Socialist Viewpoint

Others have already noted the Orwellian character of President George W. Bush’s declaration of “War Against Terrorism,” with the unanimous approval of the bipartisan US Congress. The leader of the world’s foremost terrorist, armed with the “weapons of mass destruction” capable of destroying all life on earth many times, dares to declare war on terrorism!

The world cannot forget that on August 6, 1945, the first of two atom bombs ever to be used against people was dropped on a Japanese city. The first bomb destroyed Hiroshima and three days later, a second bomb annihilated Nagasaki. It is less widely known, however that rather than having “ended” World War II, the 140,000 men, women and children that lived in those two cities had been incinerated after the Japanese government had already conceded defeat and had offered to surrender—unconditionally—on essentially the same terms that later formally concluded the war.

Even fewer people know that weeks before the nuclear annihilation of the two cities, the Japanese imperial government had asked the Soviet Union—which was not at war with Japan at the time—to transmit to the US government their decision to surrender. When informed by the Soviet government of Japan’s intentions, US president, Harry S Truman, reportedly asked Soviet Premier Joseph Stalin to keep the offer to surrender a secret “for the time being.” Stalin did as asked, thereby helping Truman rationalize capitalist America’s horrendous act of mass murder by falsely claiming it was necessary to save the lives of many thousands of American soldiers that would have been lost in an island-by-island assault on Japan.

In order to understand the grave crisis facing humanity today, we need to understand why the American capitalist government decided to terrorize the world with a demonstration of the awesome destructive power at its disposal and thereby send a message to the entire world that American imperialism possessed and would apply whatever force necessary to maintain and expand the dominance of global capitalism.