Chris Hedges: The Science of Genocide
from truthdig:
The Science of Genocide
Posted on Aug 6, 2012
By Chris Hedges
On this day in 1945 the United States demonstrated that it was as morally bankrupt as the Nazi machine it had recently vanquished and the Soviet regime with which it was allied. Over Hiroshima, and three days later over Nagasaki, it exploded an atomic device that was the most efficient weapon of genocide in human history. The blast killed tens of thousands of men, women and children. It was an act of mass annihilation that was strategically and militarily indefensible. The Japanese had been on the verge of surrender. Hiroshima and Nagasaki had no military significance. It was a war crime for which no one was ever tried. The explosions, which marked the culmination of three centuries of physics, signaled the ascendancy of the technician and scientist as our most potent agents of death.
In World War II Auschwitz and Hiroshima showed that progress through technology has escalated mans destructive impulses into more precise and incredibly more devastating form, Bruno Bettelheim said. The concentration camps with their gas chambers, the first atomic bomb confronted us with the stark reality of overwhelming death, not so much ones ownthis each of us has to face sooner or later, and however uneasily, most of us manage not to be overpowered by our fear of itbut the unnecessary and untimely death of millions. Progress not only failed to preserve life but it deprived millions of their lives more effectively than had ever been possible before. Whether we choose to recognize it or not, after the second World War Auschwitz and Hiroshima became monuments to the incredible devastation man and technology together bring about.
The atomic blasts, ignited in large part to send a message to the Soviet Union, were a reminder that science is morally neutral. Science and technology serve the ambitions of humankind. And few in the sciences look beyond the narrow tasks handed to them by corporations or government. They employ their dark arts, often blind to the consequences, to cement into place systems of security and surveillance, as well as systems of environmental destruction, that will result in collective enslavement and mass extermination. As we veer toward environmental collapse we will have to pit ourselves against many of these experts, scientists and technicians whose loyalty is to institutions that profit from exploitation and death.
Scientists and technicians in the United States over the last five decades built 70,000 nuclear weapons at a cost of $5.5 trillion. (The Soviet Union had a nuclear arsenal of similar capability.) By 1963, according to the Columbia University professor Seymour Melman, the United States could overkill the 140 principal cities in the Soviet Union more than 78 times. Yet we went on manufacturing nuclear warheads. And those who publicly questioned the rationality of the massive nuclear buildup, such as J. Robert Oppenheimer, who at the government lab at Los Alamos, N.M., had overseen the building of the two bombs used on Japan, often were zealously persecuted on suspicion of being communists or communist sympathizers. It was a war plan that called for a calculated act of enormous, criminal genocide. We built more and more bombs with the sole purpose of killing hundreds of millions of people. And those who built them, with few exceptions, never gave a thought to their suicidal creations. ................(more)
The complete piece is at: http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/the_science_of_genocide_20120806/
Botany
(70,504 posts)Those bombs might very well have saved millions of lives in stopping a planned
land invasion of Japan and the killing of all American POWs held in Japan too.
They ended the war.
MyTwoSense
(46 posts)The United States dropped the atomic bomb on August 6th. Despite the devastation, Japan did not surrender. Three days later we dropped another atomic bomb. Still elements of the Japanese military wanted to continue the fight. With a mindset like that, imagine the dead and wounded if we attacked the main Japanese islands.
Odin2005
(53,521 posts)And fuck him for using that bastard Bruno "Frigid Mothers Cause Autism" Bettelheim as a source for anything.
mojowork_n
(2,354 posts)I don't think he was referencing the "Psychology Today" Bettelheim:
http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/the-imprinted-brain/201004/bruno-bettelheim-psychotic-savant
Or maybe even the man's whole body of work in a more muted, stark perspective:
http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/1996/jun/20/the-survivor/?pagination=false
...Just those 3 specific sentences.
Of course, in "Bizarro World" broken clocks are only wrong twice a day, so you can't completely
accept that argument, either. I'm not a big fan of Hedges Calvinist / Presbyterian "Human Progress
is a myth" dark side, but I still like to read his stuff and think about what he has to say.
mojowork_n
(2,354 posts)Based on the snap replies, I wouldn't be willing to bet a whole lot of dough that any of the preceding posters actually clicked the link and read the whole essay. Or that they've been following the thread that's been connecting each
new one to the one before.
Criticizing Hedges for citing Bettelheim is a little like faulting Descartes, for his over-reliance
on Aristotle (and Aristotle's Metaphysics), when Aristotle's familiarity with the Periodic Table
of Elements, the Atomic Theory, and the Standard Model of Physics -- was obviously so
rudimentary. And just plain wrong.
Bettelheim may have been wrong, unwilling - or unable - to acknowledge or examine medical,
neurological and/or genetic evidence, when it came to autism, on the entirely different
"problem of evil" -- the 'science of genocide' in Hedges phrase -- I actually think it makes
enormous sense to consider multi-generational effects. And what's passed down from
parents to children, in addition to their genetic heritage.
For example, I wish more people might have paid attention to this book. I hope the
work in that area continues:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Post_Traumatic_Slave_Syndrome
midnight
(26,624 posts)military, but he did start campaigning his fellow scientist not to work for the military....
mojowork_n
(2,354 posts)This is the 4th in a series from UCLA, on the "Holocaust in Film and Literature," and the instructor just made a related point.
At the Wannsee Conference (re-created as theater in the film, "Conspiracy" all of the organizers/plotters were highly educated men. Eichmann, who hadn't finished high school, was the exception. There is no necessary correlation between someone having a whole lot of technical expertise, schooling or knowledge, and their having a moral sense, or empathy or compassion.
Links to the classes -- there are lots and lots, with another, similar site underneath.
http://www.academicroom.com/video/german-59-holocaust-film-and-literature-lec-4-lecture-4-18
http://www.openculture.com/freeonlinecourses
midnight
(26,624 posts)But wasn't sure... I've bookmarked the link for future exploring-thanks..
Mosaic
(1,451 posts)Is the most disgusting, vile, evil, horrible thing in human history. Good humans around the world must end it forever. Count me out, I did not choose to live here, and I don't care what happens to this vile experiment in corporatism. If I had the money I would be gone to a civilized country in an instant, and God willing I will soon.