconic farewell address in 1961. As the Manhattan Project neared its fateful conquest of the atom as a weapon for war, a parallel resolute propaganda campaign developed that lionized the nuclear age with its awe-inspiring new bombs. Officials characterized its creation as a messianic gift to the American people.

The American government’s rationalization of enormous military expenditures became rather sophisticated with the unfolding of the Manhattan Project. It was understood that this required an ongoing massive public relations effort that incorporated both civilian and military units of the government. The bombardment of the public with justification for vast outlays in the name of national security did not abate in the sixty-five years after the end of the Pacific War. Defending American interests became a ritualized component of nuclear propaganda. If the public desired peace, it must prepare for war. Propaganda claimed that nuclear weapons were needed to protect the state, “deter” the enemy, and preserve our freedoms.

Secretary of War Stimson was a chief architect of the atomic spin machine, who publicly justified the decision to use the atomic bomb but privately revealed that war had “grown steadily more barbarous, more destructive, [and] more debased in all its aspects.”¹¹⁴ Stimson believed that nuclear weapons worn “rather ostentatiously on our hip” could not guarantee the ultimate strategic victory, which only diplomacy aimed at nonproliferation could achieve. The latter should, there-fore, preoccupy American foreign relations. Even now, the private and public Stimsons need to be reconciled better in the area of public policy. As Stimson warned: “The bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. . . made it wholly clear that we must never have another war. . . . There is no other choice.”¹¹⁵

113. Statement by the President, 4.

114. “Memorandum for the President,” 11 September 1945; Henry L. Stimson and McGeorge Bundy, On Active Service in Peace and War (New York: Harper and Brothers, 1948), 641–48, quoted in William Appleman Williams, ed., The Shaping of American Diplomacy: 1900–1955, vol. 2 (Chicago: Rand McNally, 1956), 955.

115. Henry L. Stimson, ^“The Decision to Use the Atomic Bomb,^” Harper^’s Magazine, February 1947, 99.

65th Anniversary of July 26, 1945 Potsdam Declaration: No Atomic Warning

Peter Kirstein — Mon, 26 Jul 2010 14:02:23 +0000

President Truman’s Gift to the World: genocide and nuclear war

As we move toward the 65th anniversary of the nuclear genocide by the United States at the end of World War II, we should correct a frequent misinterpretation of the Potsdam Declaration. This preceded by eleven and fourteen days two days that indeed will “live in infamy”: August 6 and 9, 1945. Certainly, the nuclear destruction of Hiroshima and Nagasaki were as immoral and criminal as nazi Germany’s bestial acts and their legacy much more pronounced and significant. One of the many misperceptions about the nuclear attacks on Hirohsima and Nagasaki was the belief that Japan was warned in advance of the impeding, racist nuclear slaughter.

The Potsdam Declaration was issued on July 26, 1945 by the United States, Britain and China. The Soviet Union was still ostensibly not at war with Japan and did not sign on to this statement at the end of the Potsdam Conference outside Berlin after V-E Day. It was the first wartime conference attended by the overwhelmed and underprepared “Man from Missouri”-Harry S Truman.

I will be releasing online my recently published article on the genocide on August 6. I quote however briefly from The Historian article:

This tripartite document demanded “the unconditional surrender of all Japanese armed forces. .. . The alternative for Japan is prompt and utter destruction.” The presidential draft message of July 30, 1945 asserted how “[i]t was to spare the Japanese people that the ultimatum of July 26 was issued at Potsdam.” This claim belied the fact that the Potsdam Declaration lacked an atomic warning.

What I am referring to was the great Truman lie that the Potsdam Declaration constituted an attempt to “spare the Japanese people” by this warning. What warning? It is merely a threat of genocide and of continued barbarism. It is merely exterminationist rhetoric. There is no atomic warning and no mentioning that a uranium-core bomb was to explode over a city of innocents! Japan was never given any hint that a weapon of mass destruction was to be unleashed and the Potsdam Declaration demonstrates that fully. Japan had no idea that a nuclear attack on two cities was imminent and had it been given an atomic warning, it may well have surrendered and the nuclear arms race might have been avoided or perhaps delayed significantly.

Another Truman lie was his claim in the Hiroshima announcement that Japan’s “leaders promptly rejected the ultimatum.” There is considerable dispute over exactly what Japan’s response was and certainly it was not warned in the ultimatum that 150,000 to 200,000 women, children, fetuses and men would be blasted and irradiated to death by the cowardly attacks of the Enola Gay and Bokscar. Also civilised nations do not give “ultimatums.” They do not seek “unconditional surrender.” They seek negotiation, reconciliation and respect for human life. The United States as a result of this war has become a ruthless warrior state with its thousands of nuclear weapons that it brandishes constantly with its talk of deterrence and mutual assured destruction and first-strike capability.

Today July 26, 2010 should be a day of reflection on the vicious, racist arrogance of the Potsdam Declaration and its utter failure to either warn about an atomic attack or provide guarantees of the perpetuation of the emperor.

The great war criminal Harry S Truman should be remembered for what he was. A ruthless murderer who is now the darling, of course, of American historians.

Israel’s Blockade and Near Starvation of Gaza is disgraceful and illegal

Peter Kirstein — Mon, 05 Jul 2010 17:16:59 +0000

http://www.irancartoon.com/120/occupation/Latuff.jpg

While Israel does not occupy Gaza as the allies did in Germany after World War II or Germany did in Italy during World War II, it is still the controllng power. Gaza’s ports are controlled by Israel. Gaza’s land routes to other lands are controlled by Israel or at Rafah by Egypt. Gaza has no airport from which its people can travel for business, medical necessity or for leisure. While bordering the Mediterranean, its people cannot exit from their own sea coast. Note the Israeli piracy against an unarmed ship in the Mediterranean was in Gazan waters and certainly in international waters. Gaza is trapped; it is bullied; it is savaged by one of the three non-signatories of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (1968). Israel cannot exempt itself from the category of occupant and cannot starve a colony’s population, deny it building materials or otherwise create a sanctions regime that essentially reduces the existence of 1.5 million residents to utter dependency on a nuclear, powerful, religiously antagonistic State of Israel.

The argument that Israel uses to justify this inhumane and degrading treatment of Gaza is the prevention of Hamas–its democratically elected government–from launching rockets into Israel. While nations have the right of self-defence and certainly the right to protect its civilian populations, it must exercise proportionality in doing so. It cannot justify a relatively low-grade military threat by collectively reducing an entire nationality into slavery and abject dependence. A constabulary knowing that a murderer has entered a high-rise residential building, for example, could not raze or bomb the building in order to eliminate this threat because many civilians would perish as a consequence. The action of eliminating a threat cannot be justified if the process leads to the indiscriminate suffering and destruction of innocents. Israel should know this from its own history. They are no longer victims; they area victimizers.

I am not enthralled with just war doctrine and believe the concept is somewhat oxymoronic due to the presumption that war can be just. However, the principle of proportionality that derives from Roman Catholic Just War Doctrine, is a means-ends standard of some relevance and ethical acceptance. Do the means employed to achieve a purportedly good end justify that end? In this case, suppressing rocket fire which threatened relatively few Israelis– but certainly cannot be ignored by a nation-state–in this manner is violative of the just-war doctrine of proportionality and is in direct contravention of the epic 1949 Fourth Geneva Convention.

Israel is not the only nation that is guilty of war crimes and international humanitarian law although, as the Goldstone Report has assiduously articulated, it is certainly a repeat offender when it comes to Gaza and the West Bank. Its patron, the United States of America, far exceeds Israel in its unjust wars. While recognising Israeli depredations are all too common within the international community, it is for us who live in relatively democratic nations to condemn these actions against fellow human beings. Less developed nationalities who suffer in poverty and despair as their rich neighbors attend the ballet, eat their yogurt, go to far away resorts for holiday, drink fine wine and talk and text on their iPhones, are not a circumstance that the emerging 21st Century should tolerate.

I have always felt Israel was using the excuse of national defence, welcome to the American world of “national security” double-speak, to wreak vengeance over a people that did not accept silently their Nakba (holocaust) of 1948, in which perhaps 700,000 innocent people, who were not in Europe during the Nazi-holocaust, were utterly expelled from Palestine to make way for a Jewish state that had no legitimate, secular or rational legal claim to the land.

For those who claim criticism of Israel is an example of anti-semitism, that begs a bigger question. Does a nation that declares itself to have an official state religion-in this case Judaism–exempt itself from criticism because of its Jewish identity? I fail to see the rationality in such argumentation much less the democratic justification for such an exclusionary founding principle. Yet that can be addressed in another context.

The following is more contextualisation from Al Jazeera on the illegality of the siege of Gaza as perpetrated by Israel:

Q&A: Why Israel’s siege is illegal:

Israel denies that it occupies Gaza, but it still maintains “effective control” over the territory [AFP]

The International Committee of the Red Cross has described Israel’s blockade of Gaza as a violation of the Fourth Geneva Convention.

That conclusion rests on the Israeli government’ status as an occupying power in Gaza, which assigns it certain obligations to the people of Gaza.

Those obligations are spelt out in detail by the Fourth Geneva Convention. At their most basic, though, they require Israel to provide for the basic needs of the people, particularly food and medical care.

To the fullest extent of the means available to it, the Occupying Power has the duty of ensuring the food and medical supplies of the population; it should, in particular, bring in the necessary foodstuffs, medical stores and other articles if the resources of the occupied territory are inadequate.

The convention also requires the occupying power to allow sufficient shipments of aid – food, clothing, medical supplies and other essentials – and to take steps to preserve the health care system in the occupied territory.

Many Gazans rely on generators for power; their improper use has killed more than 100 people. Israel does not meet those basic requirements, according to many observers. Eighty per cent of people living in Gaza rely on food aid to survive; 14 per cent of children suffer from stunted growth due to malnutrition.

Power cuts are routine: 98 per cent of the population copes with routine blackouts. Fuel supplies are heavily restricted.

More than 100 basic medicines are unavailable in Gaza, and the territory’s few remaining hospitals – several were damaged during the 2008-2009 Israeli war in Gaza – lack basic supplies and equipment.

But didn’t Israel withdraw from Gaza? How is it still an occupying power?

It’s true that the Israeli government no longer has a presence inside the Gaza Strip. Former Israeli prime minister Ariel Sharon ordered the withdrawal of all Israelis (including both soldiers and settlers) from the territory in his 2005 “unilateral disengagement plan”.

But the Fourth Geneva Convention applies whenever a state has “effective control” over a territory. The Israeli government still controls Gaza’s airspace, and its land and sea borders. The only goods and people allowed into Gaza are those approved by the Israeli government.

Last month’s raid on the aid flotilla bound for Gaza is an instructive example. The organisers of the flotilla say their boats were on course to travel through Gazan waters, not Israeli waters. But the Israeli army still attacked the flotilla to prevent it from entering Gaza – showing that Israel maintains control over Gaza.

If there was no occupation, would the blockade still be illegal?

The principle of “proportionality” is central to international law: The military advantage gained by an action must outweigh the harm caused to the civilian population.

Douglas Guilfoyle, a maritime legal expert, says the blockade does not meet the proportionality testThe blockade does not meet this test. It imposes hardships on the entire population of Gaza – 1.5 million people – purportedly in order to achieve a limited military aim: preventing Hamas from firing rockets at Israel.

What’s more, documents revealed last week by the Israeli human rights organisation Gisha show that the blockade actually has a political aim, not a military one. A written statement from the Israeli government described the blockade as “economic warfare” and said it was intended to break Hamas’s control over the government in Gaza.

What about the Egyptian government?

The Egyptian border crossing with Gaza, at Rafah, has been mostly sealed since Hamas took power in June of 2007. (The Egyptian government reopened the crossing earlier this month following Israel’s raid on the aid flotilla.)

But Egypt is not an occupying power in Gaza – it does not exercise “effective control” over the territory – so, whatever the moral and political arguments against its blockade, it is not required to apply the same legal standard as Israel.

Helen Thomas: the Courageous Reporter, Another Victim of Israel Criticism Taboo

Peter Kirstein — Mon, 07 Jun 2010 19:14:16 +0000

Let’s be direct. Helen Thomas tried early last year on February 9, 2009 to get an American president to concede at a nationally televised press conference what everyone knows, that the State of Israel has nuclear weapons. She asked Barack Hussein Obama at a press conference if he knew of any nation in the Middle East that had nuclear weapons. Barack Obama dodged it by refusing to ”speculate” because America has accepted hook, line and sinker the dumb Israeli policy of “nuclear ambiguity.” Yet even Israel itself has conceded repeatedly it has nuclear weapons: remember Prime Minister Ehud Olmert’s 2006 nuclear confession on Berlin Radio? remember Mordecahi Vanunu whistle blowing in 1986 and an eighteen year prison sentence for showing photos of Dimona, remember the nuclear test with South Africa in the South Atlantic in 1979 picked up by a Vela sateliite. The charade of “ambiguity” that Ms Thomas was attempting to puncture was a mark of journalistic courage and taboo challenging. Given the mania over Iran’s nuclear ambitions, it is essential that all nations in the region account for their nuclear materials: not just Iran. In fact Iran IS MUCH MORE TRANSPARENT IN ITS NUCLEAR FISSILE MATERIALS THAN ISRAEL IS.

Yes Israelis should get out of Palestine; yes Americans should get out of America; yes Brits and their heirs should get out of Australia and New Zealand. What Israel has done in Palestine is similar to many colonial invasions: displaced an aboriginal population or in this case 700,000 Palestinians. Much of the US southwest for example was simply stolen in a landgrab from Mexico in the great-theft Mexican war of 1846-1848. Huge swaths of Mexico from California to Texas were just stolen by the US. The entire continent was inhabited by Native Americans before the Columbian exchange in the 15th century. Zionism did lead to a similar pattern of disenfranchisement, displacement and tragic dispossesion of native peoples.

Ms Thomas would have been more prudent had she qualified Palestine to mean, however, the West Bank and Gaza. Afterall, even the US has called for the abandonment of the Jewish only settlements and a two-state solution. So Ms Thomas is correct in advocating Jews get out of Palestine in the near term in specifying Gaza and the West Bank. Her comments about returning to Germany, Poland and the US was provocative but hardly worthy of her forced retirement and the national opprobium that has beset her. It was exaggerated speech based on her premise that there is an aura of illegitimacy in the Israeli colonisation and tragic establishment of apartheid in Palestine.

A more nuanced approach from Ms Thomas was needed. And a more sophisticated and tolerant response to her statement is needed. So here is mine. I believe the State of Israel is not going away and should not. I believe a state founded on a religion is anathema to my views as would a Christian America be repellant. To have a Jewish state with 20% Arab is democratically counterintuitive. Yet that is Israel founding ethos since 1948 and its future and security are legitimate within its internationally recognised borders. However, its occupation of Palestine outside of the 1967 borders is not. Its blockade of Gaza is not. Its concentration camp wall declared illegal in the West Bank by the International Court of Justice in 2007 is not. Its arrogant annexation of East Jerusalem is not. Its annexation of the Golan is not.

The issue is not to bully an eighty-nine year old woman into retirement for her right of protected speech and who generally is an iconic supporter of the oppressed and persecuted. We should take her remarks as needing qualification and frankly legitimate probing particularly in the light of colonialism and subaltern phenomena. No, Jews should not be forced to leave Israel. No Israel should not be dismembered. Yes it must be brought to justice and forced to abandon its militant reliance on blind force that has violated International Humanitarian Law and the Crimes of War as defined partially by the Fourth Geneva Convention.

French University Group Seeks Support of Palestinian Freedom from Apartheid

Peter Kirstein — Thu, 03 Jun 2010 21:53:08 +0000

Sign the petition for humanity and saving the innocent from out-of-control oppression and vicious force.

From: AURDIP – Association des Universitaires pour le Respect du Droit International en Palestine [newsletter@aurdip.fr] Sent: Thu 6/3/2010 4:27 PM

To: Kirstein, Peter N.

Subject: Attaque meurtrière contre la

Lundi dernier, l’armée israélienne a attaqué une flottille de militants pacifistes acheminant des vivres et des médicaments vers Gaza.

L’attaque a été perpétrée dans les eaux internationales et Gaza, faut-il le rappeler, est un territoire palestinien occupé illégalement par Israël depuis 1967.

De nombreux militants pacifistes ont été tués et blessés, les autres détournés de force vers Israël, la cargaison n’arrivera jamais à bon port.

Les peuples du monde entier ont éprouvé un sentiment d’horreur et de dégoût devant ce crime de droit international.

Comme d’habitude en ce genre de circonstances, les Etats-Unis ont bloqué toute action sérieuse de l’ONU contre le terrorisme d’État israélien. L’Europe sera sans doute aussi démissionnaire qu’à l’accoutumée.

Ces événements tragiques prouvent que c’est à la société civile de prendre les choses en main. Comme naguère avec l’Afrique du Sud, il faut forcer Israël et ses soutiens internationaux à respecter le droit international, en refusant de collaborer avec cet État et ses institutions tant qu’il se comporte en hors-la-loi.

C’est le but que, dans le domaine académique, s’est fixé l’AURDIP. Nous voulons alerter la communauté scientifique sur le fait que, dans les circonstances actuelles, une collaboration institutionnelle avec Israël n’est pas neutre, mais entérine le fait-accompli et justifie l’oppression des Palestiniens.

Rejoignez-nous !

AURDIP (Association des Universitaires pour le Respect du Droit International en Palestine)

http://www.aurdip.org/

Pour consulter les objectifs de l’AURDIP : http://www.aurdip.org/L-AURDIP-s-es…

Pour y adhérer : http://www.aurdip.org/article.php?p…

Pour vous inscrire à la Newsletter : http://www.aurdip.org/squelettes/ne…

English version : http://www.aurdip.org/Association-o…

Association of Academics for the Respect of International Law in Palestine

Version française

AURDIP (the Association of Academics for the Respect of International Law in Palestine) is a French organization of university professors and researchers, created in cooperation with the Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel (PACBI) and with the British organization BRICUP.

AURDIP’s two primary missions :

1. To promote the application of international law in Israel and Palestine ; specifically to oppose Israeli occupation of the Palestinian territories and Israel’s settlement policy, which fly in the face of international conventions on human rights, United Nations resolutions, and decisions of the International Court of Justice.

2. To defend Palestinians’ right to education and to support students and staff of Palestinian universities in the defense of this right.

With these goals in mind, AURDIP proposes to take the following steps, in coordination with organizations and individuals pursuing the same objectives, in France and abroad :

1. To press governments in Europe to suspend cooperative agreements between the European Union and Israel as long as the Israeli government fails to respect its obligations under international law.

2. To encourage university professors and researchers to reconsider their professional links with Israeli academic and cultural institutions as long as the Israeli government fails to respect its obligations under international law. This reconsideration may take various forms, for example refusal to participate in scientific meetings in Israel or in institutional collaboration between France and Israel, especially as regards military applications.

3. To take part in activities, within the university setting and in professional organizations, with the purpose of providing information on the situation in Palestine and on the real nature of the occupation and settlement policy.

If you fully endorse the Mission Statement of the AURDIP and authorize us to use your name publicly please click on sign here link at bottom.

The Inadequacies of Memorial Day

Peter Kirstein — Mon, 31 May 2010 13:29:42 +0000

Memorial Day is really prowar day. It is an unthinking paean to those Americans who died in war. It does not memorialise those millions who we slaughtered, tortured, mutilated or nuked in war. It does not question why American service personnel died in war. It is inadequate. It merely wants us to weep and mourn for our war dead. Yes we should. Yet it confers uncritially upon the American evil war machine a free pass without bringing justice to the American politico-military leadership that gets us into war.

The United States is a Sparta: a country propelled by racism, vengeance, and hatred of the “other.” We fight vicious, immoral, at times genocidal wars and more frequently unjust wars. Memorial Day should condemn or at least debate the “reason” Americans and others died in our interminable wars. We need to step back and ask on this and future Memorial Days, “Why did these women and men die and why were they outnumbered by civilians who are not even remotely remembered on this egregious “Memorial” day.

I went to Arlington National Cemetary in April, 2010 on a trip to Washington. I went ostensibly to pay my respects to Senator Edward Moore Kennedy the last of the Kennedy brothers and in some ways the most progressive. Yet I was sicken and enraged with all these signs about “hallowed ground” and how visitors should be silent and courteous as they walk among row after row of dead soldiers, sailors, marines, airpersons that died in all these unnjust imperialistic wars. We should not be silent and ordered about by our government but rebellious and dissentious in demanding war crimes trials-not mere Winter Soldier Investigations–but real war crimes trials for the Kissingers, the Yoos, the Bushes, the Cheneys, the Clintons who waged unjust war from Kosovo, to Vietnam, to Iraq and the stupid war in Afghanistan.

Flags are fig leafs for imperialism unless they induce introspection. Memorial services for American K.I.A. are incomplete without questioning the authorities and the dominant popular culture that propel this nation into such violence and bestiality. I am not opposed to remembering those who died in war. Indeed, my life has been one of vigorously opposing war which got me suspended, remember, in 2002. That was an antiwar e-mail to Cadet Kurpiel: remember that.

Memorial Day is inadequate; it is incomplete; it is nationalistic and actually creates an environment in which more war dead are inevitable. It covers up the economic and racially driven hyperpower: it shrouds the evil of war; it glorifies those who died without demanding justice for their unnecessary deaths. When a nation glorifies war it creates fertile ground for future war and creates a culture in which even lying about military service in a genocidal war of Vietnam becomes the norm: Connecticut Attorney General Richard Blumenthal, Illiniois warmonger who voted or the Iraq war Congressperson Mark Kirk, Mt Holyoke College liar Professor Joseph Ellis.

National Archives Sees All, Lists My Hiroshima Genocide Article

Peter Kirstein — Wed, 26 May 2010 15:25:46 +0000

The National Archives, the nation’s attic, well whatever, releases a quarterly list of research that uses archival materials from N.A.R.A. (National Archives and Records Administration). I wonder how their search engines are able to so quickly determine this. Scary given the power of monitoring and watching in John Yoo’s America. My article, “Hiroshima and Spinning the Atom: America, Britain, and Canada Proclaim the Nuclear Age, August 6, 1945″ is at the very bottom when I cut off the list:

Quarterly Compilation of Periodical Literature Reflecting the Use of Records in the National Archives: 2010

Volume 37, Number 1, January-March, 2010

“Lost: The National Archives Documents the Missing”. Manuscript Society News 30, no.4 (2009): 63-65.
NARA photos
Adams, Jane; Gorton, D. “This Land Ain’t My Land: The Eviction of Sharecroppers by the Farm Security Administration”. Agricultural History 83, no.3 (Summer 2009): 323-351.
RG096
Alexander, Joseph H. “A Bitter Hemorrhage of Fighting”. Naval History 24, no.2 (April 2010): 44-50.
NARA photos
Alexander, Joseph H. “The ‘Old Breed’ Girds for Battle”. Naval History 24, no.2 (April 2010): 18-21.
NARA photos
Aono, Toshihiko. “‘It Is Not Easy for the United States to Carry the Whole Load’: Anglo-American Relations during the Berlin Crisis, 1961-1962″. Diplomatic History 34, no.2 (April 2010): 325-356.
RG059/RG218/JFK Library
Bach, Morten; Hale, Korcaighe. “‘What He Is Speaks So Loud That I Can’t Hear What He’s Saying’: R.W. Scott McLeod and the Long Shadow of Joe McCarthy”. Historian 72, no.1 (Spring 2010): 67-95.
RG046/DDE Library
Barrett, David M. “Why Intelligence Failures Are (Still) Inevitable”. Diplomatic History 34, no.1 (January 2010): 207-213.
CREST
Bearss, Edwin C. “Pinned Down and Wounded at Suicide Creek”. Naval History 24, no.2 (April 2010): 42-43.
NARA photos
Boylan, Kevin M. “The Red Queen’s Race: Operation Washington Green and Pacification in Binh Dinh Province,1969-70″. Journal of Military History 73, no.4 (October 2009): 1195-1230.
RG472
Brady, Tim; Tarbox, James M. “World War II in HD: Through Their Eyes”. History: The History Channel Magazine 7, no.6 (November-December 2009): 31-43.
NARA photos
Browne, Joseph. “‘To Bring Out the Intellect of the Race’: An African American Freedmen’s Bureau Agent in Maryland”. Maryland Historical Magazine 104, no.4 (Winter 2009): 374-401.
RG105
Bryan, Mark Evans. “‘Slideing into Monarchical extravagance’: Cato at Valley Forge and the Testimony of William Bradford Jr.”. William and Mary Quarterly 67, no.1 (January 2010): 123-144.
RG360
Castonguay, Stephane. “Creating an Agricultural World Order: Regional Plant Protection Problems and International Phytopathology, 1878-1939″. Agricultural History 84, no.1 (Winter 2010): 46-73.
RG007/RG054
Clark, Donald A. “‘But What Should We Say?’ The Story of a Fallen Patriot”. Journal of the Illinois State Historical Society 102, no.3-4 (Fall-Winter 2009): 307-323.
RG029
Cohen, Daniel A. “Making Hero Strong: Teenage Ambition, Story-Paper Fiction, and the Generational Recasting of American Women’s Authorship”. Journal of the Early Republic 30, no.1 (Spring 2010): 85-136.
RG029
Cohen, Naomi W. “Commissioner Williams and the Jews”. American Jewish Archives Journal 61, no.2 (2009): 99-126.
Online version
RG085
Contreni, Maureen C. “Schwab v. Coleman: The Making of Enemy Aliens, Naturalization Law, and Citizens in Baltimore, 1937-1944″. Maryland Historical Magazine 104, no.4 (Winter 2009): 418-443.
RG276
Costigliola, Frank. “After Roosevelt’s Death: Dangerous Emotions, Divisive Discourses, and the Abandoned Alliance”. Diplomatic History 34, no.1 (January 2010): 1-23.
RG059/RG334/FDR Library/HST Library/NARA photos
Cull, Nicholas J. “Speeding the Strange Death of American Public Diplomacy: The George H.W. Bush Administration and the U.S. Information Agency”. Diplomatic History 34, no.1 (January 2010): 47-69.
RG306/GHWB Library
Cunningham, Roger D. “The 2d Cavalry Division”. On Point 15, no.3 (Winter 2010): 22-25.
NARA photos
Davis, Robert Scott. “Joe Ritchey of Tennessee: An American Desperado in Legends, the Newspapers, and a Federal Pension File”. Tennessee Historical Quarterly 69, no.2 (Summer 2009): 152-173.
RG029/RG048/RG094/RG109/RG153
Drea, Edward J. “The Seldom-Seen Enemy”. Naval History 24, no.2 (April 2010): 22-25.
NARA photos
Ellis, Catherine H. “Clouds, Snow, Fire and Jail: Walter M. Ainslie’s 1921 Air Tour and the Birth of Aviation in Northern Arizona”. Journal of Arizona History 50, no.4 (Winter 2009): 315-338.
RG029
Ellis, Joseph J. “Madison’s Radical Agenda”. American Heritage 59, no.4 (Winter 2010): 39-40.
NARA photos
Engel, Jeffrey A. “A Better World…but Don’t Get Carried Away: The Foreign Policy of George H.W. Bush Twenty Years On”. Diplomatic History 34, no.1 (January 2010): 25-46.
RG059/GHWB Library
Foo, Yee Wah. “Fu Bingchang, Chiang Kai-shek and Yalta”. Cold War History 9, no.3 (August 2009): 389-409.
RG059
Frank, Richard B. “First Contact with the Enemy”. Naval History 24, no.2 (April 2010): 28-35.
NARA photos
Frank, Richard B. “The Pacific War’s Biggest Battle”. Naval History 24, no.2 (April 2010): 56-61.
NARA photos
Frank, Richard B. “Waging War in a Rain Forest”. Naval History 24, no.2 (April 2010): 36-40.
NARA photos
Franz, William. “‘To Live By Depredations’: Main Poc’s Strategic Use of Violence”. Journal of the Illinois State Historical Society 102, no.3-4 (Fall-Winter 2009): 238-247.
RG075/RG094
Freilich, Kay Haviland. “Verifying an Ancestor’s Words: The Autobiography of Mary (Seeds) Haviland”. National Genealogical Society Quarterly 97, no.4 (December 2009): 245-64.
RG015/RG029/RG049/RG163
Fried, Richard M. “The Iron Curtain in Rhetoric and Reality”. Diplomatic History 34, no.1 (January 2010): 187-191.
HH Library
Friedman, Norman. “The South Carolina Sisters: America’s First Dreadnoughts”. Naval History 24, no.1 (February 2010): 16-23.
RG019
Goitein, Patricia L. “Meet Me in Heaven: Confronting Death along the Galena Trail Frontier 1825-1855″. Journal of the Illinois State Historical Society 102, no.3-4 (Fall-Winter 2009): 248-281.
RG029
Goldman, Zachary K. “Ties That Bind: John F. Kennedy and the Foundations of the American-Israeli Alliance”. Cold War History 9, no.1 (February 2009): 23-58.
JFK Library
Gwinn, Nancy E. “The Library of Congress, the Smithsonian Institution, and the Global Exchange of Government Documents, 1834-1889″. Libraries & the Cultural Record 45, no.1 (2010): 107-122.
RG059
Hatle, Elizabeth Dorsey; Vaillancourt, Nancy M. “‘One Flag, One School, One Language’: Minnesota’s Ku Klux Klan in the 1920s”. Minnesota History 61, no.8 (Winter 2009-10): 360-371.
RG029
Haynes, Robert V. “The Tragic Tenure of Territorial Governor Robert Williams”. Journal of Mississippi History 71, no.2 (Summer 2009): 139-166.
RG107
Herwig, Holger H. “Slaughter in Paradise”. Naval History 24, no.1 (February 2010): 56-63.
NARA photos
Heyde, Veronika. “Amerika und die Neuordnung Europas vor dem Marshallplan (1940-1944)”. Vierteljahrshefte fur Zeitgeschichte 58, no.1 (January 2010): 115-136.
RG059/FDR Library
Holmes, Todd. “The Economic Roots of Reaganism: Corporate Conservatives, Political Economy, and the United Farm Workers Movement, 1965-1970″. Western Historical Quarterly 41, no.1 (Spring 2010): 55-80.
RR Library
Iguchi, Haruo. “The Secrets behind Japan’s Ability to Cope with U.S. Economic Sanctions, 1940-1941″. Diplomatic History 34, no.1 (January 2010): 177-182.
RG084
Janssen, Volker. “When the ‘Jungle’ Met the Forest: Public Work, Civil Defense, and Prison Camps in Postwar California”. Journal of American History 96, no.3 (December 2009): 702-726.
RR Library
Jones, Catherine. “Ties That Bind, Bonds That Break: Children in the Reorganization of Households in Postemancipation Virginia”. Journal of Southern History 76, no.1 (February 2010): 71-106.
RG029/RG105/RG393
Kammer, David. “‘A Matter Very Close to My Heart’: Franklin D. Roosevelt, the Tingleys, and the Creation of the Carrie Tingley Hospital for Crippled Children”. New Mexico Historical Review 85, no.1 (Winter 2010): 39-60.
FDR Library
Kayaoglu, Barin. “Strategic Imperatives, Democratic Rhetoric: The United States and Turkey, 1945-52″. Cold War History 9, no.3 (August 2009): 321-345.
RG059
Kelley, Christopher S.; Marshall, Bryan W. “Going It Alone: The Politics of Signing Statements from Reagan to Bush II”. Social Science Quarterly 91, no.1 (March 2010): 168-187.
RG060
Kimball, Gary. “William Jefferson Hardin: A Grand but Forgotten Park City African American”. Utah Historical Quarterly 78, no.1 (Winter 2010): 23-38.
RG094
Kimberly, Charles M. “The Depression in Maryland: The Failure of Voluntaryism”. Maryland Historical Magazine 104, no.4 (Winter 2009): 402-417.
RG069/RG073
Kirby, Jack Temple. “ANCESTRYdotBOMB: Genealogy, Genomics, Mischief, Mystery, and Southern Family Stories”. Journal of Southern History 76, no.1 (February 2010): 3-38.
RG029
Kirstein, Peter N. “Hiroshima and Spinning the Atom: America, Britain, and Canada Proclaim the Nuclear Age, 6 August 1945″. Historian 71, no.4 (Winter 2009): 805-827.
RG077/RG374

Public Free Speech Campaign to End Israel Aggression In Palestine

Peter Kirstein — Wed, 07 Apr 2010 23:10:52 +0000

Page 1 of 10

THE ALBUQUERQUE EXPERIENCE www.stop30billion.com

COALITION TO STOP $30 BILLION TO ISRAEL

February 2010This is a history of the New Mexico-based Coalition to Stop $30 Billion to Israel campaign that has taken place in Albuquerque over the last two and one-half years. This account will hopefully serve as a useful guide to others who may be considering a similar campaign. Each community is different, of course, and each undertaking will evolve in its own way, possibly utilizing some elements of the Albuquerque experience but not others.

This narrative focuses, in particular, on the billboard campaign that was mounted by the Coalition in April 2009; these ten boards were replaced by one large billboard that is currently in place.

Although groups in many communities throughout the U.S., including Albuquerque, have erected billboards in the past, the current effort may hold particular promise as a model for organizations elsewhere.

Over the past few years several occurrences have contributed to an increasing public awareness of the substance and origins of the Israel-Palestine conflict. First, perhaps, was the Palestinian call for Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions against Israel (BDS), which was launched in July 2005 and which has now burgeoned into a rapidly-growing global movement.

The publication of “The Israel Lobby” by Professors John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt, which first appeared in the London Review of Books in March 2006 and expanded the following year into a best-selling book, The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy, attracted much controversy and not a small amount of praise, as has President Jimmy Carter’s Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid, published in November 2006.

There continues to be outrage over “Operation Cast Lead,” the 22-day Israeli massacre in Gaza, which took place in December 2008-January 2009. The attack resulted in the killing of 1400 Palestinian civilians, of whom more than 400 were women and children; more than 5300 Palestinians were wounded, and more than 4000 residences were totally destroyed.

Finally, there is the “Goldstone Report,” so named after Justice Richard Goldstone, a Jewish South African chosen by the United Nations Human Rights Council to lead an independent factfinding mission to investigate international human rights and humanitarian law violations related to “Operation Cast Lead.”

The mission’s final report, released in September 2009, accused both Palestinian militants and Israel Defense Forces of war crimes and possible crimes against humanity. The report

Page 2 of 10

recommended that the sides openly investigate their own conduct; should they fail to do so, the report further recommended that the allegations be brought to the International Criminal Court.

The Israeli government rejected the report as prejudiced and full or errors; Hamas, which governs the Gaza Strip, initially rejected the report’s findings, but then urged world powers to embrace it.

In November 2009, the U.S. House of Representatives overwhelmingly passed a resolution denouncing the report as “irredeemably biased and unworthy of further consideration or legitimacy.”

The time is ripe for an aggressive nation-wide billboard campaign to protest U.S. military aid to Israel; this aid is currently scheduled to total $30 billion over a 10-year period through Fiscal Year 2018.

I. FOCUS ON U.S. MILITARY AIDThe campaign began in the summer of 2007 when the Albuquerque-based Middle East Peace and Justice Alliance (MEPJA) decided to focus on opposing U.S. military aid to Israel as its primary political project. This was in addition to MEPJA’s other activities, including raising funds for

humanitarian projects in Palestine, sponsoring a steady stream of speakers from out-of-state, general lobbying, outreach and education.

Earlier in the year MEPJA members had considered initiating a divestment campaign in New Mexico which would center on the $15 million in Israeli bonds held by the State of New Mexico.

However, because MEPJA had only enough members to undertake one major political campaign, the divestment project was abandoned and the decision was made, for the following reasons, for the campaign to focus entirely on opposition to military aid (a “sanction” in the BDS framework):

a. a military-aid project would spotlight higher-visibility national policy, whereas a divestment project would involve lower-visibility New Mexico state policy;

b. a military-aid project would target generally higher-profile national Congressional leaders in New Mexico rather than state government leaders;

c. calling for an end to military aid would be more easily understood by the public than calling for divestment; and

d. opposing the give-away of taxpayer dollars to a foreign country would be more easily accepted by the public than would opposing the investment of taxpayer dollars in foreign bonds.

Although not fully appreciated at first, it also became apparent that compared to the arguments for divestment (or boycott), which deal very broadly with Israel’s behavior, the arguments in favor of cutting U.S. military aid could be more narrowly defined and defended – namely, that the largest share of aid goes to a small and economically well-off country, that Congress is violating U.S. law in aiding Israel, and that such aid is not in the U.S. national interest.

Another factor influencing the choice of the military-aid campaign was the national effort against such aid being led by the US Campaign to End the Israeli Occupation (USC). In addition to providing a structured nation-wide movement with which New Mexico could coordinate, the USC had available a variety of supporting materials such as fact sheets, petition forms and postcards.

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II. CREATING A COALITIONFor the first nine months of the campaign MEPJA members circulated, at a variety of political events, petitions which publicized the proposed campaign. Then in May 2008 a committee was formed to investigate the possibility of establishing a broad coalition of existing New Mexico organizations which would sponsor the campaign. There were three reasons for doing this:

a. to secure representation from a diverse range of community groups,

b. to enlist more workers, and

c. to concentrate attention on a single political task, rather than on the variety of tasks that MEPJA was undertaking.

In September 2008, drawing on the mailing list of the Albuquerque Center for Peace and Justice, invitations were sent to over 80 groups in the New Mexico peace-and-justice community to attend an organizational meeting. The meeting was held on November 15, and the Coalition to Stopwas created.

$30 Billion to Israel

The Coalition consists of 16 groups from the Catholic, Protestant, Jewish and Muslim communities of New Mexico, as well as from local veterans and human-rights associations:

Pax Christi New Mexico

Pax Christi Saint Bernadette (Albuquerque)

Social Concerns Committee, Albuquerque Unitarian Universalist Fellowship

Another Jewish Voice (Albuquerque)

Another Jewish Voice (Santa Fe)

Muslim Women Outreach

Veterans for Peace (Albuquerque)

Veterans For Peace (Santa Fe)

Amnesty International Chapter 101 (Albuquerque)

United Nations Association, Albuquerque Chapter

Middle East Peace and Justice Alliance

University of New Mexico Coalition for Peace and Justice in the Middle East

Vecinos United

Irish Freedom Committee

New Mexico People’s Weekly Forum

Stop The War Machine

A sustained recruitment effort would very likely enlist a number of additional members.

Over several months, by-laws were adopted, officers chosen and committees established. A bank account was opened, a post-office box rented, a website constructed (www.stop30billion.com) and a listserve developed. Although the Coalition has an Employer Identification Number (EIN), it has not yet applied for tax-exempt non-profit status. Committee structure evolved, eventually settling at five standing committees: Research, Outreach, Media, Advocacy and Direct Action. A Coordinating Committee was formed and was composed of a chairperson, secretary and treasurer, and the chairs of the five standing committees and of any ad hoc committees.

The Coalition then embarked on a variety of activities, including the production of a PowerPoint document on ending military aid, to be used in presentations to community groups. The

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CoalitionCoalition helped found an active student organization at the University of New Jewish-American pro-Palestinian activist, author and public speaker Anna Baltzer. It also lobbied elected officials and met with a number of religious leaders to urge interfaith tolerance on the part of their congregations.

In addition, the Mexico and financed the trip of two students to a BDS conference at Hampshire College in Massachusetts. Coalition members also participated in a variety of demonstrations, including a number of mass actions during the attack on Gaza, a memorial service one year later, a weekly rally throughout 2008 and 2009 for ending military aid to Israel, which was held on Albuquerque’s main street, and several months of a weekly interstate overpass action (called a “Living Sign”) to

“STOP ISRAELI APARTHEID.”

III. THE FIRST BILLBOARDOn April 8, 2009, under a two-month contract with Lamar Outdoor Advertising, the Coalitionerected ten 5-foot x 11-foot billboards throughout Albuquerque with the message “Tell Congress:

STOP KILLING CHILDREN. No More Military Aid to Israel.”

Page 5 of 10

The message was deliberately provocative and was intended to elicit a strong reaction from the opposition, which we hoped would lead to the type of controversy that generates publicity in the local media. This approach is designed (1) to raise awareness of the issue with the general public, (2) to serve an educational function, and (3) to ultimately lead to the broad-based political pressure that is essential if any fundamental change is to occur in U.S. policy regarding Israel.

After the Coalition issued a press release about the billboards, the blog Mondoweiss posted a supportive article that immediately spread through the Internet. In the days that followed, comments both pro and con flowed into the Coalition’s website from around the world. A number of generous donations were received. The Washington Report on Middle East Affairs printed an article about the billboards. Sean Hannity led off one of his daily radio shows blasting the signs.

On April 21 a dedication ceremony featuring Cindy Sheehan took place in front of one of the billboards. Local newspaper and television coverage continued, along with letters to the Albuquerque JournalCoalition’s efforts to restore the signs continued to be received on the Lamar Outdoor Advertising took down all the signs, after only three weeks of the two-month contract period. Lamar’s local manager said that “the advertising was removed due to numerous complaints questioning the facts.” He further stated that Lamar had erred in approving a design that was “factually inaccurate or misleading.”

Within days, the US Campaign to End the Israeli Occupation issued an action alert calling on their members to contact Lamar’s Albuquerque office in protest; Lamar reported receiving up to 200 emails and 10-12 phone calls per hour. Expressions of outrage over Lamar’s action and of support for theCoalition’s Coalition and Lamar, and it was agreed that Lamar would put

Negotiations were held between the the signs back up with the same photographs and a milder message (“Stop Giving Weapons to Israel With Our Tax Dollars!”), and that the Coalition would request its many supporters to stop contacting Lamar. Two weeks later, however, Lamar’s corporate office in Baton Rouge, Louisiana ordered the Albuquerque office to retract the new agreement and cancel the contract with the

CoalitionCoalition rejected Lamar’s Louisiana office and objecting to their decision to re-erect the billboards. Lamar’s Albuquerque office then said they would be willing to erect a replacement sign with the message “Tell Congress: Stop Giving Money to Israel” but that the sign would not be allowed to include any photographs. After considerable internal discussion, the offer on the grounds that such a message would be too severely compromised; a minority of members, however, argued that any billboard opposing aid to Israel was better than none. Lamar issued a full refund, and the matter was closed. There were no grounds for legal action against

Lamar because the contract specifically allowed the company to “reject or withdraw any copy, either before posting and after posting.”

The Coalition printed postcards featuring a photograph of the billboard, and large color placards of the billboard were also printed with the heading “CENSORED BY THE ISRAEL LOBBY”;

these placards were used in street demonstrations and tabling.

On November 3, 2009, two of New Mexico’s three Representatives in the U.S. House, representing Albuquerque and Santa Fe, abstained from the 344-to-36 vote that condemned the U.N.’s Goldstone Report. It is possible that the Coalition’s efforts, and the billboard campaign in

Page 6 of 10

particular, helped persuade the two Representatives not to go along with the majority.

IV. THE SECOND BILLBOARDIn the Fall of 2009 the Coalition found another company – Del Outdoor Advertising, a regional company based in Yuma, Arizona – which was willing to put up a billboard protesting U.S. military aid to Israel. The full-sized billboard emphasized the bread-and-butter issue of taxpayer dollars going abroad during a period of economic hard times: “Tell Congress: Spend Our $$ At

Home, NOT ON THE ISRAELI MILITARY!”

The 10-foot x 30-foot billboard went up the morning of December 2, 2009. Within an hour the sign was taken down, after the owner of the auto transmission business on the site complained that he had already received “three or four angry calls from customers.” The sign was relocated to a less desirable site a few blocks away.

The Coalition asked Del for a more visible location for the billboard, and after six weeks the billboard was moved to a busy street (401 Wyoming Avenue, NE), which is used by the many hundreds of employees who commute to work at Sandia National Laboratories, one of the nation’s primary nuclear weapons labs.

Page 7 of 10

It is important to note that even during the period when the billboard was in a much lessYouTube. Photographs were emailed to many listserves. Three thousand advantageous location, its “virtual vi sibility” far ec lipsed its physic al visibility.

immediately posted on pre-addressed postcards featuring a photograph of the new billboard were distributed to activists to mail to New Mexico’s national senators and representatives. Business cards with a color photo of the billboard were printed for members to distribute.

Articles appeared on national blogs such as Mondoweiss and Muzzlewatch. The Washington Report onplanned coverage. Cindy Sheehan and Retired U.S. Army Colonel and State

Middle East Affairs

Department official Ann Wright endorsed the new sign. Individuals in several large U.S. cities expressed interest in erecting similar billboards, and organizing efforts started in Seattle and San Francisco. And the US Campaign to End the Israeli Occupation decided to promote a national billboard campaign, which was inspired, in part, by the Albuquerque project. All these activities started during the initial six-week period when the billboard itself was not in a highly visible location.

V. BILLBOARD DETAILSThere are many outdoor advertising companies, and it is advisable to approach as many

Selecting a Company and Negotiating a Deal

companies as possible; in that way, one can compare prices and be in a good position to negotiate the best deal possible. The company’s initial offer should be considered the starting point toward a mutually acceptable final agreement. Because of the current economic downturn, it may be possible to obtain substantially lowered rates; some companies offer reduced prices for non-profit groups or for billboards containing Public Service Announcements (PSAs.)

Because of the controversial nature of the Israel/Palestine issue, it is best to describe one’s project in generalities, without being too specific; this approach should help to facilitate the negotiating process. An organization should identify itself as a community group intending to erect educational billboards about the Middle East conflict. Once a deal is negotiated, a contract will be signed; the contract will include the price, the time period, the number and size of boards and, often, the locations where the billboards will be erected.

Lamar Outdoor Advertising is one of the larger national firms, with offices in forty states. Clear Channel is another large firm. There are also many smaller regional and local firms. The rate chart for Clear Channel (http://www.clearchanneloutdoor. com/rates/ index.htm) reveals a veryrough correspondence between population size and billboard rates, with striking inconsistencies.

For example, the rates for San Francisco are more than double the rates for Albuquerque, whereas the rates for Seattle are more than triple the rates for Albuquerque even though the listed Seattle viewership is much smaller than that of San Francisco. (The population of the Albuquerque metropolitan area is approximately 900,000.)

The size of the signs also determines the cost. In Albuquerque, the ten 5-foot x 11-foot billboards

(the April 2009 billboards) cost $770 for the printing of the adhesive paper (enough for twenty separate signs) and $1200 per month rental fee for all ten signs. The adhesive paper is not reusable, so extra paper was printed to allow billboards to be erected in ten new locations in subsequent months, replacing some or all of the original locations, in order to reach different audiences.

Page 8 of 10

The one 10-foot x 30-foot billboard (the December 2009 billboard) cost $600 for the printing of the vinyl “skin” plus $350/month rental fee. Because the vinyl skin for the larger board can be moved from one location to another, the sign can be moved around monthly or bi-monthly without incurring additional printing charges. (The skin drapes around the four edges of the flat steel backing of the billboard structure. The four edges of the skin have sleeves into which wooden rods are inserted. Hooks are placed around the rods and are attached by adjustable straps to girders on the back of the billboard frame.)

Much of the cost of the Albuquerque billboards was covered by the gifts of two Albuquerque residents who each contributed $1000. It is likely that similar donations can be obtained in most other communities, particularly after the billboards are erected and their visual effectiveness can be appreciated.

Designing the BillboardSlogans and images should be selected by the group and given to the graphics designer at the billboard company. Images may be purchased from online stock photography websites such as http://www.dreamstime.com/ and http://www.sxc.hu/. To find suitable illustrations one can

search these sites for “Palestine,” “Israel,” “Gaza,” “West Bank,” etc. The cost of each image is usually $10 or less; it is advisable to acquire high-resolution images.

The two photographs that were selected for the Albuquerque billboards can be seen at

http://www.dreamstime.com/merkava-mk-3-baz-main-battle-tank-image5093100 (Israeli tank)

and http://www.sxc.hu/photo/867014 (Palestinian girl). The photograph of the girl was taken in

Jerusalem’s Old City by Katya Medler-Boym, who saw the girl and her mother walking along the street and asked the mother’s permission to take the girl’s picture. (Because the photographer did not get their names, the girl remains anonymous.) The Coalition had initially hoped to use a widely-publicized photograph of a boy in front of an Israeli tank, but the Associated Press would only sell the rights to use the photo for one month in one location for a fee of $700.

After the Coalition decided on the pictures, the wording and the formatting of the billboards, the in-house designers at Lamar and Del produced the final layouts as part of the initial printing package; the designers modified the images, text and background colors for maximum impact.

Once the artwork was approved by the Coalition and by the billboard companies, the billboard material was ordered. Printing took 1-2 weeks.

When designing the billboard, it should be kept in mind that the advertising company will usually require that the sponsoring group include their name after the phrase “Paid for by” at the bottom of the billboard. This text thus becomes an integral part of the entire lay-out, both in terms of message and of format, and can therefore affect other elements of the design.

Selecting a LocationThe proper selection of the billboard locations is essential to the effectiveness of the campaign.

The sign company will inform the client about available sites. In evaluating potential sites one should take into account such factors as the volume of traffic, the demographics of the viewers, the general visibility of the billboard, surrounding obstructions and distractions, and the signs’ orientation to the sun. Many billboards are equipped with artificial lighting, which considerably extends the hours of visibility.

Page 9 of 10

Other PointsAlthough a website is not essential, it can be a feature which enhances the impact of a billboard, as it enables viewers to read supporting information, email the sponsor, and donate money via check or PayPal.

Expressions of thanks sent to the billboard company and to the owner of the property where the billboard is located can go a long way toward neutralizing protests from the opposition.

It is important to anticipate that members of the opposition may pose as sympathizers and may try to solicit information about your group’s plans.

Opposition to the billboard – including defacing the billboard, complaints in the media, and even removal of the signs – can serve a constructive purpose by publicizing the issue.

VI. TAILORING THE PROJECT TO OTHER COMMUNITIESThe sponsor of a billboard campaign can be several people acting in concert; it can be a single Organizational Structure existing organization or a newly-formed group; it can be a handful of groups acting in a loose ad hoc alliance; or it can be a broad coalition of numerous organizations. The success of a campaign does not necessarily depend on the number of people involved in the effort.

MessageThe billboard message can focus on any number of themes: a sanction, such as stopping U.S. military aid to Israel; a boycott of Israeli products, cultural events, academic exchanges or athletic events; a divestment of funds from Israeli entities or companies which profit from the Occupation; or other aspects of the Israel/Palestine/United States relationship.

Whatever the theme, the message can vary in intensity, from high-intensity (“Stop Killing Children”) to medium-intensity (“Support of Israel is Not in America’s National Interest”) to low-intensity (“Spend our Tax Dollars at Home, Not on the Israeli Military”).

Billboard graphics can make use of previous efforts, such as the Albuquerque billboards’ pictures and color scheme, or the design can be an original creation of the group.

Supporting Actions A group can focus solely on its billboard and website or it can undertake a variety of other taskssuch as lobbying, conducting research, sponsoring speakers, educating local groups, distributing literature, raising funds and participating in street actions.

Range of OptionsIn summary, a billboard campaign can range from a low-effort project (a temporary assembly of several people using an existing design with no website and no group activities) to a high-effort undertaking (a broad coalition erecting original billboard designs, backed up by a website, with ongoing fundraising and a variety of other group endeavors).

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Contact Us If you have any questions or if you are considering undertaking a billboard campaign in your own community, please contact us:

Sue Schuurman: susanschuurman@hotmail.com

Hebah Ahmed: hebah2@gmail.com

Armen Chakerian: dtwm@earthlink.net

Video was. Lamar cited an intense telephone campaign by the opposition directed at theirwebsite, including an offer of help from Medea Benjamin of Code Pink., both for and against the signs. Then on April 28, with no advance warning, sponsored visiting speakers and held a leadership-training workshop which was led by. Ten small billboards protesting U.S. military aid to Israel were erected in Albuquerque

Kirstein Chapter Appeared in Volume 3

Peter Kirstein — Tue, 16 Feb 2010 00:00:16 +0000

The Day that Changed Everything?

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The Deeper Meaning of Military Rage Against Antiwar Protest

Peter Kirstein — Thu, 11 Feb 2010 22:53:28 +0000

I suppose engaging in free psychoanalytic discourse is both errant and perhaps gratuitous. Yet I have often wondered why so many in the military are eager to marginalise and silence those with whom they disagree. For seven years, I have received 100,000s of e-mail, although admittedly much less now than heretofore, concerning my 2002 e-mail exchange with Cadet Robert Kurpiel. This incident led to both a suspension and a written reprimand: the latter no longer in my file. I have published refereed articles, a book chapter, given conferenc papers and many blog posts on this incident. I have spoken to university audiences across the United States on this topic.

Yet the question lingers: why so much anger over one e-mail? Why would so many thousands of military and military-supporters demand my dismissal, castigate me as anti-American and as a “dangerous” threat to America. After all, this is a country that adores its military. We have memorials all over the country. Washington, D.C. is basically a military theme park with statue after statue and open space condemned to military worshipping of battles and victories. You watch, there will be an Iraq war memorial and an AfPak war memorial to commemorate the sacrifice of the fallen without any justice meted out to those leaders, civilian and military, that committed war crimes and violations of international humanitarian law.

We have national holidays for the military. Despite near financial collapse of the country, military-war spending increases despite annual deficits approaching 1.6 trillion dollars for FY 2011 alone! The elites know if you challenge the military, the politics of self-preservation are damaged as the world careens toward nuclear devastation and immiseration due to war and greed. Yet, why would military personnel care what I say? Why did my e-mail so enrage the cadet corps at the Air Force Academy in 2002 that they sent the e-mail to powerful media and family networks to silence me? Why?

I think it may spring from a sense of shame. A knowledge that what they are doing is wrong. Training to kill; training to hate; calling it “engagement” with the enemy; calling the slaughtering of babies and other innocents, intentional or otherwise, ”collateral damage.” The non–stop conferring of awards, honours, medals, pins, parades, ribbons is not quite enough. Some are affected subconsciously that military service has a darker side of evil and that the organised state-killing of other people whom they don’t know and probably would like if they did know is wrong. Yes they are told it is patriotic to kill. Yes they are told it is “service” to one’s nation to end the lives of others. Yes they are brainwashed into believing that military service is the most honourable of all professions: but are they totally? I think not which provides some hope that humans are not entirely convinced, due to their extreme sensitivity, that the art of killing can be bathed in patriotic glory and stupid pow flags as if WE are the victims of our own imperialistic, genocidal wars.

Turn swords into plowshares.

I think many are enraged when verbally attacked because they know the criticism, at least in part, confirms what they wish to deny. They are projecting their own sense of shame onto others. They are silencing the critic as if to silence or defer their own capacity to look themselves in the mirror and ask: why do I carry this rifle? Why do I ride a tank? Why do I use a Predator robot to kill indiscriminately in the AfPak war? Why do I pretend this is a profession as if it were teaching, medicine or social work?

Many in the military are accustomed to the society’s general adoration and respect but an occasional voice of condemnation and disgust cannot be ignored but becomes central to their self-esteem. I served in the military and hated it. I found it stupid, a waste of time and totally beneath my sense of purposeful and creative activity. It was boring. It was primitive. It was racist. It was stupid. It served no purpose whatsoever. Yes I do inform the superpatriots that I served because they should know that free thinkers also wore the U.S. imperialistic uniform. Some who served do not glorify war or feel a special loyalty to America but construe themselves as citizens of the world or of humanity in general. This is counterintuitive to the exact opposite sentiment of military service which is utterly nationalistic and blindly patriotic for the most part. I also reference my military service not to prove my patriotism–for patriotism as Samuel Johnson noted ”is the last refuge of scoundrels”- but to show I am not naive but have some hands on experience about the stupidity and evil of training Americans to kill others in poor, distant lands who are not an existential threat to the vital strategic interests of the United States.

Now before this becomes another incident, but I am ready this time, I recognize and have known folks in the military who are decent people. That is not my issue. The subject here is why some in the military are so determined to silence others while claiming to be the finger in the dike, the “man” on the watch to protect our freedoms. I have publicly praised some at the Air Force Academy who wanted no punishment meted out to me. I also, however, am willing to challenge those in the military who think they are utterly without fault or that their mission and purpose in life is pure and ethical. They need to hear other voices and to rethink military service in a nation that sends so many to die and to kill others for the most venal and illegitimate aims.

A Debate: Prowar Missouri Vietnam Veterans Assess My “Legacy”

Peter Kirstein — Tue, 09 Feb 2010 18:16:24 +0000

I received several e-mail from an individual who claimed to be a highly decorated Vietnam Veteran and whose support group discussed my 2002 antiwar e-mail to a cadet that had been sent to dozens of professors to recruit students to attend an event at the unruly Air Force Academy. Their e-mail contained the subject “Your Legacy.”

I still receive e-mail from individuals concerning this transformative event. Recently, I heard from Emily, who is in California and married to a marine, who described herself as a “cover girl for Runners World.” She used the recent USS Comfort mission in Haiti to hail the humanitarian mission of the military and to disprove my utter distaste for war and the nation that uses war to advance the interests of its elite ruling classes.

War crimes against children with napalm attacks during Vietnam genocide.

———————————————————————————————
From: Chris Gussman – CEG Services Inc. [mailto:cgussman@hughes.net]
Sent: Tue 2/2/2010 4:10 PM
To: Kirstein, Peter N.
Subject: Your legacy

Mr. Kirstein,

I belong to a 60 member Viet-Nam veterans group that meets once a month for friendship and mutual support. During last night’s meeting, the conversation turned to how we were treated by the American public when we came home in the late 60′s and early 70′s. I commented that fortunately today’s vets were treated much better than vets of my era and several people in the group disagreed. While treated somewhat better, they felt that there were still vicious public people out there who had no respect for the sacrifices the American soldiers make every day. Then your name was mentioned as an example of hurtful people in positions of importance. I was not aware of the Air Force Academy incident but it seemed that I was the only one in our group who didn’t know about it. We talked about it for 1 1/2 hours. In the end we took a vote and I was elected to see if I could contact you and deliver the following message:

While every member of our group served in the military to protect your right to hold any opinion, those rights do not protect you from the scorn of others. To criticize the young man who guards your house is unforgivable. The disrespect and arrogance displayed by your words to that Air Force Cadet help explain why academics are considered to be out of touch with reality. We collectively feel that you should be ashamed of yourself.

Chris Gussman
10439 Reynolds Road
Orrick, MO. 64077-8046
Office: (816) 770-5590
Fax (816) 770-5582
Cell (816) 591-8580
cgussman@hughes.net

One can debate how much control the US had over the South Vietnamese government but NO debate it was as autocratic as its neighbor to the north above the 17th Parallel.

———————————————————————————————-
From: Kirstein, Peter N.
To: Chris Gussman – CEG Services Inc.
Sent: Tuesday, February 02, 2010 5:06 PM
Subject: RE: Your legacy

Hi Chris:

Thank you for contacting me and the respectful if not critical tone. I will return it likewise.

While probably not all that relevant, I did serve in a St Louis unit of the US Army Reserves and trained at Fort Leonard Wood in Missouri.

I am sorry if my actions upset your Vietnam Vet group but I believe I stayed the course in appropriately rejecting war. If you read about the incident that you mention, I did engage in mutual apologies with the Air Force Academy and did have subsequent e-mail with then Cadet Kurpiel. With regard to Vietnam, I was very opposed to that war and believe to this day it was a war crime and act of genocide, knowing that the warrior is not always to be blamed for the war. Vietnam was the single most important event of my life, as it probably was yours, and we will obviously have different perspectives.

I am a native St Louisan but live in Chicago now. I see you are near Kansas City in good ol’ Mizzou country,

Best wishes,

Peter

Two to three million Vietnamese killed during the genocide.

———————————————————————————————
Mr. Kirstein,

Thank you for your reply. I admit that I am surprised.

I think you may also be surprised by my small group’s attitude. First, a little more information about the group. We met at the VA hospital in Kansas City between 1968 and 1972. We were all were being treated for injuries sustained in Viet-Nam. Our group of 60 have been awarded 131 Purple Hearts among other medals. I served 3 tours with the USAF between 1964 and 1969. I was injured 3 times (shot twice, hit by missile debris once) and never completely completed any tour (I made it 12 months, 9 months and 11 months). I was awarded 12 medals in addition to 3 Purple Hearts including a Distinguished Flying Cross (which was rarely awarded to an enlisted man).

The part that may surprise you is that, to the man, we agree with your assessment of the war……sort of. We agree that the war was a political exercise and that the war was not fought to win. But war crime and act of genocide? Obviously I don’t agree. To do so would be to brand myself a criminal. I do not believe that I am. I also wonder where your strong opinions were founded. Based on press reports? Were you there? Did you meet the people of South Viet-Nam? Did you see what was going on with your own eyes or did you watch the war on TV. In the almost 3 years that I was there, I met hundreds of South Vietnamese people. Almost all of them went out of their way to thank us or hug us. The people I met wanted us there.

My group’s objection to what you did had to do with an elitist attacking a kid who asked a question having nothing to do with the war. We’re not angry with you because of your anti-war feelings. Hell, we had anti-war feelings as well. We’re angry with you because you were a bully. You apologized because the world figured you out and you were in trouble. I don’t believe your apology was sincere for a moment. You were called out and, when the going got rough, you didn’t have the balls to stand by your convictions. So you apologized. My assessment is that, like most bullies, you are a coward as well.

But, as almost all men who have faced combat, we agree that war is never a good thing. But sometimes it’s what must be done.

And all of us believe that you are a lucky man to have people like Robert Kurpiel protecting you so that you can continue be a talker and a bully without ever having to dirty your hands.

Thank you for your reply,

Chris

Epic leader of the Vietminh and North Vietnam: Democratic Republic of Vietnam (Việt Nam Dân Chủ Cộng Hòa) that resisted Japanese, French and American colonialism and in the latter case, incontestable genocide.

———————————————————————————————–
Dear Chris:

I do not think I was a bully or a coward but a person of principle who demonstrated great courage given the threats and national attacks on me. I do not think it cowardly to protest war in an email that was a response to spam: he sent it to about 60-70 faculty and I was certainly not obligated to recruit folks for an event there. I was too personal in areas but most of the e-mail was antiwar and I don’t think I have to step back from that. Actually I have written about, spoken about and published articles about the Kurpiel incident. This might be of interest:

http://english.sxu.edu/sites/kirstein/archives/553

Whether you were a criminal or not in Vietnam is not for me to decide. I do think Senator John McCain was certainly and deserved his POW status as long as he was treated in accordance with the 1949 Geneva Convention which he apparently was not. Generally, a criminal war does not lead to prosecution of field officers or enlisted personnel unless individual acts such as {Lieutenant William} Calley {My Lai act of genocide} are detected.

I do think the war was genocide and if there were justice in the world, there would have been war crime trials with the following defendants prosecuted for war crimes and violation of international humanitarian law: Westy {General William Westmoreland}, Abrams {General Creighton Abrams who replaced Westy}, McNamara {Secretary of Defence Robert Strange McNamara}, L.B.J. {President Lyndon Baines Johnson}, R.M.N. {President Richard Milhaus Nixon}, Rusk {Secretary of State Dean Rusk under John Kennedy and L.B.J.}, Kissinger {Secretary of State Henry Kissinger under Nixon and President Gerald Ford}.

I don’t think Vietnam Vets deserved parades when they returned, although many got them. I don’t think they were heroes but I do think many were pawns in the game and drafted and should not be blamed for the war. I think it is not easy to condemn a war and celebrate the warrior and maybe that is too bad: but reality.

I suspect your anger toward me is less how I treated a “kid.” It’s not like I ever met him, or spoke to him or that he would cry and break down because of few sentences in an e-mail. He had a much stronger support group that anyone could imagine. No I suspect your anger was the way I assessed the military and this country which is so violent and desirous of war. I have great passions as do you about war and will continue to express them, however, perhaps more artfully.

So good luck and remember it was the government who sent you to war, not the antiwar protesters who wanted the war to end.

Best,

Peter

Kirstein Cites Dr Zinn’s Postwar America: 1945-1971 in Article on Nuclear Genocide in World War II

Peter Kirstein — Mon, 01 Feb 2010 14:01:19 +0000

While authors are asked not to display journal articles for a year, I thought it appropriate to cite one page in which Dr Howard Zinn’s underutilized work, Postwar America: 1945-1971 is referenced. The book covers in surprising detail much of the machinations behind the decision to use atomic weaponry against a defeated and virtually defenceless adversary, Japan, that was nearing a decision to surrender. The citation is in footnote 16. Henry Stimson was secretary of war. Major General Leslie Groves was the director of the Manhattan Project and was obsessed with censorship and control of information related to this evil, monstrous project to develop weapons of mass destruction. The article is “Hiroshima and Spinning the Atom: America, Britain, and Canada Proclaim the Nuclear Age, August 6, 1945,” The Historian, Winter, 2009:

809

…worried that scientists claiming proprietary rights of discovery might disseminate information that would eviscerate government efforts to monopolize all aspects of the nuclear enterprise. While Bush and Conant recommended that the Roosevelt administration disclose many details of the Manhattan Project, Groves was alarmed “that the president might decide that it was wise to release certain facts; the follow up stories and comments to such a release could well be ruinous.”¹³

14. Bush–Conant File, 6.

16. Notes of the Interim Committee Meeting(s), 31 May 1945 and 1 June 1945, cited from Michael B. Stoff, Jonathan F. Fanton, and R. Hal Williams, eds., The Manhattan Project: A Documentary Introduction to the Atomic Age (New York: McGraw-Hill, Inc., 1991), 117, 127–28; Howard Zinn, Postwar America: 1945–1971 (Indianapolis, IN: Bobbs-Merrill, 1973), 9–10.

17. Groves to George Harrison, 21 June 1945; Roll 6, File 75, H–B Files.

European Union Rejects Occupied East Jerusalem as Part of Zionist Entity of Israel

Peter Kirstein — Wed, 09 Dec 2009 00:35:05 +0000

EU backs Jerusalem as joint capital

The European Union said it had ‘never recognised the annexation of East Jerusalem’ [AFP]

The Israeli government had denounced the Swedish proposal, calling it a “dangerous” threat to peace efforts and saying it would undermine the EU’s role as a Middle East peace mediator.

The text talks of a “contiguous” as well as viable Palestinian state, something which would require the inclusion of part of Jerusalem, and also states that the EU “has never recognised the annexation of East Jerusalem”.

Israel captured the area in the 1967 Six Day War, immediately annexed it and claims all of the city as its eternal capital.

The agreed EU statement said that “the European Union will not recognise any changes to the pre-1967 borders”.

The issue had been subject to intense discussion among the European ministers, with some nations wanting to keep the mention of East Jerusalem in the text and others reluctant to be seen as prejudging the result of any eventual Middle East peace deal.

‘Important step’

Jean Asselborn, Luxembourg’s foreign minister, was one of the ministers most supportive of the original Swedish proposal.

East Jerusalem is “not part of Israel,” he said.

“It [the EU position] was a step on the way to having the international community assume its direct responsibility towards ending the Israeli occupation of all the Palestinian territory occupied since 1967.”

Salam Fayed, the prime minister of the Palestinian Authority

Others EU nations, notably Germany, Italy and the Czech Republic, said they were reluctant to be seen to be imposing a settlement on Israel and the Palestinians.”To decide here in Brussels what the future status of Jerusalem should be would be very frustrating for the negotiators,” said Franco Frattini, Italy’s foreign minister.

Nour Odeh, Al Jazeera’s correspondent in Ramallah, said that Salam Fayed, the prime minister of the Palestinian Authority, had provisionally welcomed the EU statement.

Acknowledging the EU position, Fayed said it was a “step on the way to having the international community assume its direct responsibility towards ending the Israeli occupation of all the Palestinian territory occupied since 1967″.

But the Palestinian PM also said any political settlement must enable “the Palestinian people to exercise self-determination, as well as the establishment of an independent and sovereign state, with East Jerusalem as its capital”.

Tim Friend, Al Jazeera’s correspondent in Brussels, said “many observers are saying that Europe filling a vacuum left by the US ,while it’s pre-occupied with other international issues, might [allow Europe to] become much more of a key player in the Middle East peace process.”

Israeli ‘annexation’

Nir Barkat, Jerusalem’s mayor, has written an open letter to Catherine Ashton, the new EU foreign policy chief, warning of the possible consequences of splitting up the city.

Barkat said: “Throughout the history of the world, there is not one important city that was divided that functioned successfully.

“They either reunited or ceased to function properly. The lesson is too clear. Jerusalem must stay united.”.

Scores of Palestinians protested in front of the French and Swedish consulates in Jerusalem to support the EU presidency’s initiative on East Jerusalem.

A confidential report by EU heads of mission in Jerusalem last week accused Israel of actively pursuing the annexation of the east of the city and undermining hopes for peace with Palestinians.

Making The Atomic Bomb, Like Iraq War, Was Based On Lies of German Weapons of Mass Destruction (W.M.D.)

Peter Kirstein — Thu, 13 Aug 2009 13:13:16 +0000

Hiroshima annual remembrance of their holocaust in which 125,000 were killed or injured as the nuclear age entered the annals of diabolical history. {See: Kirstein’s Latest A-Bomb Article}

This date, August 6, 1945, was one of the most important and significant moments in world history. The arrival of the nuclear age with the atomic bombing of Hiroshima by the Americans at the end of World War II, thrust the world into an almost indescribable frenzy of self-destruction. This winter I will be publishing research in a major peer-review journal titled, “Hiroshima and Spinning the Atom: America, Britain, and Canada Proclaim the Nuclear Age, August 6, 1945.” Using materials from the National Archives it will introduce some novel revelations of this horrific and Earth shattering event. While I am prohibited, due to “copyright authorisation,” from revealing too much prior to publication including an abstract, I will, with appropriate circumspection, state the following.

Before the uranium-core bomb exploded in the skies over Hiroshima, the United States was planning a propaganda campaign to sell the nuclear age to the American people and the global community. The article will prove that the beginnings of this campaign preceded the Truman years and that it was multinational in scope. The article will introduce for the first time A-bomb statements on the day of the bombing in a comparative historical context. As usual, American historians primarily focus upon the United States role in the Manhattan Project on which I have previously published but virtually ignore the role played by other “allies” during this period. Several nations are known to have prepared the world for the meaning of the atomic age in the most glowing terms and offer exterminationist rhetoric that debases the human condition and mocks the notion of the “Greatest Generation” with its contemptuous disregard of just war and its supposed moral superiority over the Germans or Japanese.

Many felt that the United States would have a monopoly on the nuclear weapons’ inventory for decades and arrogantly sought to prevent any efforts at international arms control. While the US used the atomic bomb against a nearly defeated and devastated Japan–twice I might add noting the criminal Nagasaki holocaust on August 9–the Soviet Union acquired its atomic bomb just four years later in August, 1949. The race was on and has not stopped as nuclear pride and nuclear elitism, so pronounced by the early nuclear powers, has prodded more vulnerable states to equal the score and avert regime change.

Unfortunately when the Earth was created, it came packed in its crust with uranium which is rather plentiful. Without uranium, a heavy unstable transuranic element with the atomic number 92, there is no atomic bomb: period. One cannot make any type of nuclear weapon–even a hydrogen bomb–without access to uranium. While plutonium was used as the primary fissionable material in the latter Nagasaki “Fat Man” bomb, without uranium one does not acquire plutonium. It is created as a by-product in a nuclear reactor when U-238 is bombarded with another neutron and does not exist in functional amounts in nature. Through reprocessing, which took place at Hanford in Washington State during the Manhattan Project (1942-1945), plutonium is separated and used as a fissionable fuel in nuclear weapons.

Someone forgot to tell the United States of America.

Mr George W. Bush was unfortunately not the first to mislead the American people about the existence of weapons of mass destruction (W.M.D.) Physicists Leo Szilard, Victor Weisskopf, Enrico Fermi, Albert Einstein (though he was more of a pawn in this game), Eugene Wigner and non-scientist Alexander Sachs as early as 1939, two years before the US entered the war, were trying to scare President Franklin Delano Roosevelt into launching an A-bomb programme in order to beat Nazi Germany that they claimed was feverishly and successfully working on an atomic bomb.

The first nuclear arms race was on. The “battle of the laboratories” was the name used in official documents but the problem was there was only one participant in this monstrous and unseemly competition. Germany had no Manhattan Project to speak of, did not create nuclear fission or reach criticality in any pile and never entered into a crash programme as did the US. While it had great physicists such as Werner Heisenberg, Paul Harteck, Otto Hahn (probably the first to discover nuclear fission of uranium), Kurt Diebner and Carl-Friedrich von Weizsäcker who were aware of neutron-splitting fission, it never constructed enrichment plants, gaseous diffusion plants or reprocessing plants and never created an archetype for a nuclear bomb or warhead on their rocketry. There was a “missile gap” but who cares since only conventional warheads were then developed.

Germany was innovative in theoretical physics but not in experimental physics. Its scientists let it down during the war as it underestimated the value of graphite as a moderator to slow down neutrons and basically believed heavy water and natural uranium would cause fission. Of course that would obviate enrichment of U-235 and move to the plutonium option but that was not achieved. Also allied sabotage and bombing of their heavy water assets at the Vemork Hyrdogen-Electrolyis Plant in Norway and research centers such as the Kaiser-Wilhelm Institute in Berlin further stymied their episodic and elementary nuclear-research programme. Germany never even agreed it should develop A-bombs; that decision was never formally emphasised or adopted but of course there was anemic government sponsored research into nuclear fission which fissiled.

It is certain that the atomic bomb was built over a fabrication of lies or, to be more charitable, unseemly and epic exaggeration. No: President Franklin Delano Roosevelt was hardly going to go public and talk about a German nuclear programme in 1939 or 1942, when the Manhattan Engineer District began, since he tried to keep such research in total secrecy but the genesis, the inception, the decision to develop atomic bombs was based on the false and unsubstantiated claim that Germany was in the midst of a crash programme to develop fission weapons. Was it merely faulty intelligence or exaggerated emotions to scare the administration into this Armageddon of death and mayhem and butchery?

A nuclear rival did not exist and Saddam did not possess nuclear weapons either. The entire edifice and raison d’être for the atomic-bomb programme proved to be illusory and non-existent. While Mr Bush merely lied the US into war crimes against Saddam, the scientists who preyed on F. D. R. were not well informed enough to demand morally such a dangerous and possibly Earth-eliminating undertaking with the world moving inexorably toward a nuclear catastrophe. Adolph Hitler had not even invaded Poland when this coterie tried to get President Roosevelt to launch the nuclear A-bomb project which did begin in earnest in 1942.

Yet even when Germany surrendered on May 8, 1945, the nuclear-bomb warfare option did not end. It merely transferred its objectives upon Japan that clearly was not developing nuclear weapons. The hate-filled United States did not allow a noncombat demonstration, a warning or even a continuation of the blockade to coerce a surrender. Not even the full-scale invasion, which they lied about 1,000,000 projected casualties, was likely to ever occur for that was not to deploy large numbers of American invaders across the Tokyo Plain for at least eight months in March 1946.

No modifying, despite the urgings of Secretary of War Henry Stimson and Undersecretary of State Joseph Grew, the barbaric unconditional surrender doctrine to allow the retention of the Emperor occurred–even though it was allowed AFTER the war. Nor was there waiting to see the demoralising effect of the now-resented Soviet invasion of Manchuria. The Truman A-bomb was a revengeful, criminal act without justification or military necessity. Yes scientists such as Tokutaro Hagiwara speculated about fission and even the development of thermonuclear weapons with a U-235 spark to ignite the fusion of hydrogen atoms. Yet not even the US worried about Japan being anything other than a conventional power and no one speculated otherwise.

http://www.mcalcio.com/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2009/06/duck_and_cover_fallout.gif

They used to say “duck and cover” like Bert the Turtle would do the trick. Or a little A-Bomb shelter in the backyard if you are home will be just fine. Or build more warheads and launchers than any other power will “deter.” What kind of a nation do we live in with this type of weapon, to paraphrase Secretary Stimson, “that we wear so ostentatiously on our hip?”

Leo Szilard, Franck Report and other Manhattan Project Physicists Reject Absolute Opposition to Use of the Atomic Bomb

Peter Kirstein — Sun, 09 Aug 2009 10:14:58 +0000

Dr Leo Szilard and the Franck Report avoided unconditional rejection of this carnage in Nagasaki. {See : Kirstein’s Latest A-Bomb Article}

Much has been written how Manhattan Project scientists became antiwar activists DURING World War II and tried to prevent the use of the atomic bomb. Such is not the case since every organised effort put conditions on Japan that if not met, would lead to the nuclear incineration of their country. No unconditional effort to stop the first nuclear war ever took place during the war years from 1939-1945.

The United States and the Axis powers had abandoned any pretext of preserving non-combatant immunity in warfare. The strategic bombings of urban areas was vigorously unleashed by the major powers during World War II as witnessed by the savage destruction of Dresden, Tokyo, Hamburg, Rotterdam, Nanking, and Coventry. As the violence mounted in a war without mercy, the combatants developed the concept of total war in which “soft” non-combatant, civilian populations were added to the traditional target selection of military bases, armies in the field, and key naval staging areas. Even Secretary of War Henry L. Stimson’s dramatic intercession to spare Kyoto, Japan’s ancient capital that abounded with historical and cultural treasures, from nuclear attack, was motivated to protect Japan’s historical and material artifacts and not the city’s civilian population.1

With strategic-nuclear bombing rapidly becoming operational in the final weeks of the war, 171 scientists and support personnel from the Manhattan Engineer District (Manhattan Project) responded by disseminating a flurry of petitions, reports, memoranda, and letters.2 Their purpose was to influence United States policy on how, not whether, the atomic bomb should be introduced into the Asian-Pacific War.

It will be shown that civilian and military officials, journalists, and scholars of the period have inaccurately assessed many of these documents as indicative of either unconditional opposition to the use of the atomic bomb or sharply at odds with Truman Administration policy. In particular, the petitions of physicist Leo Szilard at the Metallurgical Laboratory (Metlab) of the University of Chicago, have been variously interpreted as unalterably opposed to the use of the atomic bomb.3 A reexamination of the petitions will clearly demonstrate conditional and not unconditional opposition to attacking Japan with the atomic bomb. Furthermore, the Metallurgical Laboratory Report of the Committee on Political and Social Problems (the Franck Report) has repeatedly been assessed as unalloyed opposition to any combat role for the A-bomb. While their authors’ certainly shared misgivings in abandoning conventional warfare, it will be shown they eschewed an unconditional, absolutist rejection of the use of the atomic bomb.

One of the most detailed and important Manhattan Project documents concerning the A-bomb’s potential use was the Franck Report.4 James Franck, a German-refugee physicist and 1925 Nobel laureate, was the associate director of the chemistry division at Metlab and the committee chair.5 The Franck Report portrayed ominously the security implications of an unannounced use of nuclear weapons, was visionary in its prediction of an abbreviated American atomic monopoly, and correctly wished to harness weapons of mass destruction to an international-control regime. It advocated a noncombat demonstration on a “desert or a barren island” that would avoid international “horror and revulsion” against an unannounced American-nuclear attack in the Pacific.6 Although conceding the introduction of the A-bomb would trigger a nuclear arms race, its arguments in favor of a non-lethal test demonstration were tactical, not ethical.7 America’s fission bombs were too weak and “of comparatively low efficiency and small size” to “break the will” of Japan.8 Since many Japanese cities had already been “reduced to ashes” by conventional bombing, a surprise nuclear attack would only marginally influence Japan’s decision to surrender.9

However, the Franck Report avoided unconditional opposition to the use of nuclear weapons, and even recommended certain preconditions that might justify their introduction. These might include the approval of the incipient United Nations, the support of the American people, and a Japanese rejection of a surrender ultimatum: “The weapon might perhaps be used against Japan if the sanction of the United Nations (and of public opinion at home) were obtained, perhaps after a preliminary ultimatum to Japan to surrender or at least to evacuate certain regions…”10 The report also avoided recommending a modification of unconditional surrender, established at the Casablanca conference in January 1943, in order to facilitate a diplomatic solution to the war.

The Franck Report was alarmed about the potentially adverse diplomatic consequences that might ensue from a sudden nuclear attack, and counseled the administration on how best to avoid widespread opprobrium should the A-bomb be used against Japan; the government should defer combat use until the international community witnessed a technical demonstration, for this would lessen criticism particularly if “other nations may assume a share of responsibility for such a fateful decision.”11 While the Metlab scientists appropriately looked beyond the military application of the bomb and considered the impact of nuclear proliferation on United States national-security policy, the Franck Report not only avoided total opposition to a nuclear offensive, but also offered recommendations on how best to use the A-bomb without America becoming a nuclear-pariah state.

Arthur Holly Compton was the 1927 Nobel laureate in physics and director of the University of Chicago’s Metlab. It was the great scientist who originated the myth that Szilard’s petition drive and the Franck Report were unconditionally opposed to any atomic attack against Japan. Compton offered highly opinionated summaries before forwarding Metlab and Clinton Engineer Works (Oak Ridge, Tennessee) documents to Washington. He sent a copy of the Franck Report to George Harrison, a special consultant to Stimson and the chair, in the secretary’s absence, of the eight-person Interim Policy Committee on Atomic Energy (Interim Committee) in 1945.12 Included was Compton’s highly subjective analysis that the report wanted “outlawed by firm international agreement,” any “permitting [of] the bombs to be used in war.” Compton distanced himself from the report by arguing that any postponement in implementing the atomic option would “make the war longer and more expensive of human lives…”13 Nowhere does Compton mention that the Franck Report delineated a host of specific conditions that, if implemented, could justify a B-29 A-bomb campaign against Japan.

Dr Arthur Holly Compton

Harrison later informed Stimson in a “Top Secret” memorandum on June 26 about the existence of the Franck Report, and also inaccurately described it as rejecting the “use of the bomb, so nearly completed, against any enemy country at this time.”14 Several documentary and general histories of the atomic bomb by Barton Bernstein, Jeffrey Porro, et al., and William Sweet, excluded in their abridged reprints of the Franck Report those sections that only conditionally dissented from an A-bomb attack or that assessed the negative diplomatic fallout that might erupt from a military demonstration.15

At Metlab in July 1945, with the decision to use the atomic bomb only weeks away, Szilard began the petition movement. A Hungarian émigré, he helped create the Manhattan Project with his early conceptualization of the nuclear-chain reaction and his drafting of the August 1939 Albert Einstein letter to President Franklin D. Roosevelt—delivered by Russian-born Lehman Corporation economist Alexander Sachs.16 Szilard has been repeatedly portrayed as the Manhattan Project’s chief architect in organizing protest against the use of the atomic bomb at the end of World War II. Yet Manhattan Project documents reveal Szilard neither unconditionally opposed the atomic bombings of Japan nor significantly deviated from Truman Administration policy.

In early 1945, with Germany’s defeat a near certainty, Szilard initially attempted through an Einstein letter of introduction to meet with Roosevelt, and persuade the president that the original rationale in developing the atomic bomb had vanished. Yet the president’s death on April 12, 1945 precluded such an encounter, and Szilard subsequently initiated the petition effort with the circulation of his July 3 petition and cover letter of July 4, 1945 among scientists from both Metlab and Clinton.17 There was an unsuccessful effort to distribute the petition at Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico, which built and assembled the weapons that were used against Hiroshima and Nagasaki on August 6 and August 9, 1945. J. Robert Oppenheimer, the Los Alamos director, thwarted any petition distribution because he believed, somewhat hypocritically, a scientist should not attempt to influence the policy-making process of the national-security elites.18

While the cover letter unambiguously denounced the immorality of using nuclear weapons in opposing “on moral grounds…the use of these bombs in the present phase of the war,” the actual petition was less emphatic in its opposition to abandoning conventional warfare.19 If Japan did not accept American-“imposed” surrender terms that consisted of vague guarantees of “peaceful pursuits in their homeland,” the United States “might require a reexamination of her position” which could lead to the use of the atomic bomb.20 This first petition on a nuclear-related event did not propose an atomic warning or any concrete steps that might avoid the use of the A-bomb. Szilard, who later opposed a nuclear test-ban treaty in the 1960s that would reduce radioactive fallout and achieve some strategic stability in the wake of the Cuban Missile Crisis, did not advance any non-lethal test scenario that might have induced a Japanese surrender.21

Leo Szilard pronounced “Silard”

In paragraph six, Szilard’s petition repeated the cover letter’s condemnation of nuclear weapons with a vituperative critique of both conventional and nonconventional-strategic bombing of Japan:

The last few years show a marked tendency toward increasing ruthlessness. At present our Air Forces, striking at the Japanese cities, are using the same methods of warfare which were condemned by American public opinion only a few years ago when applied by the Germans to the cities of England. Our use of atomic bombs in this war would carry the world a long way further on this path of ruthlessness.22

This plea for atomic restraint only applied to using nuclear weapons “in the present phase of the war.”23 This was consistent with the petition’s call for an American “reexamination” of its nuclear-use policy should Japan not accede to dictated terms of surrender.

At the Clinton Laboratory, Szilard’s petition triggered a vigorous response. Eighteen Clinton scientists signed a petition that supported Szilard’s effort except for the latter’s final paragraph. Similar to the Franck Report, which the signers did not see, it recommended sharing American “responsibility for use of atomic bombs…with our allies.”

The amended petition, while repeating Szilard’s vague surrender terms that allowed Japan a “peaceful development in their homeland,” explicitly advocated an atomic warning prior to any A-bomb offensive:24 “We…feel that our attitude is more clearly expressed if its last paragraph is replaced by the following…’Convincing warnings have been given that a refusal to surrender will be followed by the use of a new weapon.’”25 This appeal for an atomic warning went beyond any Szilard petition. While Compton conveniently ignored the Clinton demand for an atomic warning in pursuing his own agenda of prompt, immediate use, his general characterization of its framers as “reading the minds of Mr. Truman and Mr. Stimson” accurately reflected the document’s avoidance of unconditional opposition to the use of the atomic bomb.26

A Clinton “counterpetition” effort also appeared that strongly supported the unconditional use of the weapon. George W. Parker, a chemist and leader of this small but vocal group, mailed Compton a letter which has eluded historical scrutiny on July 16, 1945—the same day as the first nuclear explosion at Trinity, in the appropriately named New Mexico desert, Jornada del Muerto (Journey of Death). While not representing government policy, Parker’s explicit written support for atomic diplomacy was one of the first to appear in any World War II document. Parker was impressed with the diplomatic advantages that would accrue from unveiling such an “impressive weapon.” As a winning weapon, the A-bomb would confer an “impressive victory…[and] should inspire American diplomacy and world opinion to effectively tame the present hard-booted Russian ego which is now an embarrassing threat to plans for world security.”27 Specifically rejecting an atomic warning and brushing aside fears of diplomatic isolation following the weapon’s use, Parker rejected any “political or moral issue” that might dissuade the government from authorizing an immediate use of the atomic bomb. It advocated “winning the war.”28

During this frenetic July when dozens of atomic scientists endeavored to influence the endgame of their unprecedented creation, Parker also released a petition, co-endorsed by D. S. Ballantine, that smeared Szilard’s petition movement as unAmerican. Titled “A Petetion [sic] to the Administration of Clinton Laboratories,” it was unusually strident and provocative as it unleashed a vitriolic condemnation of Szilard.29 Declaring itself a “counterpetition” and evoking the language and ideological nationalism that would typify McCarthyism, the Parker-Ballantine petition denounced Szilard as a threat to national security.30 “[T]he original Szilard petition has exposed the security of the DSM project. Certainly, if one such petition, with the information and dangerous implications it has, can pass through… plant and project administration, we feel that every individual may assume open season and compete to be sure that his own aquiesence [sic] or dissension is equally well broadcast.”31

“The Greatest Generation’s” Destruction of Innocents in Nagasaki

The Parker-Ballantine petition claiming to represent true patriotism, affirmed its “sentiments” were shared by “particularly those who have sons and daughters in the foxholes and warships of the Pacific.”32 While noting the Metlab petition’s ethical misgivings concerning weapons of mass destruction, the two scientists described accurately its less than unqualified opposition: “If practical necessities demand its [the bomb’s] use, then the moral issue should be bypassed. It should be used if the nation’s life were endangered, the petition went on to say.”33

In their petition, Parker and Ballantine rejected concerns that an unannounced A-bomb attack would precipitate international outrage, or threaten global security in introducing a new destructiveness of unprecedented magnitude. Deployment of the latest military technology always generates fear the petition alleged, but subsequent to widespread proliferation into nation-state arsenals, it becomes an “everyday implement of war.” So too would nuclear weapons as “future generations will come to regard this latest device with less and less regard.”34

The Clinton petitions, counterpetition, and letters were delivered to Martin D. Whitaker, physicist and director of the Tennessee laboratory, and the Oak Ridge scientists’ chief conduit to Washington. Whitaker subsequently gave them to Colonel Kenneth D. Nichols, Corps of Engineers, and a principal deputy of Major General Leslie R. Groves—the director of the Manhattan Project since its inception on August 13, 1942. Nichols, who earned a doctorate and later became a major general, was a key link in the communication’s channel between the Manhattan Project scientists and Washington.35 Nichols subsequently shared them with Compton, hoping to receive a summary analysis, but Compton confined his written analysis during the war only to those petitions and reports written by Metlab personnel.36

Two weeks after circulating his July 3 petition, Szilard submitted a second revision that had the support of seventy Metlab personnel. The signers’ names did not appear on a single-master petition but were scattered among nine different copies that were circulated among the various laboratory’s division sections.37 As a result, there have been widely disparate accounts of the precise number of names that appeared on the last Manhattan Project petition of World War II. At least four times in 1945 Szilard reported gathering sixty-seven signatures on the July 17th petition.39 Major General F. L. Parks referred to “some sixty scientists” in a letter to A. J. Muste of The Fellowship of Reconciliation.39 In 1960 Szilard actually reduced the number to “about sixty members” in an interview with U.S. News and World Report.40 While incorrectly identifying a quotation from the Franck Report and attributing it to Szilard’s petition, Lloyd Gardner stated only “several atomic scientists” signed the July petition.41 Alperovitz claimed some sixty-nine signatures were affixed to the petition.42 Kai Bird and Lawrence Lifschultz stupidly claimed there were 155 names appearing on Szilard’s July 17th petition which was only two fewer than the total number of signed supporters of all Manhattan Project petitions!43

A composite list of the July 17th petition at the National Archives contained the seventy names that appeared on nine-separate petition copies along with their job descriptions at the Metallurgical Laboratory.44 A revised, more detailed list, that was probably completed at the end of 1946, revealed a more intrusive ongoing-security monitoring operation. Those who signed the petition were now categorized as “important” or “not important,” and included the circumstances under which an individual might have resigned from the Manhattan Project.45 While there is no evidence of a post-petition purge, an ongoing intelligence-gathering operation of atomic scientists who attempted to influence the decision to use the atomic bomb, anticipated inappropriate national-security excesses during the Cold War.46

Szilard’s revised petition of July 17th never circulated outside Chicago and, unlike the draft of July 3rd, received no feedback from Clinton Engineer Works’s colleagues. While efforts were made by senior officials to draw major distinctions between the July 3 and July 17 versions, they were strikingly similar. Each contained eight paragraphs and neither advocated total opposition to the use of the atomic bomb. The final petition did not differ substantively from the original, but merely adopted a more measured, conciliatory tone in its critique of the possible use of atomic weapons. The first petition’s declaration that “the destruction of Japanese cities” might be effective but inappropriate, was replaced by the less provocative—“attacks by atomic bombs”—which removed specific criticisms of urban targeting. The July 3 petition warning that Japan’s refusal to abide by American surrender terms might justify a nuclear response, was rewritten with a similar warning that the United States “might…find itself forced to resort to the use of atomic bombs.”47

Dr Szilard’s July 17 petition that conditionally supported the use of the atomic bomb.

The July 3 petition’s denunciation of nuclear weapons as “primarily a means for the ruthless annihilation of cities,” was substituted with the less critical observation that they “provide…nations with new means of destruction.” The July 3 petition’s sixth paragraph, as cited earlier, which twice denounced the “ruthlessness” inherent in strategic bombing, was replaced with a more analytic reflection that nuclear proliferation among competing powers could significantly attenuate international stability.

Significantly, the revised petition retained the earlier provisions for a nuclear attack should “the terms which will be imposed upon Japan have been made public in detail and Japan knowing these terms has refused to surrender.”48 The revised petition concluded with a deferential request that the president, before authorizing the use of the atomic bomb, take cognizance of the petition’s “considerations” and “other moral responsibilities.”49 While the petitions deviated rhetorically in their assessment of the potential use of the atomic bomb, they both unambiguously outlined conditions that could allow its criminal, barbaric introduction into the Asian-Pacific War.

Szilard’s petitions omitted specific antibomb conditions that might have thwarted the genocidal use of this horrific weapon. Possible options of maintaining the blockade around the Japanese islands, continuing the mass murder city-busting air raids, or modifying unconditional surrender to allow the retention of the emperor were not included in any Metlab petition. Both the Franck Report and the July 13 Clinton petition at least recommended a non-combat demonstration or an atomic warning prior to the decision to deploying the uranium-core gravity bomb against Japan. Yet Szilard is referred to as the first “moral philosopher of the nuclear age.”50

Nevertheless, several officials claimed Szilard had to compromise his putative antibomb position in order to obtain a significant number of signatures on his petition. While certainly true the Hungarian émigré revised the original in order to obtain greater support, the original only included conditional opposition to the use of the atomic bomb. Compton and others who claimed a Metlab probomb consensus thwarted Szilard’s alleged anti-nuclear pacifism, were merely attempting to quell any laboratory opposition to an immediate, combat role for the atomic bomb.

According to Captain R. Gordon Arneson, the Interim Committee’s recording secretary, Szilard’s second petition was categorical in “urging that the bomb not be used in the present war.”51 Besides failing to acknowledge the petition’s explicit avoidance of unconditional opposition to the use of the A-bomb on a defenceless adversary, Arneson dismissed the petition endeavor as frivolous due to the scientific community’s supposed representation on the Scientific Panel.52

Compton also misinterpreted and attempted to discredit the petition drive in a July 24 memorandum to Nichols. Like Arneson’s misreading of the July 17 petition, Compton erred dramatically in his interpretation of the earlier petition as an absolutist unsuccessful effort to derail the use of the atomic bomb. Compton claimed Szilard failed in “seeking signatures requesting no use of the new weapons in this war.”53 In his postwar memoir, Compton repeated his claim that the July 3 petition “called for outright rejection of the use of atomic bombs.”54 The Metlab director averred it was rejected by other scientists, thereby, forcing Szilard “to rephrase it so as to approve use of the weapons after giving suitable warning and opportunity for surrender under known conditions.”55

Nichols, who essentially lifted Compton’s analysis of Szilard’s petition campaign, sardonically observed that “the more informed individuals” at Metlab refused to sign the original draft because they “support the present plans for use of the weapon.” Like Compton, he mistakenly claimed the second petition was significantly altered “as a result of opposition… in order to get signers…”56 Ironically, Compton’s and Nichols’s assessment of the restrained anti-use posture of the July 17 petition were more accurate than that of its author. Szilard’s July 19 cover letter to Compton twice claimed the final version emphasized “the moral issue only” despite its mere conditional dissent from using the A-bomb.

Yet Szilard contradicted his own assessment by describing considerable disagreement among the seventy signers of the document. Some supported “early” use of the bomb, because delay might create the impression that the United States was attempting to conceal its nuclear monopoly and “cause distrust on the part of other nations… ”57 Others feared a nuclear-arms race with Russia would result unless a “demonstration” was delayed until after the United States identified what “course it intended to follow” in arms control and development during the postwar period.58

Compton almost certainly submitted to Washington, without Szilard’s knowledge or consent, the July 3 petition since it was not intended for actual transmittal; only the final July 17 document was sent to Compton with the purpose of reaching the White House. Szilard delivered to Compton six unsigned copies, and one signed copy that was placed inside a separate envelope. Szilard’s intent was to conceal the names of his supporters by protecting their “privilege under the Constitution,” and requested the signed copy be seen only by those “authorized to open the mail of the president.”59 Nichols then delivered by military police courier the ten Metlab and Clinton petitions and letters to Groves.60

Despite Compton’s and Farrington Daniels’s fallacious assertion that the documents “were transmitted to the White House,” Arneson stated definitively that Truman never saw the Manhattan Project materials that were sent to Washington.61 Groves kept them for about a week until August 1, when he finally routed them to the secretary of war after Stimson had returned from the Potsdam Conference outside Berlin. “It was decided that no useful purpose would be served by transmitting…[them] to the White House, particularly since the President was not then in the country.”62

Raymond Gram Swing: moral, ethical but propagated anti-bomb myth.

The popular culture in the postwar period witnessed additional erroneous portrayals of the Szilard petitions as unconditionally opposed to the decision to use the atomic bomb. Raymond Swing, an immensely popular ABC radio newsperson, denounced America’s-atomic monopoly, advocated world government to restrain unlimited-state sovereignty, and referred to a “communication…to President Truman after the first experiment at Los Alamos [sic] proved to be a success…[as] a plea that the bomb…not be dropped over Japan before a test demonstration.”63 Fletcher Knebel and Charles W. Bailey misrepresented the July 3 petition as “ask[ing] Truman not to use the bomb at all,” without revealing its highly qualified opposition to an atomic offensive.64 They also claimed incorrectly in their Look article that Szilard, in seeking greater support, changed the July 3 petition’s demand of “no use of the A-bomb at all” to requiring that a “warning” must precede any authorized use of the atomic bomb.65

Jacob Bronowski wrote that Szilard, “[a]lways… wanted the bomb to be tested openly before the Japanese and an international audience, so that the Japanese should know its power and should surrender before people died.”66 However, no reference to “no use,” a test demonstration, or any non-lethal detonation ever appeared in a Szilard petition. More recently Martin Harwit, former director of the Smithsonian Air and Space Museum, reprinted the July 17 petition and correctly described its modest opposition to using the atomic bomb in the Pacific. However, he claimed inaccurately that only “as a last resort” should the atomic bomb be used against Japan.67

The atomic scientists who attempted to influence one of the twentieth century’s most fateful decisions, operated within a narrow ideological consensus that only modestly questioned the decision to use the atomic bomb. Manhattan Project officials, historians, and journalists have too often emphasized the supposed chasm between the national-security managers who formulated policy and the Manhattan Project scientists who built the bomb. While the airburst-atomic devastation of a non-nuclearJapan unleashed the nuclear arms race and threatened the human race, there was no movment among the supposed dissenters to reject any conditions for the transformation of World War II into an orgiastic nuclear war.

1. Gar Alperovitz, The Decision to Use the Atomic Bomb and the Architecture of the American Myth (New York, 1995), 531-32; Barton J. Bernstein, “The Atomic Bombings Reconsidered,” Foreign Affairs, Jan-Feb 1995, 147.

2. Of that total, Leo Szilard, James J. Nickson, and George W. Parker signed more than one document, resulting in 168 different signatures.

3. The name “Metallurgical Laboratory,” was a ruse that served as a “convenient blind.” Arthur H. Compton to Irwin Stewart, April 30, 1943, roll 10, file 156, Bush-Conant File Relating to the Development of the Atomic Bomb, 1940-1945, Records of the Office of Scientific Research and Development, Record Group 227; National Archives—Great Lakes Region (Chicago).

4. Michael B. Stoff, Jonathan F. Fanton, and R. Hal Williams, eds.,The Manhattan Project: A Documentary Introduction to the Atomic Age (New York, 1991), 140-47. In addition to Franck, the other committee members were Donald J. Hughes, James J. Nickson, Eugene Rabinowitch, Glenn T. Seaborg, Joyce C. Stearns, and Leo Szilard.

5. Barton J. Bernstein, ed., The Atomic Bomb: The Critical Issues (Boston, 1986), 25.

6. Ibid., 26-27. “Horror and revulsion” did not represent the Franck Report’s own reaction to a possible atomic attack on Japan, but those of the American public and the international community.

7. The use of the term “demonstration” has often confounded students of the war because of the myriad applications of the term. Frequently, it referred to the use of the atomic bomb in a non-combat mode such as an uninhabited area in Japan or even the United States. A “technical” or a “test” demonstration’s purpose was to induce Japan’s surrender or to gain international support should a combat use against urban areas subsequently ensue. The term “military demonstration” could suggest a “limited” counterforce attack against a military target that would produce minimal “collateral damage” to civilians. “Military demonstration,” however, was frequently used as a euphemism for strategic nuclear bombing of a full range of military and non-military assets.

8. Stoff, et al., eds., Manhattan Project, 143. The term “fission,” based on cell division in biology, refers to a neutron splitting of a uranium (or plutonium) nucleus into two smaller and similar-sized nuclei. Physicists Lise Meitner and her nephew Otto Robert Frisch coined the term in 1938.

9. Ibid.

10. Stoff, et al., eds., Manhattan Project, 144. For support of the development of the atomic bomb and the Franck Report’s, misspelled as “Frank,” surrender ultimatum as a means of “transferring the burden of responsibility to the Japanese themselves,” see Norman Cousins and Thomas K. Finletter, “A Beginning for Sanity,” The Saturday Review of Literature, June 15, 1946, 6-7.

11. Ibid., 147.

12. National Archives Microfilm Publications Pamphlet Describing M1108, “Harrison-Bundy Files Relating to the Development of the Atomic Bomb, 1942-1946,” (Washington, D. C., 1982), 1. In addition to Stimson and Harrison, other members of the Interim Committee were Ralph Bard, Vannevar Bush, Jimmy Byrnes, William L. Clayton, Karl T. Compton, and James B. Conant. Bard, undersecretary of the navy, authored a memorandum that has also been erroneously portrayed as a great departure from the Interim Committee’s consensus on using the atomic bomb “as soon as possible, on a war plant surrounded by workers’ homes…” While recommending an atomic warning, bilateral talks “somewhere on the China coast,” and an offer to retain the emperor, Bard proposed a mere two-to-three day bombing delay to induce Japan’s surrender on these terms. Notes of the Interim Committee Meeting, June 1, 1945; roll 4, file 3; Correspondence (“Top Secret”) of the Manhattan Engineer District, 1942-1946, Records of the Office of the Chief of Engineers, Record Group 77; National Archives—Great Lakes Region (Chicago). [Emphasis in original]; Ralph A. Bard, “Memorandum on the Use of S-1 Bomb,” June 27, 1945; roll 6, file 76, Harrison-Bundy Files Relating to the Development of the Atomic Bomb, 1942-1946, Records of the Office of the Chief of Engineers, Record Group 77; NA—Great Lakes Region (Chicago). [Hereafter referred to as H-B Files]. S-1 was one of several code names used for the Manhattan Project during the war.

13. Compton to Secretary of War–Attention: Mr. George Harrison, June 12, 1945, 1-2, roll 6, file 76, H-B Files.

14. Martin J. Sherwin, A World Destroyed: The Atomic Bomb and the Grand Alliance (New York, 1975), 305.

15. Bernstein, Atomic Bomb, 26-9; Jeffrey Porro, Paul Doty, Carl Kaysen, and Jack Ruina, eds., The Nuclear Age Reader (New York, 1989); 11-13, William L. Sweet, The Nuclear Age: Atomic Energy, Proliferation, and the Arms Race, 2nd ed. (Washington, 1988), 9.

16. National Archives Microfilm Publications Pamphlet Describing M1392, “Bush-Conant File Relating to the Development of the Atomic Bomb, 1940-1945,” (Washington, D. C., 1990), 2.

17. Albrecht Fölsing, Albert Einstein: A Biography (New York, 1997), 719-20.

18. Ronald E. Powaski, March to Armageddon: The United States and the Nuclear Arms Race, 1939 to the Present (New York, 1987), 18. Joseph Rotblat, 1995 Nobel Peace laureate, left Los Alamos in 1944 upon learning that Germany was not developing an atomic bomb. His moral opposition to continued atomic-weapons development was, however, a solitary act of protest and not part of any organized effort. He was threatened with arrest if he discussed his anti-bomb beliefs and, therefore, dissembled that family reunification in Europe was his reason for leaving the Manhattan Project. See Joseph Rotblat, “Leaving the Bomb Project,” in Ending War: The Force of Reason, Essays in Honour of Joseph Rotblat, Maxwell Bruce and Tom Milne, eds. (London, 1999), 12-13; Susan Landau, “From Fission Research to a Prize for Peace,” Scientific American, January 1996, 39.

19. “Szilard Petition Cover Letter,” July 4, 1945, roll 9, file 108, H-B Files.

20. “A Petition to the President of the United States,” July 3, 1945, roll 9, file 108, H-B Files.

21. Lawrence S. Wittner, Resisting the Bomb: A History of the World Nuclear Disarmament Movement, 1954-1970 (Stanford, 1997), 256.

22. “Petition to the President,” July 3, 1945.

23. Ibid. [Emphasis Added).

24. Oak Ridge Petition, July 13, 1945.

25. Ibid. [Emphasis added]. This would have contrasted significantly with the Potsdam Declaration of July 26 which did not specify an atomic weapon in its warning of “prompt and utter destruction.”

26. Arthur Holly Compton, Atomic Quest: A Personal Narrative (New York, 1956), 243. Compton belonged to the Scientific Advisory Panel that found no “acceptable alternative to direct military use.”

27. George W. Parker to Arthur Holly Compton, July 16, 1945; roll 6, file 76, H-B Files. M. D. Whitaker’s name appears just below Compton’s as an addressee in whose care the letter would be sent to Compton. On atomic diplomacy see Alperovitz, Atomic Diplomacy: Hiroshima and Potsdam, the Use of the Atomic Bomb and the American Confrontation with Soviet Power (New York, 1985); Alperovitz, Decision to Use; Powaski, The Cold War: The United States and the Soviet Union, 1917-1991 (New York, 1998), 67.

28. Parker to Compton, July 16, 1945.

29. “A Petetion [sic] to the Administration of Clinton Laboratories,” ND, roll 6, file 76, H-B Files.

30. William Lanouette, “A Note on the July 17th Petition,” Kai Bird and Lawrence Lifschultz, eds., Hiroshima’s Shadow (Stony Creek, Conn. 1998), 558-59.

31. “Petetion [sic] to the Administration.” DSM stood for Development of Substitute Materials which was yet another code name for the secret atomic-bomb project. Shortly after the war, Ballantine became more circumspect in his overt support for nuclear weapons when he signed a Clinton petition that criticized General Leslie R. Groves for publicly dismissing the possibility of nuclear proliferation and claiming an American nuclear monopoly would guarantee victory in a future war. “To the Interim Committee on Nucleonics,” September 24, 1945, roll 6, file 77, H-B Files. I was informed about the September petition by Gene Dannen e-mail to the author, July 12, 1999. Dannen’s website, http://www.dannen.com/szilard.html contains a very useful annotated chronology of many documents from Manhattan Project scientists that involve the decision to use the atomic bomb.

32. Ibid.

33. Ibid. While it accurately assessed in principle the conditional-moral argumentation of Szilard’s petition, the latter claimed, after Germany’s surrender, that the initial rationale of DSM to prevent a German atomic monopoly was “averted.”

34. Ibid.

35. Interview with Dr. Albert Wattenberg, April 24, 1992, 24, Argonne National Laboratory History Project, Albert Wattenberg Papers, National Archives—Great Lakes Region (Chicago). This is a transcript of an oral history with Wattenberg, a Metlab physicist, who signed the Szilard petition.

36. Arthur H. Compton to Colonel K. D. Nichols, July 24, 1945, roll 6, file 76, H-B Files.

37. “A Petition to the President of the United States,” July 17, 1945, roll 6, file 76, H-B Files. The copies varied in numbers of signatures from two to fourteen.

38. Leo Szilard to Arthur Holly Compton, July 19, 1945 and August 6, 1945, roll 6, file 76, H-B Files; See also Leo Szilard to Matthew J. Connelly, August 17, 1945; Leo Szilard to Robert M. Hutchins, August 29, 1945, in Spencer R. Weart and Gertrude Weiss Szilard, eds., Leo Szilard: His Version of the Facts, Selected Recollections and Correspondence (Cambridge, Mass., 1978) 215-16, 220.

39. F. L. Parks to A. J. Muste, May 31, 1946, roll 6, file 76, H-B Files.

40. “President Truman Did Not Understand,” U.S. News and World Report, August 15, 1960, 69.

41. Lloyd C. Gardner, Architects of Illusion: Men and Ideas in American Foreign Policy, 1941-1949 (New York, 1970), 182. The Franck Report initially was published in “Before Hiroshima,” The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, May 1, 1946.

42. Alperovitz, Decision to Use, 190.

43. Bird and Lifschultz, “Editors’ Note,” 552. In addition to the seventy signatures on the Szilard petition, eighty-seven names appear on Clinton Laboratories petitions. These figures exclude the July 3rd petition that was superseded by the July 17th version. However, Szilard later claimed he obtained “about fifty-three signatures” on the July 3rd draft. See Weart and Szilard, Leo Szilard, 187.

44. The list is untitled and contains only the date of the Szilard petition: July 17, 1945, roll 9, file 108, H-B Files. Ten women signatories appeared, in the following order, on the petition’s composite list: Ethaline Hartge Cortelyou, junior chemist, Katharine Way, research assistant, Mary Burke, research assistant, Mildred C. Ginsberg, computer, Hoylande Young, senior chemist, Information Section, Miriam P. Finkel, associate biologist, Mary M. Dailey, research assistant, Margaret H. Rand, research assistant, Health Section, Marguerite N. Swift, associate physiologist, Health Group, and Marietta Catherine Moore, technician. Of the eighty-seven Clinton personnel who signed petitions, all appear to be male.

45. The revised composite is untitled and contains only the date of the Szilard petition: July 17, 1945, roll 6, file 76, H-B Files. A handwritten note with unrecognizable initials accompanied it: “This is a list of people who signed the Szilard Petition of 17 July 45 to the President. There is included in brief the information on each person available in the Chicago area files.” July 2, 1947, roll 6, file 76, H-B Files.

46. For a comprehensive treatment of Cold War repression of liberal scientists see Jessica Wang, American Science in an Age of Anxiety: Scientists, Anticommunism, and the Cold War (Chapel Hill, 1999).

47 “Petition to the President,” July 3, 1945; “Petition to the President,” July 17, 1945. [Emphasis added].

48. Ibid. [Emphasis added].

49. Ibid.

50. Donna Gregory, ed., The Nuclear Predicament: A Sourcebook (New York, 1986), 5.

51. R. Gordon Arneson, “Memorandum for the Files,” May 24, 1946, 4, roll 6, file 76, H-B Files. While recording secretary, Arneson was then a second lieutenant. See also Richard Rhodes, The Making of the Atomic Bomb (New York, 1988), 634, 644.

52. “Notes for Possible Use of Secretary Patterson In Talking to Mr. Charles Ross,” ND, roll 6, file 76, H-B Files. Robert Patterson followed Stimson as Truman’s secretary of war and Ross was the White House press secretary. These notes were certainly written by Arneson, because entire passages of these “talking points” appeared verbatim in his “Memorandum for the Files.”

53. Compton to Nichols, July 24, 1945. [Emphasis added].

54. Compton, Atomic Quest, 241.

55. Ibid. These “known conditions” were not defined in the petition but presumably left for the Truman Administration to determine.

56. K. D. Nichols to Leslie R. Groves, July 25, 1945, roll 6, file 76, H-B Files.

57. Szilard to Compton, July 19, 1945.

58. Ibid.

59. Ibid.

60. William Lanouette, with Bela Silard, Genius in the Shadows: A Biography of Leo Szilard, The Man Behind the Bomb [Chicago, 1992), 274. Silard, Szilard’s brother, shortened his surname.

61. Arthur H. Compton and Farrington Daniels, “A Poll of Scientists at Chicago, July 1945,” Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, February 1948, 44, 63.

62. “Notes for Possible use of Secretary Patterson.” The president was out of the country, due to the Potsdam Conference, from July 6 to August 7. See Arneson "Memorandum," 3. It is possible that Truman may have seen an antibomb letter from an O. C. Brewster, from New York, an engineer with the Manhattan Project. See Robert J. Donovan, Conflict and Crisis: The Presidency of Harry S. Truman, 1945-1948 (New York, 1977), 69-70; Fletcher Knebel and Charles W. Bailey, “The Fight Over the A-Bomb,” Look, August 13, 1963, 20-21.

63. Raymond Swing, In the Name of Sanity (New York, 1945, 1946), 74. Since the Franck Report was completed five weeks before Trinity, one may conclude he was referring to a Szilard petition. On his internationalist perspective see especially chapters 1-2, 18-21. On Swing’s critique of nuclear weapons see John Lewis Gaddis, The United States and the Origins of the Cold War, 1941-1947 (New York, 1972), 269.

64 Knebel and Bailey, “Fight Over the A-Bomb,” 22.

65 Ibid. [Emphasis added].

66 Jacob Bronowski, The Ascent of Man (Boston, 1973), 370; Arthur Steiner, “Scientists and Politicians: The Use of the Atomic Bomb Reexamined,” Minerva, (Summer, 1977), 258-59.

67 Martin Harwit, An Exhibit Denied: Lobbying the History of Enola Gay (New York, 1996), 234-35.

An earlier version appeared in American Diplomacy under the title: “False Dissenters: Manhattan Project Scientists and the Use of the Atomic Bomb.” All photos derived from Google Images. Comments to kirstein@sxu.edu

Navy Technician Calls me “Liar” and “Propagandist”

Peter Kirstein — Tue, 30 Jun 2009 15:40:16 +0000

SERE stands for Survival Evasion Resistance Escape. All departments of the imperialist forces train with this interrogation nonsense including the navy at Naval Air Station Brunswick, Maine where my interlocutor is stationed. These folks “practice” torture, barbaric tactics of cruelty and softening, sleep deprivation, physical abuse, walling, temperature alteration and other cruel and inhumane tactics forbidden under international and even US law. Devised in the 1950s due to torture against Americans in Korea, SERE’s reverse-engineered torture so Americans could learn it as practitioners or as the party line says survive it. I am certain that at one time they also practiced waterboarding but have no evidence that is occurring now even as part of their training. The US is the world’s leading rogue state and its most violent threat to international peace and security. I find it ironic that it trains its personnel to overcome these cruel and degrading practices given the fact the US is the main perpetrator of these foul deeds. A Freudian might say this is a case of national projection of its evil ways onto others: Abu Ghraib, Bagram, Extraordinary Renditon, Guantánamo death camp, criminal Iraq and Afghan wars in general.

From: Luedke, Barry T IT1 Faso, SERE [mailto:barry.luedke@navy.mil]
Sent: Tue 6/30/2009 6:28 AM
To: Kirstein, Peter N.

Hey Pete,

By the way, nice propaganda blog about me on your website: http://english.sxu.edu/sites/kirstein/
That’s the problem with liars like you. You distort the truth. I never said anything about “loving guns”, yet you put that right under my name. It is both funny and pathetic at the same time. You claim to be a history professor? If you knew anything about history, you would know that socialism, and the way you think have not only been complete failures, but were responsible for the slaughter of millions of people. There were others in history who thought the way you do. Stalin, Hitler, Mao, and Lenin. Have you ever heard of them? They were responsible for the deaths of nearly 80,000,000 people. I think you can learn a lot from history. If only you would enlighten yourself to truth instead of propaganda and lies.

IT1(SW) Luedke
SERE EAST NASB
Brunswick, ME

—————————————————————————————

From: Kirstein, Peter N.
Sent: Tue 6/30/2009 10:35 AM
To: Luedke, Barry T IT1 Faso, SERE

Dear Barry Luedke:

I think calling me a “liar” does not contribute to the dialogue between those of us who are antiwar and those who are more bellicose. However, I think you fail to differentiate between democratic socialism, fascism and communism. Socialism or even Marxian communism does not envision a strong central government with dictatorial powers and the absence of a civil society. Indeed socialism emphasises equality, freedom with a vital state supervisory role.

In the US we unfortunately are not as far advanced in achieving socialism as other countries but we are not totally lacking. Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, Pell Grants and the stimulus package are examples of using the state to create a more just society.

So try to avoid sensationalising, as if you were FOX news, what socialism is and what it is not. I think your quotation of your entire first e-mail indeed reflected love of guns and the use or threat of force and destruction to achieve peace. I believe I adequately described your message.

BTW: Norman Thomas was a dear man, a wonderful person. He was not a warmonger, a lover of dictatorship or even a communist. Many of his views by the way did become practice as we moved, however slowly, toward a more socialist view of society with less competition and more cooperation.

Yours against American militarism.

Peter

Active Duty Navy Person Thinks Guns Only Means to Achieve Peaceful Relations

Peter Kirstein — Mon, 29 Jun 2009 23:54:20 +0000

Image added to post. Slight editing for consistency.

From: Luedke, Barry T IT1 Faso, SERE [mailto:barry.luedke@navy.mil]
Sent: Mon 6/29/2009 2:50 PM
To: Kirstein, Peter N.
Subject: Something to ponder….

Know guns, know peace.
No guns, no peace…

IT1(SW) Luedke
SERE EAST NASB
Brunswick, ME “The American people will never knowingly adopt Socialism. But under the name of ‘liberalism’ they will adopt every fragment of the Socialist program, until one day America will be a Socialist nation, without knowing how it happened.” – Norman Mattoon Thomas 1928.

From: Kirstein, Peter N.
Sent: Mon 6/29/2009 6:25 PM
To: Luedke, Barry T IT1 Faso, SERE

Dear Information Technician Luedke:

I agree with former presidential candidate Norman Thomas and do hope we achieve democratic socialism so our 48,000,000 citizens without health care would be covered LIKE you are at public expense and those without jobs are taken care of etc. If you are in the navy, you appear to have been brainwashed into believing that only violence can defend our freedom and that capitalism is superior, which unregulated can lead to horrendous suffering and social dislocation. Also those officers, I presume navy, who authorised those snipers to murder like cowards those, black, young, desperate, poor Somali pirates have blood on their hands. There was no reason to treat unresisting civilians in that manner. It lowers the navy to the level of those pirates in my opinion.

Also if you contact me again, kindly address me by name and sign your e-mail. I expect you as I did when I was in the military to comport yourself in a professional manner toward those you claim to serve.

I am sincerely yours,

Peter N. Kirstein

Kirstein Publishes Anti-Imperialism Essay to Accompany Art Exhibit in Slovenia

Peter Kirstein — Tue, 09 Jun 2009 18:18:27 +0000

The essay below has been published in a book, Necessary Discourse on Hysteria, that accompanied a major art exhibit at the Koroska Gallery of Fine Arts, Slovenj Gradec, Slovenia that was held in November-December 2008. Its chief curators were Jernej Kozar and Rado Poggi. While the essay was written before the 2008 presidential election, it has been updated and its main arguments remain valid. I just received a copy of the exhibit publication with essays from other international contributors and images of the exhibit. This is the full citation: Necessary Discourse on Hysteria. Slovenj Gradec, Slovenia: The Koroska Gallery of Fine and Applied Arts Slovenj Gradej, 2009. {ISBN: 978-961-91463-5-4}

“American Imperialism and the Paranoid Style of American Politics.”

Richard Hofstadter, a major American historian of the postwar era, wrote an essay for Harper’s magazine, The Paranoid Style in American Politics in 1964. Whether it was Roman Catholicism, populism or masonry, communism or McCarthyism, this tendency to construe America as a nation under siege is a strong undercurrent of its oppressive culture and ethos. Yet I think paranoia is to a large extent cynically manufactured by the ruling classes in order to advance their personal quest of power projection and global domination.

An example was the shameless political advertisement of Democratic presidential candidate, Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton, Democrat of New York. It depicted a phone ringing in the White House at 3:00 a.m. to suggest that then Senator Barack Obama, Democrat of Illinois, could not be trusted as Commander in Chief and lacks the capacity to deal with an unannounced threat to the national interest. The ad was also inherently racist, as it depicted non-African-American children sleeping at that hour, but vulnerable if an African-American were elected president. It simply pandered to age-old hysterical themes of racial and national-security insecurities. Hysteria is frequently a manufactured by-product of power maximizing. An imperial, racist nation that practices global state terrorism is unwilling to encounter its own malevolence and so it projects onto others irrational qualities of evil and power. Recall the criminal invasion of Iraq on March 19, 2003 was fueled by a hysterical overreaction to both the potential power and putative presence of non-existent weapons of mass destruction.

Jihadists, Muslims in general, terrorists, Al Qaeda, Hizbollah, Hamas, al Quds unit of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps and the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (P.K.K.) are designated or depicted as terrorist organisations. The Department of State would be well served to designate the United States as a terrorist organisation if that term is going to be utilised to designate crimes against civilians committed for political objectives. The deemphasis on using the word “terror” is noticeable since Barack Hussein Obama became the 44th president on January 20, 2009.

Yet the continued listing of so-called terrorist nations or non-state actors is an effort to dehumanise and marginalise those who have legitimate grievances against the United States, Israel and other oppressive governments. No other nation is as frightened as the United States about the external world and yet ironically no other nation can project power across the full spectrum of military assets. Yet this power has led to a perpetual unease, a sense of hysteria, a compulsion and addiction to war, a rogue state status of human rights violations and a slow but palpable decline in both the standard of living and civil liberties.

America’s greatest enemy is not external but internal. The power elites ranging from the neo-conservatives, the Israel Lobby, the centrist supporters of imperial overstretch such the Council on Foreign Relations, the Democratic and Republican parties, the immoral and unethical rulers of Wall Street and the Pentagon are the true enemies of the people. Great nations cannot sustain popular support of its endless wars and military adventurism unless it convinces the populace that their freedoms are enhanced by this madness.

Most Americans are proud of their country’s superpower status and are convinced that their freedom and putative democracy are sustained and nourished by constant muscular vigilance, frequent wars and an unrestrained worshipping of its military culture. Indeed, patriotism and love of country are to a large extent predicated on the belief that the American military is the sine qua non for our prosperity, protection and stability as a nation. Military academies, think tanks, specialised military universities, war-memorial monuments as prolific as McDonalds’s restaurants, veterans groups, Air Force Ones, marine presidential helicopters, colour guards, bellicose “bombs bursting in air” national anthems, p.o.w. flags, national holidays such as Memorial Day, Veterans Day, Independence Day and lesser ones as Armed Forces Day and the universality of the American flag are constant reminders of martial attributes that embrace war and violence to resolve interstate conflict. Washington, D.C. is virtually a military theme park that reflects the core values of the nation with scant attention to international peace and security.

At some point, the military empire that undermines our nation’s security needs to be dismantled and downsized in a manner that would not lead to unilateral disarmament beyond legitimate self-defence, but would clearly reduce the capacity of the arrogant hyperpower to wage war. Speaking truth to power, the United States of America is such a dangerous, irresponsible and destructive force, that for the sake of international peace and security, America must become a less powerful and more rational-state actor. The Fate of the Earth hangs in the balance.

Presidential Election, 2008:

I would prefer that one of the major candidates would have stated categorically that American imperialist forces would be withdrawn from Iraq without the usual qualifications of “orderly,” “systematically” etc. and critique the war in a manner that does not merely emphasise its impact on United States vital strategic interests in Afghanistan but as an immoral and ruthless projection of American power. The only candidate that did not vote for the authorisation to use force was former Senator Barack Obama. Even though he was not serving in the United States Senate but the Illinois State Senate, he publicly opposed the war on October 2, 2002, nine days before the Senate, with a Democratic party majority I might add, approved the evil joint-war resolution to send American military forces to Iraq.

In comparison to then Senator Clinton, there could be construed a greater credibility in the Illinois senator’s plan to withdraw one to two combat brigades a month and complete the withdrawal in sixteen months. As president, he appears to be implementing this phased withdrawal from Iraq and then deploying them to Afghanistan.

Senator Obama stated before his election as president he would engage in direct diplomacy with heads of state with which the United States has adversarial relations. These would include Iran, Cuba, the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, Venezuela and Syria that would be diplomatically engaged without preconditions but with a suggested agenda of relevant items. Senator John McCain, Republican of Arizona, and Mrs. Clinton, now ironically secretary of state, rejected such a rapprochement as naïve and as giving aid and comfort to our enemies.

The old politics of Cold War era confrontation does not quickly subside from this ruthless nation. A new politics is certainly needed where hegemonic aspirations are tempered with a more collegial and internationalist view of world politics. I think it naïve that America’s role in the world can be more constructive and less lethal in the absence of a more creative inter-state diplomatic agenda.

The costs of the Iraq war may reach three trillion dollars according to Nobel Prize winning economist Joseph Stiglitz. The war budget alone is annually about one trillion when, in addition to the Pentagon, one includes the intelligence services, the Department of Energy and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration.

Also the soaring health care costs for tens of thousands of wounded and psychologically damaged Iraq War veterans are part of the unsustainable economic burdens of the war to the United States economy. Rich nations do not have unlimited resources to police the world. Forty eight million Americans are without health insurance and the gap in life expectancy between the rich and poor is growing. Poor African-American males die at age 66.9 but the life expectancy of affluent white women is 81.1 years. This is not entirely the result of the Iraq War but it is arguable that the priorities of war, hegemonic domination and white Judeo-Christian supremacy demonstrate that a militarised society does not emphasise social equality at home, much less abroad.

U.N. Accuses Israel of Lying, Reckless Destruction in Gaza

Peter Kirstein — Tue, 05 May 2009 23:13:54 +0000

America tortures and it won’t punish the perpetrators. Israel commits war crimes and the U.S. is silent. Moving toward peace and justice requires more than handshakes and calming speech although those are not immaterial. Peace and justice requires courage in moving against entrenched interests that use “terrorism” and “Islamofascist” terms to obscure their brutal, racist, savage destruction of a darker skinned people that had its country dispossessed and hijacked for NO logical reason in 1948.

May 5, 2009

UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) – A U.N. inquiry accused Israel on Tuesday of gross negligence and recklessness in attacks on U.N. property in the Gaza strip during fighting between the Jewish state and Palestinian militants in January.

U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, who appointed the four-person inquiry board in February, said he would seek compensation for damage put at more than $11 million but would not follow the panel’s call for further investigations.

Israeli officials rejected the report as one-sided, saying it ignored the fact that Israel was fighting a war against a “terrorist” organization — the militant group Hamas.

Israel’s armed forces conducted their own investigation into the conduct of the December-January Gaza campaign and said last month it had found no serious misconduct by troops, who had acted within international law.

Israel launched the campaign to try to halt Palestinian rocket fire from the Hamas-controlled strip. More than 1,000 Palestinians were killed but the sides differ over how many were combatants. Israel lost 10 soldiers and three civilians.

The U.N. inquiry led by Briton Ian Martin, a former head of rights group Amnesty International who later joined the United Nations, investigated nine incidents of damage to U.N. property and faulted Israel in seven of them. It blamed Hamas in one case and could not establish responsibility in another.

In several cases, the report found Israel had “breached the inviolability of United Nations premises,” had not respected U.N. immunity and was responsible for deaths and injuries.

In a January 15 incident, the shelling of the Gaza compound of the U.N. Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) with high explosive and white phosphorus, an incendiary substance, “was grossly negligent, amounting to recklessness,” it said. Three people were injured.

PURSUE REPARATIONS

The panel also found that Israeli forces had failed to meet their responsibilities to protect U.N. personnel and civilians when they fired mortar shells on January 6 that landed near an UNRWA school in Jabalia where Palestinians were sheltering.

Seven people were wounded inside the school, but an estimated 30-40 people were killed nearby.

In these and other incidents, Israel said its forces were responding to Palestinian fire.

But the U.N. report said allegations that militants had fired from within U.N. premises “were untrue, continued to be made after it ought to have been known that they were untrue, and were not adequately withdrawn and publicly regretted.”

In 11 recommendations, the panel said the U.N. should seek that acknowledgment and should pursue reparations for damage caused. It also called for an impartial inquiry of alleged violations of international law by Israel in Gaza and by Palestinian militants who rocketed southern Israel.

The panel’s report emerged from a 27-page summary sent by Ban to members of the U.N. Security Council and to Israel. Ban said the full 184-page report was being kept secret because information in it could prejudice U.N. security.

In a letter accompanying the summary, Ban said he was “carefully reviewing these recommendations with a view to determining what course of action, if any, I should take.” But he said he did not plan any further inquiry.

Ban told a news conference, however: “I intend to seek reparation of loss or damage incurred by the U.N.” Apart from losses of some $29,000 caused by Palestinian rocket fire at a U.N. warehouse, the report ascribed all the damage to Israel.

Israel’s deputy U.N. ambassador, Daniel Carmon, called the report one-sided and unfair. “We were really shocked to see a report where the board is limiting itself to the facts of the damages only, ignoring the context, ignoring that there is war against terrorism,” he told Reuters.

Carmon called the panel’s recommendations “unacceptable,” but welcomed Ban’s letter which he said showed the U.N. chief was “somehow distancing himself from the board’s report.”

(Editing by Cynthia Osterman)

Video of Kirstein Remarks on Chicago Gaza Panel

Peter Kirstein — Mon, 27 Apr 2009 14:53:10 +0000

This is a YouTube video of excerpts from a Gaza Colonisation Panel that I served on in Chicago on February 26, 2009. This is the full text of my statement on the Israeli assault on defenceless Gaza.

Sister Christian Molidor, R.S.M., discussed the experience of living in the West Bank and Jerusalem. SXU Professor Peter N. Kirstein, Ph.D., advocated reassessment of the American-Israel bilateral relationship. Shaun Harkin, an organizer with the Immigrants’ Rights Coalition and the Chicago Antiwar Coalition, writer, International Socialist Review, addressed connections between the experience of the Palestinians and local marginalized communities.

For more information about Saint Xavier’s Middle Eastern Studies program:
http://www.sxu.edu/Academic/Liberal/Middle_Eastern_Studies/ default.asp

Democratic Peoples Republic of Korea Peaceful Satellite Launch

Peter Kirstein — Mon, 06 Apr 2009 15:57:20 +0000

Update: These are more details of the actual claimed space launch:

“The satellite is going round the earth along its elliptic orbit at the angle of inclination of 40.6 degrees at 490 km perigee and 1,426 km apogee. Its cycle is 104 minutes and 12 seconds.”

Whether the D.P.R.K. successfully achieved an actual space launch is a sideshow. I am unaware of any international law that prohibits a country from launching satellites, successfully or not, into Earth orbit. Certainly the Outer Space Treaty, the L.T.B.T. and N.P.T. do not preclude such activity. I find it ironic the nuclear-armed America denounces a satellite test but has not taken any action to cease its own “space” launches and other planetary ASAT activities. In fact N.A.S.A. is just another off budget Pentagon cash cow–an ersatz “Space Command” in which primarily military officers fly and engage in futile space colonisation.

It is the usual American empire asserting its rights of global pursuit of national security but demanding its adversaries not seek their own defence through military modernisation. If the United States were truly serious about acheiving a settlement of the Korean War, it would remove its roughly 35-40,000 troops along the D.M.Z. Will President Barack Hussein Obama, bring the troops home or will he persist in “containment” of the D.P.R.K. while giving lip-service to the six-party talks?

Most sources that are not anti-Asian are convinced the D.P.R.K. does not possess deployed nuclear weapons. They may have enriched enough isotopic Uranium 235 to manufacture fissile material for a bomb but it is questionable they have either weaponised much less deployed a nuclear weapon. They obviously do not have armed missiles; whether they have gravity bombs that can be sortied on an aging MIG is also very problematic.

——————————————————————————-

Kim Jong Il Observes Launch of Satellite Kwangmyongsong-2

Pyongyang, April 5 (KCNA) — General Secretary Kim Jong Il visited the General Satellite Control and Command Centre to watch the process of launching the experimental communications satellite Kwangmyongsong-2 on Sunday. He acquainted himself with the preparations made for the satellite launch.

After being briefed on the satellite launch, he observed the whole process of the satellite launch at the centre.

At 11:20 a.m. the satellite Kwangmyongsong-2, a shining product of self-reliance, soared into space by carrier rocket Unha-2. It was smoothly and accurately put into its orbit 9 minutes and 2 seconds after being completely separated from the carrier rocket.

Expressing great satisfaction over the fact that scientists and technicians of the DPRK successfully launched the satellite with their own wisdom and technology, he highly appreciated their feats and extended thanks to them.

It is a striking demonstration of the might of our Juche-oriented science and technology that our scientists and technicians developed both the multistage carrier rocket and the satellite with their own wisdom and technology 100 percent and accurately put the satellite into orbit at one go, he noted, repeatedly praising the patriotic devotion of the scientists and technicians who are playing a vanguard role in the drive to open the gate to a great prosperous and powerful nation.

Stressing the need to bring about a new turn in conquering outer space and making a peaceful use of it on the basis of the successful launch of the satellite Kwangmyongsong-2, he set forth the important tasks to be fulfilled to do so.

He met with the scientists and technicians who have contributed to the satellite launch by devoting all their wisdom and enthusiasm with ardent patriotism and warmly encouraged them before having a photograph taken with them.

He was accompanied by Secretary Jon Pyong Ho and First Vice-Department Director Ju Kyu Chang of the WPK Central Committee.

Ward Churchill Trial Blog Runs Gaza Remarks on Academic Freedom

Peter Kirstein — Thu, 26 Mar 2009 13:29:06 +0000

I recently appeared on a Gaza Panel and noted the issues of academic freedom and the New McCarthyism as competing values in America. In particular in critiquing Israeli policy toward the besieged Palestinian nation there is a taboo on critical thinking or even scholarly discourse.

I appreciate this rather attractive blog running an excerpt:

http://wardchurchilltrial.wordpress.com/page/7/

Dr. Peter Kirstein has posted his remarks for the Chicago Gaza Panel, including a “naming names of the courageous victims of the New McCarthyism who refused to be silent”. (And one of the best jabs I’ve ever seen at the always/already useless Stanley Fish.)

Spanish philosopher Miguel Unamuno, during the Spanish Civil War, declared in 1936, “Sometimes to be Silent is to Lie.” He directed this remark on his campus of the University of Salamanca, where he had served twice as rector, to the pro-Franco fascist General Milan-Astray, who forced him off campus at gunpoint and placed Unamuno under house arrest. This was a shocking violation of academic freedom which I am sure Stanley Fish, now op-ed columnist of the New York Times, would with characteristic nuance defend.

Unamuno died within two months after suffering a heart attack. In this country professors have been denied tenure, denied promotion, subjected to public vilification, experienced censorship of their books, been prohibited from speaking at previously scheduled events, been suspended, denied the right to teach classes in their specialty, pressured to turn down appointments at universities, and have been fired from both tenure and non-tenure track positions for speaking truth to power about the Israel-Palestinian conflict.

Naming names was used during the McCarthy Era to blacklist and smear supposed communists and internationalists including many academicians. Well I am naming names of the courageous victims of the New McCarthyism who refused to be silent: Norman Finkelstein, Joel Kovel, Terri Ginsberg, Mehrene Larudee, Douglas Giles, John Mearsheimer, Stephen Walt, Nadia Abu El-Haj, Joseph Massad, Ward Churchill and Juan Cole…

Gaza Panel to Explore Multidimensionality of the Crisis

Peter Kirstein — Thu, 19 Feb 2009 22:54:06 +0000

The Department of Sociology, Anthropology and Criminal Justice and the Middle Eastern Studies Program consider involvement in world issues and responsiveness to humanitarian crises as basic tenets of service, mercy, diversity, and justice that constitute a part of the core values of Saint Xavier University.

Due to the crisis in Gaza, the department and the Middle Eastern Studies Program have engaged in programming on campus to heighten awareness of the history and current humanitarian crisis in the region.

We invite you

to the third phase of our

awareness building efforts:

Panel Discussion

February 26^th

12:00 P.M.- 1:30 P.M.

4^thFloor Board Room

Panelists:

Christian Moledare, RSM

will discuss the lived experience in the West Bank and Jerusalem;

Peter N. Kirstein, Ph.D.

will advocate reassessment of the American-Israel bilateral relationship;

and

Shaun Harkin, Organizer, Immigrants’ Rights Coalition and ChicagoAntiwar Coalition, Writer, International Socialist Review

will address connections between the experience of the Palestinians and local marginalized communities.

The Department of Sociology, Anthropology and Criminal Justice and the Middle Eastern Studies Program are grateful to the Diversity Action & Reflection Team (DART) for their support of this educational effort.

President Obama, “To Be Silent is to Lie”: Israel’s Nuclear Arsenal

Peter Kirstein — Wed, 11 Feb 2009 14:30:27 +0000

President Barack Obama was asked twice at his initial prime time press conference on Monday February 9 by Helen Thomas whether there were any countries in the Middle East that had nuclear weapons. This courageous reporter, who was essentially banned by the Bush administration from asking questions at press conferences, knew precisely what she was doing.

America’s political elites, in the grip of fear to challenge the Israel lobby or its client state, Israel, will not concede what is absolute fact. Israel is a major nuclear power with both fission and thermonuclear weapons. While I admit the latter is not 100% verifiable, the existence of Israel as a nuclear state is. There is not one arms control specialist or nuclear weapons’ expert who does NOT know that Israel, with the help of the French and Americans, has developed a nuclear arsenal. Dimona is their primary nuclear research center. They even jointly tested in 1979 a nuclear device in the South Atlantic with then-apartheid South Africa.

While this blog would not be adding much to the public knowledge in reiterating the tens of thousands of reports on Israel’s status as a nuclear power, it is essential that President Obama muster the courage to speak truth to the American people. His response to Ms Thomas was, “I will not speculate,” and glossed over the question. Part of the reason for this lack of candor is Iran. If the United States concedes that Israel is a nuclear-weapons state, it would diminish its argument that Iran, a Muslim state, should not be allowed to develop a fission device. It would render the hypocrisy in attempting to thwart a Muslim bomb in the region while ignoring the fact that a “Jewish” bomb exists. It would reveal the inconsistencies of counterproliferation.

While the Obama administration should be lauded for its tone and willingness to engage in dialogue with Iran, it should seek a nuclear weapons free zone. No nuclear weapons in the Middle East should be U.S. policy. Of course that would antagonise the Israel lobby for daring to concede that Israel must make concessions in bringing peace and stability to the region, but the primary purpose of an American president is to protect the national security of the American people. America’s interests in a denuclearised region are served by reducing horizontal proliferation. With a hectic arms race whereby Muslim states are attempting to match Israel, little is served except continued tension. I am sure Iran is acutely aware that a non-nuclear Iraq was invaded and that a proto-nuclear state of North Korea was not.

National Lawyer’s Guild on Gaza and Laws of War

Peter Kirstein — Sun, 08 Feb 2009 17:51:00 +0000

I received this report from the National Lawyers Guild’s delegation to Gaza. I have every reason to believe their report is accurate given the distinguished history of the Guild and similar reports by Human Rights Watch and other dispassionate observers of the carnage and slaughter in the enclave.

February 7, 2009

Strong Indications of Violations of the Laws of War, U.S. Law, and War
Crimes Found in the Gaza Strip

[Gaza City] We are a delegation of 8 American lawyers, members of the National Lawyers Guild in the United States, who have come here to the Gaza Strip to assess the effects of the recent attacks on the people, and to determine what, if any, violations of international law occurred and whether U.S. domestic law has been violated as a consequence. We have spent the last five days interviewing communities particularly impacted by the recent Israeli offensive, including medical personnel, humanitarian aid workers and United Nations representatives. In particular, the delegation examined three issues: 1) targeting of civilians and civilian infrastructure; 2) illegal use of weapons and 3) blocking of medical and
humanitarian assistance to civilians.

Targeting of Civilians and Civilian Infrastructure

Much of the debate surrounding Israel’s aerial and ground offensive
against Gaza has centered on whether or not Israel observed principles of proportionality and distinction. The debate suggests that Israel targeted Hamas i.e., its military installations, its leaders, and its militants, and in the process of its discrete military exercise it inadvertently killed Palestinian civilians. While we have found evidence that Palestinian civilians were victims of excessive force and collateral damage, we have also found troubling instances of Palestinian civilians being targets themselves.

The delegation recorded numerous accounts of Israeli soldiers shooting civilians, including women, children, and the elderly, in the head, chest, and stomach. Another common narrative described Israeli forces rounding civilians into a single location i.e., homes, schools which Israeli tanks or warplanes then shelled. Israeli forces continued to shoot at civilians fleeing the targeted structures.

We spoke to Khaled Abed Rabbo, who witnessed an Israeli soldier execute his 2-year-old and 7-year-old daughters, and critically injure a third daughter, Samar, 4-years old, on a sunny afternoon outside his home. Two other Israeli soldiers were standing nearby eating chips and chocolates at the time on January 7, 2009. Abed Rabbo recounts standing in front of the Israeli soldiers with his mother, wife and daughters for 5 â€” 7 minutes before one of the soldiers opened fire on his family.

We spoke to Ibtisam al-Sammouni, 31, and a resident of Zaytoun
neighborhood in Gaza City. On January 4th, the Israeli army forced
approximately 110 of Zaytoun’s residents into Ibtisam’s home. At
approximately 7 am on January 5th, the Israeli military launched two tank shells at the house without warning killing two of Ibtisam’s children: Rizka, 14 and Faris, 12. When the survivors attempted to flee Israeli forces shot at them. Her son Abdullah, 7, was injured in the shelling and remained in the home among his deceased siblings for four days before Israeli forces permitted medical personnel into Zaytoun to rescue them. After medical personnel removed the injured persons, an Israeli war plane destroyed the house and it crumbled over the lifeless bodies. The dead remained beneath the rubble for 17 days before the Israeli Army permitted medical personnel to remove their bodies for burial.

We spoke to the family of Rouhiya al-Najjar, 47, who lived in Khozaâ€^TMa, Khan Younis. Israeli forces ordered her neighborhoods residents to march to the city center. Rouhiya led 20 women out of her home and into the alley. They all carried white scarves. Upon entering the alley, an Israeli sniper shot Rouhiya in her left temple killing her instantly. Israeli forces prevented medical personnel from reaching her body for twelve hours. These are only some of the accounts that we’ve collected.

Israeli forces also destroyed numerous buildings throughout the Gaza Strip during the recent incursion. Guild delegates viewed the remains of hundreds of demolished homes and businesses â€” in addition to the remains of the American School in Gaza, damaged medical centers, and the charred innards of UNRWA warehouses. While in situations of armed conflict, collateral damage and mistakes can occur, the circumstances surrounding the cases that the delegation investigated indicate deliberate targeting rather than collateral damage or mistake. Specifically:

The American School at Gaza, which was hit with two F-16 missiles on

January 3, 2009, killing the watch guard on duty. According to Ribhi
Salem, the school’s director, the Israelis gave no warnings. Mr. Salem
stated that the school had come to an agreement with resistance groups not to use school grounds and there had never been resistance activity on the property.

United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA)

John Ging, the Director of Gaza Operations for UNRWA reported that Israeli forces fired missiles at UNRWA schools in Gaza City, Jabalyia and Bet Lahiya. The United Nation compound in Gaza city was also hit with white phosphorous shells and missiles. Ging noted that al United Nations buildings and vehicles all fly UN flags, are marked in blue paint from the top, and that during hostilities the UN personnel remained in constant contact with Israeli authorities.

Misuse of Weapons

Our delegation has heard allegations of the use of DIME (Dense Inert Metal Explosive) weaponry, white phosphorus and other possible weapons whose use in civilian areas is prohibited. We have also heard of the use of prohibited weapons, such as flachettes. We have found our own evidence of the use of flachette shells, which we will combine with evidence collected by Amnesty International to push for further investigation. We have not found any conclusive evidence of the use of DIME, though we believe that this warrants further investigation and disclosure by the Israeli military.

Our findings overwhelmingly point to the use of conventional weapons in a prohibited manner, specifically, the use of battlefield weaponry in
densely populated civilian areas. Customary international law forbids the use of weapons calculated to cause unnecessary suffering. We found evidence that Israel used white phosphorus in extensively throughout its three-week offensive in a manner that led to numerous deaths and injuries. For example, Sabah Abu Halima, 45, lived in Beit Lahiya with her husband, seven boys, and one girl. It was midday and she and her entire family was home. Within minutes she felt her home shaking and missiles fell through the rooftop. She fell to the ground upon impact. When she looked up she saw her children burning.

Preventing Access to Medical and Humanitarian Aid

Under customary international humanitarian law, the wounded are protected persons and must receive the medical care and attention required by their conditions, to the fullest extent practicable and with the least possible delay. Parties to a conflict are required to ensure the unhindered movement of medical personnel and ambulances to carry out their duties and of wounded persons to access medical care. Speaking to medical workers and the family of victims, NLG delegates documented serious violations of this provision. Among the stories documented include:

Zaytoun neighborhood, which came under attack and invasion by ground foces on January 3, 2009. The Palestinian Red Crescent received 145 calls from Zaytoun for help, but were denied entry by Israel. Bashar Ahmed Murad, Director of Emergency Medical Services for the Palestinian Red Crescent Society told us that â€œa lot of people could have been saved, but they weren’t given medical care by the Israelis, nor did the Israeli army allow Palestinian medical services in.â€ When paramedics were finally allowed to enter on January 7, Israeli forces only gave them a 3-hour â€œlull€ to work and prohibited ambulances into the area. Insteadthey forced paramedics park the ambulances 2 kilometers away and enter the area on foot. Murad told delegation members how they had to pile the wounded on donkey carts and have the medical workers pull the carts in order to help
the most people possible in the short time they were given. After the 3 hours were over, the Israeli army started shooting toward the ambulances. The Red Crescent was not able to reach that area again to evacuate the dead until January 17, 2009 when the Israeli army pulled out.

Al-Shurrab Family

On January 16th, Israeli forces shot at the jeep of Mohammed Shurrab, 64 years of age, and two of his sons, Kassab and Ibrahim, aged 28 and 18 as they were returning from their fields. Mohammad was shot in the left arm and Ibrahim was shot in the leg. The elder son, Kassab, sustained a fatal bullet wound to the chest, being shot multiple times after being ordered out of the car. Mohammad, bleeding from his wound, contacted the media, the International Committee of the Red Cross, and a number of NGOs via
mobile phone in order to acquire medical assistance. Israeli forces denied medical relief agencies clearance to reach them until almost 24 hours after Mohammad, Ibrahim and Kassab had been shot. Earlier that morning, Ibrahim had succumbed to his wound and died. Mohammad Shurrab and his sons were shot during a so-called â€œlullâ€ in Israeli ground operations, which Israeli forces had agreed to in order to allow humanitarian relief to enter and be distributed in the Gaza Strip. As such NLG delegates fail to see how this denial of medical access to the wounded Shurrab family could have been absolutely necessary and not simply arbitrary.

International humanitarian law also prohibits attacks on medical
personnel, medical units and medical transports exclusively assigned to carry out medical functions. Delegate members saw ambulances seriously damaged and destroyed, some apparenly deliberately crushed by Israeli tanks. The Palestinian Red Crescent Society and the Palestinian Ministry of Health informed delegates that 15 Palestinian medics were killed and 21 injured in the course of Israel’s assualt.

Conclusions

This delegation is seriously concerned by our initial findings. We have
found strong indications of violations of the laws of war and possible war crimes committed by Israel in the Gaza Strip. We are particularly
concerned that most of the weapons that were found used in the December 27 assualt on Gaza are US-made and supplied. We believe that Israel’s use of these weapons may constitute a violation of US law, and particularly the Foreign Assistance Act and the US Arms Export Control Act.

A report of our initial findings will be compiled and submitted to, among others, members of the United States Congress. We intend to push for an investigation by the United States government into possible violations by Israel of US law. We also hope to contribute our finding and efforts to other efforts by local and international lawyers to push for accountability against those found responsible for the egregious crimes that we have documented.

Dr Norman Finkelstein Article on Gaza Slaughter

Peter Kirstein — Sun, 25 Jan 2009 17:17:56 +0000

This is an analysis of the twenty-three day Israel assualt on the Gazan enclave in which 400 children were killed and a total of 1300 Palestinian civilians died. It is ironic that the world focuses on stopping Hamas’s access to rockets and little emphasis on reducing Israel’s capacity to wreak disproportional havoc on a civilian population under decades of occupation and years of near starvation. Dr Finkelstein was recommended for tenure in 2007 at DePaul University by his department and college personnel committee but was denied tenure for expressing views similar to those articulated here. Such is the state of academic freedom in this country where unpopular views and not the credentials of a candidate for tenure are given primary importance.

Foiling Another Palestinian “Peace Offensive”: Behind the bloodbath in Gaza

Early speculation on the motive behind Israel’s slaughter in Gaza that began on 27 December 2008 and continued till 18 January 2009 centered on the upcoming elections in Israel. The jockeying for votes was no doubt a factor in this Sparta-like society consumed by “revenge and the thirst for blood,”[1] where killing Arabs is a sure crowd-pleaser. (Polls during the war showed that 80-90 percent of Israeli Jews supported it.)[2] But as Israeli journalist Gideon Levy pointed out on Democracy Now!, “Israel went through a very similar war…two-and-a-half years ago [in Lebanon], when there were no elections.”[3] When crucial state interests are at stake, Israeli ruling elites seldom launch major operations for narrowly electoral gains. It is true that Prime Minister Menachem Begin’s decision to bomb the Iraqi OSIRAK reactor in 1981 was an electoral ploy, but the strategic stakes in the strike on Iraq were puny; contrary to widespread belief, Saddam Hussein had not embarked on a nuclear weapons program prior to the bombing.[4] The fundamental motives behind the latest Israeli attack on Gaza lie elsewhere: (1) in the need to restore Israel’s “deterrence capacity,” and (2) in the threat posed by a new Palestinian “peace offensive.”

Israel’s “larger concern” in the current offensive, New York Times Middle East correspondent Ethan Bronner reported, quoting Israeli sources, was to “re-establish Israeli deterrence,” because “its enemies are less afraid of it than they once were, or should be.”[5] Preserving its deterrence capacity has always loomed large in Israeli strategic doctrine. Indeed, it was the main impetus behind Israel’s first-strike against Egypt in June 1967 that resulted in Israel’s occupation of Gaza (and the West Bank). To justify the onslaught on Gaza, Israeli historian Benny Morris wrote that “[m]any Israelis feel that the walls…are closing in…much as they felt in early June 1967.”[6] Ordinary Israelis no doubt felt threatened in June 1967, but-as Morris surely knows-the Israeli leadership experienced no such trepidation. After Israel threatened and laid plans to attack Syria, Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser declared the Straits of Tiran closed to Israeli shipping, but Israel made almost no use of the Straits (apart from the passage of oil, of which Israel then had ample stocks) and, anyhow, Nasser did not in practice enforce the blockade, vessels passing freely through the Straits within days of his announcement. In addition, multiple U.S. intelligence agencies had concluded that the Egyptians did not intend to attack Israel and that, in the improbable case that they did, alone or in concert with other Arab countries, Israel would-in President Lyndon Johnson’s words-”whip the hell out of them.” The head of the Mossad told senior American officials on 1 June 1967 that “there were no differences between the U.S. and the Israelis on the military intelligence picture or its interpretation.”[7] The predicament for Israel was rather the growing perception in the Arab world, spurred by Nasser’s radical nationalism and climaxing in his defiant gestures in May 1967, that it would no longer have to follow Israeli orders. Thus, Divisional Commander Ariel Sharon admonished those in the Israeli cabinet hesitant to launch a first-strike that Israel was losing its “deterrence capability…our main weapon-the fear of us.”[8] Israel unleashed the June 1967 war “to restore the credibility of Israeli deterrence” (Israeli strategic analyst Zeev Maoz).[9]

The expulsion of the Israeli occupying army by Hezbollah in May 2000 posed a major new challenge to Israel’s deterrence capacity. The fact that Israel suffered a humiliating defeat, one celebrated throughout the Arab world, made another war well-nigh inevitable. Israel almost immediately began planning for the next round, and in summer 2006 found a pretext when Hezbollah captured two Israeli soldiers (several others were killed in the firefight) and demanded in exchange the release of Lebanese prisoners held by Israel. Although Israel unleashed the fury of its air force and geared up for a ground invasion, it suffered yet another ignominious defeat. A respected American military analyst despite being partial to Israel nonetheless concluded, “the IAF, the arm of the Israel military that had once destroyed whole air forces in a few days, not only proved unable to stop Hezbollah rocket strikes but even to do enough damage to prevent Hezbollah’s rapid recovery”; that “once ground forces did cross into Lebanon…, they failed to overtake Hezbollah strongholds, even those close to the border”; that “in terms of Israel’s objectives, the kidnapped Israeli soldiers were neither rescued nor released; Hezbollah’s rocket fire was never suppressed, not even its long-range fire…; and Israeli ground forces were badly shaken and bogged down by a well-equipped and capable foe”; and that “more troops and a massive ground invasion would indeed have produced a different outcome, but the notion that somehow that effort would have resulted in a more decisive victory over Hezbollah…has no basis in historical example or logic.” The juxtaposition of several figures further highlights the magnitude of the setback: Israel deployed 30,000 troops as against 2,000 regular Hezbollah fighters and 4,000 irregular Hezbollah and non-Hezbollah fighters; Israel delivered and fired 162,000 weapons whereas Hezbollah fired 5,000 weapons (4,000 rockets and projectiles at Israel and 1,000 antitank missiles inside Lebanon).[10] Moreover, “the vast majority of the fighters who defended villages such as Ayta ash Shab, Bint Jbeil, and Maroun al-Ras were not, in fact, regular Hezbollah fighters and in some cases were not even members of Hezbollah,” and “many of Hezbollah’s best and most skilled fighters never saw action, lying in wait along the Litani River with the expectation that the IDF assault would be much deeper and arrive much faster than it did.”[11] Yet another indication of Israel’s reversal of fortune was that, unlike any of its previous armed conflicts, in the final stages of the 2006 war it fought not in defiance of a U.N. ceasefire resolution but in the hope of a U.N. resolution to rescue it.

After the 2006 Lebanon war Israel was itching to take on Hezbollah again, but did not yet have a military option against it. In mid-2008 Israel desperately sought to conscript the U.S. for an attack on Iran, which would also decapitate Hezbollah, and thereby humble the main challengers to its regional hegemony. Israel and its quasi-official emissaries such as Benny Morris threatened that if the U.S. did not go along “then non-conventional weaponry will have to be used,” and “many innocent Iranians will die.”[12] To Israel’s chagrin and humiliation, the attack never materialized and Iran has gone its merry way, while the credibility of Israel’s capacity to terrorize slipped another notch. It was high time to find a defenseless target to annihilate. Enter Gaza, Israel’s favorite shooting gallery. Even there the feebly armed Islamic movement Hamas had defiantly resisted Israeli diktat, in June 2008 even compelling Israel to agree to a ceasefire.

During the 2006 Lebanon war Israel flattened the southern suburb of Beirut known as the Dahiya, where Hezbollah commanded much popular support. In the war’s aftermath Israeli military officers began referring to the “Dahiya strategy”: “We shall pulverize the 160 Shiite villages [in Lebanon] that have turned into Shiite army bases,” the IDF Northern Command Chief explained, “and we shall not show mercy when it comes to hitting the national infrastructure of a state that, in practice, is controlled by Hezbollah.” In the event of hostilities, a reserve Colonel at the Israeli Institute for National Security Studies chimed in, Israel needs “to act immediately, decisively, and with force that is disproportionate….Such a response aims at inflicting damage and meting out punishment to an extent that will demand long and expensive reconstruction processes.” The new strategy was to be used against all of Israel’s regional adversaries who had waxed defiant-”the Palestinians in Gaza are all Khaled Mashaal, the Lebanese are all Nasrallah, and the Iranians are all Ahmadinejad”-but Gaza was the prime target for this blitzkrieg-cum-bloodbath strategy. “Too bad it did not take hold immediately after the ‘disengagement’ from Gaza and the first rocket barrages,” a respected Israeli columnist lamented. “Had we immediately adopted the Dahiya strategy, we would have likely spared ourselves much trouble.” After a Palestinian rocket attack, Israel’s Interior Minister urged in late September 2008, “the IDF should…decide on a neighborhood in Gaza and level it.”[13] And, insofar as the Dahiya strategy could not be inflicted just yet on Lebanon and Iran, it was predictably pre-tested in Gaza.

The operative plan for the Gaza bloodbath can be gleaned from authoritative statements after the war got underway: “What we have to do is act systematically with the aim of punishing all the organizations that are firing the rockets and mortars, as well as the civilians who are enabling them to fire and hide” (reserve Major-General); “After this operation there will not be one Hamas building left standing in Gaza” (Deputy IDF Chief of Staff); “Anything affiliated with Hamas is a legitimate target” (IDF Spokesperson’s Office).[14] Whereas Israel killed a mere 55 Lebanese during the first two days of the 2006 war, the Israeli media exulted at Israel’s “shock and awe” (Maariv)[15] as it killed more than 300 Palestinians in the first two days of the attack on Gaza. Several days into the slaughter an informed Israeli strategic analyst observed, “The IDF, which planned to attack buildings and sites populated by hundreds of people, did not warn them in advance to leave, but intended to kill a great many of them, and succeeded.”[16] Morris could barely contain his pride at “Israel’s highly efficient air assault on Hamas.”[17] The Israeli columnist B. Michael was less impressed by the dispatch of helicopter gunships and jet planes “over a giant prison and firing at its people”[18]-for example, “70…traffic cops at their graduation ceremony, young men in desperate search of a livelihood who thought they’d found it in the police and instead found death from the skies.”[19]

As Israel targeted schools, mosques, hospitals, ambulances, and U.N. sanctuaries, as it slaughtered and incinerated Gaza’s defenseless civilian population (one-third of the 1,200 reported casualties were children), Israeli commentators gloated that “Gaza is to Lebanon as the second sitting for an exam is to the first-a second chance to get it right,” and that this time around Israel had “hurled [Gaza] back,” not 20 years as it promised to do in Lebanon, but “into the 1940s. Electricity is available only for a few hours a day”; that “Israel regained its deterrence capabilities” because “the war in Gaza has compensated for the shortcomings of the [2006] Second Lebanon War”; and that “There is no doubt that Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah is upset these days….There will no longer be anyone in the Arab world who can claim that Israel is weak.”[20]

New York Times foreign affairs expert Thomas Friedman joined in the chorus of hallelujahs.[21] Israel in fact won the 2006 Lebanon war, according to Friedman, because it had inflicted “substantial property damage and collateral casualties on Lebanon at large,” thereby administering an “education” to Hezbollah: fearing the Lebanese people’s wrath, Hezbollah would “think three times next time” before defying Israel. He expressed hope that Israel was likewise “trying to ‘educate’ Hamas by inflicting a heavy death toll on Hamas militants and heavy pain on the Gaza population.” To justify the targeting of Lebanese civilians and civilian infrastructure Friedman asserted that Israel had no other option because “Hezbollah created a very ‘flat’ military network…deeply embedded in the local towns and villages,” and that because “Hezbollah nested among civilians, the only long-term source of deterrence was to exact enough pain on the civilians…to restrain Hezbollah in the future.”

Leaving aside Friedman’s hollow coinages-what does “flat” mean?-and leaving aside that he alleged that the killing of civilians was unavoidable but also recommends targeting civilians as a “deterrence” strategy: is it even true that Hezbollah was “embedded in,” “nested among,” and “intertwined” with the Lebanese civilian population? Here’s what Human Rights Watch concluded after an exhaustive investigation: “we found strong evidence that Hezbollah stored most of its rockets in bunkers and weapon storage facilities located in uninhabited fields and valleys, that in the vast majority of cases Hezbollah fighters left populated civilian areas as soon as the fighting started, and that Hezbollah fired the vast majority of its rockets from pre-prepared positions outside villages.” And again, “in all but a few of the cases of civilian deaths we investigated, Hezbollah fighters had not mixed with the civilian population or taken other actions to contribute to the targeting of a particular home or vehicle by Israeli forces.” Indeed, “Israel’s own firing patterns in Lebanon support the conclusion that Hezbollah fired large numbers of its rockets from tobacco fields, banana, olive and citrus groves, and more remote, unpopulated valleys.”[22]

A U.S. Army War College study based largely on interviews with Israeli participants in the Lebanon war similarly found that “the key battlefields in the land campaign south of the Litani River were mostly devoid of civilians, and IDF participants consistently report little or no meaningful intermingling of Hezbollah fighters and noncombatants. Nor is there any systematic reporting of Hezbollah using civilians in the combat zone as shields.” On a related note, the authors report that “the great majority of Hezbollah’s fighters wore uniforms. In fact, their equipment and clothing were remarkably similar to many state militaries’-desert or green fatigues, helmets, web vests, body armor, dog tags, and rank insignia.”[23]

Friedman further asserted that, “rather than confronting Israel’s Army head-on,” Hezbollah fired rockets at Israel’s civilian population to provoke Israeli retaliatory strikes, inevitably killing Lebanese civilians and “inflaming the Arab-Muslim street.” Yet, numerous studies have shown,[24] and Israeli officials themselves conceded[25] that, during its guerrilla war against the Israeli occupying army, Hezbollah only targeted Israeli civilians after Israel targeted Lebanese civilians. In conformity with past practice Hezbollah started firing rockets toward Israeli civilian concentrations during the 2006 war only after Israel inflicted heavy casualties on Lebanese civilians, while Hezbollah leader Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah avowed that it would target Israeli civilians “as long as the enemy undertakes its aggression without limits or red lines.”[26]

If Israel targeted the Lebanese civilian population and infrastructure during the 2006 war, it was not because it had no choice, and not because Hezbollah had provoked it, but because terrorizing the civilian population was a relatively cost-free method of “education,” much to be preferred over fighting a real foe and suffering heavy casualties, although Hezbollah’s unexpectedly fierce resistance prevented Israel from achieving a victory on the battlefield. In the case of Gaza it was able both to “educate” the population and achieve a military victory because-in the words of Gideon Levy-the “fighting in Gaza” was “war deluxe.” Compared with previous wars, it is child’s play-pilots bombing unimpeded as if on practice runs, tank and artillery soldiers shelling houses and civilians from their armored vehicles, combat engineering troops destroying entire streets in their ominous protected vehicles without facing serious opposition. A large, broad army is fighting against a helpless population and a weak, ragged organization that has fled the conflict zones and is barely putting up a fight.[27]

The justification put forth by Friedman in the pages of the Times for targeting civilians and civilian infrastructure amounted to apologetics for state terrorism.[28] It might be recalled that although Hitler had stripped Nazi propagandist Julius Streicher of all his political power by 1940, and his newspaper Der Stuermer had a circulation of only some 15,000 during the war, the International Tribunal at Nuremberg nonetheless sentenced him to death for his murderous incitement.

Beyond restoring its deterrence capacity, Israel’s main goal in the Gaza slaughter was to fend off the latest threat posed by Palestinian moderation. For the past three decades the international community has consistently supported a settlement of the Israel-Palestine conflict that calls for two states based on a full Israeli withdrawal to its June 1967 border, and a “just resolution” of the refugee question based on the right of return and compensation. The vote on the annual U.N. General Assembly resolution, “Peaceful Settlement of the Question of Palestine,” supporting these terms for resolving the conflict in 2008 was 164 in favor, 7 against (Israel, United States, Australia, Marshall Islands, Micronesia, Nauru, Palau), and 3 abstentions. At the regional level the Arab League in March 2002 unanimously put forth a peace initiative on this basis, which it has subsequently reaffirmed. In recent times Hamas has repeatedly signaled its own acceptance of such a settlement. For example, in March 2008 Khalid Mishal, head of Hamas’s Political Bureau, stated in an interview:

There is an opportunity to deal with this conflict in a manner different than Israel and, behind it, the U.S. is dealing with it today. There is an opportunity to achieve a Palestinian national consensus on a political program based on the 1967 borders, and this is an exceptional circumstance, in which most Palestinian forces, including Hamas, accept a state on the 1967 borders….There is also an Arab consensus on this demand, and this is a historic situation. But no one is taking advantage of this opportunity. No one is moving to cooperate with this opportunity. Even this minimum that has been accepted by the Palestinians and the Arabs has been rejected by Israel and by the U.S.[29]

Israel is fully cognizant that the Hamas Charter is not an insurmountable obstacle to a two-state settlement on the June 1967 border. “[T]he Hamas leadership has recognized that its ideological goal is not attainable and will not be in the foreseeable future,” a former Mossad head recently observed. “[T]hey are ready and willing to see the establishment of a Palestinian state in the temporary borders of 1967….They know that the moment a Palestinian state is established with their cooperation, they will be obligated to change the rules of the game: They will have to adopt a path that could lead them far from their original ideological goals.”[30]

In addition, Hamas was “careful to maintain the ceasefire” it entered into with Israel in June 2008, according to an official Israeli publication, despite Israel’s reneging on the crucial component of the truce that it ease the economic siege of Gaza. “The lull was sporadically violated by rocket and mortar shell fire, carried out by rogue terrorist organizations,” the source continues. “At the same time, the [Hamas] movement tried to enforce the terms of the arrangement on the other terrorist organizations and to prevent them from violating it.”[31] Moreover, Hamas was “interested in renewing the relative calm with Israel” (Shin Bet head Yuval Diskin).[32] The Islamic movement could thus be trusted to stand by its word, making it a credible negotiating partner, while its apparent ability to extract concessions from Israel, unlike the hapless Palestinian Authority doing Israel’s bidding but getting no returns, enhanced Hamas’s stature among Palestinians. For Israel these developments constituted a veritable disaster. It could no longer justify shunning Hamas, and it would be only a matter of time before international pressure in particular from the Europeans would be exerted on it to negotiate. The prospect of an incoming U.S. administration negotiating with Iran and Hamas, and moving closer to the international consensus for settling the Israel-Palestine conflict, which some U.S. policymakers now advocate,[33] would have further highlighted Israel’s intransigence. In an alternative scenario, speculated on by Nasrallah, the incoming American administration plans to convene an international peace conference of “Americans, Israelis, Europeans and so-called Arab moderates” to impose a settlement. The one obstacle is “Palestinian resistance and the Hamas government in Gaza,” and “getting rid of this stumbling block is…the true goal of the war.”[34] In either case, Israel needed to provoke Hamas into breaking the truce, and then radicalize or destroy it, thereby eliminating it as a legitimate negotiating partner. It is not the first time Israel confronted such a diabolical threat-an Arab League peace initiative, Palestinian support for a two-state settlement and a Palestinian ceasefire-and not the first time it embarked on provocation and war to overcome it.

In the mid-1970s the PLO mainstream began supporting a two-state settlement on the June 1967 border. In addition, the PLO, headquartered in Lebanon, was strictly adhering to a truce with Israel that had been negotiated in July 1981.[35] In August 1981 Saudi Arabia unveiled, and the Arab League subsequently approved, a peace plan based on the two-state settlement.[36] Israel reacted in September 1981 by stepping up preparations to destroy the PLO.[37] In his analysis of the buildup to the 1982 Lebanon war, Israeli strategic analyst Avner Yaniv reported that Yasser Arafat was contemplating a historic compromise with the “Zionist state,” whereas “all Israeli cabinets since 1967″ as well as “leading mainstream doves” opposed a Palestinian state. Fearing diplomatic pressures, Israel maneuvered to sabotage the two-state settlement. It conducted punitive military raids “deliberately out of proportion” against “Palestinian and Lebanese civilians” in order to weaken “PLO moderates,” strengthen the hand of Arafat’s “radical rivals,” and guarantee the PLO’s “inflexibility.” However, Israel eventually had to choose between a pair of stark options: “a political move leading to a historic compromise with the PLO, or preemptive military action against it.” To fend off Arafat’s “peace offensive”-Yaniv’s telling phrase-Israel embarked on military action in June 1982. The Israeli invasion “had been preceded by more than a year of effective ceasefire with the PLO,” but after murderous Israeli provocations, the last of which left as many as 200 civilians dead (including 60 occupants of a Palestinian children’s hospital), the PLO finally retaliated, causing a single Israeli casualty.[38] Although Israel used the PLO’s resumption of attacks as the pretext for its invasion, Yaniv concluded that the “raison d’être of the entire operation” was “destroying the PLO as a political force capable of claiming a Palestinian state on the West Bank.”[39] It deserves passing notice that in his new history of the “peace process,” Martin Indyk, former U.S. ambassador to Israel, provides this capsule summary of the sequence of events just narrated: “In 1982, Arafat’s terrorist activities eventually provoked the Israeli government of Menachem Begin and Ariel Sharon into a full-scale invasion of Lebanon.”[40]

Fast forward to 2008. Israeli Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni stated in early December 2008 that although Israel wanted to create a temporary period of calm with Hamas, an extended truce “harms the Israeli strategic goal, empowers Hamas, and gives the impression that Israel recognizes the movement.”[41] Translation: a protracted ceasefire that enhanced Hamas’s credibility would have undermined Israel’s strategic goal of retaining control of the West Bank. As far back as March 2007 Israel had decided on attacking Hamas, and only negotiated the June truce because “the Israeli army needed time to prepare.”[42] Once all the pieces were in place, Israel only lacked a pretext. On 4 November, while the American media were riveted on election day, Israel broke the ceasefire by killing seven Palestinian militants, on the flimsy excuse that Hamas was digging a tunnel to abduct Israeli soldiers, and knowing full well that its operation would provoke Hamas into hitting back. “Last week’s ‘ticking tunnel,’ dug ostensibly to facilitate the abduction of Israeli soldiers,” Haaretz reported in mid-November it was not a clear and present danger: Its existence was always known and its use could have been prevented on the Israeli side, or at least the soldiers stationed beside it removed from harm’s way. It is impossible to claim that those who decided to blow up the tunnel were simply being thoughtless. The military establishment was aware of the immediate implications of the measure, as well as of the fact that the policy of “controlled entry” into a narrow area of the Strip leads to the same place: an end to the lull. That is policy-not a tactical decision by a commander on the ground.[43]

After Hamas predictably resumed its rocket attacks “[i]n retaliation” (Israeli Intelligence and Terrorism Information Center),[44] Israel could embark on yet another murderous invasion in order to foil yet another Palestinian peace offensive.

Norman G. Finkelstein

New York City

19 January 2009

[1] Gideon Levy, “The Time of the Righteous,” Haaretz (9 January 2009).

[2] Ethan Bronner, “In Israel, A Consensus That Gaza War Is a Just One,” New York Times (13 January 2009).

[3] 29 December 2008; www.democracynow.org/2008/12/29/israeli_attacks_kill_over_310_in.

[4] Richard Wilson, “Incomplete or Inaccurate Information Can Lead to Tragically Incorrect Decisions to Preempt: The example of OSIRAK,” paper presented at Erice, Sicily (18 May 2007; updated 9 February 2008; www.normanfinkelstein.com/article.php?pg=11&ar=1589).

[5] Ethan Bronner, “Israel Reminds Foes That It Has Teeth,” New York Times (29 December 2008).

[6] Benny Morris, “Why Israel Feels Threatened,” New York Times (30 December 2008).

[7] “Memorandum for the Record” (1 June 1967), Foreign Relations of the United States, vol. XIX, Arab-Israeli Crisis and War, 1967 (Washington, DC: 2004).

[8] Tom Segev, 1967: Israel, the war, and the year that transformed the Middle East (New York: 2007), p. 293, my emphasis.

[9] Zeev Maoz, Defending the Holy Land: A critical analysis of Israel’s security and foreign policy (Ann Arbor: 2006), p. 89.

[10] William Arkin, Divining Victory: Airpower in the 2006 Israel-Hezbollah war (Maxwell Air Force Base, AL: 2007), pp. xxi, xxv-xxvi, 25, 54, 64, 135, 147-48.

[11] Andrew Exum, Hizballah at War: A military assessment (Washington Institute for Near East Policy: December 2006), pp. 9, 11-12.

[12] Benny Morris, “A Second Holocaust? The Threat to Israel” (2 May 2008; www.mideastfreedomforum.org/de/node/66).

[13] Yaron London, “The Dahiya Strategy” (6 October 2008; www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3605863,00.html); Gabriel Siboni, “Disproportionate Force: Israel’s concept of response in light of the Second Lebanon War,” Institute for National Security Studies (INSS), 2 October 2008. Attila Somfalvi, “Sheetrit: We should level Gaza neighborhoods” (2 October 2008; www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3504922,00.html).

[14] “Israeli General Says Hamas Must Not Be the Only Target in Gaza,” IDF Radio, Tel Aviv, in Hebrew 0600 gmt (26 December 2008), BBC Monitoring Middle East; Tova Dadon, “Deputy Chief of Staff: Worst still ahead” (29 December 2008; http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-36466558,00.html); www.btselem.org/English/Gaza_Strip/20081231_Gaza_Letter_to_Mazuz.asp.

[15] Seumas Milne, “Israel’s Onslaught on Gaza is a Crime That Cannot Succeed,” Guardian (30 December 2008).

[16] Reuven Pedatzur, “The Mistakes of Cast Lead,” Haaretz (8 January 2009).

[17] Morris, “Why Israel Feels Threatened.”

[18] B. Michael, “Déjà Vu in Gaza” (29 December 2008; www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3646558,00.html).

[19] Gideon Levy, “Twilight Zone/Trumpeting for War,” Haaretz (2 January 2009).

[20] Amos Harel and Avi Issacharoff, “Israel and Hamas Are Both Paying a Steep Price in Gaza,” Haaretz (10 January 2009); Ari Shavit, “Analysis: Israel’s victories in Gaza make up for its failures in Lebanon,” Haaretz (12 January 2009); Guy Bechor, “A Dangerous Victory” (12 January 2009; www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3654505,00.html).

[21] Thomas L. Friedman, “Israel’s Goals in Gaza?,” New York Times (14 January 2009).

[22] Human Rights Watch, Why They Died: Civilian casualties in Lebanon during the 2006 war (New York: 2007), pp. 5, 14, 40-41, 45-46, 48, 51, 53.

[23] Stephen Biddle and Jeffrey A. Friedman, The 2006 Lebanon Campaign and the Future of Warfare: Implications for army and defense policy (Carlisle, PA: 2008), pp. 43-44, 45.

[24] Human Rights Watch, Civilian Pawns: Laws of war violations and the use of weapons on the Israel-Lebanon border (New York: 1996); Maoz, Defending the Holy Land, pp. 213-14, 224-25, 252; Augustus Richard Norton, Hezbollah: A short history (Princeton: 2007), pp. 77, 86.

[25] Judith Palmer Harik, Hezbollah: The changing face of terrorism (London: 2004), pp. 167-68.

[26] Human Rights Watch, Civilians Under Assault: Hezbollah’s rocket attacks on Israel in the 2006 war (New York: 2007), p. 100. HRW asserts that Hezbollah rocket attacks on Israeli civilians were not retaliatory but provides no supporting evidence.

[27] Gideon Levy, “The IDF Has No Mercy for the Children in Gaza Nursery Schools,” Haaretz (15 January 2009).

[28] Glenn Greenwald, “Tom Friedman Offers a Perfect Definition of ‘Terrorism’” (14 January 2009; www.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/2009/01/14/friedman/).

[29] Mouin Rabbani, “A Hamas Perspective on the Movement’s Evolving Role: An interview with Khalid Mishal, Part II,” Journal of Palestine Studies (Summer 2008).

[30] “What Hamas Wants,” Mideast Mirror (22 December 2008).

[31] Intelligence and Terrorism Information Center at the Israel Intelligence Heritage and Commemoration Center, The Six Months of the Lull Arrangement (December 2008), pp. 2, 6, 7.

[32] “Hamas Wants Better Terms for Truce,” Jerusalem Post (21 December 2008). Diskin told the Israeli cabinet that Hamas would renew the truce if Israel lifted the siege of Gaza, stopped military attacks and extended the truce to the West Bank.

[33] Richard N. Haass and Martin Indyk, “Beyond Iraq: A new U.S. strategy for the Middle East,” and Walter Russell Mead, “Change They Can Believe In: To make Israel safe, give Palestinians their due,” in Foreign Affairs, January-February 2009.

[34] Hezbollah Secretary General Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah’s Speech Delivered at the Central Ashura Council, 31 December 2008.

[35] Noam Chomsky, The Fateful Triangle: the United States, Israel and the Palestinians (Boston: 1983), chaps. 3, 5.

[36] Yehuda Lukacs (ed), The Israeli-Palestinian Conflict: a documentary record, 1967-1990 (Cambridge: 1992), pp. 477-79.

[37] Yehoshaphat Harkabi, Israel’s Fateful Hour (New York: 1988), p. 101.

[38] Robert Fisk, Pity the Nation: The abduction of Lebanon (New York: 1990), pp. 197, 232.

[39] Avner Yaniv, Dilemmas of Security: Politics, strategy and the Israeli experience in Lebanon (Oxford: 1987), pp. 20-23, 50-54, 67-70, 87-89, 100-1, 105-6, 113, 143.

[40] Martin Indyk, Innocent Abroad: An intimate account of American peace diplomacy in the Middle East (New York: 2009), p. 75.

[41] Saed Bannoura, “Livni Calls for a Large Scale Military Offensive in Gaza,” IMEMC & Agencies (10 December 2008; www.imemc.org/article/57960).

[42] Uri Blau, “IDF Sources: Conditions not yet optimal for Gaza exit,” Haaretz (8 January 2009); Barak Ravid, “Disinformation, Secrecy, and Lies: How the Gaza offensive came about,” Haaretz (28 December 2008).

[43] Zvi Bar’el, “Crushing the Tahadiyeh,” Haaretz (16 November 2008). Cf. Uri Avnery, “The Calculations behind Israel’s Slaughter of Palestinians in Gaza” (2 January 2009; www.redress.cc/palestine/uavnery20080102).

[44] The Six Months of the Lull Arrangement, p. 3.

Source: Norman G. Finkelstein Website

Campus Watch Returns With Another List of Back to the Future McCarthyism

Peter Kirstein — Mon, 12 Jan 2009 16:36:33 +0000

Campus Watch is “Watching.”

Campus Watch, one of the New McCarthyism’s most egregious excesses, continues to list academics and other critics of its barnstorming, ideological-cleansing crusade against academic freedom. In its latest efforts in “Setting the Record Straight,” Daniel Pipes’s website has published a list of individuals who have allegedly erroneously written about the academic watchdog and its highly nationalistic, confrontational mission to stifle debate on the Middle East. I am included in their latest gambit to “set the record straight”:

“writing at his blog, allows his fixation with Campus Watch to get the better of him, again. This time, he ascribes an article to Middle East Forum director Daniel Pipes that was, in fact, written by Campus Watch West Coast representative Cinnamon Stillwell.”

I had written a response to Cinnamon’s critical commentary of an academic freedom conference that I participated in at New York University last February. I forthrightly acknowledged my unintentional error nineteen days later, on March 14, 2008, concerning the provenance of the piece. Somewhat gratuitously Cinnamon continues to express exasperation that she was not cited as the author. Again, I acknowledge the error. {Update: Campus Watch, subsequent to my post, has noted my corrections of the misattribution.} The broader issue is not provenance but the approach to dealing with disparate views on issues of colonisation, racism, peace and justice in the Middle East.

Indeed, I don’t think the Pipesian West Coast henchwoman has truly ”set the record straight.” I wrote in my response to their criticism of the N.Y.U. “Freedoms at Risk Conference:”

…”they believe no American academic should criticise Israel; no American academic should explore Palestinian suffering behind the walls of death and despair; no American academic should teach, utter, write or speak about any aspect of the Middle East, Israel, Iraq, Iran unless it entirely comports with the muscular, preemptive world-wide war against Islam–with YOUR son or daughter–not theirs.”

I believe the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan as well as the savage destruction of Gaza have certainly raised significant questions about the judiciousness of our foreign policy and whether the 4300+ American deaths have justified such actions. Wars must remain within the public sphere of vigorous dissent and debate as lives are lost and dreams shattered.

I don’t believe Ms Stillwell has fairly addressed my main point. For those who may be unaware, it was Campus Watch that was established in 2002 with the mission to “monitor” Middle East Studies departments on university campuses throughout the United States. They published a list of professors whom they construed as disloyal, sympathetic to terrorism and anti-American with the intent of marginalising or cleansing them from the academy. Hundreds of aroused non-specialists, including myself, demanded they be included in the blacklist as an act of anti-McCarthyism solidarity.

Mr Pipes then dutifully published another list with the provocative title: “Solidarity With the Apologists.” “Apologists” was an explicit reference to a term bandied about during the witch hunts of the 1950s, in which academics, Hollywood filmmakers and other intellectuals were accused of being “apologists” for the Kremlin and the “communist menace” in general. Then Mr Pipes removed the original blacklist and the solidarity list from his website. He knew he had gone too far and had to retreat from this excess.

However, to set the record straight, Daniel Pipes as Colin Wright wrote in Situation Analysis, Spring 2004, believes that those professors who disagree with him should essentially be arrested or expelled from America. Writing for the New York Post, Pipes’s columns were entitled, “The Terrorist Next Door,” (August 12, 2003), “Profs Who Hate America,” (November 12, 2002) and “Terrorist Profs,” (February 24, 2003). Such uncontrolled rodomontade exceeds anything from any of those listed on Cinnamon’s latest list.

For the record, I never take this stuff personally. Cinnamon and I have exchanged several pleasant e-mail including my regard for her Haight-Ashburyesque name. Yet in the public sphere we continue to express our divergent views with gusto. Well I guess that is what Barack wants us to do: go for it but with civility.

John Pilger Also Questions the Academy’s Silence Over Israel Assualt on Gaza’s Educational Institutions

Peter Kirstein — Thu, 08 Jan 2009 18:36:26 +0000

It is most disturbing that a nuclear power can destroy intentionally an educational system of an impoverished people and in particular its institutions of higher learning with virtually little protest from “western” academic leaders.

Cardinal Renato Martino

John Pilger in an article refers specifically to this curious silence as Israel destroys what Cardinal Martino, head of the Vatican Council on Justice and Peace, has referred to Gaza as , “a big concentration camp.” I find it most disturbing that in the United States criticism of Israel has become extremely difficult and in particular in academia. One needs to address issues of persecution and destruction of vital educational properties beyond military necessity in a forthright manner. The ethnic composition of an aggressor nation or its victims is inadequate cause to withhold criticism of military excesses: adherence to the principles of proportionality, justice, respect for non-combatants and international humanitarian law should be demanded of all nations.

Pilger:

“Then there are the academics, the deans and teachers and researchers. Why are they silent as they watch a university bombed and hear the Association of University Teachers in Gaza plea for help? Are British universities now, as Terry Eagleton believes, no more than “intellectual Tescos, churning out a commodity known as graduates rather than greengroceries”?

Issue of Civilian Deaths in Israel Strategic Bombing of Gaza

Peter Kirstein — Wed, 31 Dec 2008 23:00:44 +0000

I had mentioned that about 60 civilians had been killed in the strategic bombing of Gaza by the Israeli Defence Forces. Most of Hamas, as the Vietcong, do not wear regular military-issue clothing but are a lightly armed insurgent force recruited from the civilian population as citizen-soldiers. They both resisted occupation/siege/blockade from a superior armed military force. I received an e-mail suggesting I underestimated the total non-combatant deaths in the Eastern Mediterranean enclave.

Not too long ago I debated a professor, Edwin Moïse, at Clemson on the categorisation of deaths in the Iraq War. He was irritated that I overstated combat deaths as opposed to all deaths in theatre. I admit to some reluctance to categorise deaths in war since the evil of war has become routinised with statistics and disinformation campaigns. Nevertheless, I do post relevant and thoughtful comments to the blog that I receive as e-mail.:

From:	Hal [hl1313@XXXXX]	Sent:	Wed 12/31/2008 4:48 PM
To:	Kirstein, Peter N.
Cc:
Subject:	non-combatants

Prof Kirstein:

In a story on you blog yesterday you stated that about 60+ non-combatants were killed in Gaza.

Lenin’s Tomb (blog) checked the UN report on deaths and found that the 60+ figure you used were women only, like all men killed were combatnats.

Also a large number of men killed were policemen. I know that today most policemen act and look like military but they are not military and should not be considered combatants.

I find your blog excellent but with limited time you might have missed the BS that the UN is trying to sell.

Thank you and happy new year.

hal lewis

Proportionality and Israel Bombing of Islamic University (Gaza)

Peter Kirstein — Mon, 29 Dec 2008 15:42:45 +0000

Islamic University Gaza apparently under attack

As an academic, I can think of few “targets” more delicate and worthy of sparing from aerial attack than educational institutions. In the latest strategic bombing of densely populated Gaza, Israel has deliiberately attacked Islamic University on late Sunday, December 28, 2008. This outrage cannot be justified by military necessity regardless of disinformation and unproven claims that it was primarily a haven for weapons deployment.

Attacking universities is similar to the strategic bombing campaign of the Second World War in which German cities were targeted without mercy. While it appears that the majority of casualties in these aerial raids of rage and hate are not civilian, some sixty non-combatants have been killed. The purposeful destruction of a university, not to mention the general violation of proportionality from the air, should be construed as a war crime. While a nation has the right of self-defence to suppress rocket attacks into its territory, it does not have the right to destroy civilian infrastructure and other vital components that support civil society.

A university represents knowledge, the search for truth and in this case the potential elevation of an occupied people. The Bush administration frequently justified its invasion of Afghanistan and its growing deployment of forces there as a countermeasure to prevent the Taliban from restricting the education of women. Yet there is apparently no concern about the destruction of a university which is one of the few avenues of potential progress in a region that is blockaded and utterly impoverished by Israel.

I would hope that university presidents, the American Association of University Professors and unions such as the National Education Association would condemn the bombing of educational institutions in this manner. Where will these students be relocated should be asked? Where will professors teach should be asked? Can a military nuclear power be allowed to use such violent measures to suppress the educational aspirations of an impoverished, helpless population without any criticism?

As we saw in the Lebanon-Israel war in 2006, few or zero casualties in Israel is met by force far beyond proportionality. An appropriate response should be measured by casualties, by targets selected and by length of campaign. Israel has used far more force and caused infinitely more human and material destruction than it received. I am not optimistic that the Obama administration will reassess American policy in the region as the war against Islam continues to create needless suffering and potentially a nuclear exchange at some point.