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Hiroshima HypocrisyLetter by Eddie McDonnell, September 2005 'Blair now wants to start a new nuclear missile programme', wrote Mary Black and Andrew Stone (July/August SR). This is at a time when he is speaking, ludicrously, as if he is in a position to morally condemn the London bombers. Blair's moral depravity in illegally invading Iraq and killing thousands of innocent civilians is not much different to that of the bombers. Taking into account the numbers, it's very much worse. Yet the British media and commentators have ignored his moral double standards and given him sycophantic nationalistic support.
Meanwhile that same media has been reviewing the slaughter of 120,000 civilians at Hiroshima. In all the articles and letters I've read, it's been argued that it was justified because of the Japanese government's brutality in the war, and because it would have cost many Allied military lives to defeat Japan by conventional invasion. Transfer that argument to the terrorist bombers. Blair, Bush and their predecessors have done brutal things in the Middle East. Those who want to fight back haven't got the means to mount a regular war against the invaders, so they brutally attack civilians, ordinary people on the buses and tube in London, just like the US brutally attacked the ordinary people of Hiroshima.
Socialists are consistently against the killing of innocent civilians, whichever country they are in. We are against Blair and the London bombers slaughtering ordinary people because, to take Blair's case, of what Saddam or Al Qaida did - or, in the bombers' case, because of what Blair and Bush have done. We are against what was done at Hiroshima.
Now Blair is preparing to build a new Trident nuclear system, we will ask how he justifies that system, the purpose of which is to blast to death millions of ordinary people like those killed on 7 July, while he takes a morally superior position to 'terrorists'.
Eddie McDonnell Comments? Email letters@socialistreview.org.uk Contents | Donate Access to this website is free - help us keep it that way. Please make a donation. |
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