Why U.S. Nukes Did Not Shorten the War with Japan

by Len Hart, The Existentialist Cowboy

The 'bomb' did not shorten the war, nor did it affect --in any way --Japan's insistence upon retaining its emperor. Absolutely nothing was gained by the wanton murder of some 200,000 civilians.

U.S. President Harry Truman is said to have nuked Japan because he wanted an 'unconditional surrender'! In fact, he got nothing more than what had been offered prior to the use of two nuclear weapons first against Hiroshima and, later, against Nagasaki. The Geneva Conventions which prohibit genocide were not codified until 1948. But it is the purpose of the law to codify prohibitions against acts that are --already --wrong! The law cannot make right a wrong nor can it make wrong acts that are clearly right!

I voiced to him my grave misgivings, first on the basis of my belief that Japan was already defeated and that dropping the bomb was completely unnecessary, and secondly because I thought that our country should avoid shocking world opinion by the use of a weapon whose employment was, I thought, no longer mandatory as a measure to save American lives. It was my belief that? Japan was, at that very moment, seeking some way to surrender with a minimum loss of "face"

--Dwight David Eisenhower

It is said that Truman would accept nothing less than 'unconditional surrender' In fact, he did not get an unconditional surrender. The surrender was conditioned upon the retention of the Emperor, a request that the Japanese had made as it sued for peace.

"The Japanese Government are ready to accept the terms enumerated in the joint declaration which was issued at Potsdam on July 26th, 1945, by the heads of the Governments of the United States, Great Britain, and China, and later subscribed to by the Soviet Government, with the understanding that the said declaration does not comprise any demand which prejudices the prerogatives of His Majesty as a Sovereign Ruler.

PROCLAMATION DEFINING TERMS FOR JAPANESE SURRENDER, (2) OFFER OF SURRENDER FROM JAPANESE GOVERNMENT, The Department of State Bulletin, Vol. XIII, No. 318, July 29, 1945

The bombing --the deliberate elimination of some 200,000 people --was in vain. Estimates of 150,000 killed and wounded in Hiroshima and some 75,000 at Nagasaki may be conservative. Clearly --these deaths were avoidable.

Eisenhower is vindicated by history. Indeed, as Eisenhower made clear: Japan sought terms which changed not a bit by the the use of the bomb.

The use use of the bomb is --in either case --an act of genocide against a civilian population. Genocide is now prohibited by by Resolution 260 (III) A of the United Nations General Assembly on 9 December 1948.

Japanese leaders --military and civilian, including the Emperor --were willing to surrender in May of 1945 if the Emperor could remain in place.

The Japanese government wanted to surrender; its leaders, military as well as civilian, rationally understood that the war was lost. President Truman was fully aware? of the situation as early as May of 1945. A peace treaty could have been effected and the dropping of the bomb avoided.

But they had a determined attachment (irrational?) to? the emperor. Japan would have surrendered, very possibly as early as June 1945, had its ruling establishment received guarantees of the emperor's personal safety and continuance on the throne. This should have been the first step in an American surrender strategy.

--Journal of American History

Therefore, the U.S. use of nuclear weapons of mass destruction upon a civilian population changed absolutely nothing!

President Truman was fully aware of the situation as early as May of 1945. A peace treaty could have been effected and the dropping of the bomb avoided. Churchill and Stalin went along with the 'unconditional surrender' policy --but only reluctantly.

U.S. policy demanding an unconditional surrender was rendered moot by the fact that the surrender was not unconditional but contingent upon Japan retaining its emperor. In any case, it does not ameliorate U.S. targeting a civilian population. Japan's major cities were devastated. Casualties were already in the millions. Millions more were refugees. The fleet was lost. Merchant shipping could not leave home waters or sail from the few possessions still held by Japan.
U.S. policies and actions following the de facto defeat of Japan:

• Targeted a civilian population, an action not yet covered by the Geneva Conventions of 1948.
• Achieved NOTHING that Japan had not ALREADY agreed to.

As Japan, in fact, retained its emperor, it would appear that it was the U.S. --not Japan --that made concessions after the bombing.

Addendum:

Following is my response to a comment on facebook:

Someone had posted:

"An invasion force would have still have to go in at the cost of 1000's of American lives. Ask any vet who landed at any island we captured."

1) Thousands of American lives were already lost to Japanese fighting from caves.

2) The point missed is that peace terms agreed to had already been agreed to by Japan before the bomb was dropped. There was, then, no point in dropping the bomb if the intention was to effect a un-conditional surrender. In any case, the U.S. did NOT get an un-conditional surrender. There is no ex post facto justification for this war crime.

THE BOMB HAD NO EFFECT ON PEACE TERMS.

3) There is no evidence that people fighting in caves were in any way dissuaded by the bomb! None! Japan had already agreed to the terms that were --in fact --signed after the bombs were dropped. The bombs were dropped on Nagasaki and Hiroshima --huge cities of civilians, not caves full of 'terrorists'!

What effect on cave guerillas did U.S. Military 'geniuses' think dropping bombs on civilian concentrations would have? Read Che Guerrilla. You may conclude that NUKES are powerless against a well-organized guerrilla force. IF folk were fighting in caves, what effect would bombs have? Clearly --no concessions were made as a result of NUKING the civilian populations of Hiroshima and Nagasaki! NONE!

Today the US has been mired in Afghanistan for almost a decade! Guerrillas are fighting from caves, we are told! Do you propose that we NUKE Kabul because a rag tag band of guerillas are holed up in same caves some 100 miles away?

It would seem that if the US cannot 'win' a war against folk living in caves, then the U.S. would be well advised to get the fuck outt the war business.

Why I moderate comments

• SPAM: 'comments' that link to junk, 'get rich' schemes, scams, and nonsense! These are the worst offenders.
• Ad hominem attacks: 'name calling' and 'labeling'. That includes the ad hominem: 'truther' or variations!

_______________________________________________________________________________

How an Iranian 'Oil Bourse' Threatens the American Empire

by Len Hart, The Existentialist Cowboy

It's been over seven years since the US had real or competent leadership and now a neo-ape man may precipitate our return to the cave! Iran's planned oil bourse threatens not only Bush's simplistic view of the world, it strikes at the the coffers of "big oil". Isolated by mysteriously cut internet cables, Iran --if it is not nuked --will this month begin trading oil in currencies other than the dollar. Bush's cave man response: Nuke Iran! Kill, kill!

On September 16 1985, when the Commerce Department announced that the United States had become a debtor nation, the American Empire was as dead, theoretically, as its predecessor, the British. Our empire was seventy-one years old and had been in ill financial health since 1968. Like most modern empires, ours rested not so much on military prowess as on economic primacy.

--Gore Vidal, Chapter Three of Imperial America (Nation Books, 2005)

Bush's response to Iran's "Oil Bourse", his response to the end of American empire, is pre-stonge age in nature. Indeed, the US empire will collapse when the dollar collapses. Because we have an ape-man and not a real President, the consequences will be tragic.

A commenter to this blog used the term "sunset fuel" to describe oil and our dependence upon it. The world grows more dangerous as oil becomes increasingly hard to find, more expensive to produce and refine. We should have expected the world to become a much more dangerous place under those conditions. In its decline, oil becomes disproportionately important, nations more desperate, Bush more belligerent.

Monitoring the news today --it is clear that the Middle East cables were deliberately sabotaged and the effect has been to cut Iran off the internet. Isolating a nation by cutting off its systems of communication is a first step preceding a military attack. Bush no longer cares about even the pretense of pre-text! His charge that Iran has weaponized grade fuels is universally and credibly debunked. The real threat is to the poohbahs of US empire --the Military/Industrial complex. Bush doesn't care. Nuke Iran! Kill, kill!

Like the US today, Rome had currency problems, one of the reasons for its fall. When Rome attacked Dacia, it was for the gold. Much of the history of Rome is the history of how "empire" became "enterprise", how the Praetorian Guard become the Military/Industrial complex.

The first known Roman "money" was a lump of bronze aptly named "aes grave", literally, "a heavy lump of bronze". An "aes grave" weighed about seven pounds. Traded by weight, it required slaves to carry it around.

A more portable medium --the true coin --would not appear until about 89 BC. It was quickly debased with increasingly thin silver plating as more coins were needed in circulation than could be backed up by the "real" wealth of empire. By one AD, a tiny new bronze aes or "as" was introduced. It had no real intrinsic value but it was easy to carry around. One could gain entry to bath houses or free public performances with it. Even then it was just a token to help "ushers" and/or doormen keep track of the number of folk.

By the mid 60s AD, Nero was alloying silver with cheaper metals, a process virtually impossible to detect. Nero thus set the precedent and standard not only for later emperors but politicians of almost every stripe. Briefly, Nero did what almost all politicians do. He swindled the people in order to put more coin into circulation.

By the time the Praetorian Guard auctioned off the empire to Didius Julianus, the transaction would be completed in Drachmas (Greek currency) not Roman the sestercius or the ass. The smart money had already dumped Roman coinage. In the late Empire, it was hoped that new coins --the silver "nummus" and the gold "aureus" -- would restore confidence during periods of devastating inflation.

Much is made of the "gold standard". In fact, it doesn't matter. If someone like Ron Paul restored the Gold Standard in the US, the economy would melt down for several reasons. First, economies must grow or die. Fixing the currency to a finite standard guarantees that it will be necessary to "debase" to accommodate a growing population, growing demand for money itself.

Secondly, given US weakness, encouraging Americans to dump bucks for metals, will only hasten the death cycle of the dollar. Perhaps Paul believes it is already too late --so just kill it off and be done with it --nevermind, the millions who would literally starve or wind up on the streets.

The "Gold Standard" is a myth that is easily demagogued. In fact, a nation's currency is backed up by its total productive capacity. If the nation is at work and productive, we could use monopoly money! And we have been for years. Who the hell cares for so long as we stay out of jail and pass "Go"? American prosperity had always "backed up" the strong dollar. Paulian thinking that we need only jack around with the currency to restore American prosperity is literally "backward". It doesn't work that way.

Productivity needs help. US economic expansion had always been fueled by an abundance of natural resources --land, timber, water, farm land, metals, et al. The nation's history was changed forever when oil was discovered first in Pennsylvania and, when that ran out, Spindletop in Texas. For over a century, US economic expansion was backed up by oil. The US was an oil producing nation. Oil was better than gold or silver in that it had much more intrinsic value than either metal.

Oil not only lubricated the engines, it fueled them. In the process of turning it into gasoline, it was discovered that its plastic properties could make an almost unlimited number of doodads, some of which had utilitarian value and some only value as playthings and baubles.

On a personal note, landing at Kansas City International Airport the other day, my vision of America altered by my in-flight reading of Mr. Berman's remarkable work, I saw the landscape through new eyes, a landscape I now understood to have been systematically vandalized by the corporatocracy: big box stores, chain hotels and restaurants, strip malls and gas stations, a landscape everywhere repeated across the United States, a landscape we intend to impose upon the world in order to fulfill our destiny as bringer of freedom as expressed through consumption.

--Reader Review of Dark Ages America

From internet reaction to my previous article on the US v Iran:

If Iran is attacked it will have nothing or next to nothing to do with the oil bourse. It will be because the PNACers have targeted Iran, because, like Iraq, it is not a puppet state, and, in the Neocon "mind" thus presents an "existential threat" to the greater Israel that they imagine.

It has everything to do with Neocons who are most certainly supporters of the Military/Industial Complex or, more accurately, the Military/Oil Exploitation complex. Neocons are all about empire and oil is at the heart of American empire. Israel is, in fact, just a convenient ally as were the various puppet, vassel states of Rome --many of which were in the Middle East.

Certainly, when oil is no longer traded in dollars, it is not only the dollar that will collapse. It means that the US --on the bad end of a huge balance of trade deficit --will no longer be able to afford to import goods or services. For a nation that long ago (Reagan years primarily; See Vidal, cited) gave up its role as a manufacturing nation, this collapse will be monumental, catastrophic. The fact that oil had been traded in dollars was the only thing propping up the dollar. That there was a demand for dollars because there was a demand for oil meant that you could continue to buy imported goods with dollars. Now --imagine a world in which no other country need "purchase" dollars in order to import oil! What if oil producing nations agree to accept other currencies? What if they refuse to accept dollars? Go to Wal-Mart or even your local supermarket. Almost everything on the shelves is imported. Imagine a shop owner refusing to accept as payment for anything in the shop your worthless dollars !

As Gore Vidal pointed out, the US empire ended in the eighties, when the US became a net debtor nation. GOP regimes since have only made the situation worse. Just as empire became the business of Rome, empire had become the "business" of the US which no longer produces enough to employ its population let alone export to the rest of the world. Most US consumer goods are imported from China, sold in Warl-Mart, discarded in America. America's best days are over. We live in the twilight of empire.

Additional resources

• Carta Blanc: The Meaning of Ron Paul
• The Day the American Empire Ran Out of Gas
• Roman Coins
• How the White House Snookered the 9/11 Commission
• The Commission: The Uncensored History of the 9/11 Investigation

---

Media Conglomerates, Mergers, Concentration of Ownership, Global Issues, Updated: January 02, 2009

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Russia Arms the "Doomsday Bomb"?

Recently, Russian President Vladimir Putin warned that a US attack on Iran would be considered an attack on Russia. Earlier, a Chinese sub popped up undetected in the midst of the US 5th Fleet. As tensions mount, Wired Magazine tells us that a Russian "doomsday bomb" is still armed.

Fearing that a sneak attack by American submarine-launched missiles might take Moscow out in thirteen minutes, the Soviet leadership had authorized the construction of an automated communications network, reinforced to withstand a nuclear strike. At its heart was a computer system similar to the one in Dr Strangelove. Its codename was Perimetr. It went fully operational in January 1985. It is still in place. Its job is to monitor whether there have been nuclear detonations on Russian territory and to check whether communications channels with the Kremlin have been severed. If the answer to both questions is “yes” then the computer will conclude that the country is under attack and activate its nuclear arsenal. All that is then needed is final human approval from a command post buried deep underground. It would be a brave officer, adds Smith, who, having been cut off from his superiors in the Kremlin, could ignore the advice of such a supposedly foolproof system.

[...]

We all face the prospect that, if Russia were ever attacked, its strategic nuclear warheads could be launched by a computer system designed and built in the late 1970s.

Ron Rosenbaum, Slate, [quoted in Wired:Soviet Doomsday Device Still Armed and Ready]

A giant cobalt bomb capable of making the earth uninhabitable was made famous in the Stanley Kubrick film: Dr. Strangelove. [The clips below playback in sequence, a precis of the motion picture!]

We'll Meet Again??

Kubrick blurred fact and film fiction. Not only scenarios but devices dealt with by Kubrick had been classified.

We now have good reason to ask ourselves if we are safer now than during the height of the cold war. I don't think we are! Bush moved the countdownclock to nuclear annihilation much closer when he promised that the US would join an Israeli nuclear strike on Iran. As relations between Russia and the US seemed to warm for a brief while, America's right wing struggled throughout the Reagan era to find another phantom menace, another demon around which it might rally the populace. Sadly --our enemies are of our own making. The GOP would literally be nothing without them.

Sober PhDs are behind these thoughts. Citing the hazard of genetically engineered viruses, eminent astrophysicist Stephen Hawking has said, "I don't think the human race will survive the next thousand years." Martin Rees, the knighted British astronomer, agrees; he gives us a 50-50 chance. Serious thinkers such as Pulitzer Prize winner Laurie Garrett, author of The Coming Plague, and Bill Joy, who wrote Wired's own 2000 article "Why the Future Doesn't Need Us," warn of techno-calamity.

--Gregg Easterbrook, We're All Gonna Die! Wired

The real enemy has always been the politicians. Their power derives from the manifestation of nightmares!

This update from Crooks and Liars:

The Wall Street Journal ran an article last week (subscription req’d) that Bush was using an investigation into a 1994 terrorist attack on a Jewish Community Center in Argentina as a way to continue to strain and maintain pressure on Iran.

The only problem? There’s no real evidence that Iran was involved in the bombing:

(I)t is impossible to avoid the conclusion that the case against Iran over the AMIA bombing has been driven from the beginning by US enmity toward Iran, not by a desire to find the real perpetrators.

Evidence? We don’t need no stinkin’ evidence. Nobody could anticipate the president initiating a pre-emptive war against a sovereign nation on trumped up evidence, could they? Oh…wait…

GOP, Nukes, Government Incompetence, Terrorism

Bush Risks World War III with Russia, China and Iran

Two ominous developments have complicated Bush's plans to nuke Iran. One is a warning from Putin. The other --a dramatic demonstration by China. In their wake, Bush has now said he is committed to resolving the "crisis" diplomatically. But the new line was not forthcoming until after Vladimir "Pooty Poot" Putin, stated flatly and without emotion: an attack on Iran will be considered an attack on Russia. "Pooty Poot" has nukes and will use them. High-level diplomatic sources in Tehran were reported to have told the Asia Times Online that Putin and Ayatollah Ali Khamenei had agreed on a plan that would nullify Bush's campaign to strike Iran preemptively with a nuclear weapon.

China, likewise, warned America's rogue psychopath. As if to underscore the point, a Chinese submarine popped up --undetected --in the middle of a Pacific Ocean exercise. The Sub was said to be "dangerously close" to the USS Kitty Hawk, having slipped past a US "shield" of a dozen warships and two US subs. US brass are "dumbfounded"!

We can only speculate about US ability to detect "subs". One would have assumed advances since the making of the early 90's film --"The Hunt for Red October". Even so -- that China has a sub that slips so effortlessly, silently past vaunted US detection technology confirms that the sub was of advanced design and equipped with advanced stealth technology. Just recently, in the comments section, I stated that China had the ability to put a nuclear sub undetected just off the US East Coast. China exceeded my prediction. I had not expected to be confirmed so quickly by events. [See: Submarine Detection]

The US Navy Fifth Fleet is headquartered in the Gulf State of Bahrain which is responsible for patrolling the Persian Gulf, Arabian Sea, Suez Canal and parts of the Indian Ocean. The Fifth Fleet currently comprises a carrier group and two helicopter carrier ships. Its size peaked at five aircraft carrier groups and six helicopter carriers in 2003 during the invasion of Iraq. Presently, it is led by the USS Enterprise (CVN-65), the first nuclear powered aircraft carrier commissioned in 1961, and on November 2, began participating in a Naval exercise in the Persian Gulf.

The Fifth Fleet's base in Bahrain, is only 150 miles away from the Iranian coast, and would itself be in range of Iran's new generation of anti-ship cruise missiles. Also, any Naval ships in the confined terrain of the Persian Gulf would have difficulty in manoeuvring and would be within range of Iran's rugged coastline which extends all along the Persian Gulf to the Arabian sea.

Michael E. Salla, M.A., Ph.D, The US neoconservative agenda to Sacrifice the Fifth Fleet - The New Pearl Harbor

Bush downplays the vulnerability of the Fifth Fleet. Nevertheless, Iran, itself, has the ability to wipe out the US Fifth Fleet, currently within range of Iran's Russian-made mobile missile launchers situated strategically in mountainous terrain overlooking the Persian Gulf. Iran is not Iraq.

The most sophisticated of Iran's cruise missiles are the 'Sunburn' and 'Yakhonts'. These are missiles against which US military experts conclude modern warships have no effective defense [emphasis mine, LH]. By deliberately provoking an Iranian retaliation to US military actions, the neoconservatives will knowingly sacrifice much or all of the Fifth Fleet. This will culminate in a new Pearl Harbor that will create the right political environment for total war against Iran, and expanded military actions in the Persian Gulf region.

Michael E. Salla, M.A., Ph.D, The US neoconservative agenda to Sacrifice the Fifth Fleet - The New Pearl Harbor

A new Pearl Harbor may be precisely what the Neocon mentality desires. They would be willing to go back to the well. Bush logic, meanwhile, defies logic. Just recently [video below] Bush warned that WWIII is imminent. Therefore, he says, we must strike pre-emptively to prevent WWIII. Never mind that the pre-emptive strike will precipitate it. You can't make this stuff up!

The US continues to fall for Bush's idiocy!
So --who's the bigger idiot?

Defense analyst Tim Ripley of Jane's Defense Weekly, calls a US attack on Iran a "nightmare scenario", a war that could not be finished. Bush should have some experience in that field. He is utterly incapable of either finishing or winning in Iraq.

Intent on war, it is not surprising that Bush tries to cover up dissenting opinions and dangers. Bush is a "man" who has proven himself impervious to logic, common sense and empathy.

He will ignore the Pentagon's Millennium Challenge war games that resulted in the US loss of the fleet. Neoconservative kiss ups to Bush simply ignore the advise of experts. It is the nature of ideology that nothing is learned from experience.

Millions of lives were ruined by the back to back debacles of three idiots: Reagan, Bush Sr. and now a twisted twig. Millions of lives were ruined by Reagan who almost single handedly broke both the US labor movement and the US economy forever. Bush Sr was content merely to preside over the ruins while launching murderous and unjustified attacks on Panama and luring Saddam Hussein into Kuwait. Once a spook always a spook.

In the meantime, a veteran speaks out:

Iraq war is a betrayal of American democracy

November 11, 2007

By MATT HOWARD

Editor's note: Matt Howard gave this statement at a recent protest at the Statehouse.

In 2003 I illegally invaded the sovereign nation of Iraq with 1st Tank battalion 1st Marine Division. My commander in chief unleashed the world's fiercest fighting force upon the country and people of Iraq, and now those of us used and betrayed by him are demanding justice.

Four and a half years after our opening "shock and awe" Bush's lies are known throughout the world, and yet he continues to act with impunity. Four and a half years later the Bush regime has unleashed a hell upon the country of Iraq that only those who have been there can truly understand.

As a two-tour combat veteran of this brutal war, I have a responsibility to speak honestly and openly about what has been done and what continues to be done in our name. We veterans know that this war is not the one being sanitized on the nightly news. It has nothing to do with the liberation of the people of Iraq; instead it has everything to do with the subjugation and domination of these people in the name of US imperial economic and strategic interests.

We did not go to war with the country of Iraq, we went to war with the people of Iraq. During the initial invasion we killed women. We killed children. We senselessly killed farm animals. We were the United States Marine Corps, not the Peace Corps, and we left a swath of death and destruction in our wake all the way to Baghdad.

Let me say again so that there is no misunderstanding. I stand here today as a former US Marine saying we are killing women and children in Iraq. This is the true nature of war. War lends itself to atrocities. Don't think you can use an organization designed to kill other human beings for anything humanitarian. That has never been our mission. That was crystal clear from the moment I was forced to bury the crate of humanitarian food given to me in Kuwait.

Four and a half years later we as soldiers, sailors, airmen and marines are done. We are done being told under threat of court martial to run over children that get in the way of our speeding convoys.

We are done raiding and destroying the homes of innocent Iraqis on a nightly basis.

We are done abusing and torturing prisoners.

We are done being hired thugs for the 160,000 contractors and US corporate interests in Iraq.

We are done being poisoned by depleted uranium, the unspoken Agent Orange of this war.

We are done coming home broken, from two, three, four tours of duty – only to find our commander in chief has actually tried to CUT funding to the Department of Veterans Affairs. To find our doctors being told to diagnose us with pre-existing personality disorders instead of post traumatic stress syndrome.

We are done killing for lies.

So Iraq Veterans Against the War is taking back our history – the history that has been robbed from us. We are dispelling the myth that the Vietnam war ended when the Democrats started voting against it. Instead we are spreading the truth about how the American War in Vietnam ended.

The Vietnam War ended when soldiers put down their weapons and refused to fight; when pilots dropped their bombs in the ocean.

We are re-educating the public to let them know that the power ultimately lies with the people. Just take a look at the thousands of pages of internal documents from the Department of Defense explicitly detailing how at the end of the Vietnam war the military had collapsed. It was literally in a state of mutiny. And that movement is slowly starting again. Because ultimately in every war waged throughout human history, those forced to fight quickly realize they have much more in common with those they are being told to kill than with those telling them to do the killing.

And we are re-educating the public about the true nature of sectarian violence. No, the middle east is NOT inherently violent. In fact, in the 1,400-year schism between Sunnis and Shias – there has NEVER been a civil war fought. They have always lived in the same neighborhoods and even intermarried. The United States has caused this civil war using the classic colonial techniques of divide and conquer.

George Bush is a war criminal who has violated international law, the Geneva convention and the Nuremberg standards and needs to tried accordingly for crimes against humanity.

I ask every red-blooded American today: What would you do if your homeland was savagely invaded and occupied by another country? The Iraqis will continue to resist and fight until the last American has left their homeland. Period. End the violence in Iraq? End the occupation.

We veterans are speaking out to stop the violence being perpetrated in our name. When we voted in the Democrats on an anti-war mandate, the Bush regime expanded the war. As we are marching against further occupation, the Bush regime is making threats against Iran.

And we will not continue to be silenced by the mainstream media. Top generals and bottom privates are all speaking in unison now. We know the truth about the slaughter of upwards of one million Iraqis. Why is no one listening? We will not stand by as this regime tricks the country into thinking that if you oppose the war you do not support the troops. We ARE the troops and we have never felt support from this administration. Stop mindlessly supporting the troops. Start demanding that we come home – and maybe think about apologizing to us when we get back.

Matt Howard attained the rank of corporal in the United States Marine Corps. He is head of the Vermont chapter for Iraq Veterans Against the War.

Additional Resources

• The Generalist: Michael Horovitz' The New Wasteland
• Strategies and Strategists
• Jeremy Scahill - US war of conquest in Iraq
• Retro: Mailer and McLuhan
• Mission Accomplished

Discoveries

• Shakespeare (for Leonard)
• Ahmad Jamal - Ahmad's Blues
• Chain Reactions
• Cannonball & Nat Adderley - Work Song

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