Anti-War
May 21, 2023
Yasui Masakazu, Secretary General
Japan Council against Atomic and Hydrogen Bombs (Gensuikyo)
1. The G7 Summit Meeting of major economies, held from May 19 to 21 in the A-bombed city Hiroshima, ended, issuing a joint statement. During the Summit, the G7 leaders had an opportunity to visit the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum and meet with the Hibakusha. However, far from “send(ing) out a strong message to realize a world free of nuclear weapons” from the A-bombed city, as repeated by Prime Minister Kishida, no new initiatives or proposals were made, betraying the expectations of the Hibakusha and the people. On the contrary, the Summit declared its open affirmation of the “nuclear deterrence” theory, which is very deplorable.
When Japan invited the leaders of Brazil, India and Indonesia to attend the G7 summit in Hiroshima, there were glimmers of hope that it might be a forum for these rising economic powers from the Global South to discuss their advocacy for peace in Ukraine with the wealthy Western G7 countries that are militarily allied with Ukraine and have so far remained deaf to pleas for peace.
But it was not to be. Instead, the Global South leaders were forced to sit and listen as their hosts announced their latest plans to tighten sanctions against Russia and further escalate the war by sending U.S.-built F-16 warplanes to Ukraine.
Twenty-two years ago, Congress put sanity up for a vote. Sanity lost in the House, 420-1. It lost in the Senate, 98-0.
Barbara Lee’s lone vote for sanity — that is to say, her vote against the Authorization for the Use of Military Force resolution, allowing the president to make war against . . . uh, evil . . . without congressional approval — remains a tiny light of courageous hope flickering in a chaotic world, which is on the brink of self-annihilation.
Militarism keeps expanding, at least here in the USA. If there’s a problem out there, option one is to kill it quickly. Problem solved! This simplistic (and utterly false) mindset, which is always present — the companion of fear — may have a grip on American politics like never before, as demonstrated in the recent debt-ceiling standoff, in which President Biden came to an agreement with the Republicans that social spending will be slashed but “defense” spending must continue to expand.
I’m looking at the new report from Costs of War.
Five years ago, I think Nicolas Davies credibly and conservatively estimated 6 million people directly killed in U.S. wars since 2001 in Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Syria, Yemen, Libya, and Somalia.
What Costs of War has now done is to go with the highly dubious but corporate-respectable estimate of 900,000 directly killed in all of those wars, but leaving out Libya and Somalia. They’ve then documented a pattern of four indirect deaths for every direct death. By indirect deaths, they mean deaths caused by a war’s impact on:
“1) economic collapse, loss of livelihood and food insecurity;
2) destruction of public services and health infrastructure;
3) environmental contamination; and
4) reverberating trauma and violence.”
In just a few words -- “those who control the present, control the past and those who control the past control the future” -- George Orwell summed up why narratives about history can be crucial. And so, ever since the final helicopter liftoff from the U.S. Embassy’s roof in Saigon on April 30, 1975, the retrospective meaning of the Vietnam War has been a matter of intense dispute.
Yesterday the US Senate repealed the Iraq 2002 ‘Authorization for the Use of Military Force’ (AUMF), in which, at the behest of the Bush Administration, the U.S. licensed itself to attack the people of Iraq, and, with a fusillade of pressure-packed, hysteria driven lies, dragged along a tricked-up international “coalition of the willing.”
The 2002 AUMF, now otherwise known as an official, categorical, murderous lie, passed twenty years ago, by a Senate vote of 77-23.
Yesterday’s repeal basically said: ‘We repeal the AUMF.’ That’s it. No explanation in the bill as to why. No preamble which recited the litany of lies which Congress bought lock, stock and two smoking barrels. The deaths of one million innocent Iraqis didn’t rate so much as a mention in the repeal.
No apology was made to the people of Iraq. No apologies to the families of dead and injured U.S. soldiers. No mention of the war’s on-going cost to U.S. taxpayers, the amount now approaching five trillion dollars.
National Security Council spokesperson John Kirby said this week, when asked about UK shipments of Depleted Uranium weapons to Ukraine: “If Russia is deeply concerned about the welfare of their tanks and tank soldiers, the safest thing for them to do is move them across the border, get them out of Ukraine.”
Meanwhile, Pentagon spokesperson Garron Garn said Depleted Uranium had “saved the lives of many service members in combat,” and “other countries have long possessed depleted uranium rounds as well, including Russia.”
The announcement by Vladimir Putin over the weekend that Russia will deploy tactical nuclear weapons in Belarus marked a further escalation of potentially cataclysmic tensions over the war in neighboring Ukraine. As the Associated Press reported, “Putin said the move was triggered by Britain’s decision this past week to provide Ukraine with armor-piercing rounds containing depleted uranium.”
When the hijacked planes hit the twin towers of the World Trade Center, pierced the Pentagon and buried into a field near Shanksville, Pennsylvania, most of our thoughts were about the cruel, horrific shattering of family bonds, the forever severing of deep friendships, the senseless destruction of human life. More than that America was under threat and fear prevailed.
The never-ending heartache of loss was on display in photos with messages that ringed the fence of a church near ground zero in New York: “Have you seen him?” “Please, any information, call…” “Please help us find our wife and mother.”
Hundreds of messages. No responses.
I was in New York a few days after 9/11 and witnessed the devastation. I traveled to the site where Flight 93 impacted. And I had heard the plane hit the Pentagon, as I joined hundreds evacuating the Congressional House Office Buildings in Washington, D.C.