John Pilger – From Hiroshima to Syria – the enemy whose name we dare not speak
On my wall is the front page of Daily Express of September 5, 1945
and the words: “I write this as a warning to the world.” So began
Wilfred Burchett’s report from Hiroshima. It was the scoop of the
century. For his lone, perilous journey that defied the US occupation
authorities, Burchett was pilloried, not least by his embedded
colleagues. He warned that an act of premeditated mass murder on an epic
scale had launched a new era of terror.
Almost every day now, he is vindicated. The intrinsic criminality of
the atomic bombing is borne out in the US National Archives and by the
subsequent decades of militarism camouflaged as democracy. The Syria
psychodrama exemplifies this. Yet again, we are held hostage to the
prospect of a terrorism whose nature and history even the most liberal
critics still deny. The great unmentionable is that humanity’s most
dangerous enemy resides across the Atlantic.
John Kerry’s farce and Barack Obama’s pirouettes are temporary.
Russia’s peace deal over chemical weapons will, in time, be treated with
the contempt that all militarists reserve for diplomacy. With Al-Qaida
now among its allies, and US-armed coupmasters secure in Cairo, the US
intends to crush the last independent states in the Middle East: Syria
first, then Iran. “This operation [in Syria],” said the former French
foreign minister Roland Dumas in June, “goes way back. It was prepared,
pre-conceived and planned.”
