Washington's use of ‘dirty bombs’

By Eulalia Bircsak, 1 February 2003

Fifty-eight years ago, on August 6 and August 9, 1945, U.S. imperialism dropped atomic bombs on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. This horrendous crime remains the only time nuclear weapons have been used against humanity.

The bombs were the dirtiest nuclear weapons imaginable. They killed over 220,000 people instantly and left entire generations condemned to slowly die from long-term illnesses. It is an atrocity the U.S. rulers not only never apologized for, but defend to this day.

For decades U.S. government officials and other apologists for imperialism have justified Washington's decision to drop the bombs as necessary to save American lives and end the war. Of course this is always the justification of an empire, and will continue to be the banner under which the U.S. rulers inflict brutalities on humanity.

But this rationalization covers up the real truth. Washington made the cold-blooded decision to incinerate the civilian populations in these two Japanese cities to send a message to its imperialist rivals and working people around the world. Their message was loud and clear: we not only have the bomb but are more than willing to use it to advance our imperial prerogatives.

The same bipartisan gang in Washington is also responsible for the succession of atrocities carried out against the peoples of Korea, Vietnam, Iraq, and more recently in Afghanistan.

These facts are important to remember today as Washington claims the moral right to organize preemptive strikes against other nations to prevent them from developing long-range delivery systems and weapons of mass destruction. Despite announcements it will cut the number of active nuclear warheads in its arsenal, the U.S. rulers still have enough of the weapons to make the rubble bounce many times over. By pressing to develop and deploy an antimissile system, Washington not only seeks to defend U.S. territory, but also to use nuclear blackmail with impunity against any country in the world.

The fight to prevent the U.S. government from again raining down nuclear weapons on working people is a battle to overthrow the war makers. As capitalism sinks deeper into crisis and the financial implosion of the economic bubble continues, the threat of a world depression looms on the horizon.

The last temporary stabilization of capitalism coming out of a similar crisis was possible only through a devastating depression and inter-imperialist world war, capped by the bombings in Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The only road for working people out of such a future is to mount a revolutionary struggle to take power out of the hands of the superwealthy few and put in place a workers and farmers government.