�In recent years, I've
argued that dropping the bomb was the proper thing to do . . . because it was
the only way to impress on humanity the terrible nature of nuclear weapons. We
have to invest them with the force of religious taboos, which are the only
things strong enough to last for millennia . . . The images of Hiroshima have
that force.''�Alvin Weinberg, a former director of Oak Ridge National
Laboratories [1]
�Talking about that
moment: �I am become death, the destroyer of worlds.� Does that capture the
moment for you?��J. Robert Oppenheimer, supervising scientist of the
Manhattan Project, responding on how he felt after the nuclear experiment in
New Mexico. [2.]
�It was then that I had a letter from Leo Szilard suggesting that the first
nuclear explosive used in the war should be used for demonstration and not for
actually hurting man. I went with the proposal to Oppenheimer, who said,
definitely, 'No.' Unfortunately, I took his advice."�Edward Teller,
theoretical physicist, Los Alamos, for the development of the first atomic
bomb [3]
�Truman ordered a halt to further atomic bombings. Truman said he had given
orders to stop atomic bombing. He said the thought of wiping out another
100,000 people was too horrible. He didn't like the idea of killing, as he
said, �all those kids.��Henry Wallace, secretary of Commerce, diary note
on Aug. 10, 1945 the day after Harry Truman incinerated Nagasaki and three days
after the incineration of Hiroshima. [4]
"It'll come out in the wash.��Harry Truman replying to J. Robert
Oppenheimer who told Truman, the day after Truman incinerated Hiroshima, �Mr.
President, I have blood on my hands." [5]
�I think we could all agree that if they [the Soviets] struck first we are
going to target our weapons against their society and destroy 120 million of
them.��Robert McNamara. testimony to Congress, January 1967, [6]
Discussing the
concept of �American Modified and Accepted Hitlerism�
(AMAH) is an avenue to understand the working mechanisms of U.S. imperialism.
Although I tend to accentuate violence as the most prominent expression of the
concept, violence is only a co-factor in the multiple layers of U.S.
ideological make-up. Any dedicated reflection on the ideological announcements
of U.S. power holders would distinctly spell out all other factors including
the desire for limitless imperialistic expansion, acquired or innate tendency
for fascism because of unaccountability and supremacist mentality, lust for
colonialism in all forms, and entrenched racism, all arranged into a corollary
that U.S. imperialists affectionately call the �American experience.�
Inescapably, our
contention is that, in all historical phases of this �experience� (colonial
period, republic, empire, pre-Zionist era, and current Zionist phase), the
rationales, ruses, actions, and applications of its guiding ideology has caused
and is still causing unspeakable death, destruction, and desolation around the
world. Because of the ease (based on a self-given right) with which the U.S.
intervenes in the affairs of the world, the premeditation to inflict mayhem, and
the recurrent announcements of supporting justificatory ideology, it is
justifiable to conclude that manifest Hitlerism (as it relates to the
American international ideology and praxis) and the U.S. have become synonyms.
Just as Hitler
wanted to implement an order and had a vision for the world, American leaders
had and still have identical objectives. For example, when retired General and
former National Security Advisor, Brent Scowcroft, used a phrase like �Our
strategy for the world . . . etc.) [7], we ask, �What strategy and lofty ideals
did Scowcroft have in mind, who authorized him to devise a strategy for the
world, and except for his imperialistic, Mormon, and military credentials, are
there any intellectual, philosophical, physiological, biological, psychological,
civilizational, societal, and literary qualifications that peremptorily put him
in control of our destiny and of the world?�
Of course, I cannot
answer all these questions without extensively studying Scowcroft and his life,
a thing that goes beyond the scope of this work. Nevertheless, I shall dare to
speculate by answering my question with a question�just give me a moment until
the next paragraph. First, from reading �A World Transformed,� that he
co-authored with George H. W. Bush, but with true writers writing the
book for both of them, we can depict a rigid ideological makeup of a
self-righteous and rigidly monolithic fascist imperialist. However, this is not
the point, as discovering this trait of Scowcroft, a man indoctrinated in the
philosophy of empire and militarism, is as equivalent to rediscovering that
Earth is a planet. In the end, from that same reading, I did not see any
serious qualifications that could authorize Scowcroft and his fellow
imperialists to devise any strategy for the world. Further, to our knowledge,
we have never come across any petition from the world soliciting the U.S. to
devise a strategy for it. Now, let me answer the question that I begged for a
moment to answer.
If we compare the
overall civilizational baggage of Scowcroft, as a representative of his
imperialist class, and that of Nelson Mandela, as a representative of all
nations yearning for justice, freedom, and equality, who between these two
leaders has the qualifications to devise a strategy for the world?
From where I stand,
I cannot see but one African giant whose morality standards and sense of
history overshadows and nullifies all petty thinking of Western imperialists,
thus making them appear meaningless entities in the perennial human landscape.
What I stated in the previous paragraph is not a comparison between
personalities, and the answer I gave has to do only with my personal election
of who has all required qualifications to design a strategy for the world. The
ultimate purpose of the comparison, however, is to deflate to absolute zero the
pretensions of U.S. imperialists to have the last word on the future of
humanity. Of course, the U.S. can be an actor among many other actors, but not
the only actor. In addition, it must earn that participatory role by
self-reforming its Hitlerian soul, renouncing international terrorism, and
accepting that the world is multiform, diverse, and has no plans to conform to
the chauvinist tenets of imperialism and Zionism.
How does a fascist
mentality work in the example of Scowcroft? In a special interview with Peter
Jennings of ABC in 2000, Scowcroft stated that the U.S. does not want any
democracy project for Iraq, and that the only thing the U.S. was pursuing, at
that time, was that one of Saddam�s henchmen puts a bullet in his head; after
that, Saddam�s regime can continue, but without Saddam. As for the people of
Iraq, their life, and future . . . who cares! This is fascism, regardless of
how we define fascism.
The �grandiose�
strategy that Scowcroft had for Iraq or for the world was not just an isolated
episode in American thinking. Interestingly, American presidents love to create
grandiose doctrines, philosophies, and visions. Monroe, Wilson, Truman, Carter,
and even a mediocre personality that owes his ascendancy to power to his
dynastic roots and to the Supreme Court, is now advocating his own
hyper-imperialist doctrine. The infatuation with �doctrines� and �visions� is
not an exclusive privilege of presidents. Zionists have a vision, especially
for the Middle East; opinion makers have a vision; bogus experts have a vision;
and even talking heads have a vision, too. One common denominator for all these
�doctrines� and �visions� is an aggressive hegemonic order that depends on
military violence to achieve U.S. imperialistic objectives.
The most
interesting aspect of U.S. ideological stagnation is that once a doctrine,
vision, or a philosophy finds its way to the public domain of information, it
becomes a rigid fixture of American life, thus testifying to the stultifying of
American thought under the hermetic control of rulers and special interests
groups. The path that leads from visions and doctrines to active implementation
of the same has one consequence on an international level�violence and
destruction of nations. To conclude this particular discussion, U.S. existence
encapsulates the most active forms of cruel violence mingled with bizarre
beliefs in its singular superiority. To double the charge against the mentality
of international violence practiced by the United States, it appears that
Zionists, militarists, supremacists, fascists, religious fanatics, and economic
concerns tied to the empire project are determined to keep it that way, thus
crowning the U.S. as the most criminal state in history and the ultimate menace
to the survival of humanity.
There have been
persistent insinuations and policy announcements by imperialists and cultural
associates that the understanding of this pretended singularity is a means to
accept reductionist and apologetic notions that posit a spurious theorem.
According to this fascist theorization, the U.S. brand of violence and its
guiding ideology are a necessity in a world dominated by �violence� [sic]. This
is to say that the U.S. is adopting violence to respond to and subdue violence!
This is preposterous; since its inception, the U.S. has been constantly the
state that promoted and initiated violence. A sporadic look at the situation in
Iraq can confirm this view, just read, �Violence in Iraq,� �Violence impedes
re-construction,� etc. The U.S. appears so blatant in insulting our
intelligence by insinuating that the Iraqis are using �violence� against
harmless U.S. invaders who just went to Iraq to help it rid itself of
dictatorship.
In other words, and
according to this scheming thinking, Hitlerism, as an expression of
international violence, is an acceptable price for the world to pay for the
glory of hyper-empire and its Zionist promoters. From another viewpoint, there
is an understatement in my idea of American Hitlerism as it relates to the
wider notion of violence: Hitlerism as an ideology actually exists in the U.S.
mentality only in modest proportions. Indeed, the rest of that mentality,
especially in its current Zionist configuration, goes far beyond Hitlerism and
makes this one a minor phenomenon on the wide turf of violence. Indeed,
Hitler�s violence is actually mild in comparison with America�s violence. For
example, Hitler hated Communism and even killed and incarcerated many communists,
but the U.S. has killed 3 million Vietnamese because, supposedly, it was
fighting to extirpate Communism, and that besides the military coups that it
had promoted to annihilate hundred of thousands of people suspected of being
communist sympathizers, as happened in Indonesia, Iran, Iraq, Chile, and
elsewhere.
Furthermore,
violence is only one component of the American makeup. Even if America were not
violent, its coercive programs for chauvinist supremacy, econo-political
manipulation and control, interventionism, abuse of human rights around the
world, would be still a serious menace to the world. As a result, our humanity
cannot be free while America�s coercion extends its long arm like a permanent
steel noose around the necks of nations.
Having arrived at
this conclusion, I propose the following methodical analysis for the
understanding of violence as manifested at multiple levels of the American
minds that control and influence society. Let us start by dissecting the quote
of Robert�s McNamara, here above quoted.
Comment: McNamara
generalized his feelings and involved all those present to his testimony. In
other words, he wanted to involve everyone in his genocidal imagination. In
psychological terms, this is a way to ease the burden of possible scruples and
feelings of guilt. It is the �collective murder of Julius Caesar syndrome�
McNamara: �If they
struck . . ."
Comment: notice how
McNamara used the conditional �if,� meaning a hypothetical scenario. This
situation requires that a hypothetical question should have a hypothetical
answer. McNamara, being an architect of war and violence, could not bring
himself into the subtle terrain of argument where the extrapolation and
mystification of terminology and meaning is an art. So how did the prodigious
former defense secretary resolve the hypothetical Soviet attack?
McNamara: �We
are going to target our weapons against their society and destroy 120 million
of them.�
Comment: McNamara
passed from the conditional and hypothetical by using the emphatic, �we are
going to.� He expressed determination. He did not say, �We would target
. . . etc.,� he was positive and sure of the quality of the American response. Further,
instead of relying on the euphemistic, metaphorical, and the abstract such as
the �U.S. would destroy Soviet cities,� implying people, he, with a dexterity
acquired from killing hundreds of thousands of Vietnamese, chillingly
quantified a number�120 million of them to be precise. Now, even here, he could
have used euphemism to lessen the impact of numbers by saying, for example, � .
. . and inflicting disproportionate fatalities,� etc. No, he was arrogant,
cocksure and emphatic on the precise number. (In his book, �In Retrospect,�
McNamara mitigated his essential Hitlerism; he appeared as if he learned
something about humanity, but that would not erase his record.)
The implication of
all the preceding is that McNamara, as one of the archetypical characters in
the vast American repertoire of violence, was not alone in his genocidal
determinism. With few exceptions, the entire ruling classes think along the
same lines. In my research on this quote, I was unsuccessful (maybe some
energetic readers can help with this) to find out if there were negative
reactions by the Congress to hear their defense secretary pronounce the phrase,
�destroy 120 million of them,� as if McNamara were talking about squashing 120
million mosquitoes hovering over a stagnate pond. In retrospect, and on grounds
of comparison, Hitler, reportedly, wanted to exterminate all Jews in Germany
and in the world. Let us see the implication of numbers. The 1949 issue of the
World Almanac, citing The American Jewish Committee, reported that in 1939
there were 16.6 million people embracing the Jewish faith in the world. [8]
There are serious implications when we compare this number of potential Jewish
victims with the number that McNamara hypothesized of Soviets he would kill in
retaliation for a Soviet attack.
If we divide 120
million people that McNamara wanted to kill in response to a hypothetical
Soviet attack by 16.6 million Jews of the world at the time of the Third Reich,
the result is 7.22 times as many. Instead, if we divide 120 million by the face
value number that Zionist organizations claim that Hitler killed which is 6
million, then that ratio increases to 20. Now since the West and Jewish
organizations tell us the killing of 6 million innocent Jews is a holocaust,
what should we call the hypothetical killing of 120 million innocent Soviet
citizens? There could be many names to choose from including �macro-Holocaust,�
�Super Soviet Holocaust,� or maybe, The Holocaust of Holocausts� or �Twenty
Holocausts.�
One may rebut that
I compared a hypothetical Soviet holocaust to: (1) a hypothetical holocaust of
total world Jewish population of diverse nationalities, including real victims
and (2) a supposedly actual number of innocent Jews that Hitler killed.
Of course, this
rebuttal is valid, but if George Bush attacked Iraq because of imperialistic
hypotheses, who would impede us to use just hypotheses without attacking any
one? Ipso facto, what I am
driving at here is to establish is intent. Suppose that in 1967 the USSR
launched an attack against the United States. First, we do not know what
exactly a Soviet attack would have targeted, and McNamara did not specify how
many Americans a Soviet attack might have killed. A retaliatory intent of the
size that McNamara imagined, i.e., to destroy 120 million lives, is large
enough to question the intimate fabric of genocidal impulses that engulf the
minds of many Americans in positions of command. Would comparing the Jewish
Holocaust, in whatever number it is presented, to Native Americans, Vietnamese,
Koreans, and Iraqis that the U.S. killed in its aggression against those four
nations be valid? The answer to this question is a firm yes. Since the word
�holocaust� is Greek for �sacrificed or perished by fire� then the phrase is
applicable whenever there is annihilation by military fire and bombs.
More sinister and
cynical than McNamara was Alvin Weinberg. A few facts emerge from reading the
equivocal quote of Weinberg. First, he committed a gigantic intellectual as
much as scientific fraud, when he stated that exploding the atomic bombs was a
lesson, because it was the only way to impress on humanity the terrible nature
of nuclear weapons.
If Weinberg were
such an ardent believer on lecturing humanity on the horrors of the atom by
showing them how countless people would incinerate instantaneously, there was a
simpler way to demonstrate that. He could have volunteered to offer himself as
immolation for the rest of the world and put himself at the epicenter of a
microscopic nuclear explosion so the world could have seen firsthand the mini
nuclear mushroom devouring him and everything around and beneath him.
In addition, from a
scientific viewpoint, there was no reason kill hundreds of thousands of people
to impress on humanity the terrible consequences of the atomic bombs. I can
confirm this fact by analogy: there is no reason to kill 10,000 people with one
single knife to impress upon us that a knife can kill. The point is that the
nuclear test of New Mexico prior to the actual detonation over Hiroshima and Nagasaki
would have sufficed as an ominous marker. Third, surprisingly, notice how
genocidal impulses accumulate massively in one person as when Weinberg,
categorically states, �In recent years, I've argued that dropping the bomb was
the proper thing to do . . . We have to invest them with the force of religious
taboos . . . etc.� It is clear that human vaporization by nuclear heat is of no
concern to a scientist like Weinberg; his paradigm did not intend to show the
horror of nuclear annihilation, as much as demonstrating a capitalistic
approach to understand it, as in, �We have to invest. . . ."
Among all American
criminal minds of the modern age, no mind can come close to that of a maniacal
killer called Harry S. Truman. There were some figures, which timidly tried to
imitate his style, including the minds of George H. W. Bush, Norman
Schwarzkopf, Colin Powell, Barry McCaffrey, and George W. Bush. Let us
substantiate this claim by studying the phrase, �Truman said he had given
orders to stop atomic bombing. He said the thought of wiping out another
100,000 people was too horrible. He didn't like the idea of killing, as he
said, "all those kids."
Well, what can we
say on the humane feelings of a mass annihilator? Did Truman imply that the
incineration of hundreds of thousands in Hiroshima and Nagasaki before wiping
out the prospected 100,000 people was not horrible in the first place? As for
his �he did not like the idea of killing �all those kids;�� this is hardly
believable coming from the mouth of a nuclear murder who just a few days
earlier burnt countless babies and children by nuclear holocaust.
The perturbed minds
of lunatic killers that history imposed on us as leaders, such as Holagu,
Napoleon, Sherman, Jackson, Custer, Hitler, Churchill, Truman, Stalin, Pol Pot,
Sharon, and Saddam, work in many mysterious ways. But when a president of the
United States who had just committed an immense nuclear bloodbath, tells his
chief scientist, who was feeling the guilt of killing so many people, that the
blood of hundreds of thousands will �come out in the wash,� he eloquently
clarified and magnified the essence of American genocidal impulses. As for the
Faustian and cynical hypocrisy of Oppenheimer, who felt blood on his hands,
just re-read the quote I provided.
My conclusive point
is that the way by which the American killing and annihilations of invented
enemies goes beyond Hitlerism, which as I stated earlier, is modest in
comparison with the American brand of violence. Although I shall use the
concept of AMAH throughout this series, the realization that this concept may
not be sufficient to reflect the exact nature of the American Empire, brought
me to see the implications of violence under the light of predetermination,
indifference, and ideological manipulation. This, as you will read in parts 11,
12, and 13 pushed me to look for a taxonomy that is possibly the nearest to
rendering my idea. The main reason for that is that Hitlerism was
straightforward in its theory and practice, the American Empire on the other hand
is not. It is treacherous. It hides behind glamorous names that include
democracy, the rule of the law, and elections.
In parts seven,
eight, and nine, I assigned to the American violence a denominator based on
Hitlerism, despite the fact that Hitler was not the worst among vicious figures
in history, and in part eight, I explained why I called it �American Modified
and Accepted Hitlerism.� Again, from studying history, it appears that any
regime employing violence, always finds the means to justify it. This is not so
in the American example, The U.S. does not justify its massive violence, it,
instead, rationalizes and accepts it . . . George H. W. Bush once,
chauvinistically, declared that he �will never apologize for America,� as if he
wanted to ingratiate himself with the parochial part of the American people by
taking jingoistic fascist attitudes.
Therefore, AMAH, as
a paradigm, is a way to make violence appear as an ordinary fact of modern age.
As for explanation of terminology, the word �modified� as it applies to
Hitlerism indicates a situation where the concept describing mass killing
changes its semantics to something not related to killing, such as when the
U.S. calls the people it kills �collateral damage,� where �collateral� means:
secondary, or accidental, and where �damage� does not even mean death or
killing! Examples of modified and accepted Hitlerism include the Native Indian,
Vietnamese, Korean, and Iraqi Holocausts.
The other situation
of modified Hitlerism is when the U.S. massively kills the population it is
attacking, but never talks about how many it killed, such as in Panama,
Columbia, Afghanistan, Iraq, and in American-arranged coups were millions of
people perished. In this case, its silence tries to modify perceptions of mass
killing, thus making it acceptable by avoidance. As for the word �accepted,� it
is self-explanatory. However, this word is full of meanings and has serious
implications. For instance, why does the U.S. expect us to gloss over its
Native Indian Holocaust, but pay attention to Stalin�s pogroms? Why do Zionists
propagandistically magnify the Jewish Holocaust, and minimize the Armenian
Holocaust or the Iraqi Holocaust by installments?
AMAH, however, is
not just an exercise in invented terminology. It is a strong indictment of
atrocious and extreme barbarity and, as such, it has its own contextual and
accusatory validity. To attest to this point, the more you accuse Sharon of
Hitlerism, the more he becomes obdurate in his Hitlerian tenacity; and the more
you indict Bush and Zionists for their crimes in Palestine, Afghanistan and
Iraq, the more they become obdurate in defense of their policies. The epitome
of this was when Iraq�s colonial ruler and Israel�s supporter, Paul Bremer, annoyed
with reports on Iraqi civilian casualties, ordered Iraqi hospitals and local
authorities, acting under the occupiers� dictate, to stop counting them . . .
In the next two or
three parts, we shall conclude our discussion on the manifestation of the
U.S.�s many faces of international violence and its driving ideology. In
particular, we shall discuss: (1) ideological expressions of American Hitlerism
as they relate to the American �experience� and the domestic means or
mechanisms that enable the U.S. to practice its brand of Hitlerism out of its
borders with such ease, glamour, and adorned publicity, and (2) historical
comparisons of Hitlerian mentalities.
Notes
[1] http://mt.sopris.net/mpc/military/japan.html
[2] http://mt.sopris.net/mpc/military/japan.html
[3] http://mt.sopris.net/mpc/military/japan.html
[4] http://mt.sopris.net/mpc/military/japan.html
[5] Quoted in: Mickey Z.�s �We�ve got the Cards: 56 years after Hiroshima�
[6] John Newhouse, War and Peace in the Nuclear age, Vintage Press Edition, 1990, p, 202
[7] Robin Wright
and Doyle McManus, Flash Points, 1991, p, 3
[8] The New York Times,
February 22, 1948, p. 4
B. J. Sabri is an Iraqi-American anti-war activist. He can be reached at: bjsabri@yahoo.com.