Bomb
After Bomb
By
Howard Zinn
18 December,
2007
Counterpunch
This
essay serves as the introduction to Bomb
After Bomb: a Violent Cartography, a collection of drawings
illustrating the history of bombing by elin o'Hara slavick. o'Hara slavick
is a professor of art at the University of North Carolina. More of her
visionary work can be viewed on her
website
Perhaps it is fitting that elin
o'Hara slavick's extraordinary evocation of bombings by the United States
government be preceded by some words from a bombardier who flew bombing
missions for the U.S. Air Corps in the second World War. At least one
of her drawings is based on a bombing I participated in near the very
end of the war--the destruction of the French seaside resort of Royan,
on the Atlantic coast.
As I look
at her drawings, I become painfully aware of how ignorant I was, when
I dropped those bombs on France and on cities in Germany, Hungary, Czechoslovakia,
of the effects of those bombings on human beings. Not because she shows
us bloody corpses, amputated limbs, skin shredded by napalm. She does
not do that. But her drawings, in ways that I cannot comprehend, compel
me to envision such scenes.
I am stunned
by the thought that we, the "civilized" nations, have bombed
cities and country sides and islands for a hundred years. Yet, here
in the United States, which is responsible for most of that, the public,
as was true of me, does not understand--I mean really understand--what
bombs do to people. That failure of imagination, I believe, is critical
to explaining why we still have wars, why we accept bombing as a common
accompaniment to our foreign policies, without horror or disgust.
We in this
country, unlike people in Europe or Japan or Africa or the Middle East,
or the Caribbean, have not had the experience of being bombed. That
is why, when the Twin Towers in New York exploded on September 11, there
was such shock and disbelief. This turned quickly, under the impact
of government propaganda, into a callous approval of bombing Afghanistan,
and a failure to see that the corpses of Afghans were the counterparts
of those in Manhattan.
We might
think that at least those individuals in the U.S. Air Force who dropped
bombs on civilian populations were aware of what terror they were inflicting,
but as one of those I can testify that this is not so. Bombing from
five miles high, I and my fellow crew members could not see what was
happening on the ground. We could not hear screams or see blood, could
not see torn bodies, crushed limbs. Is it any wonder we see fliers going
out on mission after mission, apparently unmoved by thoughts of what
they have wrought.
It was not
until after the war, when I read John Hersey's interviews with Japanese
survivors of Hiroshima, who described what they had endured, that I
became aware, in excruciating detail, of what my bombs had done. I then
looked further. I learned of the firebombing of Tokyo in March of 1945,
in which perhaps a hundred thousand people died. I learned about the
bombing of Dresden, and the creation of a firestorm which cost the lives
of 80,000 to 100,000 residents of that city. I learned of the bombing
of Hamburg and Frankfurt and other cities in Europe.
We know now
that perhaps 600,000 civilians--men, women, and children-died in the
bombings of Europe. And an equal number died in the bombings of Japan.
What could possibly justify such carnage? Winning the war against Fascism?
Yes, we "won". But what did we win? Was it a new world? Had
we done away with Fascism in the world, with racism, with militarism,
with hunger and disease? Despite the noble words of the United Nations
charter about ending "the scourge of war" - had we done away
with war?
As horrifying as the loss of life was, the acceptance of justifications
for the killing of innocent people continued after World War II. The
United States bombed Korea, with at least a million civilian deaths,
and then Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos, with another million or two million
lives taken. "Communism" was the justification. But what did
those millions of victims know of "communism" or "capitalism"
or any of the abstractions which cover up mass murder?
We have had
enough experience, with the Nuremberg trials of the Nazi leaders, with
the bombings carried out by the Allies, with the torture stories coming
out of Iraq, to know that ordinary people with ordinary consciences
will allow their instincts for decency to be overcome by the compulsion
to obey authority. It is time therefore, to educate the coming generation
in disobedience to authority, to help them understand that institutions
like governments and corporations are cold to anything but self-interest,
that the interests of powerful entities run counter to the interests
of most people.
This clash
of interest between governments and citizens is camouflaged by phrases
that pretend that everyone in the nation has a common interest, and
so wars are waged and bombs dropped for "national security",
"national defense", "and national interest".
Patriotism
is defined as obedience to government, obscuring the difference between
the government and the people. Thus, soldiers are led to believe that
"we are fighting for our country" when in fact they are fighting
for the government - an artificial entity different from the people
of the country - and indeed are following policies dangerous to its
own people.
My own reflections on my experiences as a bombardier, and my research
on the wars of the United States have led me to certain conclusions
about war and the dropping of bombs that accompany modern warfare.
One: The
means of waging war (demolition bombs, cluster bombs, white phosphorus,
nuclear weapons, napalm) have become so horrendous in their effects
on human beings that no political end-- however laudable, the existence
of no enemy -- however vicious, can justify war.
Two: The
horrors of the means are certain, the achievement of the ends always
uncertain.
Three: When
you bomb a country ruled by a tyrant, you kill the victims of the tyrant.
Four: War
poisons the soul of everyone who engages in it, so that the most ordinary
of people become capable of terrible acts.
Five:Since
the ratio of civilian deaths to military deaths in war has risen sharply
with each subsequent war of the past century (10% civilian deaths in
World War I,50% in World War II, 70% in Vietnam, 80-90% in Afghanistan
and Iraq) and since a significant percentage of these civilians are
children, then war is inevitably a war against children.
Six: We cannot
claim that there is a moral distinction between a government which bombs
and kills innocent people and a terrorist organization which does the
same. The argument is made that deaths in the first case are accidental,
while in the second case they are deliberate. However, it does not matter
that the pilot dropping the bombs does not "intend" to kill
innocent people -- that he does so is inevitable, for it is the nature
of bombing to be indiscriminate. Even if the bombing equipment is so
sophisticated that the pilot can target a house, a vehicle, there is
never certainty about who is in the house or who is in the vehicle.
Seven: War,
and the bombing that accompanies war, are the ultimate terrorism, for
governments can command means of destruction on a far greater scale
than any terrorist group.
These considerations
lead me to conclude that if we care about human life, about justice,
about the equal right of all children to exist, we must, in defiance
of whatever we are told by those in authority, pledge ourselves to oppose
all wars.
If the drawings
of elin o'Hara slavick and the words that accompany them cause us to
think about war, perhaps in ways we never did before, they will have
made a powerful contribution towards a peaceful world.
Howard
Zinn's most recent book is A Power Government's Cannot Suppress.
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