Kerry at Hiroshima

As if with Obama Administration now is a season of doing penance for something inhumane done in the past? President Obama is repentant over the 'worst mistake' he made in his eight-year rules was that he did not plan for the aftermath of the 2011 toppling of Libyan leader Moammar Qadhafi. Not only did the Nato-led intervention plunge economically stable Libya into a profound chaos, it also triggered a tribal warfare which has killed thousands. His Secretary of State, John Kerry, was in Hiroshima, the Japanese city the Americans struck with an atom bomb in 1945 killing 14,000 of its inhabitants, to tell everybody that the place is 'a reminder of the need to pursue a world free of nuclear weapons'. The United States is the only country with singular history to have used this weapon of choice against Japan, and there seems to be no going back on it given the reports that Americans are now working to manufacture more effective and precision-guided nuclear bombs. After laying a wreath on the Memorial Cenotaph for the atomic bomb victims, along with his counterparts from the Group of Seven (G7), Kerry mused, "Everyone in the world should see and feel the power of this memorial." It is "a stark, harsh, compelling reminder not only of our obligation to end the threat of nuclear weapons, but to rededicate all our efforts to avoid war itself". One would have no quarrel with his painful take - exceptional being his personal worldview against nuclear proliferation. But what he said doesn't sit well with a majority of Americans to whom nuke-bombing Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki was a justified decision necessary to bring a swift end to the World War II. Therefore, when asked whether President Obama will visit the Hiroshima memorial when he comes here in May to attend the G7 Summit, Secretary of State Kerry was not certain. Nor did he feel necessary to offer an apology on behalf of the United States. No one in Japan sought an apology, he said, adding "nor is there any interest in reopening the question of blame for the sequence of events that culminated in the use of atomic bomb".
How farcical it is that both President Obama and Secretary of State John Kerry are personally anguished over the mayhem resulting from the American policies abroad but they are helpless in offering alternatives. One would have expected Kerry to get beyond what he felt over the sad saga of Hiroshima bombing, and said his government has decided to take the path of nuclear non-proliferation and wanted rest of the world to follow suit. To him the visit to Hiroshima Peace Memorial and Museum was an "extraordinary", "stunning" and "gut-wrenching" experience and a "lesson of past to future and present that war must never be the first resort". But how is it then that literally without exception the fires of war raging in different parts of the world now are the product of American foreign policy. Is it then true that Secretary Kerry could not offer any apology over the Hiroshima bombing and President Obama may not be able to visit the Hiroshima Peace Memorial just because this would be unacceptable to the American veterans of the WWII. So, if American leadership is not apologetic over the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki and the US government has no plan to follow to cut down on its nuclear arsenal then how logical it is to expect that North Korea would liquidate its nuclear weapon programme. How come there are some nuclear states that can be trusted to remain peaceful while some others cannot be - a question that tends to acquire greater relevance to developments in our region. The United States finds nothing wrong with its policy to de-nuclearize Iran and frown over Pakistan's while going out of the way to help India build up huge fissile material stockpiles.