Reflections on the American Carpet Bombing Machine
Zinn said if you do not know what happened yesterday
You have no way of knowing if you are being played
Americans live in a willful trance
Of studied ignorance and somnambulance
With Tokyo, Dresden and Hamburg people came to harm
Suffering the effects of induced fire storms
The specific intent (per Douhet) it came to light
Was to destroy the enemy’s (that is civilians’) will to fight
With the atomic bomb we unleashed with formal instruction
An abominable weapon of mass destruction
Killing hundreds of thousands within an instant
Then lingering deaths from radiation sickness
During the Korean War we applied this in the north
And rigorously destroyed everything of any worth
Seventy-three cities were pulverized to dust
Killing 30% of the population in an orgy of blood lust.
Then when no targets remained we blasted dams creating a senseless slaughter
And cheered as agricultural lands and people were destroyed by walls of water
Innocent civilians were deprived of food (rice) and livelihood
Their country’s infrastructure destroyed for good.
Considering America’s distaste for boots on the ground
In Korea, Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia we discovered a grim work around
Targets – whole areas are – laid out on grids like carpets methodically
And every thing below destroyed systematically.
So we proceed with words bellicose
Portraying Kim as a mad man
Pushing toward possible nuclear war- a blatant profanity
With the possible killing all humanity.
Since Americans are historically ignorant
They know not what the North Koreans went through
In the mid nineties Carter intervened
To negotiate away nuclear development and a Clinton attack it seems.
Which shuttered nuclear research for years
And temporarily allayed the world’s fears.
And there was a plan for peace
Vetted by the Chinese and Korea
But in 2005 when George W labeled the North part of the axis of evil
He forced the Koreans to restart their nuclear program as a matter of survival.
Bush brazenly dismantled the peace process in place
And massive threatening maneuvers proceeded apace.
No, there still is a potential peace process in place
Which we have ignored to our disgrace
Processes requiring a quid pro quo
A non-aggression pack and stopping our war game shows
In light of history is it any wonder
Why Korea seeks to break our strangle hold asunder
Understandably for them nuclear weapons are their only deterrent tool
For although his rhetoric is problematic Kim Jong Un is no fool
For every Korean will never forget
What most Americans never knew
That with B52’s in the air America can easily go wild
And annihilate every Korean man, woman and child.
Want peace?
Make the war games cease.
Negotiate the nuclear issues by removing our threat.
Then facilitate Korea’s economic development.
More recently we are supplying the Saudi’s with $110 billion dollars
Of lethal weapons for senseless Yemini slaughter
And helping with the immoral destruction of the poorest on the earth
Bombing relentlessly and incessantly for all they are worth.
Unfortunately we have a perpetual war economy, which precludes peace
And requires perpetual war –i.e. bombing that cannot cease.
For peace to our military would bring bureaucratic famine-
Something they can just never begin to imagine.
Howard P. Charman, MD 4-29-2017 and my 76th birthday 6-15-2017
Comment: 90% of modern warfare causalities are innocent civilians. Douhet in the 1920s originated the immoral concept of targeting civilians to destroy their will to fight. And we have perfected this on an industrial scale. Unopposed bombing is not warfare, but is barbaric slaughter. In Korea, Vietnam, and (in secret) in Laos and Cambodia and later in Iraq and Libya and in assisting the Saudi’s in Yemen we have wantonly destroyed infrastructure. Interestingly, we hung Germans at the Nuremberg Tribunals for doing the exact same thing. Both Curtis Lemay (responsible for the fire-bombing of Tokyo and 300,000 deaths in one night and McNamara who oversaw the Vietnam war admitted they were potentially guilty of war crimes. And Leila Garrett (in her KPFK Los Angeles program Connect the Dots) has repetitively stated “We have a permanent war economy and therefore require permanent war.” In this regard, defense stocks soared after we initiated bombing in Syria, and with the inauguration of president Donald J. Trump. Watching the scramble for new enemies after the Berlin wall fell, the late esteemed Professor Chalmers Johnson was prompted to write the Blowback Trilogy (Blowback, The Sorrows of Empire, and Nemesis: the last days of the American republic). The Cold War and subsequent incursions in the Middle East he realized were not about protecting the American people. No, but rather in insuring the health of the American war machine and hence the economy after WWII. Eisenhower is credited in his farewell address with warning about the Military -Industrial – Congressional Complex (although at the insistence of colleagues he deleted the latter). In his Cross of Iron speech he forcefully articulates how every warplane and gun deprives the population of needed infrastructure – of hospitals and schools for children. The hypocrisy though, is that he, Allan and John Foster Dulles were responsible for multiple regime changes and actually perpetuating this institution.
Fred Branfman in his Alternet article: The World’s Most Evil and Lawless Institution? The Executive Branch of the United States Government. (Alternet 6-26-2013) documents the carnage the United States has unleashed on the world since WWII. This article is required reading for anyone trying to understand modern US history.
Martin Luther King in his 4-7-1967 Beyond Vietnam speech said “my country is the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today”. Unfortunately these words are just as relevant today as in 1967.
Howard P. Charman, MD 4-30-2017 and 6-15-2017