LewRockwell » Gary G. Kohls

War Criminal Rudolf Hoess Speaks to History’s Militarists

Gary G. Kohls — Fri, 03 May 2013 15:53:13 +0000

“Do not think you are better than me because you burn up enemies with long-range missiles without ever seeing what you have done”

The Duluth Reader ran out of space for an optional ending of last week’s Duty to Warn column. My preferred ending was the powerful Thomas Merton prose poem that gave voice to the infamous international war criminal, the Commandant of Auschwitz, Rudolf Hoess.

Merton has Hoess speaking from the gallows with the haunting accusation of history’s pro-war presidents, monarchs, dictators, Prime Ministers, and assorted politicians who know that wars always involve the mass murder of defenseless civilians (euphemistically known as “collateral damage”) in the universal long-range aerial bombing and now, in the case of the United States, the extra-judicial assassinations of suspected “terrorists” by drone warfare (which meets the definition of international war-crimes).

The self-admitted war criminal Hoess accuses every commanding officer who has ever ordered lethal missile or artillery attacks (that inevitably involve innocent non-combatants, a war crime) and every Apache helicopter crew (and their commanders) who targeted “suspects” in Iraq and Afghanistan (see the horrifying war crime “collateral murder” video courageously made available by Bradley Manning and WikiLeaks at: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5rXPrfnU3G0).

Hoess seems to be accusing every combat platoon who has ever blindly participated in night raids or mortar attacks in areas where civilians are known to be present.

Merton has Hoess say, ”Do not think yourself better because you burn friends and enemies with long-range missiles without ever seeing what you have done.”

Merton also accuses the war-profiteering industrialists that bid for the jobs of designing, manufacturing and equipping the camps with increasingly efficient extermination machinery. German ingenuity in action.

Merton’s poem contains actual quotes from some of the documents that were found after World War II had ended. The innovative SS Lt. Col. Hoess was proud – and well rewarded – for his part in improving the craft of high-tech, industrial-strength mass murder.

He said: ”Another improvement we made over Treblinka was that we built our gas chamber to accommodate 2,000 people at one time whereas at Treblinka their 10 gas chambers only accommodated 200 people each. The way we selected our victims was as follows: We had two SS doctors on duty at Auschwitz to examine the incoming transports of prisoners. The prisoners would be marched by one of the doctors who would make spot decisions as they walked by. Those who were fit for work were sent into the camp. Others were sent immediately to the extermination plants. Children of tender years were invariably exterminated since by reason of their youth they were unable to work. Still another improvement we made over Treblinka was that at Treblinka the victims almost always knew that they were to be exterminated and at Auschwitz we endeavored to fool the victims into thinking that they were to go through a delousing process. Of course, frequently they realized our true intentions and we sometimes had riots and difficulties due to that fact. Very frequently women would hide their children under the clothes, but of course when we found them we would send the children in to be exterminated. We were required to carry out these exterminations in secrecy but of course the foul and nauseating stench from the continuous burning of bodies permeated the entire area and all of the people living in the surrounding communities knew that exterminations were going on at Auschwitz.”

Hoess and others among the Nazi hierarchy had noticed the terrible psychiatric toll (alcoholism, depression, suicide, etc) that the up close and personal massacres were having on the common soldiers who reflexively obeyed the illegal orders to kill noncombatants. The decidedly less personal killing methods of starvation, shellings, bombings and gassing was far less traumatizing to the soldiers who were there at the end of the chain of command.

Hoess was hanged in 1947 for his role in the deaths of 3 million people at Auschwitz during his 3 ½ years (May 1940 to December 1943) as the camp’s commandant.

In a postwar affidavit (April 1946), Hoess confesses to his crimes:

“I commanded Auschwitz until 1 December 1943, and estimate that at least 2,500,000 victims were executed and exterminated there by gassing and burning, and at least another half million succumbed to starvation and disease, making a total dead of about 3,000,000. This figure represents about 70% or 80% of all persons sent to Auschwitz as prisoners, the remainder having been selected and used for slave labor in the concentration camp industries. Included among the executed and burnt were approximately 20,000 Russian prisoners of war (previously screened out of Prisoner of War cages by the Gestapo) who were delivered at Auschwitz in Wehrmacht transports operated by regular Wehrmacht officers and men. The remainder of the total number of victims included about 100,000 German Jews, and great numbers of citizens (mostly Jewish) from Holland, France, Belgium, Poland, Hungary, Czechoslovakia, Greece, or other countries. We executed about 400,000 Hungarian Jews alone at Auschwitz in the summer of 1944.”

“It took from 3 to 15 minutes to kill the people in the death chamber depending upon climatic conditions. We knew when the people were dead because their screaming stopped.”

“These so-called ill-treatments and this torturing in concentration camps, stories of which were spread everywhere among the people, and later by the prisoners that were liberated by the occupying armies, were not, as assumed, inflicted methodically, but were excesses committed by individual leaders, sub-leaders, and men who laid violent hands on internees.”

In his autobiography, written while he was awaiting his war crimes trial, Hoess wrote:

“I want to emphasize that I personally never hated the Jews. I considered them to be the enemy of our nation. However, that was precisely the reason to treat them the same way as the other prisoners. Besides, the feeling of hatred is not in me.”

“It is tragic that, although I was by nature gentle, good-natured, and very helpful, I became the greatest destroyer of human beings who carried out every order to exterminate people no matter what.”

From where in the human soul comes the willingness to kill?

One has to ask out loud, given the fact that Germany was an overwhelming Christian nation: “What kind of Christianity was it that justified, contrary to the teachings of Jesus, cruelty in parenting, hateful attitudes toward the “other”, and the justification of the organized mass slaughter of war? What kind of Christian leadership was it that did not stand up and courageously and prophetically say “NO” to its nation’s manufacture and stockpiling of (and its willingness to use) weapons of mass destruction whose only purpose is to kill humans and scorch the earth?

From where in the human soul comes the willingness to kill, wound, torture, enslave, or starve another human or even cooperate with the evils of state-sponsored homicide or genocide, whether your militarized nation is fascist Germany or “democratic” America?

Harshness in child-rearing is one of the realities that can easily result in the willingness to obey illegal orders to kill. Rudolf Hoess was a victim of cruelty in child-rearing, a violent, xenophobic culture, a vicious anti-Semitism and an aberrant form of Christianity that was silent on or supportive of its militaristic nation’s glorification of war.

Being a part of the inhumane society that Hoess was raised in, he never had a chance to be all that he could have been.

America’s Dementia Epidemic

Gary G. Kohls — Thu, 14 Mar 2013 10:49:26 +0000

Tens of millions of unsuspecting Americans, who are mired deeply in the mental “health” system, have actually been made crazy, homicidal, suicidal and neurologically disabled by the use of or the withdrawal from commonly-prescribed, brain-disabling, brain-damaging neurotoxic psychiatric drugs that have been cavalierly handed out like candy, with false assurance from a co-opted FDA. These synthetic prescription drugs are often prescribed in untested and unapproved combinations by unaware but well-intentioned prescribing physicians who have been under the mesmerizing influence of slick propaganda campaigns bankrolled by obscenely profitable multinational pharmaceutical corporations.

That is the conclusion of a multitude of courageous psychiatric and pharmaceutical industry whistleblowers (see some pertinent websites below), including many authors of books. Most of these whistleblowers have been black-listed by BigPharma, psychiatry, medical journals and even the mainstream media because of the magnitude of the unwelcome information they have revealed. In defense of most prescribing physicians, many of the revelations about the dangers of these synthetic drugs have been intentionally hidden from them. In any case, the whistleblowers’ revelations should be shaking up physicians, their drug-taking patients and the drug industry, as well as Wall Street.

I highlight two of these courageous whistleblowers below.

Practicing psychiatrist and scholar Grace E. Jackson, MD has written two important books that should alert psychiatric drug prescribers and the consumers of those drugs about the many dangers of those drugs. Dr. Jackson has done meticulous review and interpretations of the voluminous neuroscience research literature as well as the clinical neuropsychiatric literature and has proven, beyond a shadow of a doubt, how dementia-causing and brain damaging are many of the drugs that the drug industry has falsely reassured us as being “safe and effective”.

Drug-induced Dementia: A Perfect Crime

Dr. Jackson’s most dramatically ground-breaking book was published in 2009 and was titled Drug-Induced Dementia: A Perfect Crime. She has documented the often disastrous consequences of the chronic ingestion of any of the 5 major classes of psychiatric drugs (antidepressants, antipsychotics, psycho-stimulants, tranquilizers and anti-seizure/”mood-stabilizer” drugs).

Drug-induced Dementia: A Perfect Crime presents compelling evidence that any of the psychotropic drugs that target brain and nerve cells can cause microscopic, anatomic, biochemical, clinical and radiological evidence of brain shrinkage and other signs of brain damage, which can result in clinically-diagnosable dementia, premature death and a variety of other related brain disorders that can even mimic diagnosable mental illnesses “of unknown cause”. Jackson’s first book, Rethinking Psychiatric Drugs: A Guide for Informed Consent was an equally sobering warning about many of the hidden dangers of psychiatric drugs.

Mad in America: Bad Science, Bad Medicine and the Enduring Mistreatment of the Mentally Ill

Investigative journalist and health science writer Robert Whitaker has devoted many years of his life researching the serious downsides of psychiatric drugs. He has reported his ground-breaking results in two books, the first of which was titled Mad in America: Bad Science, Bad Medicine and the Enduring Mistreatment of the Mentally Ill (2002). In that book Whitaker explored the published literature and discovered that, since psychiatric drugs (the first one being Thorazine) began being widely prescribed in the US in the mid-1950s, there has been a 600% increase in the total and permanent disabilities of millions of psychiatric drug-takers in the United States. This uniquely First World epidemic of “mental health” disability has resulted in the life-long, taxpayer-supported, Social Security disabilities of rapidly increasing numbers of psychiatric patients who are now unable to live happy lives or be productive, taxpaying members of society.

In Whitaker’s second book Anatomy of an Epidemic: Magic Bullets, Psychiatric Drugs, and the Astonishing Rise of Mental Illness in America (2010), he provides additional, overwhelming proof of these sobering realities. He documents the history of the powerful forces behind the relatively new field of psychopharmacology and its major shapers, promoters and beneficiaries, namely BigPharma and the medical and psychiatric industries. Psychiatric drugs, whose developers, marketers and salespersons are all in the employ of the giant drug companies, are far more dangerous than these industries are willing to admit: Psychiatric drugs, it turns out, are fully capable of disabling body, brain and spirit – often permanently.

Jackson and Whitaker have done powerful services to humanity by presenting previously hidden, but very convincing evidence from the scientific literature to support their theses, that it is the drugs and not the so-called “mental illnesses” that are causing the epidemics of dementia and “mental illness” disability in America.

Aware, compassionate physicians and their aware patients should now be motivated to be wary of any synthetic chemicals that can cross the blood/brain barrier from the circulation into the brain. All of them are capable of altering the brain, sometimes permanently, in ways previously unknown to medical science and unsuspected by them and the FDA, especially in cases of polypharmacy and/or long-term or high dose use.

The sad truth is that there are long lists of serious, disabling short-term and long-term toxic effects from each and every of these commonly prescribed psychiatric drugs. And it seems to be the norm that patients do not receive much information warning them about those dangers. One of the common problems is the fact that many of these potent drugs can be addicting (dependency-inducing) and therefore decreasing the dosage of the drug can cause withdrawal symptoms that are different from the original symptoms that brought the patient to the doctor.

It is getting nearly impossible to fly over the Cuckoo’s Nest

Tragically, the prescribing of psych drugs “for life” has become synonymous with standard mental health “treatment” for almost every one of the 374 fabricated mental illness labels in the last version of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual. And putting people on pills (and rarely taking them off) has become the community standard of care in American medicine – increasingly so ever since the introduction of the so-called “anti-schizophrenic” “major tranquilizer” “miracle” drug Thorazine in the mid-1950s. (Thorazine was probably the drug that Jack Nicholson’s character Randall McMurphy was coerced into taking at “medication time” in the Academy Award-winning movie One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest.)

Thorazine and all the other first generation antipsychotic, “zombification” drugs are now universally known to have been an iatrogenic (ie, doctor-caused) disaster because of their serious long-term, brain-damaging effects that resulted in a multitude of permanent brain damage manifesting as tardive (delayed) dyskinesia, dysmetria, dystonia, dementia and Parkinson’s disease, all of which are commonly caused by antipsychotic drugs, even the “atypical” ones. Young people on such drugs are now developing Parkinson’s disease in childhood!

Thorazine and all the other “me-too” drugs like Prolixin, Mellaril, Navane, etc, are synthetic “tricyclic” chemical compounds similar in molecular structure to the tricyclic first generation “antidepressants” like Elavil and the similarly toxic, obesity-inducing, diabetogenic, “atypical” “anti-psychotic” second-generation drugs like Clozaril, Zyprexa and Seroquel.

Thorazine was originally developed in Europe as an industrial dye. That doesn’t sound so good although it may not be so unusual because Big Chemistry and Big Pharma both deal in synthetic chemical compounds. One only has to consider Depakote (valproic acid), a popular drug initially approved as an anti-epilepsy drug that was originally developed as an organic solvent. One could predict that Depakote, capable of dissolving fat, would be toxic to organs that contain fatty tissue, including human livers, pancreases and brains – as indeed it is. And yet it is still widely prescribed world-wide in the treatment of seizures, although, because so many infants and toddlers died from it, Depakote is relatively contraindicated in children below the age of 10.

Just like most ruthless corporations, BigPharma has a compulsive drive make as much money as possible by continuously expanding market share and increasing “shareholder value” (share price, dividends and the next quarter’s financial report) by whatever means necessary.

Both the prescribers and the swallowers of BigPharma’s drugs have succumbed to cunning marketing campaigns. The prescribers get seduced by attractive drug company representatives of the opposite sex and the free “pens, pizzas and post-it notes” in the office, and the patients get brain-washed by the inane and unbelievable (if one has intact critical thinking skills) commercials on TV that urge the watcher to “ask your doctor” about the latest unaffordable wannabe blockbuster drug while quickly glossing over the lethal and sub-lethal adverse effects in the fine print. If one gets a prescription for a drug that still has patent protection, prepare to pay anywhere from $100 – $300 per month, no matter if the production costs are pennies per pill.

There is no mental health disability epidemic in the third world

Interestingly, Whitaker points out that there is no such epidemic of mental illness disability in Third World nations because costly psych drugs are not prescribed as cavalierly as in First World nations. Third World poor people with first episodes of any serious mental health problem are not seen by psychiatrists. Rather, they are first nurtured and cared for by caring families in local communities (and not drugged) and, if drugs are used, they are only used short term – before the patient’s brain structure has been altered. Third world psychiatric patients are often cured without the use of any drug whatsoever and therefore those populations have far less chronic mental health problems than their counterparts in First World nations.

Jackson and Whitaker – and any number of other whistle-blowing authors and practitioners who have been questioning the knee-jerk use of potentially neurotoxic drugs for decades now – are understandably widely ignored by mainstream entities that somehow benefit from the highly profitable, pro-drug culture. Avoiding psychiatric drugs, although decidedly best for keeping brains healthy, is not best for the prescription psychiatric drug business.

The good news is that many critically-thinking scientists, holistic practitioners and assorted “psychiatric survivors” are coming to the realization that it is the drugs – and not the so-called “mental disorders” – that are contributing to our nation’s epidemics of dementia and mental illness disability.

Cognitive dissonance and the medicolegal risks of not obtaining fully informed consent before prescribing potentially dangerous drugs

Mental health practitioners who prescribe these drugs must seriously consider the medicolegal implications of continuing to follow the current community standards of care that should be changing with the new information noted above. Partly because of the common phenomenon of cognitive dissonance, many practitioners will initially refuse to allow themselves to be exposed to new truths. Some practitioners will briefly look at the new information and – even then – dismiss the new information that challenges or disproves their old belief systems. Some will reluctantly and belatedly consider the new truths and forget all about it, and others will, with some distress, try to adapt to the new information. And patients will often sort it out in a similar fashion, even though some patients may have brains that have been so cognitively impaired that they will be unable to recognize their impairment.

In any case patients and their loved ones may need to do their own research. After all, it is highly likely that in some day in the near future, prescribing brain-damaging drugs without obtaining fully informed consent from the patient might be considered malpractice.

FDA approval doesn’t mean a drug has been well-tested or is safe or effective long-term

I know that most health caregivers working for modern medical facility businesses are over-worked and often double-booked and therefore may be too busy giving their attention to BigPharma and its paid academics to absorb the sobering news related above. But this issue is too important to ignore. After all, these drugs are potentially lethal substances but are administered in sublethal doses and some (maybe most?) are known to accumulate in brain tissue. In a 4 week animal study from the 1990s, for example, Prozac was found to accumulate in the brain at a concentration 20 times higher than its concentration in the bloodstream! And yet, these drugs are still being cleverly marketed as non-toxic, and “safe and effective” (but only marginally so and only in short-term studies).

The captains of the drug industry know that their patented psychiatric drugs, when they are presented for FDA-approval, have only been tested in animal labs for days or weeks and in clinical trials on human subjects for only 6-8 weeks. They also know that many clinical trials involving psychiatrists use current drug-treated psychiatric patients who will then be in the process of going off – and therefore withdrawing from – their previous drugs. Industry executives also know that long-term trials of most psych drugs are never done prior to FDA marketing approval.

On top of that, the results of any failed or equivocal human trials are usually locked away and only the one or two trials with positive results are presented to the FDA. These executives also know that their drugs will likely be eventually discovered to be addictive and therefore may cause the patient to remain on the expensive drug forever or have potentially serious withdrawal symptoms when discontinued.

The fine line between “normal” and “mentally ill”

The truth is that people diagnosed as “mentally ill” for life are often simply those unfortunates who have found themselves in acute or chronic states of potentially reversible crises or temporary “overwhelm” due to any number of preventable, treatable and even curable bad luck situations such as being in bad company, or being a victim of poverty, abuse, violence, torture, homelessness, discrimination, underemployment, malnutrition, addictions/withdrawal, electroshock “therapy” and/or exposure to neurotoxic chemicals in their food, air, water or prescription bottles.

Those labeled as the “mentally ill” are not much different from those of us who call ourselves “normal”. But we “normals” have just been lucky enough to have not yet decompensated because of some yet-to-happen, desperation-inducing life situation. And thus we may not have yet been given a billable diagnosis with a billable code number, and so we have not yet been prescribed some unaffordable prescription drug that could put us on the road to permanent disability and institutionalization. In other words, if we are lucky enough to remain unlabeled, we are also likely to remain off brain-altering drugs; and therefore we may remain away from the clutches of “the system”, within which it is very difficult to “just say no to drugs.”

My experience with over a thousand “mentally ill” patients has led me to agree with Jackson’s and Whitaker’s assertions. I fully agree with their warnings that the chronic use of psychiatric drugs is a major cause of cognitive disorders, dementia, loss of memory, loss of IQ points, loss of creativity, loss of spirituality, loss of empathy, loss of energy, loss of strength, loss of impulse control and a multitude of metabolic adverse effects (like psych drug-induced obesity, hypertension, diabetes and hypercholesterolemia). There is no question in my mind that these drugs can sicken the body, brain and soul by causing adverse drug effects such as insomnia, somnolence, increased depression, mania, anxiety, delusions, psychoses, paranoia, etc. So before filling the prescription, I strongly urge pill-takers to read the product insert information under WARNINGS, PRECAUTIONS, ADVERSE EFFECTS, CONTRAINDICATIONS, TOXICOLOGY, OVERDOSAGE and the ever-present BLACK BOX WARNINGS ABOUT SUICIDALITY.

Dr. Peter Breggin (www.breggin.org) has warned us in his writings about a new syndrome that he calls psychiatric drug-induced Chronic Brain Impairment (CBI). It is caused by the chronic usage, especially with large doses or with combinations of psychotropic drugs. CBI could also be regarded as a chemically traumatic brain injury (cTBI). In medical school, we half-joked that Thorazine and Haldol caused “chemical lobotomies” in its victims. Little did we know how close to the truth we actually were. Chemical lobotomy is a useful way to conceptualize the serious issue CBI or cTBI, because such brain-altered patients are often indistinguishable from those who have actually suffered a physically traumatic brain injury (TBI) or have been subjected to “ice-pick” lobotomies (which were popular in the 1940s and 50s before the drugs came on the market and rapidly replaced that entire dastardly industry).

America has a dementia and mental ill health epidemic on its hands that is so obvious but so grossly misunderstood, and because of that blindness, the epidemic is worsening, not because of the supposed progression of “mental illness”, but because of the continued chronic use of neurotoxic, non-curative drugs that are, in America, erroneously used as first-line “treatment.”

For more information on these extremely serious topics check out these websites:

and follow the links.

A long mercola.com interview with Whitaker can be heard here.

America’s Dementia Epidemic

Gary G. Kohls — Thu, 14 Mar 2013 05:00:00 +0000

Previously by Gary G. Kohls: Brain-Altering Psych Drugs and the BatmanShooter

That is the conclusion of a multitude of courageous psychiatric and pharmaceutical industry whistleblowers (see some pertinent websites below), including many authors of books. Most of these whistleblowers have been black-listed by BigPharma, psychiatry, medical journals and even the mainstream media because of the magnitude of the unwelcome information they have revealed. In defense of most prescribing physicians, many of the revelations about the dangers of these synthetic drugs have been intentionally hidden from them. In any case, the whistleblowers' revelations should be shaking up physicians, their drug-taking patients and the drug industry, as well as Wall Street.

I highlight two of these courageous whistleblowers below.

Drug-induced Dementia: A Perfect Crime

Dr. Jackson's most dramatically ground-breaking book was published in 2009 and was titled Drug-Induced Dementia: A Perfect Crime. She has documented the often disastrous consequences of the chronic ingestion of any of the 5 major classes of psychiatric drugs (antidepressants, antipsychotics, psycho-stimulants, tranquilizers and anti-seizure/"mood-stabilizer" drugs).

Drug-induced Dementia: A Perfect Crime presents compelling evidence that any of the psychotropic drugs that target brain and nerve cells can cause microscopic, anatomic, biochemical, clinical and radiological evidence of brain shrinkage and other signs of brain damage, which can result in clinically-diagnosable dementia, premature death and a variety of other related brain disorders that can even mimic diagnosable mental illnesses "of unknown cause". Jackson's first book, Rethinking Psychiatric Drugs: A Guide for Informed Consent was an equally sobering warning about many of the hidden dangers of psychiatric drugs.

Mad in America: Bad Science, Bad Medicine and the Enduring Mistreatment of the Mentally Ill

Investigative journalist and health science writer Robert Whitaker has devoted many years of his life researching the serious downsides of psychiatric drugs. He has reported his ground-breaking results in two books, the first of which was titled Mad in America: Bad Science, Bad Medicine and the Enduring Mistreatment of the Mentally Ill (2002). In that book Whitaker explored the published literature and discovered that, since psychiatric drugs (the first one being Thorazine) began being widely prescribed in the US in the mid-1950s, there has been a 600% increase in the total and permanent disabilities of millions of psychiatric drug-takers in the United States. This uniquely First World epidemic of "mental health" disability has resulted in the life-long, taxpayer-supported, Social Security disabilities of rapidly increasing numbers of psychiatric patients who are now unable to live happy lives or be productive, taxpaying members of society.

In Whitaker's second book Anatomy of an Epidemic: Magic Bullets, Psychiatric Drugs, and the Astonishing Rise of Mental Illness in America (2010), he provides additional, overwhelming proof of these sobering realities. He documents the history of the powerful forces behind the relatively new field of psychopharmacology and its major shapers, promoters and beneficiaries, namely BigPharma and the medical and psychiatric industries. Psychiatric drugs, whose developers, marketers and salespersons are all in the employ of the giant drug companies, are far more dangerous than these industries are willing to admit: Psychiatric drugs, it turns out, are fully capable of disabling body, brain and spirit — often permanently.

Jackson and Whitaker have done powerful services to humanity by presenting previously hidden, but very convincing evidence from the scientific literature to support their theses, that it is the drugs and not the so-called "mental illnesses" that are causing the epidemics of dementia and "mental illness" disability in America.

It is getting nearly impossible to fly over the Cuckoo's Nest

Tragically, the prescribing of psych drugs "for life" has become synonymous with standard mental health "treatment" for almost every one of the 374 fabricated mental illness labels in the last version of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual. And putting people on pills (and rarely taking them off) has become the community standard of care in American medicine — increasingly so ever since the introduction of the so-called "anti-schizophrenic" "major tranquilizer" "miracle" drug Thorazine in the mid-1950s. (Thorazine was probably the drug that Jack Nicholson's character Randall McMurphy was coerced into taking at "medication time" in the Academy Award-winning movie One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest.)

Thorazine and all the other first generation antipsychotic, "zombification" drugs are now universally known to have been an iatrogenic (ie, doctor-caused) disaster because of their serious long-term, brain-damaging effects that resulted in a multitude of permanent brain damage manifesting as tardive (delayed) dyskinesia, dysmetria, dystonia, dementia and Parkinson's disease, all of which are commonly caused by antipsychotic drugs, even the "atypical" ones. Young people on such drugs are now developing Parkinson's disease in childhood!

Thorazine and all the other "me-too" drugs like Prolixin, Mellaril, Navane, etc, are synthetic "tricyclic" chemical compounds similar in molecular structure to the tricyclic first generation "antidepressants" like Elavil and the similarly toxic, obesity-inducing, diabetogenic, “atypical" "anti-psychotic" second-generation drugs like Clozaril, Zyprexa and Seroquel.

Thorazine was originally developed in Europe as an industrial dye. That doesn't sound so good although it may not be so unusual because Big Chemistry and Big Pharma both deal in synthetic chemical compounds. One only has to consider Depakote (valproic acid), a popular drug initially approved as an anti-epilepsy drug that was originally developed as an organic solvent. One could predict that Depakote, capable of dissolving fat, would be toxic to organs that contain fatty tissue, including human livers, pancreases and brains — as indeed it is. And yet it is still widely prescribed world-wide in the treatment of seizures, although, because so many infants and toddlers died from it, Depakote is relatively contraindicated in children below the age of 10.

Just like most ruthless corporations, BigPharma has a compulsive drive make as much money as possible by continuously expanding market share and increasing "shareholder value" (share price, dividends and the next quarter's financial report) by whatever means necessary.

Both the prescribers and the swallowers of BigPharma's drugs have succumbed to cunning marketing campaigns. The prescribers get seduced by attractive drug company representatives of the opposite sex and the free "pens, pizzas and post-it notes" in the office, and the patients get brain-washed by the inane and unbelievable (if one has intact critical thinking skills) commercials on TV that urge the watcher to "ask your doctor" about the latest unaffordable wannabe blockbuster drug while quickly glossing over the lethal and sub-lethal adverse effects in the fine print. If one gets a prescription for a drug that still has patent protection, prepare to pay anywhere from $100 — $300 per month, no matter if the production costs are pennies per pill.

There is no mental health disability epidemic in the third world

Interestingly, Whitaker points out that there is no such epidemic of mental illness disability in Third World nations because costly psych drugs are not prescribed as cavalierly as in First World nations. Third World poor people with first episodes of any serious mental health problem are not seen by psychiatrists. Rather, they are first nurtured and cared for by caring families in local communities (and not drugged) and, if drugs are used, they are only used short term — before the patient's brain structure has been altered. Third world psychiatric patients are often cured without the use of any drug whatsoever and therefore those populations have far less chronic mental health problems than their counterparts in First World nations.

Jackson and Whitaker — and any number of other whistle-blowing authors and practitioners who have been questioning the knee-jerk use of potentially neurotoxic drugs for decades now — are understandably widely ignored by mainstream entities that somehow benefit from the highly profitable, pro-drug culture. Avoiding psychiatric drugs, although decidedly best for keeping brains healthy, is not best for the prescription psychiatric drug business.

The good news is that many critically-thinking scientists, holistic practitioners and assorted "psychiatric survivors" are coming to the realization that it is the drugs — and not the so-called "mental disorders" — that are contributing to our nation's epidemics of dementia and mental illness disability.

Cognitive dissonance and the medicolegal risks of not obtaining fully informed consent before prescribing potentially dangerous drugs

Mental health practitioners who prescribe these drugs must seriously consider the medicolegal implications of continuing to follow the current community standards of care that should be changing with the new information noted above. Partly because of the common phenomenon of cognitive dissonance, many practitioners will initially refuse to allow themselves to be exposed to new truths. Some practitioners will briefly look at the new information and — even then — dismiss the new information that challenges or disproves their old belief systems. Some will reluctantly and belatedly consider the new truths and forget all about it, and others will, with some distress, try to adapt to the new information. And patients will often sort it out in a similar fashion, even though some patients may have brains that have been so cognitively impaired that they will be unable to recognize their impairment.

FDA approval doesn't mean a drug has been well-tested or is safe or effective long-term

I know that most health caregivers working for modern medical facility businesses are over-worked and often double-booked and therefore may be too busy giving their attention to BigPharma and its paid academics to absorb the sobering news related above. But this issue is too important to ignore. After all, these drugs are potentially lethal substances but are administered in sublethal doses and some (maybe most?) are known to accumulate in brain tissue. In a 4 week animal study from the 1990s, for example, Prozac was found to accumulate in the brain at a concentration 20 times higher than its concentration in the bloodstream! And yet, these drugs are still being cleverly marketed as non-toxic, and "safe and effective" (but only marginally so and only in short-term studies).

The captains of the drug industry know that their patented psychiatric drugs, when they are presented for FDA-approval, have only been tested in animal labs for days or weeks and in clinical trials on human subjects for only 6-8 weeks. They also know that many clinical trials involving psychiatrists use current drug-treated psychiatric patients who will then be in the process of going off — and therefore withdrawing from — their previous drugs. Industry executives also know that long-term trials of most psych drugs are never done prior to FDA marketing approval.

The fine line between "normal" and "mentally ill"

The truth is that people diagnosed as “mentally ill” for life are often simply those unfortunates who have found themselves in acute or chronic states of potentially reversible crises or temporary "overwhelm" due to any number of preventable, treatable and even curable bad luck situations such as being in bad company, or being a victim of poverty, abuse, violence, torture, homelessness, discrimination, underemployment, malnutrition, addictions/withdrawal, electroshock "therapy" and/or exposure to neurotoxic chemicals in their food, air, water or prescription bottles.

Those labeled as the "mentally ill" are not much different from those of us who call ourselves "normal". But we "normals" have just been lucky enough to have not yet decompensated because of some yet-to-happen, desperation-inducing life situation. And thus we may not have yet been given a billable diagnosis with a billable code number, and so we have not yet been prescribed some unaffordable prescription drug that could put us on the road to permanent disability and institutionalization. In other words, if we are lucky enough to remain unlabeled, we are also likely to remain off brain-altering drugs; and therefore we may remain away from the clutches of "the system", within which it is very difficult to "just say no to drugs."

My experience with over a thousand "mentally ill" patients has led me to agree with Jackson's and Whitaker's assertions. I fully agree with their warnings that the chronic use of psychiatric drugs is a major cause of cognitive disorders, dementia, loss of memory, loss of IQ points, loss of creativity, loss of spirituality, loss of empathy, loss of energy, loss of strength, loss of impulse control and a multitude of metabolic adverse effects (like psych drug-induced obesity, hypertension, diabetes and hypercholesterolemia). There is no question in my mind that these drugs can sicken the body, brain and soul by causing adverse drug effects such as insomnia, somnolence, increased depression, mania, anxiety, delusions, psychoses, paranoia, etc. So before filling the prescription, I strongly urge pill-takers to read the product insert information under WARNINGS, PRECAUTIONS, ADVERSE EFFECTS, CONTRAINDICATIONS, TOXICOLOGY, OVERDOSAGE and the ever-present BLACK BOX WARNINGS ABOUT SUICIDALITY.

Dr. Peter Breggin (www.breggin.org) has warned us in his writings about a new syndrome that he calls psychiatric drug-induced Chronic Brain Impairment (CBI). It is caused by the chronic usage, especially with large doses or with combinations of psychotropic drugs. CBI could also be regarded as a chemically traumatic brain injury (cTBI). In medical school, we half-joked that Thorazine and Haldol caused "chemical lobotomies" in its victims. Little did we know how close to the truth we actually were. Chemical lobotomy is a useful way to conceptualize the serious issue CBI or cTBI, because such brain-altered patients are often indistinguishable from those who have actually suffered a physically traumatic brain injury (TBI) or have been subjected to "ice-pick" lobotomies (which were popular in the 1940s and 50s before the drugs came on the market and rapidly replaced that entire dastardly industry).

America has a dementia and mental ill health epidemic on its hands that is so obvious but so grossly misunderstood, and because of that blindness, the epidemic is worsening, not because of the supposed progression of "mental illness", but because of the continued chronic use of neurotoxic, non-curative drugs that are, in America, erroneously used as first-line “treatment.”

For more information on these extremely serious topics check out these websites:

and follow the links.

A long mercola.com interview with Whitaker can be heard here.

Gary Kohls, MD [send him mail] is a family physician who, until his retirement in 2008, practiced holistic (non-drug) mental health care. His patients came to see him asking for help in getting off the psychotropic drugs to which they were addicted and that they knew were sickening and disabling them. He was successful in helping significant majorities of his patients get off or cut down their drugs using a thorough and therefore time-consuming program that was based on psychoeducational psychotherapy, brain nutrient therapy, a drastic change away from the malnourishing and often toxic Standard American Diet (SAD) plus a program of gradual, closely monitored drug withdrawal. Dr. Kohls warns against the abrupt discontinuation of any psychiatric drug because of the common, often serious withdrawal symptoms that can occur in patients who have been taking any dependency-inducing psychoactive drug, whether illicit or legal. Close consultation with an aware, informed physician who is familiar with treating drug withdrawal syndromes, who will read and study the appropriate literature and become aware of the dangers of psychiatric drugs and the nutritional needs of the drug-toxified and nutritionally-depleted brain. Dr. Kohls is a past member of MindFreedom International, the International Center for the Study of Psychiatry and Psychology and the International Society for Traumatic Stress Studies. He is the editor of the occasional Preventive Psychiatry E-Newsletter..

Gary G. Kohls Archives

Brain-Altering Psych Drugs and the Batman Shooter

Gary G. Kohls — Wed, 25 Jul 2012 05:00:00 +0000

Previously by Gary G. Kohls: Duty To Warn

Recurring mass shootings are a peculiarly American phenomenon, unless you count the carnage in the numerous nation-states recently invaded and destabilized by the American military. Everybody say in unison what we all should be thinking: "thank you National Rifle Association" and we also need to address that thanks to the lamentable weapons manufacturing lobbyist thugs who threaten into silence and inaction most of our elected officials in DC, Republican and Democrat, who can't resist taking the bribery money.

James Holmes was just another gun-wielding, brain-altered mass murderer who shot into a crowd after making impressively elaborate plans to do so, just like the 1999 Columbine shooters 13 miles as the crow flies from Aurora. And one of the first words out of the mouths of the media and ruling elites who ascended the pulpit are the obfuscating words "senseless violence"; meaning, just don't speculate about the motives of the shooter; "don't ask any unwanted questions;" "Trust us, we're the experts."

Unfortunately, these experts are also likely to be beholden to the powers-that-be that aren't interested in curing the malady that is the epidemic of gun violence. The powers-that-be want to be sure that they will be held blameless when the final official report is released. Don't expect to be told everything that you need to know to make sense of mass shootings any time soon.

If there is evidence that will help to make sense out of something that will give us a fighting chance to prevent mass shootings in the future, expect that we won't be told about it until some courageous investigative journalist does the hard sleuthing work and then is allowed to report his findings. We will certainly be as confused about this one as most of us were about Columbine.

If the real connections explaining the Aurora shootings are suppressed, as expected, the approaching police state agenda of the 1% will be enabled. Prepare for metal detectors and private security firms frisking us as we stand in line to see the next violence-inducing shoot-em-up movie that will give ideas to some copy-cat wannabe avenger about competing for the Guiness Book of World Records for non-combat zone mass murders.

I have been listening and watching the repetitive and sensationalistic news coverage of the Aurora shootings for many hours over the first few days since the deed was officially labeled "senseless". Senseless violence is the mantra, just like the media and ruling elites repeated the lie that three World Trade Center towers, on 9/11/01, (only two having been hit by planes) were exploded, demolished and pulverized, not burned, into fine dust and each then fell into their own footprints at free fall speed, which only could happen if all the floors below the top floors had been disappeared by explosives ahead of time. Anybody who watched the event intuitively knew that these towers came down by controlled demolition but the constant propaganda campaign that followed convinced millions of us to not believe our own eyes but rather believe the provably false, heavily propagandized, Bush White House conspiracy theory. (WTC 7's obvious controlled demolition, by the way, was censored out of our consciousness by the media's lack of coverage, and it was not hit by a plane). But I digress.

<<>>

One has to wonder who are the "sacred cow" industries that have contributed to America's recurrent mass shootings. Many of them surely consider themselves too big to fail and therefore too big to expose, question, criticize, or implicate as unintentional accomplices. Any one of us can think of any number of potential culprits. My list includes this TOP 10 LIST plus 3:

the violent entertainment industry;
the violent, and addictive videogame industry;
violent professional contact sports, where bodily injury is applauded;
the food industry that is doing so much to malnourish vulnerable brains and bodies;
the gun lobby;
the ease in getting lethal military style weapons (the Aurora killer reportedly got some of his guns at Gander Mountain);
our militarized culture and the media that glorifies the "legal" mass murder by "licensed to kill" soldiers at war and then condemns them when they come home psychologically and spiritually tormented and commit "illegal" murders or suicides as civilians;
Congresspersons, Presidents, state governors and Supreme Court judges who apathetically vote against or sit on existing rational harm-reduction legislation that could do so much to prevent these mass homicides;
Christian church leaders who fail to teach to their potential mass murderers in their Sunday School and confirmation classes about the nonviolent Golden Rule ethics of Jesus, whom they profess to follow; and
etc, etc. There are many potential culprits beyond those that could legally be blamed as being accessories to the crime of shooters like James Holmes.

But in the minds of many, the big culprits, and the ones that the corporate media and their paymasters are scared to death about being exposed, are

BigPharma (multinational pharmaceutical companies);
the drug advertising industry that so diabolically shapes public attitudes and behaviors; and
BigMedicine and us obedient and often enslaved physicians that are in its thrall who have, by and large, not opened our eyes to the data from the medical, forensic and pharmaceutical research community of altruistic researchers that are not beholden to pharmaceutical corporations. Much of this data shows unequivocally that most, if not all, of the five classes of potentially addictive psychiatric drugs are capable of causing drug-induced violence, drug-induced psychoses, drug-induced homicides, drug-induced mania, drug-induced suicidality, drug-induced dementia, drug-induced sleep disorders/sleep deprivation and drug-induced irrational criminal behaviors, especially in unsuspecting adolescents.

<<>>

By ignoring the peer-reviewed complementary-alternative medical literature and only paying attention to what is in the pharmaceutical industry-controlled mainstream medical journals, we physicians and our employees regularly – and often quite cavalierly – prescribe potentially lethal, though entirely legal, brain and mind-altering synthetic chemicals that those wealthy and influential sponsors lie to us about when their sales staff claims that the drugs are safe, curative and non-addicting.

Therefore, considering that there is a massive amount of documented evidence (see below) of a strong connection between American school shootings and the use of (or withdrawal from) mind-altering, brain-numbing, remorselessness-inducing psych drugs, a fair question should be: "Was the Batman Shooter taking or withdrawing from any one of the hundreds of psychiatric drugs so readily prescribed these days?" Keep in mind that the James Holmes had considerable experience in graduate-level experimental neuroscience. That should logically make every criminal investigator "focus like a laser" into the possibility of mind-altering drugs influencing the shooter's beliefs, behaviors and thinking processes.

But no, we have heard nary a word about the potential of legal psych drug use or drug withdrawal in the case of the Batman Shooter. Every thinking person should smell a rat — a cover-up in the making.

<<>>

Amazingly, one of the survivors of the Columbine school shooter Eric Harris (who was taking the Prozac-like drug Luvox that was prescribed by his tragically unaware psychiatrist, Dr. K. Albert), contributed to the myth-making of these "mass shooting crimes of the month" when he advised the most recent batch of Colorado shooting victims to not "waste time trying to figure out what motivated the shooter or shooters. It's a waste of time, and it gives them exactly what they want (sic)." And then later in the interview he complained, "I don't think I'll ever understand." Duh.

Psychologically and spiritually, any psychologist or spiritual advisor worth his or her salt when dealing with the consequences of psychological trauma will tell you that that advice is profoundly anti-therapeutic and will certainly lead to delayed healing — probably permanently – of the trauma. One wonders what brain-altering, dependency-inducing psych drug that that victim has been taking for the last 13 years. Perhaps he has already tried to taper off the drug but then found out that he can't tolerate the disabling withdrawal symptoms, and therefore he has concluded that he truly needs the potentially neurotoxic drug.

But he is just repeating what the "authorities" always seem to tell us as they hide essential but "sensitive" information that might be uncomfortable for Holmes' doctors or clinics or family members or gun and ammunition suppliers or drug company or legislators or tormentors. Perhaps the authorities are trying to protect the various industries that rightfully need to be exposed for their part in the massacres, however indirect or controversial.

<<<"SSRI Stories: Senseless violence" may be totally understandable if we are just given the inconvenient facts?>>>

James Holmes' actions would probably not be considered "senseless" if we knew the truth about everything that led up to the Batman shooting. The above-mentioned Columbine victim that is promoting blind ignorance has learned to echo what is already being promoted: keep everybody unaware of what the potential motives are; remain silent about certain painful truths; don't expose any of the powers-that-be for their part in the long lead-up to the shootings. Attitudes such as these will ensure that there will be many repeats in the future.

Not too long ago I mentioned in this column the remarkable database of serious SSRI ("selective" serotonin reuptake inhibitors, the so-called "second generation u2018antidepressants'") adverse reactions that have been documented in the public domain. That website can be accessed at www.ssristories.com. When researching that important website, keep in mind that the vast majority of media reports on seemingly irrational criminal events usually don't ask the question in the title above – unless the drugs are illicit. So the thousands of examples documented and reported represent just the tip of what surely is an enormous iceberg.), since even the FDA estimates that up to 99% of adverse events from any given drug is never reported to that agency.

SSRI Stories is a collection of 4,800+ news stories (mainly criminal in nature) that have appeared in the media (newspapers, TV, scientific journals) or that were part of FDA public testimony in either 1991, 2004 or 2006, in which psych drugs are mentioned.

<<>>

The Physicians’ Desk Reference lists the following common adverse reactions (side effects) to SSRI antidepressants (among a host of other physical and neuropsychiatric effects). None of these adverse reactions is listed as Rare.

Manic Reaction (Mania, e.g., Kleptomania, Pyromania, Dipsomania, Nymphomania)
Hypomania (e.g., poor judgment, over spending, impulsivity, etc.)
Abnormal Thinking
Hallucinations
Personality Disorder
Amnesia
Agitation
Psychosis
Abnormal Dreams
Emotional Lability
Alcohol Abuse and/or Craving
Hostility
Paranoid Reactions
Confusion
Delusions
Sleep Disorders
Akathisia (Severe Inner Restlessness)
Withdrawal Syndrome
Impulsivity

The website emphasizes:

"Adverse reactions are most likely to occur when starting or discontinuing the drug, increasing or lowering the dose or when switching from one SSRI to another. Adverse reactions are often diagnosed as bipolar disorder when the symptoms may be entirely iatrogenic (treatment induced). Withdrawal, especially abrupt withdrawal, from any of these medications can cause severe neuropsychiatric and physical symptoms. It is important to withdraw extremely slowly from these drugs, often over a period of a year or more, under the supervision of a qualified and experienced specialist, if available. Withdrawal is sometimes more severe than the original symptoms or problems."

<<>>

So with the list of common adverse effects of these drugs, I present below a "short list" of drug–associated violence over the past decade or two that was perpetrated by mostly young people who were involved in newsworthy shootings and whose psych drugs were identified, published or otherwise somehow reported to the public. Tragically, in the vast majority of psychiatric drug-related suicides, homicides or other types of irrational violence (what the media calls "senseless") prescription drugs are generally not reported in the corporate-controlled and subsidized media, where pharmaceutical companies advertise heavily, certainly exerting influences on how much investigative journalism is allowed. Again, he who calls the piper calls the tune.

The SSRI Stories website has, among its nearly 5000 entries, a list of 66 school shootings that are overwhelmingly and disproportionately American. The school shooter's list is often accompanied by suicidality caused by either taking or withdrawing from the drugs. There has been an explosion of such incidents since Prozac was introduced onto an unsuspecting market in 1989. Most of the developed world's drug regulatory agencies, including the FDA, have not tested these psychotropic drugs for safety or efficacy in humans under the age of 18 (either short term or long term) and therefore have not approved their use for that group (with rare exceptions). Therefore we physicians, when we prescribe these untested drugs to that underage group (that has immature brain development) are doing so "off label" and thus we are exposing ourselves to medico-legal risks.

Here is the sobering list.

Eric Harris age 17 (Zoloft then Luvox) and Dylan Klebold aged 18 in Colombine school shooting in Littleton, Colorado, killed 12 students and 1 teacher, and injured 23 others, before killing themselves. Klebold's medical records have never been made available to the public.

Jeff Weise, age 16, had been prescribed 60 mg/day of Prozac (three times the average starting dose for adults!) when he shot his grandfather, his grandfather's girlfriend and many fellow students at Red Lake, Minnesota. He then shot himself. 10 dead, 12 wounded.

Cory Baadsgaard, age 16, Wahluke (Washington state) High School, was on Paxil (which caused him to have hallucinations) when he took a rifle to his high school and held 23 classmates hostage. He has no memory of the event.

Thirteen-year-old Chris Fetters killed his favorite aunt while taking Prozac. Twelve-year-old Christopher Pittman murdered both his grandparents while taking Zoloft. Thirteen-year-old Mathew Miller hung himself in his bedroom closet after taking Zoloft for 6 days. Fifteen-year-old Jarred Viktor stabbed his grandmother 61 times after 5 days on Paxil. Fifteen-year-old Kip Kinkel (on Prozac and Ritalin) shot his parents while they slept then went to school and opened fire killing 2 classmates and injuring 22 shortly after beginning Prozac treatment. Luke Woodham age 16 (Prozac) killed his mother and then killed two students, wounding six others. A Pocatello, ID (Zoloft) in 1998 had a Zoloft-induced seizure that caused an armed stand off at his school. Michael Carneal (Ritalin) a 14-year-old opened fire on students at a high school prayer meeting in West Paducah, Kentucky. Three teenagers were killed, five others were wounded.. Young man in Huntsville, Alabama (Ritalin) went psychotic chopping up his parents with an ax and also killing one sibling and almost murdering another. Andrew Golden, age 11, (Ritalin) and Mitchell Johnson, aged 14, (Ritalin) shot 15 people, killing four students, one teacher, and wounding 10 others. TJ Solomon, age 15, (Ritalin) high school student in Conyers, Georgia opened fire on and wounded six of his class mates. Rod Mathews, age 14, (Ritalin) beat a classmate to death with a bat.

James Wilson, age 19, (various psychiatric drugs) from Breenwood, South Carolina, took a .22 caliber revolver into an elementary school killing two young girls, and wounding seven other children and two teachers. Elizabeth Bush, age 13, (Paxil) was responsible for a school shooting in Pennsylvania Jason Hoffman (Effexor and Celexa) – school shooting in El Cajon, California

Jarred Viktor, age 15, (Paxil), after five days on Paxil he stabbed his grandmother 61 times. Chris Shanahan, age 15 (Paxil) in Rigby, ID who out of the blue killed a woman. Jeff Franklin (Prozac and Ritalin), Huntsville, AL, killed his parents as they came home from work using a sledge hammer, hatchet, butcher knife and mechanic’s file, then attacked his younger brothers and sister. Neal Furrow (Prozac) in LA Jewish school shooting reported to have been court-ordered to be on Prozac along with several other medications.

Kevin Rider, age 14, was withdrawing from Prozac when he died from a gunshot wound to his head. Initially it was ruled a suicide, but two years later, the investigation into his death was opened as a possible homicide. The prime suspect, also age 14, had been taking Zoloft and other SSRI antidepressants.

Alex Kim, age 13, hung himself soon after his prescription of Lexapro had been doubled.

Diane Routhier was prescribed Welbutrin for gallstone problems. Six days later, after suffering many adverse effects of the drug, she shot herself.

Billy Willkomm, an accomplished wrestler and a University of Florida student, was prescribed Prozac at the age of 17. His family found him dead of suicide — hanging from a tall ladder at the family’s Gulf Shore Boulevard home in July 2002.

Kara Jaye Anne Fuller-Otter, age 12, was on Paxil when she hung herself from a hook in her closet. Kara's parents said “…. the damn doctor wouldn’t take her off it and I asked him to when we went in on the second visit. I told him I thought she was having some sort of reaction to Paxil…")

Gareth Christian, Vancouver, age 18, was on Paxil when he committed suicide in 2002,

(Gareth's father could not accept his son's death and killed himself)

Julie Woodward, age 17, was on Zoloft when she hung herself in her family's detached garage.

Matthew Miller was 13 saw a psychiatrist because he was having difficulty and school. The psychiatrist recommended Zoloft for him. Seven days after beginning the Zioloft samples, his mother found him dead… hanging by a belt from a laundry hook in his closet.

Kurt Danysh, age 18 and on Prozac, killed his father with a shotgun. He is now behind prison bars, and writes letters, trying to warn the world that SSRI drugs can kill.

Woody ____, age 37, committed suicide while in his 5th week of taking Zoloft. Shortly before his death his physician suggested doubling the dose of the drug. He had seen his physician only for insomnia. He had never been depressed, nor did he have any history of any mental illness symptoms.

A ten-year-old boy from Houston shot and killed his father after his Prozac dosage was increased.

15-year-old Hammad Memon shot and killed a fellow middle school student. He had been diagnosed with ADHD and depression and was taking Zoloft and "other drugs for the conditions."

22-year-old culinary student Matti Saari shot and killed 9 students and a teacher, and wounded another student, before killing himself. Saari was taking an SSRI and a benzodiazapine.

27-year-old Steven Kazmierczak shot and killed five people and wounded 21 others before killing himself in a Northern Illinois University auditorium. According to his girlfriend, he had recently been taking Prozac, Xanax and Ambien. Toxicology results showed that he still had trace amounts of Xanax in his system.

18-year-old Finnish gunman Pekka-Eric Auvinen had been taking antidepressants before he killed eight people and wounded a dozen more at Jokela High School – then he committed suicide.

14-year-old Asa Coon of Cleveland, shot and wounded four before taking his own life. Court records show Coon was on Trazodone.

16-year-old Jon Romano, taking medication for depression, fired a shotgun at a teacher in his New York high school.

Gary Kohls, MD [send him mail] is a founding member of The Community of the Third Way, a Duluth-area affiliate of Every Church A Peace Church.

Gary G. Kohls Archives

The Destruction of the Catholic Capital of Japan

Gary G. Kohls — Sat, 13 Aug 2011 05:00:00 +0000

Previously by Gary G. Kohls: 9-11 and 11-9: And We Thought We Were Free

"Why should veterans (who largely have abandoned the Christian faiths of their childhoods) embrace a religion that has blessed the wars that ruined their souls?"

66 years ago this week, on August 9th, 1945, the second of the only two atomic bombs ever used on civilian targets was dropped on the defenseless city of Nagasaki, Japan, by an all-Christian bomb crew that had been training for the mission for months.

It had been only 3 days since the first bomb, a uranium bomb, had incinerated Hiroshima, with chaos and confusion everywhere, especially in Tokyo, where Japan's fascist military government leaders and the Emperor Hirohito had been searching for months for an honorable end to the war, a war which had exhausted Japan into a moribund defenseless and failed nation.

The only obstacle to surrender had been the Truman administration's insistence on unconditional surrender, which meant that the Emperor would be removed from his figurehead position — an intolerable demand for the Japanese, who regarded Hirohito as a deity.

US bomber command had spared Hiroshima, Kokura and Nagasaki from the conventional incendiary bombing that had burned to the ground over 60 major Japanese cities during the first half of 1945. One of the reasons for not targeting these previously undamaged cities for the atomic bombs was scientific: to see what would happen to intact buildings — and their living inhabitants — when atomic weapons of mass destruction were exploded overhead.

Early in the morning of August 9, 1945, a B-29 Superfortress called Bock's Car, took off from Tinian Island (code-named "Papacy"), with the prayers and blessings of its Lutheran and Catholic chaplains, and headed for Kokura, Japan, which was the primary target. The plutonium bomb in its hold was code-named "Fat Man," after Winston Churchill.

The only field test of a nuclear weapon, blasphemously named "Trinity," had occurred just three weeks earlier, on July 16, 1945 at Alamogordo, New Mexico. The lava-type rock that was generated from the intense heat – called "trinitite" – can still be found at the site today.

With instructions to drop the bomb only on visual sighting, Bock's Car arrived at Kokura, but the city was clouded over. So after circling three times, looking for a break in the clouds, and using up a tremendous amount of valuable fuel in the process, it headed for its secondary target, Nagasaki.

The history of Nagasaki Christianity

Nagasaki was the city where the legendary Jesuit missionary, Francis Xavier, had established a mission church in 1549. Over the next several generations, the Christian community grew rapidly and prospered. However, as had happened in South America, Africa, Asia and other newly "discovered" countries, the Portuguese and Spanish commercial interests that had supported Xavier's missionary activities, began their planned exploitation of Japan's resources and people. However, unlike many of the other colonized tribes and nations, the European colonizers were accurately perceived as exploiters, and they were ordered out of Japan. And soon, the Christian religion of the outsiders was likewise forbidden and the faithful Japanese who refused to recant of their beliefs became the target of brutal persecutions, including torture and crucifixion, similar to what happened in the Roman persecutions in the first few centuries of Christianity.

Within 60 years of the start of Xavier's mission church, Christianity had become an outlaw religion – and professing the faith became a capital crime. Many Japanese Christians returned to their traditional Shintoism or Buddhism, but many became martyrs for the faith. After the reign of terror was over, it appeared to all observers that Japanese Christianity had been wiped out.

Japanese Christianity survived for 250 years in a catacomb-like existence

However, 250 years later, in the 1850s, after the coercive gunboat diplomacy of Commodore Perry forced open an offshore island for American trade purposes, it was discovered that there were thousands of baptized Christians in Nagasaki, living their faith in a catacomb existence, completely unknown to the government — which, when the community was discovered, immediately started another purge. But because of international pressure, the persecutions were soon stopped, Nagasaki Christianity came up from the underground, and by 1917, with no help from the government, St. Mary's Cathedral was built in the Urakami River district. It was the largest Christian cathedral in the Orient.

Now it turned out that the massive Urakami Cathedral was one of the few Nagasaki landmarks that could be seen at 31,000 feet, and so the Bock's Car bombardier, looking through his bomb site, positively identified the doomed city and ordered the drop.

So, at 11:02 am, August 9, 1945, in the middle of morning mass, the Christians of Nagasaki were boiled, evaporated and carbonized in a scorching, radioactive fireball that was several times hotter than the sun. The vibrant center of Japanese Christianity was wiped out. It had become Ground Zero.

And what the Japanese Imperial government could not do in over 250 years of persecution, American Christians had done in 9 seconds. 8,500 of Nagasaki's worshipping community of 12,000 perished that day. None of those who died were combatants.

The above true story should stimulate discussion among those who claim to be disciples of Jesus. The Catholic chaplain for the 509th Composite Group (the secret 1500 man Army Air Force group whose main function was to successfully deliver the atomic bombs to their targets) was Father George Zabelka. Several decades after the war ended, he finally saw his grave theological error in religiously legitimizing the indiscriminate, organized mass slaughter that is modern air war. He had finally recognized that the enemies of America were not the enemies of God. Rather, the fingered enemies were children of God whom God loved, and whom the followers of Jesus were also to love.

Father Zabelka's conversion to the practice of Christian nonviolence led him to devote the remaining decades of his life speaking out against violence in all its forms, especially the violence of militarism. The Lutheran chaplain, William Downey, in his counseling of soldiers who had become haunted by their making murder for the state, later denounced all killing, whether by a single bullet or by weapons of mass destruction.

Buddhism vs. institutional Christianity

In his important book, Hell, Healing and Resistance, author Daniel Hallock tells about a 1997 Buddhist retreat led by Thich Nhat Hanh that attempted to deal with the hellish, post-combat realities experienced by traumatized Vietnam War veterans. The irony of what happened there prompted Hallock to write, "Clearly, Buddhism offers something that cannot be found in institutional Christianity. But then why should veterans (who largely have abandoned the faiths of their childhoods as hypocritical) embrace a religion that has blessed the wars that ruined their souls? It is no wonder they turn to a gentle Buddhist monk to hear what are, in large part, the truths of Christ."

As a lifelong Christian, that comment stung, but it was the sting of a sad and sobering truth that I felt morally obligated to act upon. As a physician who dealt daily with psychologically traumatized patients, I know that it is violence, in all its forms, that bruises and breaks the human psyche and soul, and that that trauma is deadly and contagious, typically spreading through the families and will continue to spread until the military violence that fuels so much domestic violence is stopped.

One of the most difficult so-called "mental illnesses" to treat is combat-induced posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD). In its most virulent form PTSD is, in my considered opinion, incurable, although it might be partially treatable with intense therapy from a dedicated team of therapists and family members.

A Call to Action for the Church

It is a fact that, whereas most Vietnam War veterans, prior to their conscription, had been raised in churches where they actively practiced their faith, if they came home with combat-induced PTSD, the percentage returning to the faith of their fathers approached zero.

This is a serious spiritual problem for any church that – either by its active support of its nation's "glorious" wars or by its silence on such issues – fails to teach its young people what Jesus taught about violence: that it is forbidden for those who wish to follow him.

If the church leadership does not thoroughly inform its young people about the gruesome, soul-destroying realities of the war zone before they register for potential conscription into the military, it invites the condemnation that Jesus warned about in Matthew 18:5-6: "And whoever welcomes a little child like this in my name welcomes me. But if anyone causes one of these little ones who believes in me to sin, it would be better for him to have a large millstone hung around his neck and to be drowned in the depths of the sea."

Hopefully this essay will stimulate open and honest discussion (at least among Christians) about the spiritual consequences of killing for the war-profiteering ruling elite of ones nation, not from the perspective of the pre-Christian eye-for-an-eye retaliation that Jesus clearly rejected, but from the perspective of the ethics of the Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 5, 6 and 7 and Luke 6). Jesus, whose ministry was all about the relief of human suffering, taught the principles of nonviolent direct action that Gandhi and King perfected two centuries later: the unconditional nonviolent love of friend and enemy. Since killing was clearly outside of the mind of Christ that should be should be a no-brainer for the church.

Just War Theory-believing American Christians clearly share responsibility for the satanic acts of military violence epitomized by August 9, 1945.

Perhaps the next military atrocities like Nagasaki, Fallujah and My Lai can be prevented if a substantial number of Christian churches courageously and publicly start to resist the militaristic policies of their nations by actively refusing their government's call for the bodies and souls of their sons and daughters.

If the churches start to exercise their sacred duty to warn their parishioners about the soul-destroying nature of war, it may not be too late to save our dying, war-torn, morally and financially bankrupt planet.

Heeding the lessons of Nagasaki is a good way to start.

Gary Kohls, MD [send him mail] is a founding member of The Community of the Third Way, a Duluth-area affiliate of Every Church A Peace Church.

Gary G. Kohls Archives

The Christmas Truce of 1914

Gary G. Kohls — Wed, 09 Dec 2009 06:00:00 +0000

A century ago,
before the start of World War I (referred to in the history books
as "The Great War" or, navely, "The War to End all
Wars"), warfare as a means of settling disputes between nations
was often regarded as an honorable undertaking. Military officers,
which came from the aristocracy, were respected and honored because
of their impressive uniforms and the medals and ribbons on their
chests. Military veterans, dead or alive, were regarded as heroes
and the acts of war they participated in were considered to be glorious.
Many of the males on the planet seemed to look forward to the exciting
act of going off to war.

A century ago,
little French and British schoolchildren, not yet the age of military
conscription, were indoctrinated in the belief that Germany was
evil incarnate and deserving of death, and German schoolchildren
were taught to believe the same things about the French and the
English.

The peace that
had existed for decades in Europe since the Franco-Prussian War
had resulted in tremendous progress in culture, commerce and international
relations. Europeans of all stripes crossed borders freely, despite
the significant class and wealth disparity. There was very little
homelessness or chronic hunger.

Jews and Christians
intermingled and intermarried with few eyes being raised. The majority
of people were basically content, despite the knowledge of the excess
luxury wealth of the ruling classes. Non-democratic empires ruled
by kings, emperors, capitalists, generals and the bureaucratic hangers-on
of the ruling elite seemed to have everything going for them in
order to stay in power.

Despite their
wealth and power, many of the ruling classes were still looking
for ways to enrich themselves or further secure the ill-gotten gains
that they had already accrued. Some of these elite were also hoping
to expand their colonial empires by the use of military force directed
against innocent peoples who were weaker or otherwise less able
to defend themselves.

Some of those
in power desired to recapture or maintain control of disputed territories
(ex. Alsace-Lorraine), but they all bound themselves by a complex
web of treaties that promised nations to come to the military aid
of another if one of them was attacked.

When Archduke
Ferdinand was assassinated in Sarajevo, the peace rapidly unraveled
and, by a series of errors of judgment, bureaucratic inefficiencies,
ineptitude, and a lack of communication skills and a refusal to
risk the dishonor of "turning the other cheek" all the
treaty nations declared war on each other in a domino effect and
the first world war was on.

The momentum
that had built up over the decades by the propaganda in the schools
turned out to be unstoppable and the indoctrinated boys, ignorant
of the tragedy of past wars and looking for glory and a way out
of their boredom, rushed to the recruiting offices to sign up for
war. And the war was on.

The war ultimately
destroyed four empires, chemically poisoned the earth and water
supplies with the massive application of military toxins and killed
off 14,000,000 people, 90% of whom were young naïve combatants.

An entire generation
of young French, British and German men was wasted, either killed,
wounded or rendered insane or criminal. Virtually all of the casualties
had been brain-washed to believe that war was glorious rather than
satanic.

Predictably,
the Christian churches chimed in with their nationalistic blindness
and refused to teach what Jesus had taught his followers about violence.
The pulpits on all sides, British, Scottish, French, German, Austrian,
Hungarian, Russian, Italian, etc, all rang with patriotic fervor
and flags waving, telling their doomed sons that it was their Christian
duty to obey their secular leaders and to go off to war to kill
the fingered enemy on the other side.

Five months
into the mass slaughter of trench warfare, the Christmas holiday
came, holidays that reminded them of the safe home they had foolishly
left behind. The physically exhausted, spiritually deadened and
combat-traumatized soldiers on each side of No Man's Land sought
some respite from the cruelty of the frozen trenches.

The frontline
soldiers were at the end of their rope because of the unrelenting
sleep deprivation, hyperalertness, bad food, rats, lice, frostbitten
toes and fingers, deadly artillery bombardments, machine gun massacres
and suicidal assaults that were stupidly ordered by the commanding
officers in the rear. The horrors of No Man's Land were punctuated
by the screams and pleas for help of the wounded soldiers who were
helplessly hanging on the barbed wire or lying in the bomb craters,
each one dying an agonizing death that often lingered for days.

So, on Christmas
eve, December 24, 1914, the troops on either side of the front line,
settled down to special food, special liquor, special rest — and
the singing of Christmas carols. Kaiser Wilhelm had ordered that
100,000 Christmas trees be delivered to the German trenches for
Christmas eve, thinking that the expense of such an irrational act
was justified because, after all, the war was soon to be won by
the superior German army and so using the supply lines for such
unnecessary items seemed to be an acceptable expense.

And then a
spontaneous event happened at various spots on the 700-mile-long
trench line that stretched between Belgium and France. The singing
of Christmas carols started a chain of events that resulted in an
event that was never to be repeated in the history of warfare after
that night.

The tradition
that has emerged from this famous and true story was that the Germans
started singing Stille Nacht (Silent Night) and the British responded
with another carol. And the French and Scots joined in and all sides
sang together in their own tongues, the Scots with their bagpipes,
accompanying the German singing.

And the sense
of their common humanity, which had been driven out of them in the
schools and in basic training, broke through to consciousness. Homesickness
may have set in or perhaps the futility of the slaughter became
clear or perhaps the realization that they would have had things
if they had met in different circumstances. Or perhaps their sheer
exhaustion took the fight out of them.

However it
started, the soldiers disobeyed the orders to kill (their commanding
officers were, after all, celebrating Christmas eve back where it
was safe from the killing), dropped their guns and came out of their
trenches to meet one another. The former enemies shared pictures
from home, chocolate candy, wine – and soccer games were played.
Friendships were made and every soldier who experienced the events
was forever changed. The motivation to blindly kill a person who
had never done them wrong suddenly vanished, never to return.

So powerful
was the experience, that most of the affected men had to be withdrawn
from the front lines, replaced with fresh troops who had never had
the life-changing experience.

Fraternization
in time of war was an act of treason that was punishable by summary
execution. Unexpectedly, the commanding officers, not wanting to
draw public attention to this aberrant but potentially contagious
episode, and knowing that such actions would threaten the war effort
if it somehow became widely known, ordered no executions. There
were punishments, however, with many of the German soldiers who
refused to fight being transferred to the eastern front to kill
and die in the war with Russia.

The prize-winning
movie that beautifully characterizes the spirit of the Christmas
truce of 1914 is Joyeux
Noel (French for Merry Christmas). It is a moving tale whose
basic story comes directly from surviving veterans who experienced
the event and from letters from soldiers who wrote home about it,
letters that somehow survived military censorship.

The story that
is so beautifully told in Joyeux Noel needs to be retold again and
again in this era of the cleverly orchestrated, bankrupting, perpetual
"US-led" wars of empire that are being fought by our indoctrinated,
soon to be exhausted young men and women, some of whom are doomed
to a life overwhelmed by the horrendous realities of posttraumatic
stress disorder, sociopathic personality disorder, suicidality,
homicidality, loss of religious faith, permanent and virtually untreatable
traumatic brain injury, and a host of other nearly impossible-to-treat
problems that are eminently preventable.

Militarists
remain fearful about allowing their combatants to experience the
humanity of their future targeted victims, whether they are average
civilians from Iran, Iraq, Afghanistan or North Korea. Military
chaplains, who are supposed to be nurturers of the souls of their
soldiers, are also forbidden by their superior officers to talk
about the Golden Rule or about love of enemies or about the ethics
of the Sermon on the Mount. They are a part of the apparatus that
rejects all of the Ten Commandments, especially the one that says
"thou shalt not kill." Military chaplains, in their defense,
may themselves have never heard about the nonviolence of the gospels
or the rejection of enmity because their home churches or their
seminaries never emphasized those realities

Near the end
of Joyeux Noel there is a powerful scene, a confrontation
between the Christ-like chaplain and his Scottish bishop just as
the chaplain was giving last rites to a dying Scottish soldier.
The bishop had come to relieve the chaplain of his duties and abusively
ordered him to return to his home parish because of his "treasonous
and shameful" behavior (being merciful to the enemy) in a war
zone.

The chaplain
tried to explain to the authoritarian, pro-war, German-hating bishop
that he had just performed "the most important mass of my life"
and wanted to stay with his troops who were losing their Christian
faith. On Christmas eve, German, Scottish and French Christian soldiers
(and one Jewish German officer) had all gathered for the mass on
Christmas eve, had prayed together and had listened to a powerful
rendition of Ave Maria. The bishop denied the request.

The bishop
then delivered a pro-war sermon (the exact words having been obtained
from a sermon that was delivered by an Anglican bishop in England
later in the war) to the troops who were being brought in to replace
the suddenly reluctant soldiers. The dramatic response of the chaplain
represents a serious warning to the Christian church in America
and also to its war-justifying citizens and their political leaders.

This is a profoundly
important and very moving film that deserves to be annual holiday
fare, alongside Dickens' A Christmas Carol.

December
9, 2009

Gary
Kohls, MD [send him mail],
an associate of Every Church a Peace
Church, is a practicing physician in Duluth, MN.

9-11 and 11-9: And We Thought We Were Free

Gary G. Kohls — Tue, 11 Nov 2008 06:00:00 +0000

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Kristallnacht (11-9-38), the official start of Nazi Germany’s "endless war" against the Jews, was not an historical aberration. Rather, the Night of the Shattering Glass, which saw every synagogue and virtually every Jewish business in Germany vandalized and destroyed during the same two day period, was emblematic of an all-too-common reality that has been going on ever since the first tyrant orchestrated the first "plausible" excuse to start the first war, by sending his obedient and dutiful soldiers to kill enemy soldiers, noncombatants, women, children, infants and the unborn, in the mass slaughter of war. Today, in the high-energy confusion of 9-11 that started Bush’s endless war against nebulous "terrorism," the realities of Kristallnacht, war and fascism need to be examined. 9-11 and 11-9 have many common roots — and therefore offer many lessons to be learned.

Conscienceless tyrants throughout the history of the world have been behind every aggressive war (with Christians, ironically, doing most of the killing), sending their soldiers to do what they were trained to do; that is, kill on command, no questions asked.

Here are just a few examples of military threats from my reading of the real history of warfare: “If you French guerilla fighters kill but one of our Nazi soldiers, we will kill 50 of your people, starting with the prisoners we’re torturing for intelligence information right now.” Or: “If you Palestinians kill but one of our Israeli Defense Force soldiers, we will kill 20 of your people.” Or this hypothetical reality: “since you Japanese killed 2,500 of our US soldiers at Pearl Harbor (no civilians were targeted or even killed there) we Americans can justify killing 300,000 of your innocent citizens at Hiroshima and Nagasaki (a ratio of 1:120, with essentially no enemy soldiers being in either of those two cities on August 6 and 9 of 1945), and even then our besmirched honor and lust for revenge may never be appeased."

In 1955, Milton Mayer wrote a book entitled They Thought They Were Free. The book chronicles the lives of 10 men, all German Christians, from a small town in Germany. Each of the men were directly involved, in their roles as Nazi party functionaries or militia members, in the acts of arson and terrorism against the local Jewish synagogue and Jewish businesses on Nov. 9, 1938.

Because of the assassination, by a justifiably angry young Jewish man, of a mid-level Nazi party bureaucrat in Paris a few days earlier, these patriotic Germans justified their violence with the question: “We had to do something, didn’t we?”

Each of the 10 Germans Mayer interviewed had eagerly joined the Nazi party while Hitler was gaining power, and when Mayer interviewed them 8 years after the German empire had ended up in ashes, they still felt strongly that what Hitler had done for the German Volk proved that the Fhrer was the Savior of Germany and a political genius who had fashioned an economic miracle. They had never known such prosperity or feelings of communal warmth, security and prideful patriotism, a patriotism that increasingly united the nation whenever there were threats from foreigners outside their borders or anti-fascist freedom-fighters (AKA “terrorists”) from within. Interestingly, the feeling that the right-wing Nazi party genuinely cared for all true Germans was honestly felt.

Mayer’s book was sobering, with deep insights into fascism that enables the reader to understand the motivations of ordinary middle-class church-going people for embracing violent militaristic nationalism, racism, xenophobia, anti-Semitism, homophobia and sexism. The need to expand the empire, the willingness to kill those fingered as enemies of the state and the big business influence on politics and policy — including the decimation of the trade union movement — is not hard to comprehend. (It is important to recall at this point that the German weapons industry was the most important part of Hitler’s economic boom, and allowing trade unions to exist would have been bad for both the Nazis and big business’s agendas.)

So what are the lessons we should learn? First of all, even if we can’t predict how or when our American Empire might fall, someone has to start talking about the painful historical similarities between each of the world’s fascist empires that have crashed and burned over the past century and the bipartisan corporatist cabal in Washington, DC. (Note: It’s important to admit that all empires eventually fall, especially when they become corrupted by abusive military power, a police state mentality, indifference to human suffering and excess luxury wealth — all of which come at the expense of the poor.)

History tells us that when an empire’s political leaders, militarists, propagandists, media and big businesses are corrupted by power, wealth and greed, the end of that empire is approaching. It’s a sad commentary on our American society that one should have to again repeat the old adage that "those who fail to learn from history are condemned to repeat it," but it must be said that those who pay the price of an empire’s fall are not necessarily the power elite that start the wars and have personal fortunes that allow them to survive the aftermath, but rather the cannon fodder soldiers and civilian victims who are just pawns in the game.

Those people of conscience who see the eternally powerful truths in the ethics of Jesus, must be among the ones to speak out courageously against tyranny. Jesus preached about mercy, forgiveness and nonviolent love of friend and enemy in the Sermon on the Mount, which is, tragically, a sermon that we seldom hear from average Christian pulpits in America. And, as could be predicted for any militaristic Christian nation, it was likewise not preached in the churches of pre-Nazi Germany either.

If America continues on its downward spiral towards more and more blatant fascism (a partial definition of fascism is within paragraph 7 above), and consent is given by the church’s silence on war issues, we will at some time in the future lament our decision not to act against the tyranny of government, law enforcement, the judiciary and big business. Those of us who speak out will inevitably provoke the wrath of those in positions of power who prefer that the people remain silent and obedient. But someone must work up the courage to cry out the warning. People of the Christian faith who have heard the clear command of Jesus to courageously work for true peace and true justice and become active, nonviolent resisters of tyranny must be among the ones to shoulder the responsibility to speak out.

There are many demeaned and persecuted minority groups in America, which the Nazis would have called the Untermenschen (subhuman ones), that need protection. The list includes Native Americans, African-Americans, gays and lesbians, "undocumented" farm laborers, Muslims, Palestinians, Aboriginal peoples, the mentally ill, the physically disabled, the children, the poor and enslaved people everywhere. And we must not forget about the protection needed by the tortured and poisoned Earth and her sick and dying creatures that are also being threatened for the profits of the few. One has to be blind or corrupted to not see that we live in a nation that is on the wrong side of history and on the wrong side of justice.

I hope that I am wrong about the similarities between 9-11 and 11-9, but when one looks with an unblinking and critical eye at most US bureaucratic institutions, (most of which are peopled by decent but obedient employee/pawns) we also see political agendas that include: 1) promoting fear and confusion through blatantly obvious propaganda campaigns; 2) gradually "disappearing" the civil and human rights of the non-elite; 3) usurping power through intimidation and the threat of military or police power, while at the same time 4) having Christian religious leaders contradict their messiah by blasphemously assuring their fellow Christians: “you can kill your enemies if your earthly security is at stake.”

The god that Jesus of Nazareth revealed to his followers was a god of unconditional love, everlasting mercy and unending forgiveness. Jesus clearly commanded his followers to be merciful and refrain from harming "the least of these." May we learn the lessons of 9-11 and 11-9 before it’s too late.

Gary Kohls, MD [send him mail] is a Duluth, Minnesota physician, an avowed anti-fascist and therefore a peace and justice activist who has an aversion to human slaughter from any source, whether in times of war or in times of peace.

Gary G. Kohls Archives

It Can’t Happen Here

Gary G. Kohls — Wed, 24 Sep 2008 05:00:00 +0000

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Okay, so you call yourself a patriot. But what exactly do you mean by that?

Do you mean the patriotism that says "My country, right or wrong?" Or do you mean the patriotism that says "Might Makes Right?" Or the patriotism that Samuel Johnson defined as "the last refuge of the scoundrel?"

Do you mean the patriotism of the 16th-century Protestant reformers who believed that every leader of every nation, no matter how evil, was ordained by God to rule and therefore Christian citizens were to be unconditionally obedient to those leaders?

Or are you the patriot that loves your country so much that you won’t let tyrants or the corporate war machine take it over without a fight? Are you the type of patriot that is willing to have a lover’s quarrel with your nation, especially when your leaders meet what can be defined as "international war criminals?"

In order to find out which type of patriotism you or your country’s leaders adhere to, consider the following "hypothetical" situation:

Suppose you are a white, church-going, bible-believing citizen in a country that has prided itself in its inventiveness, its literacy, its art, its culture, its glory in past wars and its superpower status.

Say that you saw powerful corporations and their cronies who are in positions of political power grab control of your democratic nation’s legislature, judiciary and military by the use of deceptive propaganda and rigged elections. Suppose that you and your fellow citizens were being consistently lied to about your nation’s foreign policy.

Say that these business and political leaders somehow gained control of the highest executive office in the land and then started taking away, in rapid succession, the civil rights of many of your nation’s citizens. Suppose that the installed leader started accusing progressive, peace-loving citizens of being traitors; started silencing dissenters and imprisoning people of conscience; started purging anti-fascist resistance groups and co-opting the "liberal" press; and started censoring out opposing opinions from the public consciousness

Suppose the artists, song-writers, poets, film-makers and creative thinkers of your nation were all silenced, drugged or imprisoned.

You would be in 1930s Germany and the anti-democracy tyrants would have been Adolf Hitler and his henchmen. So now the question becomes: what would you have done if you were a 1930s-era German seeing your democratic nation going fascist?

If you were an average white, affluent, straight male citizen, with all the privilege and power granted to you by that majority status, you would have said virtually nothing in opposition, even as the rights of groups other than your own were being taken away and the members were disappearing in the middle of the night into the gulag of prisons and mental institutions.

As an average bible-believing Christian, you would probably have obeyed your war-supporting bishops or pastors in their support of Hitler (almost all of whom had pledged a solemn oath of loyalty to the Fhrer). You, as a conservative Christian, would have been expected to also be obedient to the rulers in Berlin in times of national crisis rather than faithfully adhering to the ethical teachings of Jesus, who forbade homicidal violence to his followers and who said that his followers were to love, rather than fear and kill, their enemies.

If you were an average German lawyer, physician or psychiatrist, you would have joined the Nazi Party, for doing otherwise would have jeopardized your practice and income. And you would have kept your mouth shut when witnessing the fear and anguish of your Jewish, Slavic, socialist, liberal, or gay clients as they were forced to march toward, and disappear into, the concentration camps and gas chambers.

So the question remains: if you saw your nation going fascist, would you have done what average German patriots did and been unconditionally obedient to your leader? Would you have been on the wrong side of justice by saluting the swastika rather than resisting the tyrants?

Knowing that any person who opposed Hitler’s wars of aggression was considered an enemy of the state, whom would you have supported? Would you have taken the side of the innocent victims? Would you have suffered in solidarity with them, or would you have stood with the oppressors?

Would you have joined the freedom-fighters (labeled "terrorists" or traitors by the State) who were courageously and patriotically trying to save their beloved nation from fascism, or would you have joined the militarists and corporatists and right-wing politicians who thought that they were choosing the "winning" side?

Now think over the similarities between the blatant fascist Germany of the 1930s and the politics and governance of the nation you live in. If you do so honestly, you may realize that fascism may be closer than you think. And in the process of pondering these issues, your personal politics and theology AND the politics and theology of those who want your vote, your business AND your silence will be revealed.

And then the course your political and spiritual life will take: active resistance against tyranny, collaboration with it or silence in the face of suffering, in response to the title question will also become clear.

Gary G. Kohls Archives

The My Lai Massacre Revisited

Gary G. Kohls — Fri, 14 Mar 2008 05:00:00 +0000

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Forty years
ago this week, on March 16,1968, a company of US Army combat soldiers
from the Americal Division swept into the South Vietnamese hamlet
of My Lai, rounded up the 500+ unarmed residents, all women, children,
babies and a few old men, and executed them in cold blood, Nazi-style.
No weapons were found in the village, and the whole operation took
only 4 hours.

Although there
was a serious attempt to cover-up this operation (which involved
a young up-and-coming US Army Major named Colin Powell), those who
orchestrated this "business-as-usual" war zone atrocity
did not deny the details of the slaughter when the case came to
trial several years later. But the story had filtered back to the
Western news media, thanks to a couple of courageous eye-witnesses
whose consciences were still intact. An Army court-marital trial
eventually convened against a handful of the soldiers, including
Lt. William Calley and Company C commanding officer, Ernest Medina.

According to
many of the soldiers in Company C, Medina ordered the killing of
"every living thing in My Lai," including, obviously,
innocent noncombatants — men, women, children and even farm animals.
Lt. Calley was charged with the murder of 109 civilians. In his
defense statement he stated that he had been taught to hate all
Vietnamese, even children, who, he had been told, "were very
good at planting mines."

That a massacre
had occurred was confirmed by many of Medina's soldiers and recorded
by photographers, but the Army still tried to cover it up. The cases
were tried in military courts with juries of Army officers,
which eventually either dropped the charges against all of the defendants
(except Calley) or acquitted them. Medina and all the others who
were among the killing soldiers that day went free, and only Calley
was convicted of the murders of "at least 20 civilians."
He was sentenced to life imprisonment for his war crime, but, under
pressure from patriotic pro-war Americans, President Nixon pardoned
him within weeks of the verdict.

The trial stimulated
a lot of interest because it occurred during the rising outcry of
millions of Americans against the war that was acknowledged by many
observers as an "overwhelming atrocity." Many ethical
Americans were sick of the killing. However, 79% of those that were
polled strenuously objected to Calley's conviction, some veteran's
groups even voicing the opinion that instead of condemnation, he
should have received medals of honor for killing "Commie Gooks."

The Vietnam
War was an excruciating time for conscientious Americans because
of the numerous moral issues surrounding the mass slaughter in a
war that uselessly killed 58,000 American soldiers, caused the spiritual
deaths of millions more, killed 3 million Vietnamese (mostly civilians)
and psychologically traumatized countless others on both sides of
the conflict.

Of course the
Vietnam War was a thousand times worse for the innocent people of
that doomed land than it was for the soldiers. The Vietnamese people
were victims of an army of brutal young men from a foreign land
who were taught that the "little yellow people" were pitiful
sub-humans and deserved to be killed — with some GIs preferring
to inflict torture first. "Kill-or-be-killed" is a reality
that is standard operating procedure for military combat units of
every nation of every era and of every ideology.

Vietnam veterans
tell me that there were scores, maybe hundreds, of "My Lai-type
massacres " during that war. Not surprisingly, the Pentagon
refuses to acknowledge that truth. Execution-style killings of "potential"
Viet Cong sympathizers (i.e., anybody that wasn't a US military
supporter) were common. Many combat units "took no prisoners"
(a euphemism for murdering captives, rather than having to follow
the nuisance Geneva Conventions which requires humane treatment
for prisoners of war). The only unusual thing about the My Lai Massacre
was that it was eventually found out. The attempted Pentagon cover-up
failed.

Very few soldiers
or their commanding officers have ever been punished for the many
war crimes that occurred during that war because those in charge
knew that killing (and torturing) of innocent civilians during war-time
is simply the norm — excused as "collateral damage." After
all, as US Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld later infamously
proclaimed, "stuff happens."

The torture
was enjoyable for some — for a while. And wars are profitable for
many — and still are (witness the Krupp family of Nazi-era infamy
and Halliburton, the Blackwater mercenaries, et al. today).

Those who plan
wars and/or participate in them, yet also profess to be Christians,
pay no attention to the ethics of Jesus' Sermon on the Mount (Matthew
5, 6 and 7) unless they are prepared to explicitly reject what their
religion's namesake repeatedly said about the issue of homicidal
violence (for Jesus says, in so many words: "Violence is forbidden
for those who wish to follow me"). And what is most hypocritical
is the fact that many pro-war Christians also reject Jesus' Golden
Rule command: "Do onto others as you would have them do unto
you."

The rejection
of the Way of Jesus also includes the rejection of his clear teachings
on how his followers are to treat the neighbor, the stranger, the
hungry, the naked, the captive, the enemy and all others in need
of mercy and understanding. In order to participate in the legal
homicide that takes place in all wars, the followers of Jesus have
to reject Jesus' teachings and adopt the un-Christ-like, anti-gospel
Just War Theory of Augustine (which first appeared 3 centuries after
Jesus' death). There is no moral way for the follower of the nonviolent
Jesus to participate in or support the mass slaughter of war. Christian
discipleship requires making a choice between those two irreconcilable
realities.

The whole issue
of the justification of war, with its inherent atrocities, never
seems to be thoroughly examined in an atmosphere of openness and
historical honesty. Full understanding of the realities of war and
its spiritual, psychological and economic consequences for the victims
is rarely attempted, even for American people of faith. If we who
are non-soldiers ever truly experienced the horrors of combat, the
effort to abolish war would suddenly be a top priority (perhaps
even for the current crop of "Chicken Hawk" warmongers
in the Bush Administration).

If we actually
knew the gruesome realities of war (or even understood the immorality
of spending trillions of dollars on war preparation while hundreds
of millions of people are homeless and starving) we would refuse
to cooperate with the things that make for war. But that wouldn't
be good for the war profiteers who profit from war. So those "merchants
of death" must hide the gruesome truths and try instead to
make war look patriotic, with, for example, sloganeering like "Be
All That You Can Be." Or they might try to convince the soon-to-be-childless
mothers of doomed, dead or dying soldiers that their child had died
fighting for God, Country and Honor instead of for domination of
the Middle East's oil reserves.

Let's face
it. The US military standing army system has been bankrupting America
at $500+ billion year after year after year — even in times of so-called
"peace." The warmongering legacy of the Pentagon is still
with us, particularly among those "patriots," including
GOP presidential candidate John McCain, who wanted to "nuke
the gooks" in Vietnam. A multitude of un-elected policy-makers
of that ilk are still in charge of US foreign policy today, and
they have been solidifying their power to continue America's misbegotten,
unaffordable and unsustainable militarism with the huge profits
made off the deaths, screams, blood, guts and permanent disabilities
of those hood-winked soldiers who were told that they were "saving
the world for democracy" when in fact they were making the
world safe for exploitive capitalism and obscene profits for the
few. And the politicians entrenched in both major political parties,
who are all-too-often paid lapdogs for the war profiteers, don't
want the gravy train to be derailed.

Things haven't
changed much even from the World War II mentality that conveniently
overlooked the monstrous evil that was perpetrated on tens of thousands
of unarmed, innocent civilians at Nagasaki on August 9, 1945, a
war crime so heinous that the psychological consequences, immune
deficiency disorders and cancers from that nuclear holocaust are
still being experienced in unimaginable suffering 6 decades later.

Things haven't
really changed when one witnesses the political mentality that allows
the 500,000 deaths of innocent Iraqi civilians in the aftermath
of the first Gulf War or the 1,000,000 civilian deaths in the current
fiasco in Iraq.

So it appears
that our military and political leaders haven't learned anything
since My Lai. And I'm sorry to have to conclude that it is still
true of the churches. The person sitting next to you in the comfortable
church pew is, like most unaware Americans, almost totally ignorant
of the hellish realities of the war-zone, so he may continue to
be blindly patriotic and indifferent to the plight of the "others"
who suffer so much in war. He may think, contrary to Jesus' clear
teachings, that some people are less than human, and, therefore,
if necessary, can be justifiably killed.

As long as
most American citizens continue to glorify war and militarism and
ignore or denigrate the peacemakers; as long as the American public
endorses the current spirit of nationalism and ruthless global capitalism;
and as long as the American Christian church leadership remains
prudently silent (and therefore consenting to the homicidal violence
of war) we will not be able to effect a change away from the influence
of conscienceless warmongers and war profiteers. The prophets and
peacemakers are never valued in militarized nations, especially
in times of war; indeed, they are always marginalized, demeaned
and even imprisoned or executed as traitors. And one of the reasons
is that there are no profits to be made in peacemaking, whereas
there are trillions to be made in the biggest business going: the
preparation for war, the execution of war and the highly profitable
"re-building" efforts ("blow it up/build it up"
economics) all the while ignoring the "inconvenient" but
inevitable collateral damage to the creation and its creatures.

As long as
we continue to be led by unapologetic and merciless war-makers and
their wealthy business cronies and as long as the ethical infants
in Washington, DC continue to be corrupted by the big money bribes,
there is no chance America will ever obtain true peace.

And as long
as America's Christian religious leaders and their followers do
not reject, as Jesus surely would have had them do, the merciless
mass slaughter that is modern war, suffering humanity will be condemned
to future wars, poverty, pestilence and starvation.

And unless
America stops the unjust carnage, fully repents and offers compensation
for the damage it has caused, its turn as a recipient of retaliatory
violence will surely come, and it will come from those foreign and
domestic victims that our nation has treated so shamefully over
the past half-century.

March
14, 2008

Gary
Kohls, MD [send him mail],
an associate of Every Church a Peace
Church, is a practicing physician in Duluth, MN.

The Atomic Murder of Nagasaki

Gary G. Kohls — Mon, 06 Aug 2007 05:00:00 +0000

DIGG THIS

62 years ago,
on August 9th, 1945, the second of the only two atomic
bombs (a plutonium bomb) ever used as instruments of aggressive
war (against essentially defenseless civilian populations) was dropped
on Nagasaki, Japan, by an all-Christian bomb crew. The well-trained
American soldiers were only "doing their job," and they
did it efficiently.

It had been
only 3 days since the first bomb, a uranium bomb, had decimated
Hiroshima on August 6, with chaos and confusion in Tokyo, where
the fascist military government and the Emperor had been searching
for months for a way to an honorable end of the war which had exhausted
the Japanese to virtually moribund status. (The only obstacle to
surrender had been the Truman administration's insistence on unconditional
surrender, which meant that the Emperor Hirohito, whom the Japanese
regarded as a deity, would be removed from his figurehead position
in Japan — an intolerable demand for the Japanese.)

The Russian
army was advancing across Manchuria with the stated aim of entering
the war against Japan on August 8, so there was an extra incentive
to end the war quickly: the US military command did not want to
divide any spoils or share power after Japan sued for peace.

The US bomber
command had spared Hiroshima, Nagasaki and Kokura from the conventional
bombing that had burned to the ground 60+ other major Japanese cities
during the first half of 1945. One of the reasons for targeting
relatively undamaged cities with these new weapons of mass destruction
was scientific: to see what would happen to intact buildings — and
their living inhabitants — when atomic weapons were exploded overhead.

Early in the
morning of August 9, 1945, a B-29 Superfortress called Bock's Car,
took off from Tinian Island, with the prayers and blessings of its
Lutheran and Catholic chaplains, and headed for Kokura, the primary
target. (Its bomb was code-named "Fat Man," after Winston
Churchill.)

The only field
test of a nuclear weapon, blasphemously named "Trinity,"
had occurred just three weeks earlier, on July 16, 1945 at Alamogordo,
New Mexico. The molten lavarock that resulted, still found at the
site today, is called trinitite.

With instructions
to drop the bomb only on visual sighting, Bock's Car arrived at
Kokura, which was clouded over. So after circling three times, looking
for a break in the clouds, and using up a tremendous amount of valuable
fuel in the process, it headed for its secondary target, Nagasaki.

Nagasaki is
famous in the history of Japanese Christianity. Not only was it
the site of the largest Christian church in the Orient, St. Mary's
Cathedral, but it also had the largest concentration of baptized
Christians in all of Japan. It was the city where the legendary
Jesuit missionary, Francis Xavier, established a mission church
in 1549, a Christian community which survived and prospered for
several generations. However, soon after Xavier's planting of Christianity
in Japan, Portuguese and Spanish commercial interests began to be
accurately perceived by the Japanese rulers as exploitive, and therefore
the religion of the Europeans (Christianity) and their new Japanese
converts became the target of brutal persecutions.

Within 60 years
of the start of Xavier's mission church, it was a capital crime
to be a Christian. The Japanese Christians who refused to recant
of their beliefs suffered ostracism, torture and even crucifixions
similar to the Roman persecutions in the first three centuries of
Christianity. After the reign of terror was over, it appeared to
all observers that Japanese Christianity had been stamped out.

However, 250
years later, in the 1850s, after the coercive gunboat diplomacy
of Commodore Perry forced open an offshore island for American trade
purposes, it was discovered that there were thousands of baptized
Christians in Nagasaki, living their faith in a catacomb existence,
completely unknown to the government – which immediately started
another purge. But because of international pressure, the persecutions
were soon stopped, and Nagasaki Christianity came up from the underground.
And by 1917, with no help from the government, the Japanese Christian
community built the massive St. Mary's Cathedral, in the Urakami
River district of Nagasaki.

Now it turned
out, in the mystery of good and evil, that St. Mary's Cathedral
was one of the landmarks that the Bock's Car bombardier had been
briefed on, and looking through his bomb site over Nagasaki that
day, he identified the cathedral and ordered the drop.

At 11:02 am,
Nagasaki Christianity was boiled, evaporated and carbonized in a
scorching, radioactive fireball. The persecuted, vibrant, faithful,
surviving center of Japanese Christianity had become ground zero.

And what the
Japanese Imperial government could not do in over 200 years of persecution,
American Christians did in 9 seconds. The entire worshipping community
of Nagasaki was wiped out.

The above true
(and unwelcome) story should stimulate discussion among those who
claim to be disciples of Jesus. The Catholic chaplain for the 509th
Composite Group (the 1500-man Army Air Force group, whose only job
was to successfully deliver the atomic bombs to their targets) was
Father George Zabelka. Several decades after the war ended, he saw
his grave theological error in religiously legitimating the mass
slaughter that is modern land and air war. He finally recognized
that the enemies of his nation were not the enemies of God, but
rather children of God whom God loved, and whom the followers of
Jesus are to also love. Father Zabelka's conversion to Christian
nonviolence led him to devote the remaining decades of his life
speaking out against violence in all its forms, especially the violence
of militarism. The Lutheran chaplain, William Downey, in his counseling
of soldiers who had become troubled by their participation in making
murder for the state, later denounced all killing, whether by a
single bullet or by a weapon of mass destruction.

In Daniel Hallock’s
important book, Hell,
Healing and Resistance, he talks about a 1997 Buddhist retreat
led by Thich Nhat Hanh that attempted to deal with the hellish post-war
existence of combat-traumatized Vietnam War veterans. Hallock said,
"Clearly, Buddhism offers something that cannot be found in
institutional Christianity. But then why should veterans embrace
a religion that has blessed the wars that ruined their souls? It
is no wonder they turn to a gentle Buddhist monk to hear what are,
in large part, the truths of Christ."

As a lifelong
Christian, that comment stung, but it was the sting of a sad and
sobering truth. And as a physician who deals with psychologically
traumatized patients every day, I know that it is violence, in all
its myriad of forms, that bruises the human psyche and soul, and
that that trauma is deadly and contagious, and it spreads through
the families and on through the 3rd and 4th
generations — until somebody stops continuing the domestic violence
that military violence breeds.

One of the
most difficult "mental illnesses" to treat is combat-induced
posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD). In its most virulent form,
PTSD is virtually incurable. It is also a fact that whereas most
Vietnam War recruits came from churches where they actively practiced
their faith, if they came home with PTSD, the percentage returning
to the faith community approached zero.

This is a serious
spiritual problem for any church that (either by the active support
of its nation's "glorious" wars or by its silence on such
issues) fails to teach its young people about what the earliest
form of Christianity taught about violence: that it was forbidden
to those who wished to follow Jesus.

If a Christian
community fails to thoroughly inform its confirmands about the gruesome
realities of the war zone before they are forced to register for
potential conscription into the military, it invites the condemnation
that Jesus warned about in Matthew 18:5–6: "And whoever
welcomes a little child like this in my name welcomes me. But if
anyone causes one of these little ones who believes in me to sin,
it would be better for him to have a large millstone hung around
his neck and to be drowned in the depths of the sea."

The purpose
of this essay is to stimulate open and honest discussion (at least
among the followers of Jesus) about the ethics of killing by and
for one’s government, not from the perspective of national security
ethics, not from the perspective of the military, not from the perspective
of (the pre-Christian) eye-for-an-eye retaliation that Jesus rejected,
but from the perspective of the Sermon on the Mount, the core ethical
teachings of Jesus in Matthew 5, 6 and 7.

Out of that
discussion (if any are willing to engage in it) should come answers
to those horrible realities that seem to immobilize decent Bible-believing
Christians everywhere: Why are some of us Christians so willing
to commit (or support and/or pay for others to commit) homicidal
violence against other fellow children of a loving, merciful, forgiving
God, the God whom Jesus clearly calls us to imitate? And what can
we Christians do, starting now, to prevent the next war and the
next epidemic of combat-induced posttraumatic stress disorder?

What can we
do to prevent the next round of these atrocities, all of which have
been perpetrated by professed Christians: the My Lai Massacre, Auschwitz
and the other Nazi death camps, Dresden, El Mozote, Rwanda, Jonestown,
the black church bombings, the execution of innocent death row inmates,
the sanctions against Iraq (that killed 500,000 children during
the 1990s), the military annihilation of Fallujah and much of the
rest of Iraq and Afghanistan, the torturing of innocents at Abu
Ghraib and Guantanamo Bay plus the many other international war
crimes (albeit un-indicted to date) perpetrated by the current "Christian"
administration of the United States. And what is to be done to prevent
the next Nagasaki?

A large portion
of the responsibility for the prevention of military atrocities
like Nagasaki lies within the organized Christian churches and whether
or not they soon start teaching and living what the radical nonviolent
Jesus taught and lived.

The next Nagasaki
can be prevented if the churches finally heed Jesus' call
to nonviolence and refuse their government's call for the bodies
and souls of their sons and daughters.

August
6, 2007

Gary
Kohls, MD [send him mail],
an associate of Every Church a Peace
Church, is a practicing physician in Duluth, MN.

August 9th

Gary G. Kohls — Sat, 15 Jul 2006 05:00:00 +0000

On the 9th
of August, 1945,
an all-Christian B-29 bomber crew took off from Tinian Island in
the South Pacific, with the blessings of its Catholic and Protestant
chaplains. In the plane's hold was the second of the only two nuclear
bombs to ever be used against human targets in wartime. The primary
target, Kokura, Japan, was clouded over, so the plane, named Bock's
Car, headed for the secondary target, Nagasaki. St. Mary's Urakami
Cathedral, a massive Nagasaki landmark that the bombardier had been
briefed on for weeks before the bombing, was briefly seen through
the thin clouds and targeted as ground zero.

The Urakami
Cathedral was the oldest and largest Christian church in the Orient,
and Nagasaki was the oldest and most influential Christian community
in Japan, having been founded by Francis Xaviar in 1550. The Nagasaki
Christian community was legendary in the history of Oriental Christianity
because of its two centuries of catacomb-like existence during the
horrible persecutions by the Imperial Japanese government –
including mass crucifixions of faithful Christians who refused to
give up the faith. Despite the persecutions, and the outlawing of
Christianity (as a capital crime to be a Christian for 250 years),
Nagasaki Christianity survived and ultimately flourished — until
11:02 am, August 9, 1945.

What Imperial
Japan could not do over two centuries of brutal persecution, fellow
American Christians did in 9 seconds. The Cathedral was destroyed
by the plutonium bomb (named Fat Man after Winston Churchill), thousands
of Nagasaki Christians were mortally burned, carbonized or vaporized
and the subsequent radiation-induced disease and deformities among
the survivors and their progeny continues to this day as a gruesome
testament to the horrors of nuclear war. But Nagasaki Christianity's
spirit lives on.

On the 9th
of August, 1943, Franz Jaegerstaetter, a devout Austrian Christian
pacifist, was beheaded by German Christians for refusing to fight
and kill in Hitler's army. Because of his conscientious objection
to war and killing, he had been abandoned by his bishop and pastor,
as well as by his family and friends, all of whom had tried to convince
him to do his patriotic duty and kill for "Volk, Fhrer und
Vaterland." They all tried to convince him that his commitment
to Christian nonviolence was futile. Instead, being obedient to
his God rather than to men, he died by guillotine at Brandenburg
Prison, at the hands of obedient baptized Christian soldiers, whose
belt buckles read "Gott Mit Uns" (God With Us).
And yet Jaegerstaetter's spirit lives on.

On the 9th
of August, 1942, Sister Teresa Benedicta of the Cross, a Jewish
Catholic Carmelite nun, was murdered by fellow German Christians
at Auschwitz. Gott Mit Uns was stamped on their belt buckles
too. The German Christian churches had, by their collaboration or
by their silence, endorsed the Nazi's rabid nationalism, militarism,
racism, anti-Semitism, xenophobia and "legal" right to
kill other children of God. Ironically, two years later, Sister
Teresa's Carmel in Cologne was incinerated during the massive American
and British saturation bombing of various civilian targets, making
it a moot point precisely which Christian warriors killed her, Nazis
or Allied. Teresa has since been sainted in the Roman Catholic Church,
and her spirit lives on.

The 509th
Composite Group, whose responsibilities were to deliver the two
radioactive weapons of mass destruction, had two Christian chaplains.
The Catholic chaplain, George Zabelka, spoke of societal attitudes
at the time: "The whole structure of secular, religious and
military society told me clearly that it was all right to u2018let the
Japs have it.' God was on our side." Father Zabelka knew what
his bomber crews were doing to innocent people and their defenseless
cities in the summer of 1945, and yet "I said nothing."
He regretted that silence for the rest of his life.

Father Emmanuel
Charles McCarthy, the foremost apostle of Christian nonviolence
in America today, has dedicated his life and ministry to raising
the consciousness of the church to the truth of Jesus' nonviolent
teachings. McCarthy says:

Today,
as for most of the last 1700 years, most Christians continue to
justify as consistent with the spirit of Christ those energies,
understandings, and emotions which lead inevitably to August 9.
Today most Christians still do not unequivocally teach what Jesus
unequivocally taught on the subject of violence. Today most Christians
still refuse to proclaim that violence is not the Christian way,
that violence is not the Holy way, that violence is not the way
of Jesus.

Every summer,
to call the Christian community to repent and to return to the truth
that violence is not the way of Christ, Father McCarthy leads a
fast from solid foods for 40 days, breaking it on August 9. In August
1995 he was at Nagasaki, leading one of the 50th anniversary
events.

It is suggested
that fellow peacemakers remember all the victims of past
August Ninths in their prayers on the upcoming 60th anniversary
commemoration. It is hoped that conscientious Christians consider
a day-long fast in remembrance of the hundreds of millions of war
dead, the hundreds of millions of physically and psychologically
traumatized survivors of war violence, and the billions of spiritually
dead victims, both soldier-perpetrators and their civilian victims,
innocents who continue to suffer from the starvation, homelessness,
poverty, sickness and hopelessness that follows every war.

July
15, 2006

Gary
Kohls, MD [send him mail],
an associate of Every Church a Peace
Church, is a practicing physician in Duluth, MN.

The My Lai Massacre

Gary G. Kohls — Mon, 06 Mar 2006 06:00:00 +0000

Thirty-eight
years ago, on March 16,1968, a company of US Army combat soldiers
from the Americal Division swept into the South Vietnamese hamlet
of My Lai, rounded up the 500+ unarmed residents, all women, children
and old men, and executed them in cold blood, Nazi-style. No weapons
were found in the village, and the whole operation only took 4 hours.

Although there
was a massive cover-up of this operation (which involved a young
up-and-coming US Army Major named Colin Powell), those who orchestrated
this "business-as-usual" war zone event did not deny the
details of the slaughter when the case came to trial several years
later. But the story did eventually filter back to the Western news
media, thanks to a couple of courageous witnesses and journalists
whose consciences were still intact. An Army court-marital trial
eventually convened against some of the soldiers, including Lt.
William Calley and Company C commanding officer, Ernest Medina.

According to
many of the soldiers in Company C, Medina ordered the killing of
"every living thing in My Lai," including, obviously,
innocent noncombatants – men, women, children and even farm animals.
Lt. Calley was charged in the murder of 109 civilians. In his defense
statement he stated that he had been taught to hate all Vietnamese,
even children, who, he was told, "were very good at planting
mines."

The massacre
was documented by many of Medina's soldiers and recorded by photographers,
but the Army still tried to cover it up. The cases were tried in
military courts with juries of Army officers, which eventually either
dropped the charges against all of the defendants (except Calley)
or acquitted those accused. Medina and all the others who were among
the killing soldiers that day went free, and only Calley was convicted
of the murders of "at least 20 civilians." He was sentenced
to life imprisonment for his crime, but, under pressure from patriotic
pro-war Americans, President Nixon pardoned him within weeks of
the verdict.

The trial stimulated
a lot of interest because it occurred during the rising outcry of
millions of Americans against the war that was acknowledged as an
"overwhelming atrocity." Many ethical Americans were sick
of the killing. However, 79% of those that were polled strenuously
objected to Calley's conviction, veteran's groups even voicing the
opinion that instead of condemnation, he should have received medals
of honor for killing "Commie Gooks."

Just like the
Jewish Holocaust of World War II, the realities of My Lai deserve
to be revisited so that it will happen "never again."
The Vietnam War was an excruciating time for conscientious Americans
because of the numerous moral issues surrounding the mass slaughter
in a war that uselessly killed 58,000 American soldiers, caused
the spiritual deaths of millions more, killed 3 million Vietnamese
(mostly civilians) and psychologically traumatized countless others
on both sides of the conflict.

Of course the
Vietnam War was a thousand times worse for the innocent people of
that doomed land. They were victims of an army of brutal young men
from a foreign land who were taught that the Vietnamese people were
pitiful sub-humans and deserved to be killed – with some GIs preferring
to inflict torture first. "Kill-or-be-killed" is an attitude
that is standard operating procedure for military combat units of
every nation and ideology.

Vietnam veterans
tell me that there were scores, maybe hundreds, of "My Lai-type
massacres" to which the Pentagon refuses to admit. Execution-style
killings of "potential" Viet Cong sympathizers (i.e.,
anybody that wasn't an American at the time) were common. Many combat
units "took no prisoners" (a euphemism for murdering captives,
rather than having to follow the nuisance Geneva Conventions which
requires humane treatment for prisoners of war). The only unusual
thing about the My Lai Massacre was that it was eventually found
out.

Very few soldiers
or their commanding officers were ever punished for the many war
crimes that occurred during that war because those in charge thought
that killing during war-time is simply the norm, usually labeled
"collateral damage." After all, as Donald Rumsfeld infamously
says, "stuff happens."

The torture
was enjoyable for some – for a while. (Witness Abu Graib and
Guantanamo Bay today.) And wars are profitable for many – and
still are. (Witness Halliburton et al. today.)

Those who plan
wars and/or participate in them, yet also profess to be Christians,
pay no attention to the ethics of the Sermon on the Mount and Matthew
25:31-46, unless they are prepared to reject the words and ministry
of the namesake of their religion especially regarding the issue
of homicidal violence (for Jesus says, in so many words: "Violence
is forbidden for those who wish to follow me"). And what is
most hypocritical is the fact that these so-called Christians also
reject Jesus' Golden Rule command: "Do onto others as you would
have them do unto you."

The rejection
of the Way of Jesus also includes his clear teachings on how his
followers are to treat the neighbor, the stranger, the hungry, the
naked, the captive, the enemy and all others in need of mercy. In
order to participate in the legal homicide that takes place in all
wars, the followers of Jesus must ethically reject the totality
of Jesus' teachings and then adopt the un-Christ-like, non-gospel
Just War Theory of Augustine (which first appeared 3 centuries
after Jesus). There is no ethical way for the follower of the nonviolent
Jesus to participate in or condone the mass slaughter of war. One
has to choose between two irreconcilable belief systems.

The whole issue
of the justification of war, with its inherent atrocities, is rarely
examined in an atmosphere of openness and historical honesty. Full
understanding of the realities of war and its spiritual, psychological
and economic consequences for the victims is rarely attempted, especially
for American "Christians." If we who are non-soldiers
ever truly experienced the horrors of combat, the effort to abolish
war would suddenly be a top priority (perhaps even the current crop
of "Chicken Hawk" warmongers in the Bush Administration).

If we actually
knew the gruesome realities of war (or even understood the immorality
of spending trillions of dollars on war preparation while hundreds
of millions of people are homeless and starving) we would refuse
to cooperate with the things that make for war. But that wouldn't
be good for the war profiteers who profit from war. So those businesses
must hide the gruesome truths and try instead to make it look like
something patriotic, with, for example, sloganeering like "Be
All That You Can Be." Or they might try to convince the soon-to-be-childless
mothers of doomed, dead or dying soldiers that their child had died
fighting for God, Country and Honor instead of for domination of
the Middle East's oil reserves.

Let's face
it. The US military standing army system has been bankrupting America
at $500+ billion year after year after year — even in times of so-called
"peace." The warmongering legacy of the Pentagon is still
with us, particularly among those who wanted to "nuke the gooks"
in Vietnam. Policy-makers of that ilk are still in charge of US
war-making today, and they have been solidifying their power to
do so with the huge profits made off the deaths, screams, blood,
guts and permanent disabilities of our hood-winked soldiers who
were told that they were "saving the world for democracy"
when in fact they were making the world fit for ruthless and exploitive
global capitalism and the obscene profits of the few. And the politicians
and businessmen of war don't want that gravy train to stop.

Things haven't
changed much even from the World War II mentality that conveniently
overlooked the monstrous evil that was perpetrated at Nagasaki on
August 9, 1945, a war crime so heinous that the psychological consequences,
immune deficiency disorders and cancers from that nuclear holocaust
are still being experienced in unimaginable suffering 60 years later.

Things haven't
really changed. The military mentality that allowed the 500,000
deaths of innocent Iraqi civilians in the aftermath of the first
Gulf War is still dominant.

So it appears
that our military and political leaders haven't learned anything
since My Lai. Is it still true of the churches? The person sitting
next to you in the church pew is, like most Americans, almost totally
ignorant of the hellish realities of the war-zone, or he may choose
to be blindly patriotic or prefer to be indifferent to the plight
of the "other" who suffers so much in war. He may think,
contrary to Jesus' clear teachings to the contrary, that some people
are less than human, and, therefore, if necessary, can be justifiably
killed "for Volk, Fhrer und Vaterland."

As long as
America continues to glorify war and militarism and denigrate peacemakers,
and as long as we endorse the current spirit of American nationalism
and exploitative, corrupt global capitalism, and as long as the
church leadership remains silent (and therefore acquiescing) we
will not be able to effect a change away from the influence of conscienceless
war-mongers and war profiteers. The prophets and peacemakers are
never valued in militarized nations; indeed, they are always
marginalized, demeaned, imprisoned and even killed. And the reason
is that there are no obscene profits to be made in the prevention
of war, whereas there are trillions to be made on the biggest business
going: war and the killing of other humans and their habitat.

As long as
we continue to be led by unapologetic war-makers, their wealthy
business cronies and the bribery from large political campaign contributors,
there is no chance we will ever obtain a meaningful peace.

And as long
as America's leaders, particularly its pseudo-Christian political
and religious leaders, do not reject the mass slaughter that is
modern war and then repent of their silence about the My Lai-like
torture of captives and other atrocities, the suffering world
will be condemned to experience others.

And America's
turn as a recipient of retaliatory violence from those we have so
heinously victimized in the past will surely come.

March
6, 2006

Gary
Kohls, MD [send him mail],
an associate of Every Church a Peace
Church, is a practicing physician in Duluth, MN.

Christians and War

Gary G. Kohls — Mon, 28 Nov 2005 06:00:00 +0000

I'm certain
that Jesus intended his church to be a peace church. That statement
is obvious if one reads the gospel stories with an open mind and
hasn't been overwhelmed by the propaganda from the leaders of the
organized Christian church of the last 1700 years that one can,
under certain circumstances, participate in the murder of another
child of God and still be following Jesus.

Without a doubt,
what was unique about Jesus was his ethic of love — love of God,
love of neighbor, love for oneself, love for the least of these,
love for one's enemies. Without a doubt, Jesus rejected violence
and killing in everything he said and did — and he modeled that
ethical stance clearly in the way he lived his life. And without
a doubt, the early church understood Jesus' mission to be about
practicing nonviolent love of friend and enemy, teaching us how
to live in peace with one another, going about our daily lives with
mercy rather than murder, compassion rather than cruelty, reconciliation
rather than retaliation.

I have experienced
only a small number of churches that I would call real peace churches
in my life as a person of faith. The ones that come to mind include
churches like St. Joan of Arc Catholic Church, Walker Community
Methodist Church and Reformation Lutheran Church, all in the Twin
Cities. Others that I have experienced are scattered around the
nation in my occasional travels as a member and organizer for Every
Church A Peace Church.

Those churches
somehow have found the courage to be radically prophetic, outspokenly
anti-war, peacemaker churches in a culture that fears disturbing
the patriotic status quo. Those churches seem to be about struggling
to implement Jesus' ethical teachings in the Sermon on the Mount
rather than modifying them to suit their nation's politics, economics
or desire for earthly security. Those churches appear to be doing
what the original followers of Jesus in the original form of Christianity
did — trying to imitate him by consistently performing, no matter
the circumstances, nonviolent Christ-like deeds of love, living
lives of mercy and forgiveness and vigorously refusing to participate
in or remain silent about, the legalized killing in the war-zone.
Living lives of Christ-like love somehow promotes the coming of
the peaceable kingdom of the Lamb here on earth. What the world
desperately needs are more churches like that.

I suspect that
many middle of the road, Just War Theory Christian churches have
clergy and lay leaders that would like to transform their churches
into true peace churches, but may have come to the conclusion that
the people in the pews aren't quite ready for something as radical
as that — and therefore the process is deemed too difficult for
now and therefore effectively abandoned. Perhaps the pastor and
lay leaders fear losing their pro-war members (and their financial
contributions) if Jesus' nonviolence was preached vigorously. Maybe
such churches fear being viewed with suspicion by the powerful,
patriotic, pro-war people that constitute a majority in their communities.

Recall Matthew
25:31–46, the Last Judgment Passage. In that passage, Jesus
says that we judge ourselves by what we did or did not do to u201Cthe
least of theseu201D because what we did or did not do them was what
we did or did not do to Jesus. According to that passage, Jesus
is incarnated in the minds and bodies of those who are hungry, thirsty,
in need of hospitality, naked, sickened, captive, homeless, discriminated
against, powerless, victimized and in need of love and mercy. These
least ones are to be cared for by the disciples of Jesus whether
they are friends, neighbors or enemies; and it makes no difference
if they appear to be deserving or not.

There is a
parallel story in Luke, called the parable of the rich man and Lazarus.
The rich man had wealth, power, privilege and was probably a religious,
law-abiding, religious, Bible-believing Jew. As far as we can tell,
he only lacked one thing — compassion for the u201Cleast of these.u201D

The rich man
treated Lazarus as less than fully human, as an object of scorn,
indifference and mercilessness, for which, in a moral universe,
Jesus says there are serious consequences. The rich man condemns
himself, because of his apathy in the face of relievable human suffering,
to an eternity of separation from a relationship with a loving God,
which many theologians have called hell.

A number of
years ago, I was at a workshop on Christian nonviolence, presented
by a Catholic priest, Father Emmanuel Charles McCarthy, whom I consider
my mentor. He recited a simple but profound poem at that conference.
It went like this:

When you
treat a thing like it's a thing, that's reality.
When you treat a thing like it's a person, that's illusion.
When you treat a person like a thing, that's violence.
But when you treat a person like a person, that's love.

That poem is
a corollary to the Golden Rule, which should help us make our everyday
ethical decisions, maybe even help us decide what politicians to
vote for and which ones to oppose. When we treat someone as less
than fully human, when we disrespect someone because of skin color,
gender, religion, social status, looks or sexuality, we are doing
violence. If we treat people like they are sexual objects, scapegoats,
cannon fodder, or someone to dominate, demean or destroy, we are
doing violence — with destructive ripples that go out we know not
where.

In 1995, during
the 50th anniversary week of the bombings of Hiroshima
and Nagasaki, I was at Holden Village, a politically and theologically
progressive Christian retreat center in the Cascade Mountains of
Washington state. During that retreat, there was a one-man play
about the life of Harry Truman, the president who was in office
when the atomic bombs were dropped on Japan. The actor portraying
Mr. Truman mentioned pointedly that as a young man he had kept in
his billfold a copy of the Golden Rule (u201Cdo unto others as you would
have them do unto youu201D), from Jesus' Sermon on the Mount. Apparently
Truman had claimed in his biographical statements during his life
that he consulted the Golden Rule whenever he had ethical decisions
to make.

Later in the
monologue, the actor elaborated on Truman's famous decision to order
the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, two defenseless civilian
targets, both of which had been protected, for scientific reasons,
from the massive conventional bombings that had destroyed nearly
every major city in Japan in the first half of 1945. At the end
of the play, the actor talked about Truman's conviction that ordering
the bombings had been the right thing to do, that he had never lost
any sleep over the decision and that he would do it all over again
without pangs of conscience.

The grotesque
contradiction of that statement and Truman's professed commitment
to the Golden Rule was too much for me, and so, during the question
and answer period, I asked for clarification. How, I wanted to know,
did Truman rationalize what Jesus clearly commanded his followers
to do in the Sermon on the Mount with his decision to order the
incineration of hundreds of thousands of innocent Japanese civilians,
especially with the knowledge that Japan had been searching for
a way to surrender with honor for weeks before the bombing. All
I got was an angry and sputtering defense of Truman's political
decision, and, of course, no coherent comment about the Golden Rule.

Harry Truman,
just like Lazarus, was a Bible-believing person of faith and privilege
who felt no remorse for his part in generating suffering. But I
suspect that if he had been on the ground at Nagasaki following
the bombings instead of half-way around the world in the safety
of the White House, joyously celebrating the end of the war, his
cavalier attitude would have been different, for Truman would have
then been forced to directly experience the agony, the living dead
pleading for water and for non-existent medical relief from their
pain. He would have smelled the unforgettable fecal stench of decaying
bodies that is always there the day or week after a military strike.

If Truman had
been there he would have seen the carbonized remains of fellow humans,
and he might not have been so proud of American technological superiority.
He might even have expressed shame at being an American, as have
so many other observers of the aftermath. He might even have recanted
of the deed and looked for ways to atone. If Mr. Truman and the
tens of thousands of Manhattan Project workers who developed the
bombs, and perhaps even the bomber crew that dropped the bomb at
Nagasaki from 31,000 feet, had witnessed the end result of their
effort up close and personal, they may have stopped cheering their
success and instead started searching their souls.

If these Americans
had actually been at ground zero and seen and smelled and heard
the death and dying, those with any conscience left would have developed
remorse and probably posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD), with
overwhelming guilt, panic attacks, insomnia, nightmares, flashbacks,
depression, shame and even suicidality for the rest of their lives,
as so many victims, perpetrators and bystanders of history's battlefields
have done. Mr. Truman may even have worked for the abolition of
war and refused to put so much money and effort into the post-war
development of America's powerful military machine, its nuclear
weapons industry and its national security apparatus, each of which
has been such a tremendous curse to the world and to the soul of
America.

But the problem
isn't just Harry Truman. And it isn't just WWII. The problem is
the willingness of most Bible-believing Americans, especially its
politicians, war profiteers, super-patriots and professional soldiers,
to cause others to suffer and die when their earthly security was
threatened, a stance that is totally contrary to what Jesus did
and said. The problem lies in America's desire for prestige, power,
prerogative and property. The problem lies in America's unquenchable
thirst for vengeance and retaliation when its honor is besmirched.
Part of the problem is the American Christian church's silence or
even complicity in the conduct of its wars. The problem is that
most of Christianity has been nurtured in the type of religion that
never seems to oppose its nation's military actions, in direct opposition
to the teachings of the founder.

The story of
the bombing of Nagasaki is a particularly sordid chapter in the
history of Christianity, for on August 9, 1945, an all-Christian
bomb crew dropped the second atomic bomb on the center of Japanese
Christianity – the Nagasaki Urakami Cathedral. The Cathedral was
one of the aiming points for the bombardier on the plane called
Bock's Car and the bomb exploded only 500 meters above it. That
important story is a profound one and one that can be told at a
later time, but what the Japanese Imperial government had tried
and failed to do for over 200 years — annihilate Christianity – was done by fellow American Christians in 9 seconds.

Since the Cathedral
was near ground zero, few Nagasaki Christians survived. 6000 Christians
died instantly including those who were celebrating mass that morning.
Three orders of nuns and a Christian girl's school were incinerated.
Tens of thousands of other innocent people died and hundreds of
thousands were mortally wounded or are still in the process of dying
as a consequence of the uranium bomb.

Is this the
way of Christ? It is not. In the gospels, Jesus clearly forbids
violence to those who wish to follow him. And, of course, he obviously
would have had no part in doing anything that creates victims.

Following the
bombing, many survivors went mad from the chaos, the disappearance,
death or suffering of loved ones, the loss of homes and possessions,
the hopelessness for the future and the absence of relief efforts.
Every survivor became depressed, and many committed suicide in the
weeks and years that followed. After the carnage of war, everybody
on the ground is at risk of getting PTSD.

But let’s get
biblical again. The Nagasaki victims are u201Cthe least onesu201D of Matthew
25. They were starving and thirsty; most were naked; all were sickened
by the radiation poisoning and absence of medical care; most were
homeless; and all were captives in their devastated city. They were
also spiritually dead and dying, but so were the American soldier-witnesses,
perpetrators who were also victims of the mass slaughter that is
modern war.

The variety
of PTSD called combat-induced PTSD turns out to be, in my professional
experience, its most incurable form, for engaging in the legalized
killing of war eventually comes back to haunt the soul and psyche – and that psychological trauma keeps on repeating itself in the
intrusive, indelible, recurrent memories, with transient respite
only possible when using brain-altering drugs, alcohol or mind-numbing,
addicting activities.

One only has
to ponder the estimated 200,000 suicides that have occurred among
Vietnam War veterans – after they came home from the war – to appreciate the mental anguish caused from being involved in
that atrocity. Combat-induced PTSD meets my definition of dying
by the sword. As one Vietnam veteran said u201Chaving PTSD is like
having been annihilated in the killing fields of Vietnam, and then
having to wait 25 years to finally lie down and die.u201D After so much
never-ending psychological and spiritual pain it feels good to finally
lie down, even if it is to die.

War and violence
sicken people whether they are victims, bystanders or perpetrators.
War and violence are equal opportunity destroyers of the soul.

The spiritual
costs of war are too high. The pacifist Martin Luther King was u201Cright
on the war questionu201D (the statement that he wanted emphasized at
his funeral). The pacifist Gandhi was right on the war question.
The pacifist primitive Christian church was right on the war question
— and it flourished in spite of that stance. Violence and killing
are deadly to the perpetrators, deadly to the souls and bodies of
the victims, deadly to the souls of the mothers of those soldiers
who participate in war, whether engaged in willingly or unwillingly.

And the pacifist
Jesus was right on the war question. u201CLove your enemiesu201D was
not a throwaway line. And Jesus meant it when he said to the
sword-wielding Peter in the garden of Gethsemane: u201CPut up the sword
for he who lives by the sword, dies by the sword.u201D

So recall the
simple poem. If we treat other people as if they were fully human,
we will treat them with mercy and love; if we treat them as fully
human, we will be incapable of killing, threatening or dominating,
even if certain groups are fingered as enemies by our political
or military leaders.

If we understand
and accept the ethical teachings of Jesus, we will then begin to
question the wisdom and morality of having half of our federal income
taxes expropriated for past and present military spending in a world
where there need be no mortal enemies. And in reordering our ethical,
political and economic lives is such a moral way, we will somehow
be certain to receive the blessings Jesus promised to the peacemakers.
Amen.

November
28, 2005

Gary
Kohls, MD [send him mail],
an associate of Every Church a Peace
Church, is a practicing physician in Duluth, MN.

The Bombing of Nagasaki

Gary G. Kohls — Tue, 30 Aug 2005 05:00:00 +0000

60
years ago, on August 9th, 1945, the second of the only
two atomic bombs (a plutonium bomb) ever used as instruments of
aggressive war (against essentially defenseless civilian populations)
was dropped on Nagasaki, Japan, by an all-Christian bomb crew. The
well-trained American soldiers were only "doing their job,"
and they did it efficiently.

It
had been only 3 days since the first bomb, a uranium bomb, had decimated
Hiroshima on August 6, with chaos and confusion in Tokyo, where
the fascist military government and the Emperor had been searching
for months for a way to an honorable end of the war which had exhausted
the Japanese to virtually moribund status. (The only obstacle to
surrender had been the Truman administration's insistence on unconditional
surrender, which meant that the Emperor Hirohito, whom the Japanese
regarded as a deity, would be removed from his figurehead position
in Japan — an intolerable demand for the Japanese.)

The
Russian army was advancing across Manchuria with the stated aim
of entering the war against Japan on August 8, so there was an extra
incentive to end the war quickly: the US military command did not
want to divide any spoils or share power after Japan sued for peace.

The
US bomber command had spared Hiroshima, Nagasaki and Kokura from
the conventional bombing that had burned to the ground 60+ other
major Japanese cities during the first half of 1945. One of the
reasons for targeting relatively undamaged cities with these new
weapons of mass destruction was scientific: to see what would happen
to intact buildings — and their living inhabitants — when atomic
weapons were exploded overhead.

Early
in the morning of August 9, 1945, a B-29 Superfortress called Bock's
Car, took off from Tinian Island, with the prayers and blessings
of its Lutheran and Catholic chaplains, and headed for Kokura, the
primary target. (Its bomb was code-named "Fat Man," after
Winston Churchill.)

The
only field test of a nuclear weapon, blasphemously named "Trinity,"
had occurred just three weeks earlier, on July 16, 1945 at Alamogordo,
New Mexico. The molten lava rock that resulted, still found at the
site today, is called trinitite.

With
instructions to drop the bomb only on visual sighting, Bock's Car
arrived at Kokura, which was clouded over. So after circling three
times, looking for a break in the clouds, and using up a tremendous
amount of valuable fuel in the process, it headed for its secondary
target, Nagasaki.

Nagasaki
is famous in the history of Japanese Christianity. Not only was
it the site of the largest Christian church in the Orient, St. Mary's
Cathedral, but it also had the largest concentration of baptized
Christians in all of Japan. It was the city where the legendary
Jesuit missionary, Francis Xavier, established a mission church
in 1549, a Christian community which survived and prospered
for several generations. However, soon after Xavier's planting of
Christianity in Japan, Portuguese and Spanish commercial interests
began to be accurately perceived by the Japanese rulers as exploitive,
and therefore the religion of the Europeans (Christianity) and their
new Japanese converts became the target of brutal persecutions.

Within
60 years of the start of Xavier's mission church, it was a capital
crime to be a Christian. The Japanese Christians who refused to
recant of their beliefs suffered ostracism, torture and even crucifixions
similar to the Roman persecutions in the first three centuries of
Christianity. After the reign of terror was over, it appeared to
all observers that Japanese Christianity had been stamped out.

However,
250 years later, in the 1850s, after the coercive gunboat diplomacy
of Commodore Perry forced open an offshore island for American trade
purposes, it was discovered that there were thousands of baptized
Christians in Nagasaki, living their faith in a catacomb existence,
completely unknown to the government – which immediately started
another purge. But because of international pressure, the persecutions
were soon stopped, and Nagasaki Christianity came up from the underground.
And by 1917, with no help from the government, the Japanese Christian
community built the massive St. Mary's Cathedral, in the Urakami
River district of Nagasaki.

Now
it turned out, in the mystery of good and evil, that St. Mary's
Cathedral was one of the landmarks that the Bock's Car bombardier
had been briefed on, and looking through his bomb site over Nagasaki
that day, he identified the cathedral and ordered the drop.

At
11:02 am, Nagasaki Christianity was boiled, evaporated and carbonized
in a scorching, radioactive fireball. The persecuted, vibrant,
faithful, surviving center of Japanese Christianity had become ground
zero.

And
what the Japanese Imperial government could not do in over 200 years
of persecution, American Christians did in 9 seconds. The entire
worshipping community of Nagasaki was wiped out.

The
above true (and unwelcome) story should stimulate discussion among
those who claim to be disciples of Jesus. The Catholic chaplain
for the 509th Composite Group (the 1500 man Army Air
Force group, whose only job was to successfully deliver the atomic
bombs to their targets) was Father George Zabelka. Several decades
after the war ended, he saw his grave theological error
in religiously legitimating the mass slaughter that is modern land
and air war. He finally recognized that the enemies of his nation
were not the enemies of God, but rather children of God whom God
loved, and whom the followers of Jesus are to also love. Father
Zabelka's conversion to Christian nonviolence led him to devote
the remaining decades of his life speaking out against violence
in all its forms, especially the violence of militarism. The
Lutheran chaplain, William Downey, in his counseling of soldiers
who had become troubled by their participation in making
murder for the state, later denounced all killing, whether by a
single bullet or by a weapon of mass destruction.

In Daniel
Hallock’s important book, Hell,
Healing and Resistance, he talks about a 1997 Buddhist
retreat led by Thich Nhat Hanh that attempted to deal with the hellish
post-war existence of combat-traumatized Vietnam War veterans. Hallock
said, "Clearly, Buddhism offers something that cannot be found
in institutional Christianity. But then why should veterans embrace
a religion that has blessed the wars that ruined their souls? It
is no wonder they turn to a gentle Buddhist monk to hear what are,
in large part, the truths of Christ."

As
a lifelong Christian, that comment stung, but it was the sting of
a sad and sobering truth. And as a physician who deals with psychologically
traumatized patients every day, I know that it is violence, in all
its myriad of forms, that bruises the human psyche and soul, and
that that trauma is deadly and contagious, and it spreads through
the families and on through the 3rd and 4th
generations — until somebody stops continuing the domestic
violence that military violence breeds.

One
of the most difficult "mental illnesses" to treat is combat-induced
posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD). In its most virulent
form PTSD is virtually incurable. It is also a fact that whereas
most Vietnam War recruits came from churches where they actively
practiced their faith, if they came home with PTSD, the percentage
returning to the faith community approached zero.

This
is a serious spiritual problem for any church that (either by the
active support of its nation's "glorious" wars or by its
silence on such issues) fails to teach its young people about
what the earliest form of Christianity taught about violence: that
it was forbidden to those who wished to follow Jesus.

If
a Christian community fails to thoroughly inform its confirmands
about the gruesome realities of the war zone before they are forced
to register for potential conscription into the military, it invites
the condemnation that Jesus warned about in Matthew 18:5–6:
"And whoever welcomes a little child like this in my name
welcomes me. But if anyone causes one of these little ones who believes
in me to sin, it would be better for him to have a large millstone
hung around his neck and to be drowned in the depths of the sea."

The
purpose of this essay is to stimulate open and honest discussion
(at least among the followers of Jesus) about the ethics of killing
by and for ones government, not from the perspective of national
security ethics, not from the perspective of the military, not from
the perspective of (the pre-Christian) eye-for-an-eye retaliation
that Jesus rejected, but from the perspective of the Sermon on the
Mount, the core ethical teachings of Jesus in Matthew 5, 6 and 7.

Out
of that discussion (if any are willing to engage in it) should come
answers to those horrible realities that seem to immobilize decent
Bible-believing Christians everywhere: Why are some of us Christians
so willing to commit (or support and/or pay for others to commit)
homicidal violence against other fellow children of a loving, merciful,
forgiving God, the God whom Jesus clearly calls us to imitate? And
what can we Christians do, starting now, to prevent the next war
and the next epidemic of combat-induced posttraumatic stress
disorder?

What
can we do to prevent the next round of these atrocities, all of which
have been perpetrated by professed Christians: the My Lai Massacre,
Auschwitz and the other Nazi death camps, Dresden, El Mozote, Rwanda,
Jonestown, the black church bombings, the execution of innocent
death row inmates, the sanctions against Iraq (that killed 500,000
children during the 1990s), the military annihilation of Fallujah
and much of the rest of Iraq and Afghanistan, the torturing of innocents
at Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo Bay plus the many other international
war crimes (albeit unindicted to date) perpetrated by the current
"Christian" administration of the United States. And what
is to be done to prevent the next Nagasaki?

A
large portion of the responsibility for the prevention of military
atrocities like Nagasaki lies within the organized Christian churches
and whether or not they soon start teaching and living what the
radical nonviolent Jesus taught and lived.

The
next Nagasaki can be prevented if the churches finally heed
Jesus' call to nonviolence and refuse their government's call for
the bodies and souls of their sons and daughters.

August
30, 2005

Gary
Kohls, MD [send him mail],
an associate of Every Church a Peace
Church, is a practicing physician in Duluth, MN.

The Hidden Costs of War

Gary G. Kohls — Wed, 24 Aug 2005 05:00:00 +0000

11
years ago, on August 26, 1994, a US Marine combat veteran from Gulf
War I, Guy Harvey Baker, murdered two St. Paul policemen in cold
blood. Virtually all of the coverage by the major media made it
appear that these murders could not be rationalized (the usual inane
comment "we'll probably never understand what actually happened,"
was used by several commentators). However, if attention were to
be paid to the multiple underlying realities of the murder, most
of which were not reported, many sobering and unwelcome lessons
for our pro-war culture could be learned.

According
to the earliest press clippings (never repeated, as far as I could
tell) in the Minneapolis Star-Tribune, Baker had been, in his childhood
and adolescence, the proverbial fun-loving kid down the block. He
was popular in his Iowa hometown; his respected father had a well-paying
job teaching in the public schools; he dated the best-looking girls;
he was close to his family; and he hung out with the "cool
crowd." In 1987 he joined the US Marine Corps, every patriotic
American boy's dream, but in Baker's case it was the top of the
slippery slope that ended tragically in St. Paul.

The
Change Is Forever (Marine Corps Advertising Slogan)

Somewhere
between basic training in 1987 (where he had been a standout, breaking
course records in the obstacle course) and August 26, 1994, Baker
became a "remorseless killer, very cool, very calm, very chilling."
(That quote came from his jailers, but could just as easily have
been from his proud Marine Corps superiors.) Friends say he was
changed by his experiences in the Marines and specifically by his
experience in the war, where he served as a forward air controller,
working in the battlefield under dangerous conditions. He had been
decorated for exemplary service more than once.

But
Baker also had posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and, obviously,
antisocial personality disorder, both virtually incurable conditions
with multiple manifestations caused by a combination of exposure
to psychological traumas, cruelty, chronic stress, sleep deprivation,
neurotoxins and malnutrition.

The
prototype of combat-induced PTSD is the Vietnam combat veteran who
often came home "crazy," having been subjected to the
severe psychological, spiritual and physical stress of jungle combat.
The Vietnam combat soldier had been trained in every which way to
kill those who were fingered as enemies, training that wasn't easily
unlearned when he returned to civil society. He had found himself
fearing for his life constantly in an insane environment, ready
to point and shoot at anything that moved, usually asking questions
only after the killing. He had been immersed in a 24/7 kill or be
killed situation for months, often sleep-deprived, irritable, eating
toxic food, drinking contaminated water — a crazy-making environment
that offered little or no respite from the constant crises.

Combat
veterans in all wars are often forced to unquestioningly kill potential
enemies, including innocent civilians, and often witness, or participate
in, torture, grotesque death, horrifying sights, smells and sounds – memories that haunt them forever in the form of unwanted daytime
flashbacks and nocturnal nightmares.

On
top of that, many soldier-victims grew to hate the war and the senseless
killing, and began the lifelong mistrust of the Pentagon and the
government politicians that ordered them into a hellhole. Usually
the only respite to their intolerable existence was alcohol, tobacco,
pot, heroin and other drugs, made readily available by the military.
Upon returning to the states, the stressed veteran was not reprogrammed,
re-humanized or re-spiritualized to fit back into "normal"
society.

Combat-induced
PTSD is classically manifested by recurrent nightmares (Baker's
were about rats); severe insomnia (which causes chronic fatigue,
headaches, irritability, mental dullness and often unemployability);
depression and anxiety; panic attacks; flashbacks of the original
traumas; marital dysfunction; hypervigilence and aggression, with
violent reactions to what may only be minor threats. Such veterans
are often reclusive but also may be abusive of those around them
with reactions ranging from verbal, emotional, physical and/or sexual
abuse.

Traumatized
vets are much more likely to commit suicide than the average civilian
(it is believed that upwards of 200,000 Vietnam veterans have committed
suicide since the war ended). They are more often chemically dependent
or abusive of drugs and more likely to commit criminal acts (at
one point in the 1970s, 20% of all US prison inmates were Vietnam
vets). And homelessness is rampant, with a recent survey showing
that 30% of the homeless in the US are military veterans).

In
addition to Baker's PTSD, he had become partially deaf as a direct
result of his battlefield experience. This service-connected disability
certainly contributed to his joblessness and homelessness. Baker
was an early victim of the Gulf War Syndrome, which caused him to
have a chronic rash (remember Agent Orange?), numb feet, memory
loss, restless nights and night sweats. Baker blamed the anti-nerve
gas pills he was given, but of course he also had exposure to toxic
residues of all kinds, including explosives, petroleum products
and, most significantly, depleted uranium (DU), the radioactive
armor-piercing shells that burn on impact, spreading tiny particles
of uranium and plutonium all over the desert and into the air whenever
the wind blows, to be inhaled or ingested by passersby for billions
of years to come.

The
first Bush administration, a proxy for us American citizens (who,
as Bush the Elder often reminded us, supported the mass slaughter
in Gulf War I by a 9 to 1 margin) sent Guy Harvey Baker and many
other all-American "boys next-door" to do homicidal duty
to ensure American access to cheap Middle Eastern oil. Baker was
probably fooled into thinking that he was doing his "duty to
God and country" rather than protecting the profitability,
prestige and prerogative of multinational corporations such as Halliburton
and Exxon, who seem to be above the law. He learned his soldiering
trade well and became an obedient, unthinking, paid professional
killer. He suffered – and died (mentally and spiritually) in ways
that we civilians can't appreciate and which even Baker and his
loved ones may not have understood. He was one of the "few
good men" but was imbued with serious anti-social traits that
are thought to be necessary in combat but, in civilian life, are
a menace to society. He was discarded by the war machine that recruited
him and is now disavowed by the Marine Corps that trained him to
be what he became.

In
1994, Guy Harvey Baker was one of the most hated humans in the news,
but he was any mother's son.

What
the unthinking public and its vengeful politicians have done is
to turn a blind eye to the root causes of the Baker story, ignoring
what the glorification of war has done to our violence-tolerant
society and its unsuspecting military recruits. And therefore we
have not seen this truth: that our entire culture, not just Guy
Harvey Baker, has been victimized by our nation's reliance on problem-solving
by use of political intimidation, bribery, ruthless economic oppression
and lethal, unaffordable military violence.

August
24, 2005

Gary
Kohls, MD [send him mail],
an associate of Every Church a Peace
Church, is a practicing physician in Duluth, MN.

Whitewashing Hiroshima

Gary G. Kohls — Fri, 06 Aug 2004 05:00:00 +0000

DIGG THIS

Back in 1995,
the Smithsonian Institute was preparing an honest but aggressive
display dealing with the 50th anniversary of the atomic bombings
of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Amid much right-wing reactionary wrangling,
from various ultrapatriotic veterans groups all the way up to the
Newt Gingrich/GOP-dominated Congress, the Smithsonian was forced
to eliminate that painful but historically important part of the
story — the Japanese civilian perspective. So again we had another
example of powerful politically conservative groups influencing
public policy — and messing with history because they didn’t have
the courage to face up to unpleasant historical truths.

The historians
did have a gun to their heads, of course, but in the mle, the
media and therefore the public ignored a vital historical point.
And that is this: The war would have ended soon without the atomic
bombs, and thus there wouldn’t have been a bloody American invasion
of Japan. American intelligence, with the full knowledge of President
Truman, was fully aware of Japan’s desperate search for ways to
honorably surrender weeks before the order was given for the Holocaust
that was Hiroshima.

American intelligence
data, revealed in the 1980s, shows that a large-scale US invasion
(planned for no sooner than November 1, 1945) would have been unnecessary.
Japan was working on peace negotiations with the Allies through
its Moscow ambassador in July of 1945. Truman knew of these developments,
the US having broken the Japanese code years earlier, and all of
Japan’s military and diplomatic messages were being intercepted.
On July 13, 1945, Foreign Minister Togo said: “Unconditional
surrender (giving up all sovereignty) is the only obstacle to peace.”
Truman knew this, and the war could have ended by simply conceding
a post-war figurehead position for the emperor — a leader regarded
as a deity in Japan. That concession was refused by the US, the
Japanese continued negotiating for peace, and the bombs were dropped.
And after the war, the emperor remained in place. So what were the
real reasons for 1) the refusal to accept Japan’s offer of surrender
and 2) the decision to proceed with the bombings?

Shortly after
WWII, military analyst Hanson Baldwin wrote: “The Japanese, in a
military sense, were in a hopeless strategic situation by the time
the Potsdam demand for unconditional surrender was made on July
26, 1945.” Admiral William Leahy, top military aide to President
Truman, said in his war memoirs, I Was There: “It is my opinion
that the use of this barbarous weapon at Hiroshima and Nagasaki
was of no material assistance in our war against Japan. The Japanese
were already defeated and ready to surrender because of the effective
sea blockade and the successful bombing with conventional weapons.
My own feeling is that in being the first to use it, we had adopted
an ethical standard common to the barbarians of the Dark Ages.”
And General Dwight Eisenhower agreed.

Truman
proceeded with the plans to use the bombs, but he never officially
ordered the Nagasaki bomb that followed Hiroshima only three days
later. There are a number of factors that helped Truman make his
decision.

The
US had made a huge investment in time, mind and money ($2,000,000,000
in 1940 dollars) to produce the bombs, and there was no inclination
— and no guts — to stop the momentum.
The US
military — as did its citizens — had a bloodthirsty appetite for
revenge because of Pearl Harbor. Mercy wasn’t the mind-set of
these professed Christians, and the missions were accomplished
— with glee.
The Nagasaki
bomb was a plutonium bomb and Hiroshima’s was uranium. Scientific
curiosity certainly was a major factor for the mass slaughter
of the Nagasaki community. The decision to use both bombs had
obviously been made well in advance. The three day interval was
unconscionably inadequate — Japan being in shambles in its communications
and transportation capabilities — and besides, no one, not even
the Japanese high command, fully understood what had happened
at Hiroshima.
The Russians
had proclaimed their intent to enter the war with Japan 90 days
after V- Day, which would have been Aug. 8, two days after Hiroshima.
Indeed, Russia did declare war on August 8 and was marching across
Manchuria when Nagasaki was incinerated. The US didn’t want Japan
surrendering to anybody else, especially a future enemy, so the
first nuclear “messages” of the infantile Cold War were sent.
Russia indeed received less of the spoils of war, and the two
superpowers were mired in mutual moral bankruptcy and economic
near-bankruptcy for the rest of the century.

An estimated
80,000 innocent civilians — plus 20,000 young essentially weaponless
Japanese conscripts — died instantly in the Hiroshima bombing. Hundreds
of thousands suffered agonizing burns, leukemia and infections for
the rest of their shortened lives, and generations of the survivor’s
progeny inherited horrible radiation-induced illnesses, cancers
and premature death. What has been covered up is the fact that 12
American Navy pilots, their existence well known to the US command,
were incinerated in the Hiroshima jail on Aug. 6.

The 75,000
Nagasaki victims were virtually all innocent civilians, except for
the inhabitants of an allied POW camp near Nagasaki’s ground zero.
They were incinerated, carbonized, then evaporated, by a scientific
experiment carried out by obedient, unaware soldiers. The War Dept.
knew of the existence of the POWs but, when informed, simply
replied: “Targets previously assigned for Centerboard (atomic bomb
mission code name) remain unchanged.”

So the end
of the war in the Pacific was just one more myth in a long list
of myths Americans have been fed by our military and civilian leaders,
war being glorified in the process. A short list of some of the
others includes the censored-out military invasions of (and usually
CIA-orchestrated atrocities in) Korea, Viet Nam, Laos, Cambodia,
Granada, Panama, Iraq, the Philippines, Chile, El Salvador, Nicaragua,
Guatemala, Haiti, Colombia, etc, etc. But somehow we still hang
on to our shaky “my country right or wrong” patriotism, desperately
wanting to believe that our nation only works for peace, justice
and democracy and not mainly for capitalism. While it is true that
the US military has faced down a few despots, with natural heroism
and sacrifice from the dead and now dying American soldiers, more
often than not our methods of rationalizing the atrocities of war
are identical to those of the “godless communists” or “evil empire”
on the other side of the battle line. August 6 and 9, 1945 are just
two more examples of the brutalization of innocent civilians in
“total war," whether it is called “regretful collateral damage”
or “friendly fire."

The
time has come for Americans to stand up for real justice and peace
(rather than the unaffordable “armed truces” we have all over the
world) by acknowledging the whole truth of history
and owning up to the numerous war crimes and crimes against humanity
that have been perpetrated by American militarism in the last half-century.
And then we need to start accepting the consequences of our leadership's
actions, like the courageous and honorable people we claim to be.
Doing what is right for the whole of humanity for a change, rather
than just what is advantageous for us over-privileged Americans,
would be real honor, real patriotism and an essential start toward
real peace.

August
3, 2006

Gary
Kohls, MD [send him mail],
an associate of Every Church a Peace
Church, is a practicing physician in Duluth, MN.

Whitewashing Hiroshima: The Uncritical Glorification of American Militarism

Gary G. Kohls — Fri, 06 Aug 2004 05:00:00 +0000

Back
in 1995, the Smithsonian Institute was preparing an honest but aggressive
display dealing with the 50th anniversary of the atomic bombings
of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Amid much right-wing reactionary wrangling,
from various ultrapatriotic veterans groups all the way up to the
Newt Gringrich-dominated Congress, the Smithsonian was forced to
eliminate that painful but historically important part of the story
– the Japanese civilian perspective. So again we had another
example of powerful politically conservative ultrapatriotic groups
influencing public policy – and messing with history because
they didn’t have the courage to face up to unpleasant historical
truths.

The
historians did have a gun to their heads, of course, but in the
mle, the media and the public overlooked a vital historical point.
And that is this: The two bombs did not have to be used to end the
war and there wouldn’t have been a bloody American invasion of Japan.
American intelligence, with the full knowledge of President Truman,
was fully aware of Japan’s desperate search for ways to honorably
surrender weeks before the order was given for the American-led
nuclear Holocaust that was Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

American
intelligence data, revealed in the 1980s, show that a large-scale
US invasion (planned for no sooner than November 1, 1945) would
have been unnecessary. Japan was working on peace negotiations with
the Allies through its Moscow ambassador in July of 1945. Truman
knew of these developments because the US had broken the Japanese
code years earlier, and all of Japan’s military and diplomatic messages
were being intercepted. On July 13, 1945, Foreign Minister Togo
said: “Unconditional surrender (giving up all sovereignty)
is the only obstacle to peace.” Truman knew this, and the war could
have ended by simply conceding a post-war figurehead position for
the emperor, a leader regarded as a deity in Japan. That concession
was refused by the US; the Japanese continued negotiating for peace;
and the bombs were dropped. And, ironically, after the war, the
emperor was allowed to remain in place. So what were the real reasons
for 1) the refusal to accept Japan’s offer of surrender and 2) the
decision to proceed with the bombings?

Shortly
after WWII, military analyst Hanson Baldwin wrote: “The Japanese,
in a military sense, were in a hopeless strategic situation by the
time the Potsdam demand for unconditional surrender was made on
July 26, 1945.” Admiral William Leahy, top military aide to President
Truman, said in his war memoirs, I
Was There: “It is my opinion that the use of this barbarous
weapon at Hiroshima and Nagasaki was of no material assistance in
our war against Japan. The Japanese were already defeated and ready
to surrender because of the effective sea blockade and the successful
bombing with conventional weapons. My own feeling is that in being
the first to use it, we had adopted an ethical standard common to
the barbarians of the Dark Ages.” And General Dwight Eisenhower
agreed.

Truman
proceeded with the plans, but he never officially ordered the Nagasaki
bomb that followed Hiroshima. There are a number of factors that
helped Truman make his decision.

The US
had made a huge investment in time, mind and money ($2,000,000,000
in 1940 dollars)
to produce the bombs, and there was no inclination – and
no guts – to stop the momentum.
The US
military – as did its citizens – had a bloodthirsty
appetite for revenge because of Pearl Harbor. Mercy wasn’t the
mind-set of these professed Christians, and the missions were
accomplished – with glee.
The Nagasaki
bomb was a plutonium bomb and Hiroshima’s was uranium. Scientific
curiosity certainly was a major factor at Nagasaki. The decision
to use both had obviously been made well in advance. The three
day interval was unconscionably inadequate – Japan being
in shambles in its communications and transportation capabilities
– and no one, not even the Japanese high command, fully
understood what had happened at Hiroshima.
The Russians
had proclaimed their intent to enter the war with Japan 90 days
after V-E Day, which would have been Aug. 8, two days after
Hiroshima. Indeed, Russia did declare war on
August 8 and was marching across Manchuria when the innocent
civilians of Nagasaki were incinerated. The US didn’t want Japan
surrendering to anybody else, especially an upcoming enemy,
so the first nuclear “messages” of the infantile Cold War were
sent. Russia indeed received less of the spoils of war, and
the two superpowers were mired in mutual moral and economic
near-bankruptcy for the rest of the century – with no end
in sight.

An
estimated 80,000 innocent civilians – plus 20,000 young, essentially
weaponless Japanese conscripts – died instantly in the Hiroshima
bombing. Hundreds of thousands of others suffered agonizing burns
and infections for the rest of their shortened lives, and generations
of the survivor’s progeny inherited horrible radiation-induced illnesses,
cancers and premature death. What has been covered up is the fact
that 12 American POWs, Navy pilots, their existence well known to
the US command, were killed in a Hiroshima jail on Aug. 6.

The
75,000 Nagasaki victims were virtually all innocent civilians, except
for the inhabitants of an allied POW camp near Nagasaki’s ground
zero. They were instantaneously incinerated, carbonized and evaporated
by a scientific experiment carried out by obedient, unaware soldiers.
The War Dept. knew of the existence of the POWs but, when informed,
simply replied: “Targets previously assigned for Centerboard (atomic
bomb mission code name) remain unchanged.”

So
the end of the war in the Pacific was just one more myth in a long
list of myths we have been fed by our military and political leaders,
war being glorified in the process. A short list of some of the
others include the covered-up military actions (and frequently CIA-orchestrated
atrocities) in Korea, Viet Nam, Laos, Cambodia, Granada, Panama,
Iraq, the Philippines, Chile, El Salvador, Nicaragua, Guatemala,
Haiti, Colombia, etc., etc. But somehow we still hang on to our
shaky “my country right or wrong” patriotism, desperately wanting
to believe that our nation only works for peace, justice and democracy
and not mainly for the form of capitalism that has been corrupted
to its core. While it is true that the US military has faced down
a few despots, with natural heroism and sacrifice from the physically,
psychologically and spiritually dead and dying American soldiers,
more often than not our methods of rationalizing the atrocities
of war are identical to those of the “godless communists” or “evil
empire” on the other side of the battle line. August 6 and 9, 1945
are just two more examples of the brutalization of innocent civilians
in “total war," whether it is called “‘regretful' collateral
damage” or “friendly fire."

The
time has come for Americans to stand up for real justice and real
peace (rather than the fake variety of our unaffordable “armed truces”
that we have all over the world) by acknowledging the whole truth
of history and owning up to the numerous censored-out American war
crimes and crimes against humanity, that have been perpetrated in
our names over the last half-century. And then we need to start
accepting the consequences of our nation’s actions, like the courageous
and honorable people we claim to be. Doing what is right for the
whole of humanity for a change, rather than just what is advantageous
for us already over-privileged Americans, would be real honor, real
patriotism and an essential start toward real peace.

August
6, 2004

Gary
Kohls, MD [send him mail],
an associate of Every Church a Peace
Church, is a practicing physician in Duluth, MN.