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Location: Nashville, Tennessee, United States

8/20/2003

Nonviolent Nonsense
A website called Nonviolence.org linked to my post below regarding the Enola Gay, the plane the dropped the atomic bomb on Hiroshima back in 1945, helping to speed the end of World War II, saving many hundreds of thousands of lives in the process. The writer of the Nonviolence.org post seems to think I'm guilty of historical "amnesia and techno-lust," and comments:

Schoolchildren visiting Washington won’t learn the truth about the bombing. Another generation will be spoon-fed propaganda about its country’s greatness and goodness. Another generation will not pause to consider its country’s old sins and tragic mistakes. A typical blog entry about the Smithsonian exhibit that claims no single plane did more to save lives in World War II. Abstract death and claim righteousness to your country, keep militarism going and keep peaceful people from uniting across national boundaries.
What peaceful people is he talking about? The Japanese, who attacked us on Dec. 7, 1941, or the Japanese who were invading China and other countries as far back as 1931, or the Japanese who massacred some 300,000 Chinese during their occupation of Nanking in 1937-38? The fact of the matter is, Japan was not willing to surrender before we bombed Hiroshima and Nagasaki, but afterwards they did, ending the war. And for almost 60 years since, we have indeed united peacefully with the Japanese across national boundaries, a fact which seems to escape Martin Kelley, the reality-denier who founded Nonviolence.org.

While we're mulling that over, please note also that Nonviolence.org has not posted anything condemning yesterday's bus bombing in Jerusalem, in which a Hamas suicide bomber killed 20 innocent Israelis. In fact, I ran a search on the Nonviolence.org website for the terms Hamas, Hezbollah (and alternate spelling Hizbullah), Arafat and Palestinian and got the same result every time: "No pages were found containing..." I dunno why. I mean, if you're into urging nonviolence, I'd think you would be very vocal about urging Hamas to disarm and stop killing Jews... I mean, you know, if you're actually against the mass murder of Jews, that is.

I ran a search for the word terrorism too and found three articles on the site that mentioned the word, including this one that suggests the U.S. focus on Saudi Arabia as the key player in the September 11 attacks. Okay, I agree with that ( and think the Bush administration is focusing on the Saudis, quietly). But then what? Should we unite peacefully with them across national boundaries? Bomb them? Invade them? The latter choices would seems to be rather, uh, non-nonviolent, but Kelley, after criticizing the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, condemns President Bush for "giving a pass" to Saudi Arabia. So the founder of Nonviolence.org seems to be urging ... violence.

Somebody please slap some sense into him.