Baghdad: another Hiroshima?
Hassan Abu-Taleb* ponders the horrors of war after making a timely visit to the memorial in Hiroshima
As the date of the US attack on Iraq approaches, President Bush is facing increasing criticism from civil and religious organisations around the world. He is thus finding it necessary to cite moral and humanitarian justifications for the attack, claiming that the US "will fight in a just cause and by just means". While we all know that justice is one of the greatest values in human life, it is much easier to talk about it than actually attain it -- particularly in a world characterised by greed and where appropriating the rights of others occurs.
Since the human race first learned to organise its affairs, intellectuals and philosophers have borne the burden of defining the system of values that underpins our humanity and nobility of character. The idea of war was an integral part of this philosophical and religious endeavour, and several different kinds of war have been elaborated. Among these is the "just war", discussed by St Augustine in his fifth- century philosophical work, The City of God. Augustine defined a just war as that in which a society is forced to engage to defend itself and to protect its physical and spiritual existence in the face of a treacherous attack from an evil power. In this context, the only just war is a defensive war. An offensive war or a "preventative strike" -- a term used in the most recent US security brief -- that seeks to gain control of others and their resources is not a just war, which is the case with the impending US attack on Iraq.
Augustine and other philosophers, both ancient and modern, clearly express the relationship between justice and a necessary war, linking it with the idea of protecting civilians and keeping them from falling prey to an evil foreign power. Yet American history is filled with examples in which such simple concepts are reinterpreted to provide the necessary justification for an offensive attack. Unconvincing and superficial as they may be, these justifications nevertheless provide a veneer of morality and an evangelical zeal that passes for justice. One of the clearest examples of this type of willful misinterpretation came in the final days of World War II, when President Harry Truman decided to use the nuclear bomb against Japan on 6 August 1945.
Truman justified his actions by positing a false relationship that simply did not exist between the sacrifice of a few hundred Japanese civilians and the protection of the lives of thousands of others, foremost among them US soldiers who had been assigned to occupy Japan at that time. The spuriousness of this reasoning has been proven. Japan was on the verge of surrender, and the use of such force was not warranted. According to historical studies, there were a number of reasons to use nuclear weapons, but the official justification of protecting a larger number of civilians by sacrificing a few thousand was not one of them. One of the most important factors behind the use of the nuclear bomb in Hiroshima and Nagasaki was the desire of the US military-industrial community to field test the nuclear bomb. The second reason was to prevent the approach of Soviet troops, who, it was said, were on the verge of occupying northern Japan. The third reason was to crush Japan completely, enabling the US to occupy it at the least possible expense.
Subsequent histories and US military documents have shown that Hiroshima and Nagasaki were not chosen at random. Hiroshima, notably, was the base of the Fifth Japanese Army, where the remnants of the Japanese military gathered after its retreat from other war zones. It also housed a number of factories, both civilian and military. Finally, the city is surrounded by mountains, which act as a natural barrier, containing the effect of the nuclear blast within a relatively narrow geographic area. In these histories, including those published by the US army itself, the idea of protecting civilians, or at least the majority of them, is never raised. Nor does it appear that Truman considered the lives of thousands of Japanese who would meet immediate death with the detonation of a bomb that would destroy the north. In October 1945, the US army conducted a field study of the material and human impact of the nuclear bomb in Hiroshima, but the results of the study still have not been published.
This historical example illustrates the way in which decisions about war are made in the US. The content, objectives, and management of Washington's current campaign against Iraq do not differ substantially, particularly when we bring in the concept of the just war, which Bush himself has raised several times in the last few days, saying that the war is being waged to protect Iraqi civilians by liberating them from an odious dictatorship. What is noteworthy here is the attempt to link justice with freedom, both of which are taken to be enough of a just cause to ease the conscience of the US as it plunges into a terrible war in which several thousand innocent Iraqis will die. Bush seems to consider this a small price to pay to liberate their country, or, more precisely, to establish a new colonial regime led by the US, and the first of its kind in the third millennium.
As Bush and his administration embark on their just war and seek to liberate Iraq, no consideration is being given to the innocents who will perish or suffer hardship or flee their country. The new US national security strategy allows for the use of nuclear weapons to confront potential enemies, and US officials have hinted more than once that tactical nuclear weapons may be used against Iraq if the latter employs what Washington feels are weapons of mass destruction. As such, perhaps the example of Hiroshima can clarify what sort of destruction and damage the US is seeking in Iraq and the region.
In the renowned Peace Memorial Museum in Hiroshima, which this writer visited only a few days ago at the invitation of the Japanese Foreign Ministry, the falsity of US justifications becomes clear as one views the traces of the enormous crime committed against the citizens of this city over half a century ago. The photographs -- including those released by the US army a decade ago -- show massive destruction throughout the city, littered with human ashes, mutilated bodies, and charred pieces of flesh. The stories of those who survived because of their relative distance from the centre of the detonation are filled with terror and pain, and speak of the malignant diseases suffered throughout the past 50 years.
Hiroshima, with its people and its captivating natural environment, surrounded by lofty peaks that house several famous temples, was reduced to ashes only a few seconds after the first detonation of a nuclear bomb. The Japanese called the bomb "pika-don", "pika" referring to an extremely bright light and "don" meaning a thunderous sound. The Americans called it "little boy". Although the degree of destruction and suffering the explosion would cause was known before the detonation, at the time, President Truman found no difficulty at all in denying any moral responsibility for the thousands of people who died or were later afflicted with disease as a result of exposure to radiation. Forty-three seconds after the detonation of the bomb at a height of 50 metres, the temperature reached 50 million degrees Celsius, producing a ball of fire that took the form of a great mushroom cloud. This created extremely hot shock waves that covered an area of about five kilometres in less than a second. The pressure of the blast reached 280 square metres per centimetre, leaving nothing in its wake except burnt, radioactive ashes. In about a minute, less intense shock waves spread throughout an area of 50 kilometres, causing fires and destruction to a varying degree.
As a result of the high temperatures caused by the explosion, 120,000 Japanese died immediately; by the end of 1945, a total of 180,000 had died. Another 70,000 were afflicted with diseases as a result of radiation exposure. As for the city itself, nothing remained but ashes and the ruins of a few orphaned buildings that stood witness to this unprecedented atrocity. The nuclear bomb used on Hiroshima was the equivalent of about 20,000 tons of TNT, but it was primitive compared to the types of nuclear weapons the US now has in its arsenal. The US now seems intent on doing a field test with these weapons, along with other modern weapons of mass destruction. Does the US want to turn Baghdad and other Iraqi Arab cities into another Hiroshima?
Perhaps the best advice one could give those who oppose using war as a means of resolving political disputes is that they urge President Bush to visit this memorial museum. Perhaps, then, he will see with his own eyes the destruction and death wreaked on an innocent population by another US president over 50 years ago. Such a visit might be just what is needed to convince him that the war he wants to wage in Iraq has no relation whatsoever to justice, but is merely naked aggression, and an inhumane crime judged by any standards.
* The writer is an expert at the Al-Ahram Centre for Political and Strategic Studies and editor-in-chief of the Arab Strategic Report.
Al-Ahram Weekly Online : 20 - 26 March 2003 (Issue No. 630)
Located at: http://weekly.ahram.org.eg/2003/630/op16.htm