Opinion Editorials, August 2009

 64th Anniversary of US Atomic Bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki:

A world of nuclear giants and ethical infants

By Eileen Fleming

ccun.org, August 5, 2009

This August 6th and 9th mark the 64th anniversary of the most brutal acts      upon innocent people; America's atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

On Armistice Day, 1948 General Omar Nelson Bradley warned, "We live in a world of nuclear giants and ethical infants, in a world that has achieved brilliance without wisdom, power without conscience. We have solved the mystery of the atom and forgotten the lessons of the Sermon on The Mount. We know more about war than we know about peace, more about dying than we know about living."

In 1995, from Ashkelon Prison, Mordechai Vanunu noted: "A radioactive cloud consumed rubbed out Hiroshima...A live nuclear test sentenced you. A nuclear laboratory…children women trees animals in and under a nuclear mushroom…burning… burned…flattened to ground radioactive ash-Hiroshima...Nuclear weapons gamblers win against you…Hollywood doesn't know you - you are not a Jewish Holocaust." [1]

A little history:

At 2:45 AM, on August 6, 1945, an American B-29 bomber flew north from Tinian Island toward Japan. Three and a half hours later, the Enola Gay dropped "Little Boy" an 8,900-pound atomic weapon upon civilians in Hiroshima and leveled almost 90% of the city. On August 9, "Fat Man" was dropped on Nagasaki, and one third of that city was destroyed.

"Little Boy" was fuelled by highly enriched uranium-235 and generated a destructive force of about 15 kilotons—the equivalent of 15,000 tons of TNT. "Fat Man" consisted of a plutonium core surrounded by high explosives wired to explode simultaneously and yielded a 22 kiloton explosion.

As a child, I could not comprehend how my country could cold bloodedly target and murder Japanese citizens in order to 'save' American lives, which was the lame response I always received from every adult I questioned as to why after what we did to Hiroshima did we do it again to Nagasaki?

If THAT DAY, we call 9/11 taught us anything, it should be that America's nuclear arsenal cannot defeat 'terrorism' or provide security from the actions of a few violent mad men who target and murder innocent ones.


American money is imprinted with "IN GOD WE TRUST" but reality is we have become a nation of hypocrites, for by our foreign policy we expose that we live by the sword.


America has a nuclear arsenal of over 10,000 weapons and nearly 2,000 remain on hair-trigger alert ever since the end of the Cold War.

An estimated 150 – 240 tactical nuclear weapons remain based in 5 NATO countries and the United States is the only country with nuclear weapons deployed on foreign soil.

American taxpayers provide over $54 billion annually to maintain WMD's, which is but a drop in the bucket of the overall U.S. military spending. The U.S. is also a co-conspirator in international nuclear apartheid and major collaborator in Israel's INEFFECTIVE policy of nuclear ambiguity.

In April 2004, and just three days after Vanunu was released from 18 years in jail for providing the photographic proof and telling the truth about Israel's clandestine seven story underground WMD Program in the Negev, Uri Avnery wrote:

"Everybody understands that he has no more secrets. What can a technician know after 18 years in jail, during which technology has advanced with giant steps?

"But gradually it becomes clear what the security establishment is really afraid of. Vanunu is in a position to expose the close partnership with the United States in the development of Israel's nuclear armaments.

"This worries Washington so much, that the man responsible in the State Department for 'arms control', Under-Secretary John Bolton, has come to Israel in person for the occasion. Vanunu, it appears, can cause severe damage to the mighty super-power.

"The Americans, it seems, are very worried. The Israeli security services have to dance to their tune. The world must be prevented by all available means from hearing, from the lips of a credible witness, that the Americans are full partners in Israel's nuclear arms program, while pretending to be the world's sheriff for the prevention of nuclear proliferation."[2]
 

On July 29, 2009, Archbishop Edwin F. O’Brien of Baltimore gave a keynote talk at the first Deterrence Symposium, hosted by U.S. Strategic Command at Offutt Air Force Base in Nebraska.


He said, "Our world and its leaders must stay focused on the destination of a nuclear-weapons-free world and on the concrete steps that lead there…[and] that deterrence, in the words of the U.S. bishops, is not 'a long-term basis for peace' …the spread of nuclear weapons and technology to other nations, and the threat of nuclear terrorism, which cannot be deterred with nuclear weapons, point to the need to move beyond nuclear deterrence as rapidly as possible…Religious leaders, prominent officials, and other people of goodwill who support a nuclear-weapons-free world are not naïve about the task ahead. They know the path will be difficult and will require determined political leadership, strong public support, and the dedicated skills of many capable leaders and technical experts.  But difficult is not impossible.” [3]

The Archbishop outlined several concrete steps toward total nuclear disarmament supported by the Catholic Church, including the Nuclear Test Ban Treaty, negotiations on a Fissile Material Cut-Off Treaty, and the revision of military doctrines of nuclear weapon states to “renounce the first use of nuclear weapons” and “declare they will not be used against non-nuclear threats.”[Ibid]


In Hiroshima on May 2008, Nobel Peace Prize Laureate, Mairead Maguire said:

"We live in an insecure, uncertain world; it is also a time of opportunity. It is a time to put aside many of the old ways and with creativity and imagination, develop new thinking, ideas, institutions, etc. Young people and women will help this process; they know that Nuclear weapons belong to the cold war thinking, and can never be used. To do so, would be immoral, illogical and destroy the Environment.

"They know our real problems, are: Poverty, Environment, unethical globalization, abuse of Human Rights and International Laws, gender inequality, ethnical/political conflict, State and paramilitary acts of terror…They know that spending trillions on weapons that can never be used, while each day over 30,000 children die of preventable disease, is immoral and unacceptable.

"We are all aware that we are living in an increasing Culture of violence, and if we are to survive we need to build a Culture of Non-violence. Choosing not to kill another human being is the greatest contribution each of us can make to peace. This is not a hard choice when through prayer, meditation, morality, or logic, we come to realize that our lives are sacred as is the life of all our brothers and sisters, and there are always alternatives to violence which work. Human beings are evolving and there is a new consciousness that we must choose non-violence and build strong relationships and community." [4]

On May 17, 2009, Mairead prevailed on seventeen Nobel laureates to sign a letter called the Hiroshima-Nagasaki Declaration. Her friend, author and Jesuit priest John Dear wrote of that day:

"Released in Hiroshima, it calls upon world leaders, and all people, to eliminate nuclear weapons. And it warns that unless humanity fails in that endeavor, 'the horrors of Hiroshima and Nagasaki' will be repeated. Such weapons, [Mairead] says, belong to the tragic past. They belong to a time when the world lacked the wisdom to realize that each culture needs the other to survive.

"Governments which still hold such weapons violate the prohibition of war in the UN charter. But more than that, she says, they’re operating anachronistically. They’re out of touch with the insights of the times. Nowadays our enemies aren’t across the border. The enemies of humanity today are poverty, environmental destruction, militarism, and war.

"Our security nowadays lies in nonviolence and love. She insists that we all need to heed the wisdom of nonviolence and apply it institutionally, internationally, globally and concluded in The Vision of Peace, 'Everyone of us has a role to play in the creation of a new culture of nonviolence.'" [5] 


2009 is the final year in the United Nations Decade of Creating a Culture of Nonviolence for All the Children of the World. America is on the record in the UN as abstaining from voting because to support such an initiative would make it "too hard for us to go to war."


Many Americans live under the delusion that the USA is a Christian nation. If that were true, we would lead the way in nuclear disarmament and abolish war.


 John Dear also wrote:

"Contrary to what the Pentagon tells us, that our God is not a god of war, but the God of peace; not a god of injustice, but the God of justice; not a god of vengeance and retaliation, but the God of compassion and mercy; not a god of violence, but the God of non-violence; not a god of death, but the living God of life.


"[And then] we discover a new image of God. As we begin to imagine the peace and non-violence of God; we learn to worship the God of peace and non-violence; and in the process, become people of peace and non-violence.

"The one thing we can say for sure about Jesus is that he practiced active, public, creative non-violence. He called us to love our neighbors; to show compassion toward everyone; to seek justice for the poor; to forgive everyone; to put down the sword; to take up the cross in the struggle for justice and peace; to lay down our lives, to risk our lives if necessary, in love for all humanity, and most of all, to love our enemies. His last words to the community, to the church, to us, as the soldiers dragged him away, could not be clearer or more to the point: "Put down the sword."

"That's it. We are not allowed to kill. That's why they run away; they realize he is serious about non-violence…Jesus dies on the cross saying, "The violence stops here in my body, which is given for you. You are forgiven, but from now on, you are not allowed to kill:

"Violence doesn't work. War doesn't work. Violence in response to violence always leads to further violence. Those who live by the sword will die by the sword. Those who live by the bomb, the gun, the nuclear weapon, will die by bombs, guns and nuclear weapons. You reap what you sow. The means are the ends. What goes around comes around. War can not stop terrorism because war is terrorism. War only sows the seeds for future wars.


"Underneath this culture of war and injustice is a sophisticated spirituality of violence, a spirituality of war, a spirituality of empire, a spirituality of injustice that has nothing to do with the living God or the Gospel of Jesus. [Ibid]


Jesus is best known as The Prince of Peace and when he told Nicodemus, that you must be born again to enter the kingdom of heaven, he was not talking about an emotional high, but a TRANSFORMATION of heart and mind to wake up and see The Divine in ALL people and all of creation.

Every August 6th in the Eastern Orthodox, Catholic, and Anglican churches, there is a celebration of the Feast of the Transfiguration of Jesus, an event reported in the synoptic gospels in which Jesus became radiant having undergone a metamorphosis; a transformation.



In 2008, at the National Press Club, Rev. Dr. John Chryssavgis, Theological Advisor to the Ecumenical Patriarch on Environmental Issues, Greek Orthodox Archdiocese of America addressed President Bush's agenda known as COMPLEX TRANSFORMATION: 

"The question is not how much more sophisticated our plants and weapons can become, but how serious we are as a nation to lead the world with an alternative vision which interprets power differently and promotes peaceful coexistence globally.

"Complex Transformation is the Bush administration proposed plan to restructure the nation's nuclear weapons infrastructure. The administration's goal is to consolidate existing nuclear facilities while increasing the capacity to produce material for new nuclear weapons.

"According to a report jointly released by the Energy Department (DOE) on January 10, 2008, the administration seeks an annual production capacity of 80 plutonium pits (read: triggers for new nuclear bombs) as a result of the transformation.

"The main justification for the program is the perceived need for a more adaptable and responsive nuclear infrastructure to react to unnamed future threats."[6]


The Wisdom of Nonviolence


"The God of peace is never glorified by human violence… The radical truth of reality is that we are all one." –Thomas Merton

Gandhi's non-violence was a political tactic that evolved from the inner realization of spiritual unity within himself. Gandhi studied all the world's religions and after attending many churches, he remarked that Christianity was a great religion and all Christians should "TRY IT!"

The problem is not with Christianity, but that too few who claim to be have taken The Sermon on The Mount as their manifesto and live lives that express that God is Love and God Loves All.

"Love is not the starving of whole populations. Love is not the bombardment of open cities. Love is not killing......Our manifesto is the Sermon on the Mount, which means that we will try to be peacemakers." -Dorothy Day


"The wisdom of non-violence teaches that war is not the way to follow Jesus. War is not the will of God. War is never justified. War is never blessed by God. War is not endorsed by any religion. War is the very definition of mortal sin. War is demonic, evil, anti-human, anti-life, anti-God, and anti-Christ." [7]


"In all of earth’s sixty-five-million-year history, we are living in the most dangerous of times. The fact that a bomb was dropped on Hiroshima and two hundred thousand lives were vaporized within twenty minutes has not prevented man from dreaming up more ways to fill space with weapons of mass destruction. We were not created for militarism, but to turn our swords into plowshares. We have arrived here today by no accident. We have been summoned by the universe to claim the highest common ground. As the Dali Lama said, the radicalism of our age is to be compassionate human beings. We have been called to bring love and compassion back into the equation and assist others to connect with the deepest parts of themselves. Now is the time to realize, as never before, that when any of us suffer, we all suffer. All life is interconnected, interdependent, and greatly loved by the creator, the sustainer of the universe. We are called by love, for love, and to love.”- Franciscan Fr. Louis Vitale, July 20, 2005, Berkeley, California at TIKKUN’s first annual conference for spiritual progressives. [8]


From Ashkelon prison in 1987, Mordechai Vanunu asked:

"Any country, which manufactures and stocks nuclear weapons, is first of all endangering its own citizens. This is why the citizens must confront their government and warn it that it has no right to expose them to this danger. Because, in effect, the citizens are being held hostage by their own government, just as if they have been hijacked and deprived of their freedom and threatened…when governments develop nuclear weapons without the consent of their citizens - and this is true in most cases - they are violating the basic rights of their citizens, the basic right not to live under constant threat of annihilation…Is any government qualified and authorized to produce such weapons?"


On April 5, 2009, President Obama stood on the world stage amongst thousands of flag-waving Czechs and spoke of good humor, home town Chicago, the will of the people over tanks and guns, old conflicts, revolution, moral leadership as the most powerful weapon, iron curtains that fell and the state of 21st century nuclear weapons:

"We are here today because enough people ignored the voices who told them that the world could not change. We're here today because of the courage of those who stood up and took risks to say that freedom is a right for all people, no matter what side of a wall they live on, and no matter what they look like. We are here today because the simple and principled pursuit of liberty and opportunity shamed those who relied on the power of tanks and arms to put down the will of a people.

"Some argue that the spread of these weapons cannot be stopped, cannot be checked -– that we are destined to live in a world where more nations and more people possess the ultimate tools of destruction. Such fatalism is a deadly adversary, for if we believe that the spread of nuclear weapons is inevitable, then in some way we are admitting to ourselves that the use of nuclear weapons is inevitable.

"As the only nuclear power to have used a nuclear weapon, the United States has a moral responsibility to act…It will take patience and persistence. But now we, too, must ignore the voices who tell us that the world cannot change. We have to insist, "Yes, we can."

"There is violence and injustice in our world that must be confronted. We must confront it by standing together as free nations, as free people. I know that a call to arms can stir the souls of men and women more than a call to lay them down. But that is why the voices for peace and progress must be raised together.

"Let us honor our past by reaching for a better future. Let us bridge our divisions, build upon our hopes, and accept our responsibility to leave this world more prosperous and more peaceful than we found it. Together we can do it.

"Words must mean something [and] violence and injustice must be confronted by standing together as free nations, as free people…[and] Human destiny will be what we make of it."[9]

To this day, the USA and Israel claim to be peace seekers and democracies.

"Israel is a not a democracy but is an Ethnocracy, meaning a country run and controlled by a national group with some democratic elements but set up with Jews in control and structured to keep them in control.”-Jeff Halper, American Israeli, Founder and Coordinator of ICAHD/Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions and a Noble Peace Prize Nominee for 2006.

To this day Vanunu remains an open air prisoner captive in occupied east Jerusalem denied the right to leave the Jewish State. What Vanunu's Freedom of Speech trial exposed since it began on January 25, 2006 is that the Israeli SECURITY System controls the Israeli Ministry of Justice. [Learn more: Vanunu Archives @ WeAreWideAwake.org]

To this day, Tel Aviv persists to attempt to deflect its egregious transgressions of international law and human rights abuses aided and abetted by well funded publicity campaigns, an AIPAC beholden Congress and an American media that has failed at its commission to seek and report all sides of a story when it comes to the now 42 years of military occupation of Palestine.


In April 1999, thirty-six members of the House of Representatives signed a letter calling for Vanunu's release from prison because they believed "we have a duty to stand up for men and women like Mordechai Vanunu who dare to articulate a brighter vision for humanity."

President Clinton responded with a public statement expressing concern for Vanunu and the need for Israel and other non-parties to the Non-Proliferation Treaty to adhere to it and accept IAEA safeguards.

However, ever since the silence had been deafening, until hope resurrected in Prague:

"Words must mean something [and] violence and injustice must be confronted by standing together as free nations, as free people…Human destiny will be what we make of it."-President Obama


"You cannot talk like sane men around a peace table while the atomic bomb itself is ticking beneath it. Do not treat the atomic bomb as a weapon of offense; do not treat it as an instrument of the police. Treat the bomb for what it is: the visible insanity of a civilization that has ceased...to obey the laws of life."- Lewis Mumford, 1946

"Our society is run by insane people for insane objectives. I think we're being run by maniacs for maniacal ends...I believe that as soon as people want peace in the world they can have it. The only trouble is they are not aware they can get it…You're just left with yourself all the time, whatever you do anyway. You've got to get down to your own God in your own temple. It's all down to you, mate...All we are saying is give peace a chance...All you need is love...Imagine all the people living life in peace. You may say I'm a dreamer, but I'm not the only one. I hope someday you'll join us, and the world will be as one...Reality leaves a lot to the imagination."-John Lennon

"If you are not apart of the solution; you are apart of the problem."-Eldridge Cleaver


Learn more and please and thanks for doing something:

http://www.paxchristiusa.org/newsletters/October2008NewsletterWeb.pdf
 
http://www.wearewideawake.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=660&Itemid=175
 
 Notes:

1. http://vanunu.com/poems/mvpoemhiroshima.html  
2. http://www.fromoccupiedpalestine.org/taxonomy/term/226
3. www.usccb.org/sdwp/international/n.  The full text of Archbishop O’Brien’s talk, “Nuclear Weapons and Moral Questions: The Path to Zero,” uclearzero.shtml.
4. http://peacepeople.com
5. http://www.fatherjohndear.org/articles/Nobel_Laureates.html
6. http://www.faithfulsecurity.org/html/complex_transformation.html
7. http://www.fatherjohndear.org/speeches/thomas_merton_wisdom.htm
8. eileen fleming, KEEP HOPE ALIVE, page 156
9. http://wearewideawake.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=1247&Itemid=219
 
Eileen Fleming, A Feature Correspondent for Arabisto.com and Founder of WeAreWideAwake.org
Author of "Keep Hope Alive" and "Memoirs of a Nice Irish American 'Girl's' Life in Occupied Territory" 
Producer "30 Minutes with Vanunu" and "13 Minutes with Vanunu"