Government: Marketers of Death
Submitted by Bill St. Clair on Sun, 20 Feb 2005 13:00:00 GMT
#
My plastic knives and LED flashlight shipped from
Botach Tactical on Friday. UPS expects to deliver them to my
office on next Friday.
# Anthony Gregory at LewRockwell.com - Targeting Civilians at Hiroshima and Nagasaki - why the atomic bombings that supposedly "saved lives" did no such thing and how the killing of civilians in World War II set a really bad precedent. [smith2004]
Truman has been quoted as saying, "The atom bomb was no 'great decision.'... It was merely another powerful weapon in the arsenal of righteousness." He also called the bomb the "greatest achievement of organized science in history," and wondered aloud about how "atomic power can become a powerful and forceful influence toward the maintenance of world peace."
We cannot know whether Truman believed this or exactly why he chose to bomb Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Some still insist that the president genuinely thought it was the least deadly way to end the war; others think that he was trying to intimidate Stalin or even prevent the USSR from invading and conquering Japan before the United States could.
But we do know that the bombings did accomplish a number of things. They ushered in a new era of warfare, in which targeting civilians became an acceptable strategy. The advent of the nuclear bomb brought on decades of Cold War between the U.S. and Russian superpowers, whose subjects lived in constant anxiety under the perennial threat of nuclear annihilation. It encouraged the Russians to accelerate their production of weapons of mass destruction. It further consolidated power in the executive branch of the U.S. government -- what power even compares with the power to destroy so many lives at the push of a button? And it launched civilization toward the ultimate collectivism, whereby civilian lives became expendable fodder for the sufficiently empowered governments of the world. More than half the fatalities in World War II were civilian, and the apocalyptic finale of the war in Hiroshima and Nagasaki drastically altered the formula for waging war, henceforth branding civilians as legitimate targets to achieve higher, collectivist purposes.
...
Some Americans have celebrated Hiroshima, as though it was a necessary end to the madness of World War II in which 50 million people lost their lives. They perceive the atomic bombings the way one might look at a peace treaty. Several years back, the Post Office came close to commemorating the event with a stamp depicting the image of the mushroom cloud that took hundreds of thousands of lives.
Instead, Hiroshima and Nagasaki should be remembered with solemn and thoughtful reflection as atrocities that reinforced collectivist attitudes toward war and sparked the beginning of a fearful era of cold and hot war with the United States and its proxies against the USSR and its proxies.
# World Net Daily - Condi to replace Cheney next year? - Jack Wheeler has reported that he expects Dick Cheney to resign as vice president next year. Bush'es likely appointment as successor: Condoleeza Rice. [trt-ny]
Writes Wheeler: "Being a sitting vice president places Condi in an impregnable position for the GOP nomination in 2008 and sucks every breath of wind from Hillary's sails. Historically, it's hard for a party to keep the White House after they've had it for eight years. This is George Bush and Dick Cheney's way to buck history -- and make it."
# L. Reichard White at Nexialist News - Standard Operating Procedure? - a long investigation into the marketing of Amerika's wars. The war on Iraq isn't the first war to be marketed with lies; they all were.
"People do not make wars; governments do." -- Ronald Reagan
