There is no justification for Hiroshima – or the possession of nuclear weapons

I am so tired of arguing about whether the atomic attacks on Japan were necessary for ending the war, or whether they might have saved the lives of thousands of American soldiers who would have otherwise had to invade the Japanese mainland, or indeed, whether the attacks were unnecessary and primarily aimed at the Soviet Union. It doesn’t matter. They were morally wrong and a horrendous crime either way, no matter what policy-makers believed at the time; no matter what cause they were in support of. This is because, as our politicians so frequently remind us about terrorism, there is no cause, no belief, that justifies deliberately targetting civilians. This is the crux of it: nothing justifies incinerating hundreds of thousands of civilians. Nothing. It might have been different if they had bombed the Japanese fleet or a military camp. But they didn’t. They targetted a city of civilians, which hadn’t been bombed already, and which was flat so they could determine the subsequent damage. And when the weather wasn’t quite right, they chose another city to obliterate. A case of randomly choosing who will die.

Whether you deliberately kill hundreds of thousands of civilians by instantaneously burning them to a cinder (followed, of course, by months and years of radiation poisoning for thousands of others), or whether you slowly load them into cattle trucks and send them to gas chambers and then incinerate them in furnaces, it is still wrong to deliberately murder civilians. If instead of using a massive bomb dropped from the skies, America had dropped killer squads into Hiroshima to round people up, slaughter them with knives and burn their bodies until Japan surrendered, that would have been equally immoral. The method of killing doesn’t mean very much, although it could be argued that an atomic bomb is more immoral than many others because it precludes civilians from any chance of escape. At least if America had sent killer squads into Hiroshima, most civilians might have had a chance of escape or resistance. With a nuclear bomb, there is no escape, no chance of survival. The point is, there is no legitimate justification for deliberately killing hundreds of thousands of civilians. None. No matter what method you use – atomic bombs, conventional bombs, bullets, machetes or gas chambers – it is still wrong.

One of the biggest problems with the continual political and academic attempts to try and justify this horrendous attack on civilians is that it opens the door to future attacks on civilians. It’s a slippery slope to moral nihilism and indiscriminate slaughter. If it’s legitimate to kill 200,000 Japanese civilians to save the lives of American soldiers in the war, or end a terrible war, then why not a few thousand Iraqi or Afghan civilians to prevent another terrorist attack like 9/11? More importantly, if it’s legitimate for America to kill enemy civilians to potentially save the lives of its citizens, then why shouldn’t other nations take the same attitude? And why stop at states? Why not terrorist or militant groups? Why couldn’t terrorist groups argue that killing a few enemy civilians now could save more lives in future? What if a few bomb attacks on the London Underground helped to prevent the invasion of Iraq and thereby saved over a hundred thousand Iraqi civilians? Wouldn’t that be the same justification?

In fact, this kind of moral calculation, following the American example, is exactly what we have witnessed ever since. In Osama bin Laden’s statements he frequently referenced the atomic attack on Hiroshima as justification for his own group’s actions. If America can deliberately target civilians to achieve their goals, then why shouldn’t bin Laden? Is it just that some people – the evil ones – are forbidden from deliberately killing civilians, but others – the good guys – can kill hundreds of thousands of civilians as long as it is in a good cause? In some ways, the 9/11 attacks represent the same twisted logic as the original ground zero: deliberately trying to kill thousands of civilians is justified by the rightness of your cause. The real question posed by these continued attempts to justify Hiroshima is: can atrocity against civilians ever be justified, even if the perpetrator believes it’s in a good and noble cause? The answer is, no! Emphatically, no! From this perspective, 9/11 and ground zero Hiroshima are the twin bastards of the same perverted moral logic.

Until America – and all of those who continue to offer legitimacy to its atomic attacks – admit that it was an immoral horrendous atrocity, instead of trying to whitewash it out of history, the belief that targeting civilians is sometimes justified will never be eradicated. Owning up and making a commitment to never deliberately targetting civilians again is crucial because America is an opinion leader – an example to the rest of the world. And if America refuses to apologise for deliberately killing hundreds of thousands of civilians and demonstrating real repentance for this horrific act, then why should any other government apologise for similar acts? Why should China ever apologise or indeed stop attacking civilians in Tibet? Why should Russia repent of its attacks on civilians in Chechnya? Indeed, why should al Qaeda ever apologise, or the IRA, or ETA, or any group that has deliberately attacked civilians?

In the end, if indiscriminately killing civilians is inherently wrong, and if America should apologise for its horrific attacks on Japan, then it must also give up its nuclear weapons, because such weapons can only ever kill hundreds of thousands of civilians. They are indiscriminate. They cannot be used in a war between armed opponents. They are civilian-targetted weapons. At present, America and the other nuclear powers have enough nuclear bombs to kill every man, woman and child on the planet several times over. Threatening to deliberately kill millions of civilians is immoral, and hypocritical. If it’s wrong for terrorists to threaten to kill civilians, and if no cause or belief justifies terrorist targetting of civilians, then the same is true for nuclear weapons. It’s that simple.

Never again. Abolish nuclear weapons now.

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Lamenting the Literary Terrorist

Why have novelists so far failed to write a believable terrorist character, one that reflects actual people in the real world? Why do literary terrorists instead mostly conform to propagandistic stereotypes and widespread cultural myths? I must have read a hundred novels – both popular and serious literary fiction – with central terrorist characters, and I have yet to be satisfied with one which I feel represents a real person in the real world. Here, I am not referring to offbeat characters accused of terrorism (such as Paul Auster’s Leviathan), terrorists who are dead and their motivations have to be reconstructed retrospectively (such as Yasmina Khadra’s The Attack), or characters accused of terrorism who are really not terrorists in any reasonable sense (such as Heinrich Boll’s The Lost Honour of Katharina Blum). Rather, I am concerned with the novel in which a terrorist plays a central role.

Most recently, I read The Garden of Last Days by Andre Dubus III. In this otherwise excellent novel, a central character is one of the 9/11 terrorists – one of the ones who frequented Miami strip clubs before embarking on the mission. This character, Bassam, conforms to several common stereotypes typical of the literary terrorists I have come across.

First, in a broad sense, and characteristic of a great many literary terrorist characters I have come across (such as Thomas Harris’s Black Sunday, and more recently, Vince Flynn’s Memorial Day), he is filled with a pathological hatred of America and Americans. He hates its culture, its success and its lack of piety, and he fantasizes about slitting the throats of people he meets. He looks forward to the vengeance he is about to unleash on America. In this particular novel, Bassam’s hatred is further twisted into a warped self-loathing which results from his inability to resist the sexual attraction he feels towards the scantily clad American women and the pleasure he takes from alcohol and smoking – things purportedly denied him by his religion. He is, in effect, deeply cruel, ruthless and psychologically unbalanced. In this, he follows a long-standing literary trope which goes back to Joseph Conrad’s The Secret Agent, who was ruthlessly willing to risk his wife’s son in his diabolical plot.

This leads directly to the second theme common to literary depictions of terrorists. In a depiction remarkably similar to the central terrorist characters in John Updike’s Terrorist and Nelson DeMille’s The Lion’s Game, the terrorist, Bassam, is deeply confused by his sexual feelings, which leads to a perverse sexual experience in which a confused self-hatred is the primary outcome. In Dubus III’s depiction, Bassam (along with most of the stereotypical terrorists in popular thrillers) looks forward to death because he longs to experience all the sexual delights of the virgins promised to him in paradise. The sexually perverted terrorist is a surprisingly common theme in the depiction of the literary terrorist.

Third, the literary terrorist, following Dubus III, Updike, Moshin Hamid’s The Reluctant Fundamentalist, Don DeLillo’s Falling Man, and countless others, is a religious fanatic. In these depictions, the terrorist is portrayed as being motivated solely by a perverted and all-consuming sense of divine purpose. This means that they are also inherently irrational and unreasonable, a true believer in a twisted world view. In all cases, the religious fanatical terrorist stands in stark contrast to the ‘good’ religious person who possesses a moderate, non-political, positive religious orientation, rather than a twisted, pathological zealotry.

A fourth common characteristic of the literary terrorist is the extent to which they are motivated by a desire for personal revenge. For example, following DeMille’s Lion character, Yasmina Khadra’s terrorist in The Sirens of Baghdad is motivated by the desire to avenge shame and violence visited on his family by Coalition troops. For this, he is willing to die delivering a specially developed biological agent to Europe which will kill millions. The literary terrorist, it seems, can be motivated by religion or revenge, but never political conviction.

Interestingly, a final characteristic sometimes seen in the literary terrorist, including Doris Lessing’s The Good Terrorist, is the good-hearted but misguided, naïve, simple-minded individual who is easily manipulated by more villainous individuals. In this depiction, the terrorist is really a kind of victim, and thus, not really a terrorist at all. We can feel human sympathy for this kind of terrorist.

The point is, none of these depictions really accord with the academic research on people who join militant or terrorist groups, nor do they accurately reflect existing interviews, auto-biographies and biographies of terrorists. These two bodies of evidence show instead that terrorists are most often intelligent, rational, altruistic, socially integrated, married or in relationships, and motivated by understandable political grievances, not unlike the kind of people who join organisations like Greenpeace or WWF. A realistic depiction of a terrorist therefore might describe someone like Nelson Mandela, a man imprisoned for being a terrorist and officially listed as a terrorist by the US government until a few years ago.

The question is: why have novelists failed to do their research in the case of terrorists and instead relied on unrealistic stereotypes and exaggerations? I mean, it’s not as if novelists couldn’t go to Northern Ireland and talk to dozens of former terrorists, visit convicted terrorists in prison or even just read a few auto-biographies. I suspect this failure is a function of the way in which terrorism has been socially constructed as a modern cultural taboo – a taboo which novelists are still unwilling to challenge. A novel I am currently reading – The Bombmaker by Stephen Leather – illustrates my point. Purportedly about a retired IRA bombmaker who’s daughter is kidnapped in order to force her to make another bomb, the author cannot bring himself to write about an actual terrorist who might later regret what they’ve done and wish to have a normal life. Instead, it turns out the former bombmaker was working for the British intelligence services; that is, she was one of the ‘good guys’ all along, therefore we do not need to feel anxious about sympathizing with her predicament.

Unlike ordinary murderers and criminals, novelists, it seems, are not allowed to paint a sympathetic picture of a terrorist or attempt to understand their political motivations or perspectives as fellow human beings. There is no equivalent of Truman Capote’s In Cold Blood for terrorists, for example. Instead, the dominant taboo against terrorism must never be violated and terrorists must always be portrayed as deviant, abnormal, inhuman. They are not allowed to be like us in any way. The problem is, not only are such stereotypes wrong, they are potentially dangerous. At the very least, giving the ‘Other’ a human face, including the terrorist ‘Other’, is a necessary step in learning to deal constructively and nonviolently with conflict and those who would resist us. It is also a crucial step in preventing the worst kinds of abuses against those we have placed outside of humanity. In Abu Ghraib we transformed the terrorist into the animal we had always imagined them to be – the animal novelists have always told us they are.

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How Bizarre: Book-burning, Magic and the Logic of Counter-terrorism

Recently, I was amazed to read the following story from a colleague of mine who had experienced first-hand the terrifyingly illogical world of counter-terrorism. He related the following experience:

Travelling to ISA from Dublin via Heathrow, I was going through security at Heathrow (through the dreaded terminal 5) where I put my hand-luggage through the scanner. Some sun-screen came up on the x-ray and so the attendant went through the routine of inspecting my bag. In my bag, I had a number of books: Imagined Communities, Foucault on Security Politics and War, The IRA at War, 1916-1923, Critical Terrorism Studies: A New Research Agenda, and Terrorism: A Critical Introduction. The attendant took out the sunscreen, put it aside, and then took out Imagined Communities face down–he did not flip it over to look at the cover, indicating to me that he did not consider ‘books’ to be suspicious in the first instance; I, of course, suspected that this was soon going to change, and it did change when he took out Terrorism: A Critical Introduction, which happened to be face-up. As you know, this book has a picture of a passenger plane on the cover, and the word ‘Terrorism’ in a pretty big font–and so he stopped, seemingly confused as to what to do, and saw Critical Terrorism Studies: A new research agenda as the next book in my bag, also face-up, while holding the other book in his hand. He took this out, put these two books to one side, and then put the remaining books, including The IRA at war, 1916-1923 into the tray with all my other stuff–i.e. the non-suspect materials. For me, this is especially interesting in that the IRA book specifically references what may be considered a ‘terrorist’ group on its cover, but does not have the word ‘terrorism’ in the title. He then flicked briefly through the two CTS books–as if to see if there was anything ‘hidden’ inside–before turning to ask me why I was travelling with these materials.

I told him that I was travelling to San Diego for an academic conference and that I needed to use these books to finish off writing a paper–which is true. I also explained to him that I am a PhD student and that I research and teach on the area of ‘terrorism’ and international security. Still somewhat perplexed, he requested my passport and boarding pass, took them, and stepped away to make some sort of communication through his walkie-talkie. As far as I remember, he also took my student ID–not sure if this was requested as other form of identity, or if I provided it to him as further proof of my status as a PhD student. I do not know what was said, but he returned a couple of minutes later to say–to the best of my memory–’Just to inform you that due to the materials in your possession, we have called the police as a matter of routine. Sometimes they decide to come down in these situations, sometimes they don’t. On this occasion, they have decided to come down.’ In the meantime, he had placed the two CTS books into a new tray and after much deliberation, decided to put the IRA book in as well, just in case, and ran these books through the x-ray machine again.

I was quite angry at this stage, as there were people looking, I had just wasted €40 on sunscreen that I never got to use and I also felt perturbed by this feeling of suspicion being placed upon me. Most overtly, my main concern was that I would miss my flight to San Diego which was leaving in approx. 2 and a half hours. Having taken my passport, boarding pass and ID, I was told to ‘wait there’ until the police arrived–’there’ being just the far side of the security area beside the railing overlooking the food court–in full view of everyone. At this stage, a few people, hearing ‘terrorism’ in an airport setting, were curious and stuck around in the background, looking away and pretending to look at the ground/ceiling every time I caught their eye. Before moving a couple of steps back to this new ‘waiting area’, I asked the security attendant–in a pretty angry tone, it has to be said–’what is the rationale for this? These are academic, published books on terrorism that are directly related to my studies’. I don’t remember his exact response, but basically he did not address this and told me to ‘wait there’ until the police arrived. I asked ‘how long will that be, as I have a flight to catch’, and he responded that it won’t be long, in a very disparaging manner–as if he was revelling in the power of having me as a suspect.

At this stage, I was very annoyed and pretty anxious about missing my flight. Feeling the gaze of suspicion, I suddenly became aware of my posture, how I was standing, asking myself do I sit down, where do I look, how do I look, and actually imagining how a ‘real terrorist’ would act and stand in this situation, in some sort of a mind-game. I decided that a ‘real terrorist’ would be scratching himself as I was, and told myself to stop doing that–my priority was to get to San Diego, so I also made a conscious decision to be nice in any more dealings with that official and any others–I felt that if I was in any way confrontational with the police when they come, it will only contribute to the chances of me missing my flight. I knew this incident was becoming more and more significant in terms of what I study, I but said to myself that I would think about that afterwards. I was waiting for 45-50 minutes for the police to come, and in that time I inquired, again, as to how much longer it will take. Once again, I was unceremoniously told to ‘wait over there’. The security attendant changed shift after about 25mins of this time and handed my passport, boarding pass and student ID to a new security attendant. He filled her in with the basic details and she came over to me to ask about the situation. I explained to her what I had told the guy and she was far more amenable, which put me more at ease.

After 45-50 minutes, I noticed some police uniforms to my right coming through the security section. I counted 12 police officers, especially noticing their handguns and batons, all coming towards me. I had decided in this instance that San Diego would remain a pipe dream and that I was in for a very long and far less sunny afternoon at Heathrow. Luckily, they all passed me except for 2 officers, as they were actually only changing shifts, so I was quite relieved, naturally. First thing to say here is that the two police officers were very cordial. Once again, they apologised for the delay in coming down–to which I reciprocated, ‘don’t worry about it’, acting out my decision to be as nice as possible to facilitate my chances of getting on the flight.

One officer (probably in early his 30s) did all the questioning and basically asked me, again, why I had these materials and what was the purpose of my travel. I relayed my story again that I was going to an academic conference and that I needed these books to write a paper. He understood this, and seemed pretty interested on a personal level as to my area of research. I asked him how long more I’d be waiting, as I wanted to catch my flight and he replied that they had called Special Branch to run a ‘background check’ on me, and that ‘we’ had to wait for that before progressing further (it had definitely changed from a you situation to a more overtly empathetic we situation by this stage). The walkie-talkie squawked literally just after he said this, and it was Special Branch, confirming that they had visited the university website and had seen my profile as a PhD student. Though I did not hear what was said, the officer relayed this information to me and informed me that I was free to go on my way; but before doing so, he needed the names of the books in question so that he could take these down and ‘pass on the details’–presumably to Special Branch–, presumably to say that these books are not a threat and are ‘permissible material’, or something along those lines. We went over to the security table top where the tray with my other ‘non-suspect’ material lay–including my laptop and a USB key which, if they had actually checked, contained mass amounts of material on terrorism, including a lot of primary AQ statements and other primary material.

 Once here, he informed me that I would be placed on a ‘list’ for future reference, so that if I’m ever stopped going through a UK airport, it will show up that I am permitted to travel with such material. I inquired about this ‘list’ further and he ‘reassured’ me that it was just to make things easier for me in future. The security attendant behind the counter apologetically explained that the sunscreen would have to go into the bin, and I felt that there was a complete change in atmosphere here from one of suspicion, to one of respect due to what I studied and my status as a ‘lecturer’ also. In other words, it was okay for me to travel with this material as I had sufficient expertise in the area–which left me to question what if I was a person who had bought these books out of a general interest in terrorism, with no identifiable online profile confirming my ‘expert’ status; or worse, a Muslim citizen interested in this area; perhaps even flying to South East, or Central Asia.

After getting some food and sending a few texts to friends about my experience as ‘The Heathrow One’ in a joking reference to the Guilford 4 and the Birmingham 6, I was a lot more relaxed and relieved that I would be going to San Diego. As I queued up at the gate to get on the flight, people were called through, and every person sailed on by after scanning their boarding pass and passport. When it came to me, however, the scan seemed to bring up something, as the attendant clearly stopped to look at something on the screen, and seemed to say something to his colleague standing right next to him–also looking at the screen–who nodded and who also stared intently at the screen. He typed in something on the computer–which I had not seen done for anyone else–before handing me back my passport and boarding pass. I don’t know what was on the screen, what was typed, or what was said, but I suspect it had to do with my newly-fledged identity as a ‘non-terrorist’ rather than a regular citizen. 

I am sure other readers will be able to relate similar or even worse experiences than this; they seem to have become shockingly normal when travelling these days. What shocked me was the way it perfectly illustrated some completely bizarre attitudes from the security personnel.

First, the fact that they needed to re-x-ray the three terrorism books is completely bizarre. It suggests that they felt that these books might contain more than just pages of paper, but that they might contain dangerous materials that are not detectable in one single x-ray but require double scrutiny. Added to this, it suggests that they truly believed that a terrorist might hide a dangerous material in a book with the word ‘terrorism’ on the front cover! Alternately, it might suggest that they believed that technology could reveal any dangers hidden in the suspicious text itself.

Second, I found it bizarre that possessing books with the word ‘terrorism’ on the front cover was itself a reason for suspicion – in other words, that only risky or potentially dangerous individuals would want to learn about terrorism by reading such books. For all they knew, these could have been books about how to defeat terrorism. This unknowing about the intentions of the reader or the content of the books however, fed straight into the ingrained paranoia of counter-terrorism and created uncertainty sufficient for immediate securitisation. [I wonder if there has ever been a terrorist in history who has carried around books on terrorism.]

Third, it seems bizarre to me that books can be considered dangerous in and of themselves, requiring intervention and careful monitoring from security professionals. This is an outmoded and discredited view which sees the written word as having almost magical powers to poison people’s minds, transform their personalities and make them do things which they otherwise might not do. It is the same logic that decries rock music as the cause of youth suicide and recommends book burnings to prevent the spread of moral decay. Furthermore, by putting my colleague on a list of people authorised to carry books with the word ‘terrorism’ in the title, it suggests that they believe that some people can prove themselves to have the necessary will power and spiritual qualities to deal with the powerful magic of these texts, while others not allowed on the list might be vulnerable to being seduced by the texts. Such non-authorised people might, by reading a book on terrorism, decide to become a terrorist! More broadly, this episode suggests that in the current environment, only scholars and authorised professionals have a good reason to read about terrorism: there is no good reason apart from that. Curiosity and thirst for knowledge are no longer acceptable reasons for reading a book on terrorism.

Finally, it is an obvious point well illustrated by many others’ experiences, but if my colleague had not been a white, European citizen but a Muslim or person of colour, the racist vagaries of profiling would have resulted in far worse treatment and perhaps being permanently banned from having books on terrorism in their possession. In this bizarre worldview, non-white and certainly Muslim people are the most vulnerable to being seduced by the written word and should not be allowed to read books on terrorism lest they are tempted to become one!

One day I may have to test out whether having my name on the front cover of these books makes a difference – or maybe authoring a book on terrorism is even more suspicious than reading one!

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