From Hiroshima to Iraq
and back
Robert Jensen
School of Journalism
University of Texas
Austin, TX 78712
work: (512) 471-1990
fax: (512) 471-7979
rjensen@uts.cc.utexas.edu
copyright Sharon K. Weiner and Robert Jensen
2005
posted on ZNet
and Counterpunch,
August 5, 2005.
by Sharon K. Weiner and Robert Jensen
August 6 asks much of U.S. citizens, as the date silently demands
an accounting
of the decision in 1945 to drop a nuclear weapon on Hiroshima and
unleash on
the world the atomic age.
But this date also should compel us to consider our current
choices about
freedom and security, an equation that has haunted us since 1945
and is at
stake today in Iraq.
Harry Truman’s initial justification for using a nuclear weapon
was that it
would save U.S. lives by compelling Japan to surrender and sparing
casualties
that would come with an invasion. But this argument that nuclear
weapons were a
necessary evil hasn’t stood up, as legitimate questions have been
raised about
Truman’s justification.
Historians have shown that U.S. officials knew Japan was on the
verge of
surrender before the bomb was dropped and that Truman’s later
claims about
projected U.S. casualties in an invasion were grossly
inflated. Indeed, many
of Truman’s own military advisers argued against dropping the bomb
or dropping
it on heavily populated areas.
There is widespread agreement, however, about one other
purpose: Bombing
Hiroshima sent an unambiguous signal to the Soviet Union and the
world that the
United States intended to exert its dominance in the post-war
world, by any
means necessary. In other words, dropping the bomb was a political
statement
even if it was not a military necessity. A certain conception of
post-war
politics led Truman to incinerate upwards of 100,000 Japanese,
mostly
civilians, and start a costly nuclear arms race. It also led
the majority of
successive generations of Americans to believe that the risk of
nuclear
holocaust was acceptable -- that we were, as the saying went,
better off dead
than red.
This five-decade near-consensus that U.S. political goals were
worth the risk
of
nuclear war remained intact until made irrelevant by the demise of
the Soviet
Union. The war in Iraq has made it clear that a new consensus
about how to
secure the “American way of life” is not only desirable but
essential.
The war in Iraq began as a promise to the American people: If you
risk the
lives
of your children, we can eliminate a leader who is complicit in
9/11 and has
weapons of mass destruction to use in future attacks. When these
justifications
proved fictitious, the casus belli morphed into a war to spread
democracy and
destroy terrorists before they cross our borders. This bargain has
proven
equally problematic, as Americans and Iraqis are killed in a
conflict that is
creating more terrorists and fueling a coming anti-American
century.
The consequences of the new grand bargain we are accepting with
respect to our
way of life and our own security are becoming clear:
--The economic damage caused by a costly war, not at first honestly
acknowledged.
--The reputation of the United States abroad, already on shaky
ground, further
degraded.
--The use of torture, targeted assassination of civilians,
blackmail by
detaining children and wives -- tactics that are illegal or
considered
unacceptable in most of the world -- adding to the moral decline
in the United
States.
--The transformation of Iraq into a training ground for tomorrow’s
terrorists,
deepening the hostility toward the United States and the West in
the next
generation of Arabs and Muslims.
Will it take 60 years to understand that in the aftermath of 9/11
the United
States squandered the world’s good will and created a world in
which it had to
rely upon the repeated use of military force abroad to attempt to
assure
security at home? Can we understand now that such a policy -- no
matter what
its morality and legality -- is doomed to fail?
In 1945 Harry Truman ushered in the Cold War with questionable
claims about the
necessity of using nuclear weapons. In 2005 George W. Bush tells
us we’ll be
safer from terrorism if we continue to occupy a country that had
no connection
to the 9/11 terrorists until our invasion and the presence of U.S.
troops
brought them to Iraq.
Hiroshima’s relevance to Iraq today goes beyond encouraging us to
question the
president’s initial justifications; it begs us to consider whether
acquiescing
to this obfuscation won’t put us on a course that we later regret.
-----------------------------
<>Sharon K. Weiner is an assistant professor in the School of
International Service at American University and can be reached at
skweiner@american.edu .
Robert Jensen is a journalism professor at the
University of Texas at Austin, board member of the Third Coast Activist
Resource Center (http://thirdcoastactivist.org),
and the author of The Heart of
Whiteness: Confronting Race, Racism and White Privilege
and Citizens of the Empire: The
Struggle to Claim Our
Humanity. He can be reached at rjensen@uts.cc.utexas.edu.
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