Dwight D. Eisenhower – Engaging Peace

When will they ever learn?

Posted on August 15, 2016August 16, 2016 by kathiemm

Kathie Malley-Morrison

As the anniversaries of the U.S. bombing of Hiroshima (August 6, 1945) and Nagasaki (August 9, 1945) snuck by with little acknowledgment and limited chagrin in the US, it troubled me that those world-shattering, paradigm-changing events are, for young people growing up in this country today, basically ancient history. Doubly unfortunately, the shared “history” is woefully incomplete, the full story never told. Little learned.

The “history” I was taught in public school, which I still hear echoed today, was that the dropping of those atomic bombs was a necessary, essential, moral way to keep those aggressive, warmongering Japanese from increasing their deadly toll on innocent American lives.

Nobody ever told me that Dwight D. Eisenhower, General of the U.S. Army and Supreme Commander of Allied Forces in Europe during World War II, and later a highly-respected President of the United States, opposed dropping those bombs.

In his own words:

“Secretary of War Stimson, visiting my headquarters in Germany, informed me that our government was preparing to drop an atomic bomb on Japan. I was one of those who felt that there were a number of cogent reasons to question the wisdom of such an act…

“During his recitation of the relevant facts, I had been conscious of a feeling of depression and so 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’. The Secretary was deeply perturbed by my attitude…”

Eisenhower’s antipathy regarding the use of nuclear weaponry did not diminish after those blood-thirsty, saber-rattling, cock-crowing events of August 1945 . At the Republican National Convention of August 23, 1956, he warned his party, his country, and the world that:

“We are in the era of the thermonuclear bomb that can obliterate cities and can be delivered across continents. With such weapons, war has become, not just tragic, but preposterous.”

The hour is late; can’t we find a way to address the preposterousness of nuclear arms before tragedy completes envelops the planet and obliterates a large portion of living things? And while we are at it, how about doing something about obliterating lives with drones?

When to call it a weapon of mass destruction (WMD)?

Posted on May 16, 2013May 15, 2013 by kathiemm

In its Criminal Complaint against accused Boston Marathon bomber Dzokhar Tsarnaev, the FBI charged him with “unlawfully using and conspiring to use a weapon of mass destruction (namely, an improvised explosive device).” That is, the FBI labeled the pressure cooker device that killed two people and injured more than 200 others a WMD.

Boston Marathon bombing site. Photo by Aaron Tang used under CC Attribution 2.0 Generic license.

Glen Greenwald, in the Guardian, wrote a powerful essay entitled “Why is Boston ‘terrorism’ but not Aurora, Sandy Hook, Tucson and Columbine?” Reminder:

In Aurora, 12 people were killed and 58 others wounded with multiple weapons, including a semiautomatic rifle.
In Sandy Hook, 20 school children and six adults were murdered with a semiautomatic assault rifle.
In Tuscon, six people were killed and 14 (including Gabrielle Giffords) were wounded by a semiautomatic pistol.
In Columbine, 12 students and one teacher were killed and 24 others were injured by several weapons, including a semiautomatic pistol.

So, here’s another question: When can a weapon or weapon system be called a weapon of mass destruction? Choose one or more of the following answers:

When it falls into the category of nuclear, biological, or chemical (NBC) weapons.
When its sale and use does not profit the weapons industry.
When it can result in as many fatalities over time as nuclear weapons systems.
When it serves the purposes of the military-industrial-corporate media complex.

Let’s consider these possibilities in relation to the Tsarnaev brothers’ pressure cooker devices.

The most common definition of WMD has been NBC weapons. Pressure cooker bombs do not fall into this category.
The pressure cooker bomb does not profit the weapons industry, although semiautomatic weapons do.
Since World War II, pressure cooker bombs have accounted for a miniscule portion of fatalities. In contrast, as reported (opens in PDF) by UN Secretary General Kofi Annan, “small arms” have killed as many people as all other weapons combined.
You decide: in what ways can frequent use of the term “weapons of mass destruction” play into the hands of the military-industrial corporate media complex that Republican President Dwight D. Eisenhower warned our country to beware?

Kathie Malley-Morrison, Professor of Psychology

Thank you, George

Posted on February 16, 2012February 28, 2012 by kathiemm

George Washington portrait — Portrait by Gilbert Stuart in public domain. Photo by Metropolitan Museum of Art.

American schoolchildren learn at least a few things about George Washington—that he fought the British to help achieve independence for the American colonies, that he was the first President of the United States, that he refused to become King.

But how many of them have learned of Washington’s views on war? He said, among other things:

“My first wish is to see this plague of mankind, war, banished from the earth.”

“Observe good faith and justice toward all nations. Cultivate peace and harmony with all.”

Foreshadowing President Dwight David Eisenhower’s familiar warning about the military industrial complex, Washington said, “Overgrown military establishments are under any form of government inauspicious to liberty, and are to be regarded as particularly hostile to republican liberty.”

And perhaps foreshadowing the movement toward government of, by, and for the wealthiest and most powerful, Washington commented, “Few men have virtue to withstand the highest bidder.”

Washington, like all great individuals, was a complex man influenced by his historical context even while offering much great advice for a better future.

A few other messages from him to consider on Presidents Day (Monday, February 20):

“Guard against the impostures of pretended patriotism.”
“If the freedom of speech is taken away then dumb and silent we may be led, like sheep to the slaughter.”
”Labor to keep alive in your breast that little spark of celestial fire, called conscience.”

Kathie Malley-Morrison, Professor of Psychology