THOUGHTS ON HIROSHIMA DAY
It’s now 57 years since the United States dropped atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki (August 6th and 9th, 1945).
This same United States now repudiates the tardily achieved agreements to limit stockpiling of nuclear weapons and also repudiates international agreements to limit testing of these weapons.
Again, this same United States has announced a doctrine of military "First Strike", and is seeking allies for an attack on Iraq. So far, only Australia’s John Howard and Alexander Downer have come forth in support. Germany has actually said they will not be involved.
Australian support for "First Strike" is dangerous and irresponsible.
The whole framework of international laws has all but collapsed or has been reversed by this doctrine. Demands ("If you are not for us, then you’re against us") have taken the place of diplomacy and understanding. Long-standing international treaties are broken – allegedly for the good of all. Pre-emptive military strikes are considered acceptable and necessary to "prevent" terrorism. Smaller nuclear weapons are being developed for use in these "strikes". The US president gives the CIA a license to kill in the name of liberty and democracy. People are jailed until their innocence can be proven.
On this day August 6th, 2002 at an immense memorial rally on the site of the first use of nuclear weapons against humans – Hiroshima – the Mayor pleaded that the US not ever use nuclear weapons again and join in the total banning of them. The new Archbishop of Canterbury (the head of the Anglican Church in Britain) launched a petition signed by 300 clerics of his church calling on the US NOT to launch war on Iraq, and to return to the United Nations for the resolving of international problems and crimes.
This and other petitions (eg Pax Christi) were presented to the Westminster Parliament in London on the next day. Now, many members of the governing Labor Party in England are demanding the recall of Parliament to debate support (or No) for any attack by the US on Iraq, tacitly given by Prime Minister Tony Blair. The UN secretary General Koffi Anann called on the countries of the world to make the UN a working place for Peace and Disarmament.
Money is diverted from the world’s real challenges – justice, health, education and environmental repair, the alleviation of hunger and poverty – in order to manufacture nuclear and other weapons to wage WAR. Who said "Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies in the final sense a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed"? It was Dwight D Eisenhower, Supreme Commander of Allied Forces in Europe, WWII and later 34th President of the US.
THINK and ACT – Money for war or for compassion, justice and decency.
-Jim Knight, an anti-nuclear and peace activist for over 55 years.
