DOCTOR ATOMIC REMINDS THAT ONLY U.S. HAS USED ATOMIC WEAPONS AGAINST CITIES AND CIVILIANS

This afternoon I listened to a WFMT broadcast of Doctor Atomic, Lyric Opera of Chicago's production of the opera by John Adams and Peter Sellars.

Doctor Atomic tells the story of the development of nuclear weapons by a team of American scientists, principally Robert Oppenheimer, in the early 1940s.

The opera ends seconds before the first bomb is exploded in the Nevada deserts in the summer of 1945. Overtones of Japanese residents of Hiroshima and Nagasaki burned from the nuclear bombs sounds in the background together with electronic noise from the count-downs.

The United States likes to say that it is the home of the free and the land of democracy. Americans think that their country is exceptional, the beacon to the rest of the world.

Yet the dropping of nuclear bombs on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki are in start contrast to the American sense of "manifest destiny" and purity of purpose. No other country has used an atomic weapon against civilians or against populated cities. Each bomb took 100,000 lives, women, children, men, elderly, boys, girls.

No wonder Americans hardly remember in their collective historical consciousness what happened in 1945. No one talks about how president Harry Truman proved himself to be a war criminal, using weapons of war, in this first case of nuclear weapons, against civilians and cities. If the definition of a war crime par excellence is killing civilians indiscriminately, Truman's order to drop the bombs cannot be justified.

SHOULD GOD DAMN AMERICA FOR WAR CRIMES?

Howard Kurz takes a shot at both Barack Obama and Jeremiah Wright in his column today in The Washington Post. Kurz objects to Wright's, "God Damn America," notwithstanding the American bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki that led to Japan's unconditional surrender at the end of WWII.

Here's Kurz:

"As for context, Moyers played a long clip from the post-9/11 "America's chickens are coming home to roost" sermon. Wright said that America had taken its land by terror from the Indians; had enslaved Africans; had bombed Hiroshima and Nagasaki (weren't we in a death struggle with Japan, which had attacked Pearl Harbor?); had bombed Iraq, Sudan and Panama; and had backed state-supported terrorism against the Palestinians.

"Moyers's question after this diatribe: "When people saw the sound bites from it this year, they thought you were blaming America. Did you somehow fail to communicate?"

"Thought he was blaming America? Where did anyone get that idea? "

I guess Howard Kurz thinks that America should never be blamed. Not even for Hiroshima and Nakasaki, where, in each city, over 100,000 innocent men, women and children were either incinerated or poisoned with lethal nuclear radioactive materials. Kurz seems to believe the destruction of the two Japanese cities was justified:

" . . . (weren't we in a death struggle with Japan, which had attacked Pearl Harbor?)"

Should God bless America for this, or should as Wright says, should God damn America? Let's admit it. What the United States did to Japanese people when it dropped the nuclear devices was a WAR CRIME. Nothing less. It will do no good morally or ethically for Howard Kurz or other defenders of "American exceptionalism" to claim that the bombing saved the lives of American troops. President Harry S. Truman was a war criminal. So were the crew of the Enola Gay that dropped the bombs. The rules of war make that perfectly clear. The end does not justify the means, not in Hiroshima, not in Hamburg or Dresden, not in the "War on Terror.

HARRY TRUMAN ORDERS PAUL TIBBETS TO DROP ATOMIC BOMB ON HIROSHIMA KILLING OVER 100,000

Bob Greene writes an op-ed in today's The New York Times on Paul Tibbets who piloted the plane that dropped the atomic bomb on Hiroshima resulting in the fiery deaths of more than 100,000 inhabitants. Tibbets recently passed away.

Greene expresses no revulsion with Tibbetts or his actions. He writes that Harry Truman met with Tibbets at the White House and asked him if he got any criticism for dropping the bomb on innocent civilians. Just tell anybody who objects that I was the one who sent you, Truman reportedly said.

Greene writes Tibbets had peace of mind:

"It was reported that he claimed never to have lost a night’s sleep after the mission, and some saw this as a show of indifference. It was the opposite. He slept well, he told me, because “we stopped the killing.” He was at peace, he said, because “I know how many people got to live full lives because of what we did.”"

Harry Truman should have been tried as a war criminal. He claimed he ordered the bomb dropped in order to shorten the war and save American lives. Nice sentiment, but you are not allowed to kill civilians intentionally, no matter how noble the ends. And Bob Greene needs to get his values in right order. Instead of lionizing the late Paul Tibbets, he should think carefully about the 100,000 Japanese civilians, men, women, children, young, old, who Harry Truman through Paul Tibbets incinerated that terrible morning in August some 63 years ago.