U.S. Weapons of Mass Destruction
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http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/080206B.shtml
Weapons of Mass Destruction Discovered Here: Hiroshima, Nagasaki, and North Dakota
By Bill Quigley
t r u t h o u t | Perspective
Wednesday 02 August 2006
On August 6, 1945, the United States dropped an atomic bomb on Hiroshima. Three days later, the US dropped another atomic bomb on Nagasaki. These nuclear weapons killed over 100,000 people, almost all civilians, and injured many tens of thousands more.
Fr. Carl Kabat, 72, Greg Boertje-Obed, 51, and Michael Walli, 57, sit in jail in North Dakota awaiting a federal criminal trial because of weapons of mass destruction and because of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. I visited them last week.
Their crime? They tried to disarm one of the 1700+ nuclear weapons in North Dakota. On June 26, 2006, they went to the silo of a Minuteman III first-strike nuclear missile and wrote on it, "If you want peace, work for justice." Then they hammered on its lock and poured some of their own blood over it. They waited to be arrested and have been in jail ever since. If convicted, they face imprisonment of up to ten years for criminal damage to federal property.
The Minuteman III is a first-strike intercontinental nuclear missile with a range of over 6,000 miles and carries 27 times the destructive power of the bomb dropped on Hiroshima. There are over one hundred fifty Minuteman III missiles planted in the ground in silos in just the northern part of North Dakota.
Fr. Kabat has been a Catholic priest for over forty years. Greg Boertje-Obed was a First Lieutenant in the US Army. Mike Walli served two tours in Vietnam. All three men were born in small towns or rural areas of the Midwest. Walli and Boertje-Obed are members of the Loaves and Fishes Catholic Worker community in Duluth, Minnesota. Together they are called the "Weapons of Mass Destruction Here Plowshares." The Plowshares movement seeks to follow the instructions of Isaiah (2:4) and Micah (4:3) to "beat your swords into plowshares."
At the time of their arrest, the three specifically linked their actions to Hiroshima and Nagasaki. "Two of the most terrible war crimes occurred on August 6th and 9th, 1945. On August 6th, 1945, the United States dropped an atomic bomb on the city of Hiroshima, Japan, killing more than 100,000 people (including U.S. prisoners of war). Three days later the U.S. dropped an atomic bomb on the city of Nagasaki, Japan, killing more than 50,000 people. Use of these weapons of mass destruction on civilian populations were abominable crimes against humanity."
They went on to say, "U.S. leaders speak about the dangers of other nations acquiring nuclear weapons, but they fail to act in accordance with the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty which commits the U.S. to take steps to disarm its weapons of mass destruction. We act in order to bring attention to people's responsibility for disarming weapons of state terrorism. We can begin the process of exposing U.S. weapons of mass destruction, naming them as abominations that cause desolation, and transforming them to objects that promote life."
Mike Walli enlisted in the army as a young man. With the experience of two tours in Vietnam, he said: "This is not about our national defense. The hundreds of Minuteman III nuclear weapons are offensive weapons of mass destruction. Martin Luther King Jr. preached that the United States is the chief purveyor of violence in the world. We must become a people-oriented society rather than a thing-oriented society. We must kick the war economy habit."
Greg Boertje-Obed, who, after his time as an officer in the military, married and is the father of an eleven year old daughter, told me: "There is a sense of righteousness and harmony that comes from being in jail on August 6. When I was in the military, I was trained to fight and "win" a nuclear war. It became clear that all the preparations for a nuclear war were wrong. In contrast Jesus taught "Love your enemies - don't fear those who can kill the body - those who live by the sword will die by the sword." Now is the time to turn away from the ways of violence. Treat others the way we want to be treated. Now is the time to take steps to help the starving, ill, orphaned, weak, war-oppressed, and down-trodden all over the world. It is time to turn away from the bomb and the possibility of ending all life on our planet and to end the nuclear nightmare.
Fr. Carl Kabat spent several years in the Philippines and Brazil. "August 6th and August 9th are appropriate times to be in jail," he reflected. "We are here to witness against the insanity of nuclear weapons. When these bombs were dropped on the Japanese I was too young to realize what had happened. Those bombings were war crimes that we, even today, do not acknowledge. The indiscriminate killing of children, women, old people and everyone else certainly cannot be accepted under any just theory of war. Perhaps the fact that we are in jail can help us as a nation remember the criminality of those days in the past. None of us can make up for the killings in the past, but there is a possibility that our being in jail during this time might help stop such insanity from being repeated in the future."
North Dakota is home to more nuclear weapons than any other of the 50 states. The Bureau of Atomic Scientists estimated that the state contained more than 1,700 nuclear warheads, not counting the ones planted in concrete silos in the ground.
A friendly cab driver in Bismarck told me "If North Dakota seceded from the Union, we would be the world's third most-powerful nuclear state."
The Weapons of Mass Destruction Here Plowshares hope their actions will invite the people of North Dakota, and the rest of the US, to do something about our nation's nuclear weapons of mass destruction in light of many issues of justice, including the deaths of tens of thousands of civilians in Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
Bill Quigley is a human rights lawyer and professor of law at Loyola University New Orleans. Bill is a legal advisor with the Weapons of Mass Destruction Here Plowshares. You can write Fr. Carl Kabat, Greg Boertje-Obed, or Mike Walli c/o Southwest Multi-County Correctional Center, 66 Museum Drive, Dickinson, ND 58601. You can find out more about the Weapons of Mass Destruction Here Plowshares at: http://www.jonahhouse.org. You can contact their community c/o Loaves and Fishes Catholic Worker Community at 218.728.0629. You can email Bill Quigley at Quigley@loyno.edu.
Weapons of Mass Destruction Discovered Here: Hiroshima, Nagasaki, and North Dakota
By Bill Quigley
t r u t h o u t | Perspective
Wednesday 02 August 2006
On August 6, 1945, the United States dropped an atomic bomb on Hiroshima. Three days later, the US dropped another atomic bomb on Nagasaki. These nuclear weapons killed over 100,000 people, almost all civilians, and injured many tens of thousands more.
Fr. Carl Kabat, 72, Greg Boertje-Obed, 51, and Michael Walli, 57, sit in jail in North Dakota awaiting a federal criminal trial because of weapons of mass destruction and because of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. I visited them last week.
Their crime? They tried to disarm one of the 1700+ nuclear weapons in North Dakota. On June 26, 2006, they went to the silo of a Minuteman III first-strike nuclear missile and wrote on it, "If you want peace, work for justice." Then they hammered on its lock and poured some of their own blood over it. They waited to be arrested and have been in jail ever since. If convicted, they face imprisonment of up to ten years for criminal damage to federal property.
The Minuteman III is a first-strike intercontinental nuclear missile with a range of over 6,000 miles and carries 27 times the destructive power of the bomb dropped on Hiroshima. There are over one hundred fifty Minuteman III missiles planted in the ground in silos in just the northern part of North Dakota.
Fr. Kabat has been a Catholic priest for over forty years. Greg Boertje-Obed was a First Lieutenant in the US Army. Mike Walli served two tours in Vietnam. All three men were born in small towns or rural areas of the Midwest. Walli and Boertje-Obed are members of the Loaves and Fishes Catholic Worker community in Duluth, Minnesota. Together they are called the "Weapons of Mass Destruction Here Plowshares." The Plowshares movement seeks to follow the instructions of Isaiah (2:4) and Micah (4:3) to "beat your swords into plowshares."
At the time of their arrest, the three specifically linked their actions to Hiroshima and Nagasaki. "Two of the most terrible war crimes occurred on August 6th and 9th, 1945. On August 6th, 1945, the United States dropped an atomic bomb on the city of Hiroshima, Japan, killing more than 100,000 people (including U.S. prisoners of war). Three days later the U.S. dropped an atomic bomb on the city of Nagasaki, Japan, killing more than 50,000 people. Use of these weapons of mass destruction on civilian populations were abominable crimes against humanity."
They went on to say, "U.S. leaders speak about the dangers of other nations acquiring nuclear weapons, but they fail to act in accordance with the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty which commits the U.S. to take steps to disarm its weapons of mass destruction. We act in order to bring attention to people's responsibility for disarming weapons of state terrorism. We can begin the process of exposing U.S. weapons of mass destruction, naming them as abominations that cause desolation, and transforming them to objects that promote life."
Mike Walli enlisted in the army as a young man. With the experience of two tours in Vietnam, he said: "This is not about our national defense. The hundreds of Minuteman III nuclear weapons are offensive weapons of mass destruction. Martin Luther King Jr. preached that the United States is the chief purveyor of violence in the world. We must become a people-oriented society rather than a thing-oriented society. We must kick the war economy habit."
Greg Boertje-Obed, who, after his time as an officer in the military, married and is the father of an eleven year old daughter, told me: "There is a sense of righteousness and harmony that comes from being in jail on August 6. When I was in the military, I was trained to fight and "win" a nuclear war. It became clear that all the preparations for a nuclear war were wrong. In contrast Jesus taught "Love your enemies - don't fear those who can kill the body - those who live by the sword will die by the sword." Now is the time to turn away from the ways of violence. Treat others the way we want to be treated. Now is the time to take steps to help the starving, ill, orphaned, weak, war-oppressed, and down-trodden all over the world. It is time to turn away from the bomb and the possibility of ending all life on our planet and to end the nuclear nightmare.
Fr. Carl Kabat spent several years in the Philippines and Brazil. "August 6th and August 9th are appropriate times to be in jail," he reflected. "We are here to witness against the insanity of nuclear weapons. When these bombs were dropped on the Japanese I was too young to realize what had happened. Those bombings were war crimes that we, even today, do not acknowledge. The indiscriminate killing of children, women, old people and everyone else certainly cannot be accepted under any just theory of war. Perhaps the fact that we are in jail can help us as a nation remember the criminality of those days in the past. None of us can make up for the killings in the past, but there is a possibility that our being in jail during this time might help stop such insanity from being repeated in the future."
North Dakota is home to more nuclear weapons than any other of the 50 states. The Bureau of Atomic Scientists estimated that the state contained more than 1,700 nuclear warheads, not counting the ones planted in concrete silos in the ground.
A friendly cab driver in Bismarck told me "If North Dakota seceded from the Union, we would be the world's third most-powerful nuclear state."
The Weapons of Mass Destruction Here Plowshares hope their actions will invite the people of North Dakota, and the rest of the US, to do something about our nation's nuclear weapons of mass destruction in light of many issues of justice, including the deaths of tens of thousands of civilians in Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
Bill Quigley is a human rights lawyer and professor of law at Loyola University New Orleans. Bill is a legal advisor with the Weapons of Mass Destruction Here Plowshares. You can write Fr. Carl Kabat, Greg Boertje-Obed, or Mike Walli c/o Southwest Multi-County Correctional Center, 66 Museum Drive, Dickinson, ND 58601. You can find out more about the Weapons of Mass Destruction Here Plowshares at: http://www.jonahhouse.org. You can contact their community c/o Loaves and Fishes Catholic Worker Community at 218.728.0629. You can email Bill Quigley at Quigley@loyno.edu.
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Comments
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What would happen if the US dismantled all of their warheads? I"m sure China and the Russians would follow our 'example...'0
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So you think your speculation over what these other countries will or won't do justifies the arrogant U.S. government's actions? Does it also justify the U.S. in their hypocricy of having 10,000+ nukes yet threatening Iran's nuclear power production? How about Iraq's "weapons of mass destruction" that clearly were imaginary? How much hypocricy does your speculation justify? A nation's search for nuclear energy or imaginary weapons?Laz wrote:What would happen if the US dismantled all of their warheads? I"m sure China and the Russians would follow our 'example...'0 -
Man, why do people use Japan in WW-II in these kinds of arguments? Seriously ...0
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Hmmm.
Hypocicy -- sitting on the world's third largest oil reserves and telling the world you need nuclear energy, while calling to "wipe out" a soverign nation?
I will say I trust our values as a civilization with 10,000 nukes a lot more than I'd trust some others with even 1 nuke....[sic] happens0 -
But it's clearly not the way to peace, now is it?acutejam wrote:Hmmm.
Hypocicy -- sitting on the world's third largest oil reserves and telling the world you need nuclear energy, while calling to "wipe out" a soverign nation?
I will say I trust our values as a civilization with 10,000 nukes a lot more than I'd trust some others with even 1 nuke....0 -
acutejam wrote:
I will say I trust our values as a civilization with 10,000 nukes a lot more than I'd trust some others with even 1 nuke....
Yeah, pretty much. Some may find this offensive, but its true. How long has the U.S. stockpiled nukes? Decades? And besides Japan to end WW-II, when has there ever been a situation where the world was going "OMG, the U.S. is going to kill us all!" ... These "we are the REAL WMD threat" arguments are just nonsense to me. I don't lose sleep over the U.S. and Britain having these weapons. China worries me a bit more, but even in that case, realistically, what's the danger? Even China doesn't threaten to wipe countries out. Israel worries me the most, perhaps ... Not because they'd use them preemptively, but because I worry that some terrorist is going to do something really dumb to Israeli civilians, provoking a potentially apocalyptic response.0 -
don't gimme no wrote:But it's clearly not the way to peace, now is it?
Maybe not, but in this day and age, what effects would dismantling the entire U.S. nulcear arsenal have? Do you think they'd be uniformly positive?0 -
reborncareerist wrote:Maybe not, but in this day and age, what effects would dismantling the entire U.S. nulcear arsenal have? Do you think they'd be uniformly positive?
Lead by example
I necessarily have the passion for writing this, and you have the passion for condemning me; both of us are equally fools, equally the toys of destiny. Your nature is to do harm, mine is to love truth, and to make it public in spite of you. - Voltaire0 -
Ahnimus wrote:Lead by example
In an ideal world, my friend.0 -
acutejam wrote:I will say I trust our values as a civilization with 10,000 nukes a lot more than I'd trust some others with even 1 nuke....
That is a reasonable statement. Just what are those values that you think America is in possession of? I'd like to know.0 -
enharmonic wrote:That is a reasonable statement. Just what are those values that you think America is in possession of? I'd like to know.
Tolerance, freedom, respect for difference and diversity.
Now those being the ideal that we strive for, we're of course not pefect. But amen that we can come together and talk about it all without being rounded up and tortured for our speech, neh?
Of course these values have their burning point, for instance when they run into the polar opposiste. Please don't ask me to respect and tolerate those who preach intolerance (for instance).
Oh -- and the Value of Rock n Roll of course! But that's kinda embedded in freedom, right? Kinda nice to see how rockin Japan is these days, huh? Germany too! Man they're pumping out some Grade-A rock-n-roll! Can't say the latest releases from the Egyptian music scene have really floated my boat, but hey, I value diversity! Just happy they can MAKE music, yet alone listen and dance to it, huh?[sic] happens0 -
acutejam wrote:Oh -- and the Value of Rock n Roll of course! But that's kinda embedded in freedom, right? Kinda nice to see how rockin Japan is these days, huh? Germany too! Man they're pumping out some Grade-A rock-n-roll! Can't say the latest releases from the Egyptian music scene have really floated my boat, but hey, I value diversity! Just happy they can MAKE music, yet alone listen and dance to it, huh?
Well, seeing that Rock and Roll evolved from the Black communities in the US, wouldn't it be more accurate to attribute Rock and Roll to africa? What was that about the brittish music invasion? Mozart, Bach and Beethoven, guess where they were from?
Being that I am an individual that listens to a fair amount of German music. I'd have to say you are wrong in assuming they have good music because of US occupation of germany. Actually, germany has amazing musical talent that existed long before the US ever existed. Part of the reason American's don't know about it, is because if it's not in English the majority won't listen to it. Peter Schilling as an example, originally recorded his song "Major Tom" in german, but wrote an english version which became extremely popular in N. America. Die Toten Hosen had a couple of tracks on the Resident Evil sountrack, their english tracks of course. The best german music hasn't even been heard yet by N. AmericaI necessarily have the passion for writing this, and you have the passion for condemning me; both of us are equally fools, equally the toys of destiny. Your nature is to do harm, mine is to love truth, and to make it public in spite of you. - Voltaire0 -
Ya .. I was being lighthearted with the music invasion meme, still working that one out (like France, sure they make music, but do they rock? I think it sez something about their culture that they have produced no Rock Stars. Not sure what it sez, but something surely?)
Point being -- I'm all for cultures that value music, period. Artistic expression -- I'd prefer that over it's opposite?
Now, as towards the path to peace question -- I'm a realist, cat's outta the bag, nukes are here. No, 10,000 nukes is not in itself a path to peace -- it's the stick part of "carrot and the stick" which is the essence of diplomacy and negotiating.
And I don't think it's arrogant on our part to want to keep as many nations as possible non-nuclear. I accept it can be interpretted that way....[sic] happens0 -
shouldn't we be working towards "an ideal world?" Your response admits that it would be the right thing to do....assuming there is right and wrong.reborncareerist wrote:In an ideal world, my friend.0 -
acutejam wrote:Ya .. I was being lighthearted with the music invasion meme, still working that one out (like France, sure they make music, but do they rock? I think it sez something about their culture that they have produced no Rock Stars. Not sure what it sez, but something surely?)
Point being -- I'm all for cultures that value music, period. Artistic expression -- I'd prefer that over it's opposite?
I just discovered this song Elles Dansent by Nuttea born and raised in Guadeloupe. Good stuff, cross between Hip-hop and raggae, in french.I necessarily have the passion for writing this, and you have the passion for condemning me; both of us are equally fools, equally the toys of destiny. Your nature is to do harm, mine is to love truth, and to make it public in spite of you. - Voltaire0 -
Ahnimus wrote:I just discovered this song Elles Dansent by Nuttea born and raised in Guadeloupe. Good stuff, cross between Hip-hop and raggae, in french.
Hmmm. Ok ok, region of France I suppose, but c'mon gotta be more Carribean influence than french, no?
And just to stay on thread -- THERE'S the real weapon of mass destruction!
ROCK-N-ROLL[sic] happens0 -
acutejam wrote:Hmmm. Ok ok, region of France I suppose, but c'mon gotta be more Carribean influence than french, no?
And just to stay on thread -- THERE'S the real weapon of mass destruction!
ROCK-N-ROLL
Should check it out, good music, check out Massive Töne out of deutschland if you like Hip-hop. Still, most of these bands include some english in their songs. English is truly at the front in music. Strangely, in N. America we are more likely to accept Spanish in music than french or german.I necessarily have the passion for writing this, and you have the passion for condemning me; both of us are equally fools, equally the toys of destiny. Your nature is to do harm, mine is to love truth, and to make it public in spite of you. - Voltaire0 -
don't gimme no wrote:shouldn't we be working towards "an ideal world?" Your response admits that it would be the right thing to do....assuming there is right and wrong.
Indeed we should ... But doing so should not involve hasty mistakes.0 -
Ahnimus wrote:Well, seeing that Rock and Roll evolved from the Black communities in the US, wouldn't it be more accurate to attribute Rock and Roll to africa?
No, because said black people were Americans.0 -
don't gimme no wrote:So you think your speculation over what these other countries will or won't do justifies the arrogant U.S. government's actions? Does it also justify the U.S. in their hypocricy of having 10,000+ nukes yet threatening Iran's nuclear power production? How about Iraq's "weapons of mass destruction" that clearly were imaginary? How much hypocricy does your speculation justify? A nation's search for nuclear energy or imaginary weapons?
yeah, because all Iran wants is energy. <
insert "can you believe this guy" face here.Why go home
www.myspace.com/jensvad0
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