Collateral Damage
We pray that God might guide us to use [the bomb] in his ways and for his puposes
-Harry S. Truman, 1945

Kristen pointed out that today is the anniversary of the bombing of Hiroshima. I'm betting that the evening news fails to mention this, but will do all sorts of stuff to mark the anniversary of 9/11 in a little over a month. Americans love to forget that our country was responsible for one of the worst "terrorist" attacks in history. About 200,000 civilians were killed by a single bomb. These days the American propoganda machine would be quick to label them collateral damage. I still call it murder. The American history texts tell us that it was done to end the war and to prevent further deaths, but when the bomb was dropped the defeat of Japan was already assured.

When I was in middle school, a social studies teacher had us read John Hersey's Hiroshima. I think everyone should read it. When I read it, I saw for the first time that my country was not always right and that a war fought like that can never be justified in any way.

This morning the news channels were playing an audio tape of the sounds inside the WTC on 9/11. An undercover FBI agent was wearing a tape recorder inside the WTC when the plane hit and they released it today. The talking heads were saying that this is a rare chance to hear the horrors of what happened that day and played a clip of some woman screaming that her husband was still inside. Pulling on the viewer's heart strings, they seemed to me to be playing it just to get an emotional reaction. They want us to get emotional so we'll support the invasion of Iraq that Bush wants. They want us to look the other way when we start bombing the citizens of Iraq whose only crime was being born in the wrong country, teh same crime that excused the killing of thousands in Japan years ago. The White House wants to invade Iraq and other middle eastern counries to remove leaders that won't open up their country to American oil companies, not to help those people and not to "fight terrorism" but as long as the media can keep American citizens worked up about the attacks of last year, they'll get support for their war; a war for oil and big business. A war that will kill innocent people and get our own soldiers killed just to line the pockets of Bush's big business buddies.

Don't you know we've got smart bombs? They're such smart bombs, they only kill bad people.
-Oingo Boingo