Dresden, Guernica, and "Friendly Fire"
The front page of the New York Times carried this headline today: “Bombing Error Puts a Spotlight On Pilots’ Pills.” As you may be aware, two American pilots are on trial by the military for causing the deaths of four members of the Canadian armed forces in Afghanistan. I saw it referred to on TV the other night as the “friendly fire” trial. Of all the oxymorons that have been added to our collective vocabulary by the Pentagon (military intelligence, Peacekeeper Missile, etc.), “friendly fire” stands alone. What the hell is so friendly about a 500-pound bomb landing on you?
Anyway, I’m waiting for this headline: “Bombing Error Puts a Spotlight On Bombs.” We’ll probably be waiting a while for that one, if some of the other headlines I’m reading today are any indication, but there are two articles in the “Ideas” section of the Boston Sunday Globe that address the madness unleashed by aerial bombardment.
The first is an article entitled, “The fire last time,” about a German best-seller that documents the bombing campaigns against Germany during World War II. The article is here:
http://www.boston.com/dailyglobe2/019/focus/The_fire_last_time+.shtml
Here’s the last paragraph:
"Whatever Jrg Friedrich's shortcomings as a historian, and with all due respect to Winston Churchill, "The Fire" shows that the heroism of political and military leaders in wartime pales in comparison to the suffering of the people on the ground. It also reminds us to question the probity of the means, even when the end result seems desirable. War is hell-if you wage one, you should have a damn good reason."
A similar tone is struck in another piece in the same section, “'Guernica': seeing the larger picture.” The article reviews a new book, “Picasso’s War: The Destruction of Guernica, and the Masterpiece That Changed the World.” The opening paragraph is a description of the events that served as the basis for Picasso’s masterpiece:
“The morning of Monday, April 26, 1937, dawned clear along the northern Spanish coast. Like all Mondays, it was a market day in Guernica, a small village six miles inland and 181/2 miles east from Bilbao. Farmers began arriving in the town square with the week's harvest. Shoppers would soon fill the streets. But German Luftwaffe colonel Wolfram von Richthofen wasn't taking any chances. In Spain at the request of Francisco Franco's rebel army (and to test Germany's blitzkrieg strategy), Richthofen had some 50 fighter and bomber aircraft, 120 airmen, thousands of pounds of percussion, projectile, and incendiary bombs, and countless rounds of cannon ammunition at his disposal. Richthofen asked his squadron meteorologist for a forecast. When he received the assurance of good weather, he ordered the attack on Guernica.
It was a military strike unprecedented in modern warfare: the first large-scale, deliberate airborne attack of a civilian target. The afternoon bombardment lasted 31/4 hours. Citizens fleeing town were machine-gunned by German fighters. By nightfall, in Richthofen's words, Guernica was 'literally leveled to the ground.'”
http://www.boston.com/dailyglobe2/019/living/_Guernica_seeing_the_larger_picture+.shtml
As our government sends men and machines into position to carry out their planned war on Iraq, it might be time for us to “Start Seeing Iraqi Children,” as one of the signs at yesterday’s rally at the National Mall in Washington, D.C. exhorted. I think I’ll give Picasso the last word tonight:
