The Fading Ghosts of August

I missed out on being a “baby boomer” by a mere month — the definition of a boomer is someone born between 1946 and 1964, in the “good post-war years.” I was born late in November of ‘45 … three months and change after that August day when the Big Bombs were dropped on Japan. I think that makes me among the very first of the Nuclear kids … the ones that could face their own annihilation at the touch of a button, at the decision of a nervous, ambitious politician … the same dark prospect we STILL face today, and perhaps today more than ever [or at least since Kennedy played fast and loose with the Cuban Missile Crisis in the early 60’s.]

As we somberly acknowledge the 62nd anniversary of those first atom bombs dropped long ago, I wonder if the lessons are too far away from us, the horror that shocked the world then just the beginning of a kind of madness that militarism has produced, the birth of ethical complacency. When the conservatives whine and pule about the “old days,” days that I think back on with considerable hesitancy, the only thing I miss from “way back when” was a reverence for life that seems to be missing today, a communal understanding that there ARE some thresholds we may not cross, for fear of our immortal soul.

Certainly many MANY of us are still mindful and despairing at the implications of Bush’s push for a new generation of nukes [begun in spring of 2003, and to which the Department of Energy has applied an estimated 30 BILLION of our dollars.] But maybe not enough — maybe the kids that came up on horror flicks and computer games and dark nihilistic messages don’t ‘get’ how complete the blasphemy, how grotesque the reality [and karma] of such weaponry … and how borderless the radiation and fallout.

The ghosts of those who perished at Hiroshima and Nagasaki still call to us, but their shades become paler, their voices grow softer as the years go by, drowned out by the drumbeat of war and the rhetoric of egotism and self righteousness that yells, always, louder than sorrow.

We have not used nuclear weapons since August of 1945, if you discount [and this is a Big discount and Huge topic for another time] depleted uranium. Let’s review what we did those many August’s ago, because it is a cautionary tale.

Here is a snip of what I wrote for the Planet Waves cover on August 7, 2005 — it’s a piece of this puzzle:

I watched the History Channel into the wee smalls … amazed, distressed, and thoughtful. The actual suppressed footage of the Hiroshima aftermath was shown on Sundance, a channel I don’t get here in the Pea Patch … so the horrendous snips of children without skin, charred bodies and devastation that I saw last night wasn’t the entire story, but … good enough for an anti-war statements that Screams to Heaven.

Past midnight, there was an examination of the governance of Hirohito — who was he, this man worshipped as a Deity and never tried for war crimes? Disconnected entirely from reality by the circumstance of his birth, protected on every level by his handlers, and bombastic by either nature or position, this was a man who approved plans with a nod but never made an attempt to converse about decisions. The design for the war was in the hands of his cabinet and aggressive military. The murder of millions of Chinese in Japan’s ruthless push for expansion was racist at heart. The public had been taught that the Chinese [said an elderly soldier of the Rising Sun] were “inferior things; less than pigs.” The Japanese people, it’s culture, were the “superior.”

When a suggestion to bomb a U.S. Naval facility was proposed as “deterrent” to possible U.S. involvement in what would soon become a global war, the Emperor simply nodded; when his top military advisor resigned in protest, Hirohito selected [fanatical] Tojo to replace him because “he liked him.” In the end, Hirohito was the man who stepped down from his throne and into the public eye only to encourage youngsters to fly off in Kamikaze attacks for Japan’s “honor,” to tell his people that suicide was more honorable than losing the war — to remind them to “stay the course.”

Japan’s refusal to surrender after the first bomb was attributed to a failed attempt to secure Hirohito’s continued Empirical rights — evidently that first devastation wasn’t a “deal breaker” for the government. A statement was issued to the Japanese people in the immediate aftermath of Hiroshima to “cowboy up.” It was after all … a war.

Here’s another piece of the puzzle — what Harry Truman and the boys were up to as they got notice that Little Boy, the bomb that would turn a Japanese city “to glass,” was loaded into the B29 that history remembers as the Enola Gay; three days later, its companion, Fat Man, would drop on Nagasaki. The weapon was not only a dreadful surprise, it was used in a calculated fashion to break the will of a nation … the success of, and the moral border crossed with, the Dresden bombings in Germany had given us encouragement on what could be accomplished. There was speculation that American soldiers attempting to invade Japan would die by the hundreds of thousands, and Truman wanted a quick end to the war. Clearly, he couldn’t know what he was unleashing on humanity, he hadn’t even heard about the Manhattan Project until after Roosevelt’s death — misunderstanding the devastation they were readying to rain down, they were preparing a series of early, elemental warheads, six or more as fast as they could be produced, to be used in a carpet bombing project over several weeks.

Some 90,000 people died in Hiroshima within two months — unlucky survivors of the first strike had migrated to Nagasaki in time for the second; 80,000 died there. The number grew as time went on, the silent and ruthless killer that is radiation at work — some estimates are half a million — and those who are still alive today continue to suffer radiation related illnesses.

Surprisingly, Japan did not surrender after Hiroshima, and might not have done so after Nagasaki had the Russians not invaded Manchuria on August 8th. It’s ironic that the concept of Empire was what caused the Japanese to blink after the first bomb, unwilling to let it go … and that, ultimately, McArthur allowed Hirohito to keep his title, which had theocratic implications to his culture, using the Emperors compliance to encourage cooperation from Japanese citizens … after all, the man was, even humbled, only good for the occasional nod anyhow.

Hirohito wasn’t a man to connect compassionately with his people, or micromanage his subordinates … Tojo wasn’t a man who was willing to lose, or count the cost … Truman wasn’t a man to rethink his decisions, or stand down from a challenge — remind you of anyone? If you put the worst qualities of these historical figures in a blender and poured them back out you’d get the leader of the free world today — the one president since Harry himself who has no hesitancy whatsoever at the thought of using nuclear weapons … who appears almost eager to do so. Who says history doesn’t repeat?

Today, George Bush and Dick Cheney are sniffing the political air for opportunity to use Bunker Busters on Iran, supposedly for the offense of wanting a nuclear program of their own. And today, even among the Democratic candidates for president, not a single one [expect perhaps Dennis Kucinich] is willing to take the possibility of nuclear strike “off the table.” Who will put Pandora back in her box?

Threat is still threat — wars and rumors of wars still plague us — cruel, unthinkable measures still tempt our reptilian brain — the obscenity of planetary suicide is still possible. And the lesson we might have learned from Little Boy and Fat Man … that throwing our arms around the world in mutual cooperation is the only way to bring Grace to humanity and peace to the planet … is still waiting to be learned. Please DO read the blogger response to the first piece, included — it’s an example of the pragmatic, humble and [extra]ordinary Grace to which I refer.

A collection of poignant reads and statistics, below. The last piece is interesting — creation of the new bombs have been assigned to Lawrence Livermore, where much of the protest action is; all but abandoned now is Los Alamos, where Fr. John Dear lives and has devoted his life to anti-nuke and peace activism [article and link included.] The description of it now is yet another of those Neptune echos … discarded, discredited, dissolving before our eyes.

Of note: there is a disappointing amount of information “out there” today — we forget at our own peril.

Jude

She Stands At Every Door
Kathy Kelly, CommonDreams
Monday, August 6, 2007

At a small, informal school in the basement of a church in Amman, many strings of colorful paper cranes bedeck walls and windows. The school serves children whose families have fled Iraq. Older children who come to the school understand the significance of the crane birds. Claudia Lefko, of Northampton, MA, who helped initiate the school, told them Sadako’s story. The Japanese child survived the bombing of Hiroshima, but suffered from radiation sickness. In a Japanese hospital, she wanted to fold 1,000 origami crane birds, believing that by doing so she could be granted a special wish: hers was that no other child would ever suffer as she did. Sadako died before completing the task she’d set for herself, but Japanese children then folded many thousands more cranes, and the story has been told for decades in innumerable places, making the delicate paper cranes a symbol for peace throughout the world.

Today, August 6, children who’ve recently joined the informal school in Ammam will learn Sadako’s story.

Having survived war, death threats, and displacement, they may be particularly aware of the enormous challenge represented by Sadako’s wish.

Words to the song “Little Girl of Hiroshima” are on my mind today, thinking of the Iraqi children who have not survived:

I come and stand at every door
But none shall hear my silent tread
I knock and yet remain unseen
For I am dead, for I am dead.

The song goes on to tell of a child who needs no bread, nor even wheat, needs no milk, or water, for she is dead. She only asks for peace,

So that the children of the world
Can run and dance and laugh and play.

A year ago, the space where the Iraqi children gather was grim and decrepit. The Jordanian parish priest invited volunteers from the community of Iraqis living in the area to help create a place where their children could meet for lessons and games. Several families responded and set about hauling debris out of the rooms, long unused, that had once housed monks in the Eastern Orthodox Church. Walls were sanded and painted, windows installed, and a garden they planted is now in full bloom. Thirty five children gather, for two hours a day, five days a week, under careful supervision of a few adults in the community. It’s a hopeful spot.

When I visited the school several times a week, earlier this year, two of the children, Carom and Carla, were listless and withdrawn. In the past few weeks, I’ve loved watching little Carla run to join a team playing tug-o-war, proudly accept a marker and solve simple math problems in front of the class, and actively engage in cooperative games. Her brother races faster than any of the other children his age, and he fills his notebook with careful writing.

How fortunate that these two children escaped the fate of so many Iraqi children now represented by the little girl of Hiroshima, those whose silent tread will never be heard.

Claudia Lefko, (iraqichildrensart@verizon.net) works to raise money for the school. For every $35 dollars she raises, we might guess the Pentagon raises $35 million. Billions, perhaps trillions will be spent to send weapons, weapon systems, fighter jets, ammunition and military support to the region, fueling new arms races and raising the profits of U.S. weapon makers.

August 6th, Hiroshima Day, marks the time when the United States ushered the world into an age threatened by weapons of horrific mass destruction, spawning the terrible arms race that marked the cold war between the United States and the Soviet Union. Now, as the nightmare of war in Iraq steadily worsens, August 6th also marks a new round of Occupation Project activities. The Occupation Project is a campaign called for by Voices for Creative Nonviolence and endorsed by Veterans for Peace, Code Pink, Declaration of Peace, and the National Campaign for Nonviolent Resistance, among others.

The action involved is simple. Activists assemble in the offices of elected representatives, prepared to read aloud or to chant the names of Iraqis and Americans who have been killed since the U.S. invaded Iraq. They bring with them articles which help analyze how U.S. wealth and U.S. lives are being used to protect war profiteers and extend the arm of U.S. military might.

We can never reverse the decisions to drop atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, nor can we ever adequately explain to children the vicious patterns of our ongoing wars.

The song about “The Little Girl of Hiroshima” imagines a child who comes and stands at every door, unheard and unseen. In reality, we can go to the doors of elected representatives; - we can be heard and seen. We can learn from past experiences and, as we commemorate the loss of innocent lives, bolster efforts to stop war makers from constantly gaining the upper hand in our lives. I can think of no better place to announce our determination than inside the offices of those who, as elected lawmakers, can affect future military spending. Please, if you have not already done so, visit the www.vcnv.org website and consider ways to participate in the Occupation Project during these crucial weeks before the Senate and House of Representatives vote on more spending for wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. ++

Kathy Kelly (kathy@vcnv.org) is a co-coordinator of Voices for Creative Nonviolence

A bloggers response:
[MUST READ]

Buschy58 August 6th, 2007 5:46 pm

This Spring I was sentenced to two months in federal prison for crossing over into Fort Benning to protest the “School of the Americas”/WHINSEC. I have never been to prison before. I was assigned to Carswell FMC which is the only federal medical facility for women prisoners. Medical facility should be interpreted very, very loosely as there is very little medical care that goes on there. But I am off the subject. ..while I was as Carswell I got food poisoning. I was too sick to walk around outside so I sat in the open area of my unit and made peace cranes. The bright colors soon had women coming over to inquire what in the world I was doing. Soon I was teaching various women from all different clicks how to make these birds. I told them the story of Sadako and the 1,000 cranes. They really did listen. Then one woman said I should teach the women on the chronically ill unit how to make them. It took an act of God to get permission but it happened…you see, this was God’s action in this inhumane place…Soon the Carswell Peace Crane Project was born.

Women with only one good hand due to strokes were making Peace Cranes. I wrote to family and friends to send more paper but most of it got rejected by the sensors at the prison. But it didn’t stop the women. They cut squares of paper from old magazines. Guards and officials asked what these “paper birds” were…I think they were uneasy about the process. Then the women on the chronic care unit took up this challenge to make a peace crane for each woman and officer at Carswell.

I was released about two months ago…and I don’t know if they will ever achieve their goal but that really isn’t important…because the process of making cranes. of women teaching each other how to make cranes and of sharing cranes with each other brought a measure of peace to one of the most unpeaceful places I have ever been.

I understand what Kathy Kelly writes about…I have seen the power of a square piece of paper folded into the shape of a bird…I have seen it bring peace.

Tina Busch-Nema

++

Los Alamos revisited
Fr. John Dear
Jul 31, 2007

“We stand at the brink of a second nuclear age. Not since the first atomic bombs were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki has the world faced such perilous choices. North Korea’s recent test of a nuclear weapon, Iran’s nuclear ambitions, a renewed U.S. emphasis on the military utility of nuclear weapons, the failure to adequately secure nuclear materials, and the continued presence of some 26,000 nuclear weapons in the United States and Russia are symptomatic of a larger failure to solve the problems posed by the most destructive technology on earth.”

So writes the Board of Directors of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, in consultation with a board of sponsors that includes 18 Nobel Laureates.

You might be familiar with the Bulletin’s “doomsday clock,” a graphic representation of our planetary nuclear peril. The clock’s hour hand is poised on 12 and the minute hand is set just minutes away from the stroke of midnight. In 1984, the height of Cold War tension, the clock was set at just three minutes to midnight. By 1991 with the Cold War dissipated, the scientists reset the clock to 17 minutes to midnight. In January, they nudged the minute hand from seven minutes to midnight to five, a sign of their increasing pessimism.

The Bulletin board statement continues:

“As in past deliberations, we have examined other human-made threats to civilization. We have concluded that the dangers posed by climate change are nearly as dire as those posed by nuclear weapons. The effects may be less dramatic in the short term than the destruction that could be wrought by nuclear explosions, but over the next three to four decades climate change could cause drastic harm to the habitats upon which human societies depend for survival.”

My Chicago friends at the North Suburban Peace Initiative (www.nspipeace.org) write

“The biggest challenge of our time is to halt the rapidly growing spread of nuclear weapons. India and Pakistan are increasing their nuclear bomb-making capacity Iran is pursuing plans to develop nuclear weapons and the missile capability to deploy these weapons. At the heart of the problem is the nuclear strategy of the Bush Administration which rejects international treaties as a solution to proliferation and relies on U.S. military might and technology to protect the US. Rather than negotiate treaties to eliminate weapons, this Administration has forged a strategy to eliminate regimes that might use them against us.

“But the strategy has backfired. The invasion of Iraq has turned out to be a disaster. Iran and North Korea have accelerated their nuclear programs. The Bush administration has requested funding from Congress to develop a new generation of nuclear weapons. Congress has agreed to provide initial funding for the development of these new nuclear weapons. Total cost is projected to be in the multi-billion dollar range. These new nuclear weapons must also be tested before they are deployed. Any such testing would end the U.S. nuclear testing moratorium and would almost certainly prompt testing by Russia and China.”

Such statements chill our souls here in New Mexico, birthplace of the bomb, center of the world’s demonic nuclear weaponry. Here reside more nuclear weapons than in any place on the planet. And we continue to build them, and we continue to suffer the effects of radioactive waste.

Over 18 million cubic feet of waste lie buried in unlined pits, shafts and trenches at Los Alamos.

This month, an independent research group examined dust in dozens of homes, restaurants, hotels, and offices, and found radioactive particles everywhere. Hexavalent chromium (the deadly chemical featured in the movie “Erin Brockovich”) has been repeatedly detected in the Rio Grande and other canyon systems and regional drinking water. The state urges people not to eat fish from the Rio Grande. I avoid the drinking water from the well on the mesa where I live, some 30 miles from Los Alamos, N.M.; it’s sure to be contaminated.

Nonetheless, New Mexico politicians push the U.S. Congress to keep the funding pipeline to Los Alamos open. Their eyes twinkle at the prospect of all those millions. And the Congress complies. In the last few months, Los Alamos completed its new design for a starter mechanism, called a nuclear pit. With it comes another generation of nuclear weapons: the old are retired and the new are trotted out in just as big of numbers.

Despite the risks and evils, our national hurry toward world annihilation intensifies. We are rushing toward death.

My friend Jim Wallis of Sojourners recently wrote:

“I don’t believe any country should possess nuclear weapons. The foundation of the Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty was an agreement by the nuclear powers to reduce and eventually eliminate their nuclear stockpiles in return for other countries agreeing not to acquire them. None of the nuclear powers has upheld their side of the deal. If the U.S. and other nuclear weapons states are serious about preventing the spread of nuclear weapons, they must take the necessary steps toward eliminating their own nuclear arsenals. Hypocrisy doesn’t make good foreign policy.”

What can we do? Everything we can! Pray, fast, study, speak out, take at stand, cross the line, organize, act as the nonviolent Jesus would.

This year, my friends and I will journey once again up the mountain to Los Alamos to take our stand for disarmament. We will commemorate the 62nd anniversary of the U.S. atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

Friday Aug. 3, I’ll celebrate a special Mass for peace in Santa Fe. Later that evening, we will hold our annual lecture, this year featuring my friend Maryknoll Fr. Roy Bourgeois of the School of the Americas Watch, just back from Latin America and Iran.

Saturday Aug. 4, after a nonviolence training session, we’ll gather for prayer at Ashley Pond in the center of Los Alamos, process through the town, pour bags of ashes on the sidewalks, put on sackcloth, and sit in strict silence for 30 minutes. The time will be devoted to repenting of the mortal sin of war-making and nuclear weapons. And we’ll beg the God of peace for the gift of nuclear disarmament, for a new world without war, poverty of nuclear weapons, for a new world of nonviolence.

Effectiveness? Making a difference? Results? We are way beyond that. Our role is to try to fulfill the biblical mandate of repentance. Our role is to convert to Gospel nonviolence. For our inspiration, we embrace the story of Jonah and the people of Nineveh, who themselves sat themselves in sackcloth and ashes — a gesture Jesus urged on Chorazin and Bethsaida.

By this symbolic gesture we will denounce the immorality of nuclear weapons, and our own complicity. We’ll pray and speak out that Los Alamos be converted into a nonviolent center for turning all such weapons to scrap and for researching how to heal the environment.

Toward this end we bear a few dreams. We hope the weapons-makers of Los Alamos will quit their jobs. We envision all nuclear weapons being dismantled. We urge Los Alamos’s scientists to devote their talents to reversing global warming. And we proclaim to all to heed the Gospel call to nonviolence.

Everyone is hereby cordially invited to join us in this act of prayer, repentance and nonviolence on Aug. 4. May we all repent and one day welcome God’s reign of nonviolence, justice, love. ++

Remembering Hiroshima at Los Alamos
Fr. John Dear
[from the archives] 8/5/04

Hiroshima Peace Declaration 2007: Aim for a Nuclear Weapon-Free World
Mainichi Daily News
Monday, August 6, 2007

Hiroshima Mayor Tadatoshi Akiba gave the city’s 2007 Peace Declaration early Monday morning, the 62nd anniversary of the world’s first nuclear attack. An English translation of Akiba’s declaration is reproduced in full below:

That fateful summer, 8:15. The roar of a B-29 breaks the morning calm. A parachute opens in the blue sky. Then suddenly, a flash, an enormous blast — silence — hell on Earth.

The eyes of young girls watching the parachute were melted. Their faces became giant charred blisters. The skin of people seeking help dangled from their fingernails. Their hair stood on end. Their clothes were ripped to shreds. People trapped in houses toppled by the blast were burned alive. Others died when their eyeballs and internal organs burst from their bodies — Hiroshima was a hell where those who somehow survived envied the dead.

Within the year, 140,000 had died. Many who escaped death initially are still suffering from leukemia, thyroid cancer, and a vast array of other afflictions.

But there was more. Sneered at for their keloid scars, discriminated against in employment and marriage, unable to find understanding for profound emotional wounds, survivors suffered and struggled day after day, questioning the meaning of life.

And yet, the message born of that agony is a beam of light now shining the way for the human family. To ensure that “no one else ever suffers as we did,” the hibakusha have continuously spoken of experiences they would rather forget, and we must never forget their accomplishments in preventing a third use of nuclear weapons.

Despite their best efforts, vast arsenals of nuclear weapons remain in high states of readiness — deployed or easily available. Proliferation is gaining momentum, and the human family still faces the peril of extinction. This is because a handful of old-fashioned leaders, clinging to an early 20th century worldview in thrall to the rule of brute strength, are rejecting global democracy, turning their backs on the reality of the atomic bombings and the message of the hibakusha.

However, here in the 21st century the time has come when these problems can actually be solved through the power of the people. Former colonies have become independent.

Democratic governments have taken root. Learning the lessons of history, people have created international rules prohibiting attacks on non-combatants and the use of inhumane weapons. They have worked hard to make the United Nations an instrument for the resolution of international disputes. And now city governments, entities that have always walked with and shared in the tragedy and pain of their citizens, are rising up. In the light of human wisdom, they are leveraging the voices of their citizens to lift international politics.

Because “Cities suffer most from war,” Mayors for Peace, with 1,698 city members around the world, is actively campaigning to eliminate all nuclear weapons by 2020.

In Hiroshima, we are continuing our effort to communicate the A-bomb experience by holding A-bomb exhibitions in 101 cities in the US and facilitating establishment of Hiroshima-Nagasaki Peace Study Courses in universities around the world. American mayors have taken the lead in our Cities Are Not Targets project. Mayors in the Czech Republic are opposing the deployment of a missile defense system. The mayor of Guernica-Lumo is calling for a resurgence of morality in international politics. The mayor of Ypres is providing an international secretariat for Mayors for Peace, while other Belgian mayors are contributing funds, and many more mayors around the world are working with their citizens on pioneering initiatives. In October this year, at the World Congress of United Cities and Local Governments, which represents the majority of our planet’s population, cities will express the will of humanity as we call for the elimination of nuclear weapons.

The government of Japan, the world’s only A-bombed nation, is duty-bound to humbly learn the philosophy of the hibakusha along with the facts of the atomic bombings and to spread this knowledge through the world. At the same time, to abide by international law and fulfill its good-faith obligation to press for nuclear weapons abolition, the Japanese government should take pride in and protect, as is, the Peace Constitution, while clearly saying “No,” to obsolete and mistaken U.S. policies. We further demand, on behalf of the hibakusha whose average age now exceeds 74, improved and appropriate assistance, to be extended also to those living overseas or exposed in “black rain areas.”

Sixty-two years after the atomic bombing, we offer today our heartfelt prayers for the peaceful repose of all its victims and of Iccho Itoh, the mayor of Nagasaki shot down on his way toward nuclear weapons abolition. Let us pledge here and now to take all actions required to bequeath to future generations a nuclear-weapon-free world. ++

Hiroshima Remembered—and Forgotten
Olga Bonfiglio, CommonDreams
Monday, August 6, 2007

Keyoko was there during the bombing of Hiroshima on Monday, August 6, 1945. At 8:15 a.m. just before the glass of her house shattered into tiny pieces, her baby started screaming. Shards of glass covered her scalp. Keyoko looked out the window and saw the mushroom cloud hanging in the air over the city. She went outside her house looking for relatives among the piles of bodies and animal carcasses killed by the intense, radioactive heat, she saw buildings and concrete streets with vaporized shadows of human figures etched on them. People were running around begging for water.
* * * * *

“Little Boy” had been dropped from the Enola Gay, the B-29 bomber that flew over Hiroshima. Upon impact, the bomb generated an enormous amount of air pressure and heat and a significant amount of radiation (gamma rays and neutrons). A strong wind generated by the bomb destroyed most of the houses and buildings within a 1.5-mile radius. When the wind reached the mountains, it ricocheted and again hit the people in the city center. By the end of the year 140,000 civilians were dead. Another 60,000 people eventually died from the bomb’s effects. Three days later a second bomb, “Fat Man,” was dropped on Nagasaki resulting in the deaths of approximately 70,000 people by year’s end. On August 15, Japanese Emperor Hirohito surrendered.
* * * * *

Howard served in the Army during the Korean War. He is convinced that dropping the bomb on Hiroshima “was the right thing to do” because the war cost the lives of many Japanese and American GIs.

Today, Howard is concerned about North Korea’s nuclear capability. “If we can’t negotiate with them, they’ll attack South Korea.” He also recognizes that North Korea is more of a threat to the United States than the Arab countries. “I fear more for my family and not myself. I could cope, but I don’t want something drastic to happen to them.”

September 11 shocked Howard. Hearing about the lost lives made him very upset, especially since it happened on U.S. soil. Nevertheless, Howard is tired of hearing about 9/11 because he doesn’t think it compares at all to the trauma the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor caused.

“I lost a friend at Pearl Harbor and it still hurts,” he says.
* * * * *

Sister Barbara taught English in Hiroshima 1974-1994. As a volunteer at the A-Bomb Hospital where the 1945 bomb victims were still being treated, she saw people who were still badly scarred and some who were blinded or made deaf.

“The hospital patients changed my whole attitude toward life,” says Sister Barbara, who grew up during World War II and was “gung ho” to win it. “But I could see how war affected people’s lives.” Sister Barbara used to go to the Hiroshima Peace Museum every August even though it made her physically ill.

“It hurts you inside,” says Sister Barbara. “You realize that people are human beings and that something terrible happened to them.”

For Sister Barbara, the atomic bomb no longer means the end of a terrible war. Instead she understands that it has become a mechanism that allows one people to hold tremendous destructive power over another people.

“I’ve seen the results of atomic weapons,” she says. “It’s enough to make you ask: why did it have to happen?”
* * * * *

Every August 6 the city of Hiroshima holds memorial ceremonies to remember those who died from the bomb. Tens of thousands of people attend. The memorial ceremony begins with a march from the Peace Cathedral to the Cenotaph, the central monument of the whole complex and the site of the stone coffin that holds the Register of A-Bomb Victims. During the ceremony the name of each victim is read. At night the city holds a lantern float on the river and people buy candles for every family member lost to the bomb attack. Peacemakers all over the world have adopted the lantern float as a memorial of this day in their towns and cities. They insert prayers, thoughts and messages of peace in their lanterns.
* * * * *

The Peace Memorial Museum in Hiroshima provides a tangible record of the grim reality of that day and about the powerful impact that weapons of mass destruction can have on a city. The first half of the museum gives visitors a sense of life before the bombing; it showcases children’s toys, books and magazines as well as a model of the city before the bombing. The second half of the museum holds shocking wax figures of the victims: their clothes burned right off of them, their skin hanging in strips like tattered rags, flesh burned raw and sometimes exposed down to the bone, eye sockets gouged out.

Many pregnant women delivered deformed babies and women who carried eight-week-old fetuses bore children with smaller heads and lower intelligence. Children were also muted, that is, their bodies stopped growing. As a result, many young women exposed to the radiation vowed never to marry or to have children because they feared what they might produce. The message of the museum is “Ban nuclear weapons and make peace in the world.” Unfortunately, the world has not seen fit to heed this message. Here is an accounting of the nuclear weapons stockpiles in the world, according to the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC), and published in Bulletin of Atomic Scientists:

Country - (Number of Warheads) - Year of First Test
United States - (9,960 (5,735 active)) -1945
Russia - (16,000 (5,830 active)) -1949
United Kingdom - (200) - 1952
France - (350) - 1960
China - (130) - 1964
India - (70-120) - 1974
Pakistan - (30-52) - 1998
North Korea - (1-10) - 2006
Israel - (75-200) - undeclared ++

Say No To New Nuclear Weapons
Peter Wilk, The Portland Press Herald (Maine) via CommonDreams
Monday, August 6, 2007

Today and Thursday, as we mark the anniversaries of the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, it is fitting that we take a moment out of our busy Maine summers to remember the hundreds of thousands of innocent civilians who perished on Aug. 6 and Aug. 9, 1945.Now, 62 years later, the Bush administration wants to start building new nuclear bombs.

They’ve got to be kidding. How is this possible?

It is not only possible; the planning for it is well under way. A new design has been selected. A proposal to proceed with development is before Congress. Even more ominous, plans have been drafted to build a new generation of nuclear bomb-making factories at eight sites across the country — intended to produce thousands of new nuclear weapons for decades to come.

What are they thinking? How could this possibly be serving our national security interests?

The stunning reality is that nobody knows the answers to these questions. U.S. nuclear weapons policy is completely out of date.

‘NEW AND DANGEROUS ERA’

But there is hope that we can slow down the Bush administration’s rush to build new nuclear weapons.

Recently, former Secretaries of State Henry Kissinger and George Schultz, former Secretary of Defense William Perry, and former chair of the Senate Armed Services Committee Sam Nunn jointly declared: “The world is now on the precipice of a new and dangerous era. We endorse the goal of a world free of nuclear weapons.”

With such respected, conservative leaders now advocating for nuclear abolition, the time is ripe to take action to fundamentally change our nuclear weapons policy.

Current Bush administration policy includes threatening to use nuclear weapons, not only in response to an attack against us, but pre-emptively against any country we judge to be a security threat. Some have suggested a nuclear attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities.

In a recent report by Physicians for Social Responsibility, utilizing the same computer model used by the Defense Department, it is documented that up to 3 million people would likely be killed in such an attack. Do we really want a national security policy based on threatening innocent civilians with mass murder?

Perhaps those supporting development of new nuclear weapons ought to take a trip to Ground Zero in Manhattan. There they might pause to remember that each nuclear weapon among the thousands still in our arsenal, and each new nuclear weapon the Bush administration proposes to build, threatens others with death and destruction dwarfing the World Trade Center attack.

If we are frightened of weapons of mass destruction being used against us, how can threatening others with nuclear weapons possibly help? When other countries see the United States targeting them with nuclear weapons and planning to build new ones, their interest in obtaining the same weapons is stimulated.

It is a dangerous delusion to believe nuclear weapons enhance our security. Acting as if they provide protection inspires others to share in this delusion — all of which increases the nuclear danger for all of us.

LET SNOWE KNOW

In the House, Reps. Tom Allen and Mike Michaud have voted with the majority on a bill eliminating funding for the first new nuclear weapons in two decades and calling for a thorough review of current U.S. nuclear weapons policy.

Sen. Susan Collins has just co-sponsored legislation halting the proposed new nuclear weapons program until after such a policy review has been completed.

All three deserve our thanks.

However, the full Senate has not yet dealt with the issue, and Sen. Olympia Snowe has not decided how she will vote.

It is well past time to change course. Every Maine citizen has a role to play in creating a world free of the nuclear threat. Snowe needs to hear that an overwhelming majority of us want her to join the rest of our congressional delegation in leading us away from a nuclear holocaust. ++

Hiroshima, Nagasaki and America’s Immoral Addiction to Nuclear Weapons
Walter C. Uhler
Posted 6 August 2007

Americans “were free to say what they think, because they did not think what they were not free to say.”
~ Leo Szilard

“Had Germany used atomic bombs on two allied cities [during World War II], those responsible would have been ’sentenced…to death at Nuremberg and hanged…’”
~ Leo Szilard

America’s immoral addiction to nuclear weapons was on display last week after Barack Obama demonstrated that rare ability to think and to say what most American politicians are not free to say, namely that he would not use nuclear weapons “in any circumstance” to fight terrorism in Afghanistan and Pakistan. Almost immediately Senator Hillary Clinton put the use of nuclear weapons back on the table, when she asserted: “I don’t believe that any president should make any blanket statements with respect to the use or non-use of nuclear weapons.” Poor Hillary!

By her willingness to contemplate the use of nuclear weapons, Senator Clinton appears ready, were she to be elected president, to add her name to the long list of presidents who have contemplated such use. As Joseph Gerson notes, in his recent book, Empire and the Bomb: How the US Uses Nuclear Weapons to Dominate the World: “On at least 30 occasions since the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, every US president has prepared and/or threatened to initiate nuclear war during international crises, confrontations, and wars - primarily in the Third World.”

For perspective, consider that, in 1939, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt expressed America’s moral outrage, when he proclaimed: “The ruthless bombing from the air of civilians in unfortified centers of population during the course of hostilities…sickened the hearts of every civilized man and woman, and has profoundly shocked the conscience of humanity.” [Gerson, p 33] Yet, within six years, Roosevelt would not only subject European and Japanese cities to such “ruthless bombing,” his successor, Harry Truman, would do nothing to prevent America’s technological utopians from turning mass murder into a one-brushstroke work of art — by exploding single atomic bombs over Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

In fact, Secretary of War Henry Stimson “confided to Truman that with the US fire bombings that had razed nearly every major Japanese city to the ground, and with the atomic bombings that were to come, the US could ‘get the reputation of outdoing Hitler in atrocities.’”

On August 6, 1945,– sixty-two years ago today — “Little Boy” exploded over Hiroshima. “People…within a half a mile of the hypocenter were vaporized or reduced to lumps of charcoal.” The city became a living hell. “Outlines of bodies were permanently etched as white shadows in black nimbus on streets and walls, but the bodies themselves had disappeared….there were innumerable corpses without apparent injury. Parts of bodies held their ground, like two legs severed below the knees, still standing. Many of the dead were turned into statues, some solid and others waiting to crumble at a touch.”

Six-year old Junko Kayashige was sitting by a windowsill when “Little boy” exploded. She survived, but found herself “walking on the roofs of houses which were smashed flat on the ground…there were people staggering…I could not tell men from women. The skin of their bodies and even their faces had peeled off and [was] dangling, looking like seaweed.”

On August 9, 1945, “Fat Man” exploded over Nagasaki. Unlike in Hiroshima, where approximately 100,000 men, women and children died within weeks of the atomic blast - and another 100,000 during the next few months - the bomb over Nagasaki took but some 74,000 lives by the end of 1945.

Fourteen-year-old Senji Yamaguchi survived the Nagasaki blast to recount seeing the explosion “crush a pregnant woman against a wall and tear apart her abdomen. I could see her and her unborn baby dying. The blast instantly knocked down many homes and buildings as well. Mothers and children were trapped beneath the burning wreckage. They called out each other’s names, and the mothers would cry out, pleading for someone to save their children. No one was able to help them, and they all burned alive.”

Sixteen-year-old Sumiteru Taniguchi was riding his bicycle when “Fat Man” exploded. Tossed into the air by the blast, he managed to drag himself into a basement, where he groaned in agony for three nights. “A grotesque photograph pf Taniguchi’s tortured and bloody body was taken by the U.S. Army. Decades later, when his wounds had yet to fully heal, the heart-rending and now subversive picture was banned from the Smithsonian Museum’s 50th anniversary commemoration of the atomic bombings.”

Admiral William D. Leahy, President Truman’s chief of staff, opposed the use of nuclear weapons against Japan. So did General Dwight D. Eisenhower. As Leahy wrote in his memoirs, “[T]he use of the barbarous weapon at Hiroshima and Nagasaki was of no material assistance in our war against Japan. The Japanese were already defeated and ready to surrender….[I]n being the first to use it, we…adopted an ethical standard common to barbarians of the Dark Ages. I was not taught to make war in that fashion, and wars cannot be won by destroying women and children.” [Quoted from Gar Alperovitz, “Enola Gay: Was Using the Bomb Necessary?” Miami Herald, Dec. 14, 2003]

During the war, General Eisenhower was given to “a feeling of depression” when Secretary of War Henry Stimson informed him that the bomb would be used. Writing in his memoirs, Ike asserted: “[S]o I voiced to him my grave misgivings, first on the basis of my belief that Japan was already defeated and that dropping the bomb was completely unnecessary, and secondly because I thought that our country should avoid shocking world opinion by the use of a weapon whose employment was, I thought, no longer mandatory as a measure to save American lives.”

The debate still rages about whether dropping the bombs was necessary to end the war. As Tsuyoshi Hasegawa asserts in his recent book, Racing the Enemy: Stalin, Truman, and the Surrender of Japan, “Evidence makes clear that there were alternatives to the use of the bomb, alternatives that the Truman administration for reasons of its own declined to pursue.”

In a thoughtful rebuttal, Barton J. Bernstein asserts: “The basic decision on using the bomb flowed from overwhelming, long-held assumptions. To Truman and others, the bomb promised to help end the war earlier than otherwise, presumably to save some American and other Allied lives, possibly to force a surrender before the dreaded November invasion, and, as a potential bonus, conceivably to intimidate the Soviets in future dealings.” [See http://www.h-net.org/~diplo/roundtables/PDF/Bernstein-HasegawaRoundtable.pdf, p. 16]

Both scholars agree, however, that to explain why the bomb was used is not to justify its use. As Professor Bernstein notes: A “sustained effort at interpretation does not mean approving of the use of the bombs or refusing to make moral judgments - about the atomic bombing, and about the lack of a serious quest for likely alternatives.”

If, as Hasegawa suggests, Truman experienced guilt about the women and children killed by the atomic bomb, it didn’t prevent him, in 1948, from warning the Soviet ambassador that “Soviet troops should evacuate Iran within 48 hours - or the United States would use the new superbomb that it alone possessed.”

Truman also authorized General MacArthur’s successor, General Ridgeway, to use nuclear weapons during the Korean War. [p. 82] The possible targets were “Chinese and Soviet troop concentrations, Shanghai, Chinese industrial cities, and four North Korean cities.” Fortunately, Ridgeway “held his nuclear fire.”

Given the Truman administration’s actual use of nuclear weapons and its willingness to threaten their use in 1948 and authorize their use during the Korean War, President Eisenhower could come to the presidency without his previous worries about “shocking world opinion’ with such threats or actions. This nuclear “banality of evil” already had taken hold in the United States.

But “the banality of evil” only partly explains Eisenhower’s “election campaign promise to bring the [Korean] war to an end on US terms by preparing, threatening, and if necessary proceeding with a nuclear attack.” [ p.82] For, as Gerson notes: Both Truman and Eisenhower “understood that the US had ‘a commanding superiority over the USSR in strategic forces.’” Moreover, “This nuclear supremacy soon came to permeate every dimension of US Cold War policy and practice. By 1953, the US had 329 nuclear-capable bombers that, from bases in Japan and Europe, could kill millions of people and eliminate the economic and military foundations of both Communist powers.”

As Eisenhower explained in 1963, “It would be impossible for the United States to maintain the military commitments which it now sustains around the world…did we not possess atomic weapons and the will to use them when necessary.” [p. 31] Indeed, his administration adopted the doctrine of “massive retaliation” which linked “local conflicts to the specter of a global war of annihilation.”

Thus, in addition to threatening to use nuclear weapons to assure that “the Chinese, Russians and Koreans got the message,” the Eisenhower administration also offered atomic bombs to the French in 1954, in order to break the Vietnamese siege at Dien Bien Phu. And it twice threatened China with nuclear attack during the 1955 and 1958 crises concerning the islands of Quemoy and Matsu.

Months after the peaceful resolution of the Cuban Missile Crisis (recklessly initiated by Nikita Khrushchev), which had brought the US and the Soviet Union to the brink of nuclear war, the Kennedy administration approached the Soviet leaders about “‘a joint U.S -Soviet preemptive nuclear attack’ against the Chinese nuclear weapons installation at Lop Nor.” (That overture helps to explain why, in 1969, the Soviets could ask the Nixon administration whether it would object, were they to launch their own preemptive strike against Lop Nor.)

In 1965, President Johnson’s Secretary of Defense, Robert McNamara gave “a background briefing to warn that the ‘inhibitions’ on US use of nuclear weapons in Vietnam ‘might eventually be lifted.’” [p. 148] And in February 1968, General Wheeler “informed senators that the Joint Chiefs would recommend the use of tactical nuclear weapons, if they came to believe they were essential to defend the 6,000 besieged Marines” at Khe Sanh.

By President Nixon’s “own count, he seriously considered first-strike nuclear attacks on four occasions: in a ‘massive escalation’ if the Vietnam war, during the 1973 Israeli-Arab ‘October War,’ during ‘an intensification of the Soviet-Chinese border dispute,’ and during the 1971 India-Pakistan war.”

Gerson exempts President Gerald Ford from the line of presidents who have threatened to use nuclear weapons. But he notes that, in 1975, during the collapse of South Vietnam, Defense Secretary James Schlesinger “advised Ford that there was only one way to halt the North Vietnamese offensive: tactical nuclear weapons. Ford wisely decided not to pursue that option.”

In his 1980 State of the Union address, President Carter vowed, “Any attempt by an outside force to gain control of the Persian Gulf region will be regarded as an assault on the interests of the United States and will be repelled by the use of any means necessary…” [p. 205] According to Gerson, “this policy was reinforced by Presidential Directive 59, which moved US nuclear war-fighting doctrine from mutual assured destruction to ‘flexible’ and more ‘limited’ nuclear war fighting.”

Surprisingly, Gerson has little to say about the Reagan administration, except to note how the Nuclear Freeze Movement forced the Reagan administration “to turn away from the rhetoric of ‘winning nuclear wars’ and engage in arms control negotiations.” However, readers would do well to recall that Reagan “did not regard nuclear war as catastrophic,” that officials in his administration contemplated “firing a nuclear demonstration shot,” and that the Defense Guidance approved by Defense Secretary Weinberger “contained plans for fighting a ‘protracted’ nuclear war.” [Frances Fitzgerald, Way Out There in the Blue, pp. 150-51] Recall as well that Reagan “once maintained that submarine-based missiles could be recalled.”

The first Bush administration threatened to use nuclear weapons against Iraq, if that country decided to use chemical and biological weapon against U.S. forces during the 1991 Gulf War. [p. 216] And when the US made its transition from the air war to the ground war, Defense Secretary Cheney publicly affirmed his belief that the atomic bombing of Hiroshima had saved US lives.

Finally, President Clinton “threatened nuclear attacks against China, Libya and Iraq before surrendering the Oval Office in 2001 to perhaps the worst and most destructive president in U.S. history, George W. Bush.” “In its 2002 Nuclear Posture Review, the Bush II administration reiterated its commitment to first-strike nuclear war-fighting, named seven nations a primary nuclear targets, and urged funding for the development of new and more usable nuclear weapons.”

America’s belief in the utility of nuclear weapons, along with its hypocritical insistence that nearly all other nations abide by the terms of the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT) while it ignores the NPT’s Article VI obligation to engage in ‘good faith” negotiation to completely eliminate such weapons, have persuaded other nations that nuclear weapons are desirable. Witness India, then Pakistan and, now, North Korea.

Moreover, continued US willingness to plan to use nuclear weapons since the end of the Cold War ignores a July 8, 1996, advisory opinion issued by the World Court, which concluded: “[T]he threat or use of nuclear weapons would generally be contrary to the rules of international law applicable in armed conflict, and in particular the principles and rules of humanitarian law.” The court envisioned but one circumstance in which the use of nuclear weapons by a state might not constitute a crime against humanity: the “extreme circumstance of self-defense, in which its very survival would be at stake.”

According to Gerson, among the principles from which the World Court drew “were that nuclear weapons are genocidal and potentially omnicidal; they cause indiscriminate harm to combatants and non-combatants alike and inflict unnecessary suffering; they violate the requirement that military responses be proportional; they destroy the ecosystem, thus endangering future generations; they violate international treaties outlawing the use of poison gas; and they inflict unacceptable damage to neutral nations.”

But, perhaps, George Kennan said it best in 1982, when he wrote: “[T]he readiness to use nuclear weapons against other human beings - against people whom we do not know, whom we have never seen, and for whose guilt or innocence it is not for us to establish - and in doing so, to place in jeopardy the natural structure upon which all civilization rests, as though the safety and the perceived interests of our own generation were more important than everything that has ever taken place or could take place in civilization: this is nothing less than a presumption, a blasphemy, an indignity - an indignity of monstrous dimensions - offered to God!” [”A Christian’s View of the Arms Race,” The Nuclear Delusion p. 207] ++

Nuke weapons lab reports another major security breach
Michael Roston, Raw Story
Tuesday August 7, 2007

A government watchdog group warns that New Mexico’s Los Alamos National Laboratory, one of the nation’s nuclear weapons design laboratories, has again experienced a security failure of ‘the most serious’ level.

“An incident involving the unauthorized release of classified data via email occurred last week at Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL),” reported a press release Monday from the Project on Government Oversight (POGO). “The incident…is rated among ‘the most serious threats to national security.’”

However, POGO also noted that the lab had attempted to change the classification of the security breach in order to minimize it.

“In an attempt to minimize the problem, the breach was downgraded to a less severe category of IMI-4,” the group stated. “After another review, however, it was elevated back to IMI-1.”

A so-called ‘IMI-1,’ or Impact Measurement Index-1 incident can include loss or theft of a nuclear device, components or weapon data; intrusions, hackings, or break-ins into Energy Department computer systems containing secret information; or acts or attempts of terrorist actions.

In spite of the high rating of the breach, a LANL spokesman who talked to the Santa Fe New Mexican attempted to further downplay the incident.

“We did have a lab employee who made a mistake and inadvertently allowed sensitive information to get on our yellow network, which is password protected,” Kevin Roark told the paper’s Andy Lenderman. “It’s for lab employees only. It is not accessible to the outside world. However, sensitive information should not reside on the yellow network.”

In its release, POGO listed 12 security incidents at Los Alamos since nuclear scientist Wen Ho Lee was falsely accused of leaking nuclear secrets to the Chinese military. In one late 2006 incident, a LANL employee who was arrested on suspicion of dealing methamphetamines was found to have sensitive information from the lab in his home.

“LANL has been fined, lab officials have been fired, and the lab was even closed for a number of months so that it could get its act together,” POGO Senior Investigator Peter Stockton said in a statement. “It’s clear that it just can’t.”

POGO’s full statement can be read at this link. ++

“So keep fightin’ for freedom and justice, beloveds, but don’t you forget to have fun doin’ it. Lord, let your laughter ring forth. Be outrageous, ridicule the fraidy-cats, rejoice in all the oddities that freedom can produce. And when you get through kickin’ ass and celebratin’ the sheer joy of a good fight, be sure to tell those who come after how much fun it was.”
~ Molly Ivins, 1944 - 2007

In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes.

Add comment August 7th, 2007

Heckuva job, Brownie — no, really!

George W. Bush is no doubt missing his faithful lapdog and trusty poodle [who has been sent off to “solve” the Israel/Palestine problem, trotting along in the giant footprints of Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton who came close but no doggy biscuit.] Britain is withdrawing its troops, bit at a time, and today, she wants her Gitmo prisoners back.

Gordon Brown, Tony Blair’s replacement, is a very formal gent, and not given to frivolity. When he recently visited the Dubby, he wore the same look that my elderly father wears when confronted by other-peoples-children [and sometimes his own] … faintly annoyed, patiently enduring, counting the minutes ’til departure. Brown was spared the “presidential wink” given to the Queen [go here for an excellent read on the psychology that prompted it, and the video] weeks earlier, but he did have to suffer some incoherent babble from the Dub to press, indicating that this Scot wasn’t nearly as “dour” or “awkward” as had been suggested. Brown gave the Bushies a big helping of nuance, from resisting “war on terror” rhetoric to referring to Dub as “Mr. President” at all times; and check out his underreported visit to Bill Clinton before he headed home. [All the links here are Really Interesting reads; if you have time, don’t miss.]

Washington Post’s Froomkin gives us some tidbits:

Bush’s Gift Bombs

AFP reports: “For a man rarely seen out of a sombre suit and tie, it could be seen as an inappropriate gift for Gordon Brown — and even more so given the political sensitivities in Britain of the invasion of Iraq.

“But US President George W. Bush gave Brown a present of a fur-trimmed leather bomber — or aviator — jacket when the prime minister visited him at his Camp David retreat, north of Washington, Sunday and Monday.

“The brown jacket has a name tag with the prime minister’s official title — ‘Rt Hon (Right Honourable) Gordon Brown’ — on the left breast and a Camp David badge with the presidential seal on the other.”

Patrick Wintour writes in the Guardian: “Gordon Brown spent two days at the American presidential retreat of Camp David emphasising the importance of soft power. Judging by the gift he received from George Bush, however, the message has not quite got through.”
Wintour speculates: “Mr Bush may have seen the present as a revenge for being forced to dress relatively formally at Camp David in order to meet the prime minister’s desire for a businesslike session, as opposed to anything with a hint of relaxed intimacy.”

(AFP reports that while Bush himself was casually dressed, according to aides the British leader did not divest himself of his suit, although he did take his tie off at breakfast.)

… and again, quoting Politico’s Mike Allen on the Dubby’s continued “happy face” mood:

“…We were out at Camp David the other day, you maybe saw the video of when he picked up Prime Minister Gordon Brown in his golf cart, which had a Golf Cart One and presidential seal on the front. He drove by the press, waived, sped up a little bit, and then did a 360. It wasn’t quite a donut, because he didn’t spin out, but he did a little circle right in front of us, just because he could, gave us a little mischievous smile, and a wave, just to remind us that he’s there. So that’s his mood, and I think Tony Snow reflects that. He is a happy warrior.”

Brown is a different breed of cat — and cats, as you know, only curl up on your lap when they WANT to. I doubt that spinning donuts in a golf cart put him in a purring mood — nor erased the notion that the colonials had frittered away any diplomatic chops they ever possessed.

Jude

The performance of Britain’s new PM gives a hint of what the post-Bush era may be like
Village Voice
8/7/08

George W. Bush’s British manservant, Tony Blair, is someplace in the Middle East doing little more than meets-and-greets with Israelis and certain selected Palestinians. It’s nothing more than Blair’s trying to sweep the shards of broken Iraq under the rug — he helped break it, so he should try to clean it up.

“Manservant” is too distinguished an image. Much of the world will continue to see the bubbly Blair as the Bush regime’s loyal little puppy. But now that Gordon Brown is the new British PM, we’ve entered an era of what John Feffer of the Institute for Policy Studies calls “post-poodle politics.”

Brown (left, with Bush) is a different animal. He won’t faithfully yip with joy around Bush. He’s known to be sober and reserved, more of a St. Bernard than a feisty, cute terrier like Bush’s pal Barney.

More importantly, Brown may be more like a St. Bernard, but he won’t be coming to the Bush regime’s rescue. The British PM is more likely to take several dumps on Bush’s carpet.

The way Brown practices foreign policy — even what he’s already done as he tries to extract his country from the Iraq debacle — gives us a preview of what a post-Bush regime could look like.

Unfortunately, one step Brown has already taken — halting the influence of his advisers on career civil servants — will probably never happen in U.S. presidential politics. As Ian Davis notes in Foreign Policy in Focus:

The new prime minister has made it clear that career civil servants from the Foreign Office (rather than political appointees) will become his principal advisers on international relations. … Brown also plans to ban special advisers from giving orders to civil servants.

In Dick Cheney’s Bush regime, a small coterie of Cheney, Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, Rove, and the like ran roughshod over more pragmatic types like generals Eric Shinseki (on the number of troops needed to “conquer” Iraq) and Tony Zinni (who believed that the road to peace led through Jerusalem instead of Baghdead).

Brown’s more likely to rely on his military people in the field than has Blair, let alone the Bush regime. And that means a quicker exit by the Brits from Iraq. Davis says:

British military commanders are reported to have drawn up plans to withdraw the vast majority of British troops from Iraq within 12 months to concentrate on the war in Afghanistan. They believe British troops are achieving little in southern Iraq and that their presence is escalating the violence.

Blair’s regime didn’t seem to have much faith in its people on the ground. Back in 2005, Blair thought so much of his Foreign Office career diplomats that he immediately canned his ambassador to Uzbekistan, Craig Murray, after Murray — a boil on Blair’s butt — had the audacity to denounce Uzbek dictator Islam Karimov’s torture tactics.

Don’t expect to see any photos of Gordon Brown chatting about the “war on terror” with Cheney on the steps of 10 Downing Street, as Blair did in 2002 during the secret plotting of the Iraq invasion.

And as for Iran? No matter how much Cheney and his crew are itching to pull the trigger, this dog Brown won’t hunt. As Davis says:

Iraq will undoubtedly color Brown’s policy towards Iran. While Blair has refused to rule out military action, it is almost inconceivable that a Brown government would support such action.

Finally, Brown won’t be stirring up the populace to support the current war on Terra. More from Davis:

In contrast to Tony Blair, the new British leader has offered no emotive sound bites, no promises of tough new laws and no talk of a “war on terror” since the failed terror attacks in London and Glasgow at the end of June. His few public statements have been measured and brief, with many Britons welcoming this change to a lower-key approach.

Which U.S. presidential candidate sounds the most like Gordon Brown? Well, it ain’t Hillary Clinton, who’s in thrall to the right-wing American-Israeli lobby. Is it Barack Obama? At least he talks about talking with our dastardly enemies. Like Brown, Obama has little experience in directing foreign policy.

For once, a newspaper editorial — a British one, in the July 30 Daily Mail — sums things up nicely when it comes to the shift from Blair to Brown:

The love-in is over. Everything about Gordon Brown’s demeanour at Camp David [on July 30] proclaimed that a new chapter is opening in Britain’s relations with the United States.

Gone was the informality of the Blair years: the casual clothes (who can forget ambassador Christopher Meyer’s description of Tony Blair’s “ballcrushingly tight corduroys”?) and the matey exchanges of banter between British prime minister and American president.

Instead, Brown was businesslike almost to the point of coolness.

Where Tony Blair fell hook, line and sinker for Mr Bush’s flattery, Mr Brown seemed utterly impervious to it.

Why, he even described his talks with George Bush as “full and frank” — diplomatic code through the ages for difficult conversations on points of disagreement.

Good. For won’t this new, more formal relationship be far healthier — for both Britain and the U.S?

We all know where Mr Blair’s lapdog devotion to Mr Bush led us. Every day, new horror stories emerge from the shambles of Iraq.

By the time our presidential election rolls around, Brown will have been in office for about a year. His performance should at least give us an idea of what — and who — it may take to start undoing the damage of the Bush era.

UK asks U.S. to free residents from Guantanamo
Adrian Croft, Reuters
8/7/08

LONDON - Britain asked the United States on Tuesday to release five British residents from Guantanamo Bay in a change of policy that may signal Prime Minister Gordon Brown is taking a more independent stance from Washington.

Foreign Secretary David Miliband sent a formal request to U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice for the release of the five men, who were legally resident in Britain before their detention but are not British nationals.

The decision marks a shift from the policy of former Prime Minister Tony Blair’s government, which secured the release of all nine British citizens held at the U.S. prison camp in Cuba but maintained it was not responsible for detainees of other nationalities who had simply lived in Britain.

Speculation that Brown, who succeeded Blair in June, will steer a more independent course has been reinforced by some of his ministerial appointments and by one minister’s comment that Brown and Bush were unlikely to be “joined together at the hip.”

Britain said it was seeking the release and return to Britain of Shaker Aamer, a Saudi national; Jamil el-Banna, who is Jordanian; Omar Deghayes, a Libyan; Binyam Mohamed from Ethiopia; and Abdennour Sameur, an Algerian.

The Blair government had opposed a legal challenge by relatives of several of the men seeking to force London to press for their release from U.S. detention camp.

In Washington, State Department spokesman Sean McCormack said the United States would review the British request, which was “well within the confines of our policy.”

“We don’t want to be the world’s jailers. At the same time, we also don’t want to see very dangerous people allowed to walk the streets freely so they can pose a threat to our citizens as well as others,” he told reporters.

STRONG CRITICISM

The United States has faced strong criticism over the indefinite detention of terrorism suspects at Guantanamo Bay. U.S. President George W. Bush has said he would like to close the camp but calls it a necessary tool in the war on terrorism.

Britain said it welcomed steps by Washington to reduce the numbers of people detained at Guantanamo Bay and to move towards the closure of the facility.

John Curtice, politics professor at Strathclyde University, said the request was a clear change of policy that supported expectations the Brown government would be “rather more independent of the U.S. than its predecessor.”

Blair was Bush’s closest ally during the Iraq war but many supporters of Britain’s ruling Labour Party disapproved of his closeness to the U.S. president. There have been repeated suggestions that Brown will pursue a more independent line.

However, a senior government source said the request for the release of the British residents was not at all about distancing Britain from the United States.

“The reason for the change in approach is that the U.S. are prepared to accept representations now about individuals who are not the nationals of those countries,” the source said, adding that Washington had previously not been open to such overtures.

Clive Stafford Smith, legal director of prisoners’ rights group Reprieve, congratulated the Brown government. “At last we are seeing an ethical foreign policy: action rather than words,” he said in a statement.

William Hague, foreign affairs spokesman for the opposition Conservative Party, told Sky News the British request may be welcome to the United States, because “they can only close down Guantanamo when they have found something to do with … all the people who are currently incarcerated there.”

Additional reporting by Arshad Mohammed in Washington

As British Leave, Basra Deteriorates
Violence Rises in Shiite City Once Called a Success Story
Karen DeYoung and Thomas E. Ricks, WaPo
Tuesday, August 7, 2007; Front Page

As British forces pull back from Basra in southern Iraq, Shiite militias there have escalated a violent battle against each other for political supremacy and control over oil resources, deepening concerns among some U.S. officials in Baghdad that elements of Iraq’s Shiite-dominated national government will turn on one another once U.S. troops begin to draw down.

Three major Shiite political groups are locked in a bloody conflict that has left the city in the hands of militias and criminal gangs, whose control extends to municipal offices and neighborhood streets. The city is plagued by “the systematic misuse of official institutions, political assassinations, tribal vendettas, neighborhood vigilantism and enforcement of social mores, together with the rise of criminal mafias that increasingly intermingle with political actors,” a recent report by the International Crisis Group said.

After Saddam Hussein was overthrown in April 2003, British forces took control of the region, and the cosmopolitan port city of Basra thrived with trade, arts and universities. As recently as February, Vice President Cheney hailed Basra as a part of Iraq “where things are going pretty well.”

But “it’s hard now to paint Basra as a success story,” said a senior U.S. official in Baghdad with long experience in the south. Instead, it has become a different model, one that U.S. officials with experience in the region are concerned will be replicated throughout the Iraqi Shiite homeland from Baghdad to the Persian Gulf. A recent series of war games commissioned by the Pentagon also warned of civil war among Shiites after a reduction in U.S. forces.

For