Robin Wright's Blog, page 7
April 11, 2017
The New Yorker
The Assad Dynasty:
Nemesis of Nine U.S. Presidents
By Robin Wright
Secretary of State Henry Kissinger’s first meeting with Syrian President Hafez al-Assad, in 1973, dragged on until almost eleven p.m. It ran so long, the Times reported, that the media began to speculate about whether America’s top diplomat had been kidnapped. Assad “negotiated tenaciously and daringly like a riverboat gambler to make sure he had exacted the last sliver of available concessions,” Kissinger recalled in his memoir, “Years of Upheaval.” The marathons were typical. In 1991, Secretary of State James Baker famously waved a white flag “in submission” after almost ten hours because he needed a bathroom break. Baker called negotiating with Assad “bladder diplomacy.”Since the bloodless coup, in 1970, that brought the family to power, the Assad dynasty—the founding father, Hafez, and his heir and second son, Bashar—has exasperated nine American Presidents. “Time-consuming, nerve-racking, and bizarre,” Kissinger said of his sessions with Hafez al-Assad. Republican and Democratic Administrations alike have coaxed and cajoled, prodded and praised, and, most recently, confronted and condemned the Assads to induce policy changes....Read onhttp://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/the-assad-family-nemesis-of-nine-u-s-presidents
Nemesis of Nine U.S. Presidents
By Robin Wright
Secretary of State Henry Kissinger’s first meeting with Syrian President Hafez al-Assad, in 1973, dragged on until almost eleven p.m. It ran so long, the Times reported, that the media began to speculate about whether America’s top diplomat had been kidnapped. Assad “negotiated tenaciously and daringly like a riverboat gambler to make sure he had exacted the last sliver of available concessions,” Kissinger recalled in his memoir, “Years of Upheaval.” The marathons were typical. In 1991, Secretary of State James Baker famously waved a white flag “in submission” after almost ten hours because he needed a bathroom break. Baker called negotiating with Assad “bladder diplomacy.”Since the bloodless coup, in 1970, that brought the family to power, the Assad dynasty—the founding father, Hafez, and his heir and second son, Bashar—has exasperated nine American Presidents. “Time-consuming, nerve-racking, and bizarre,” Kissinger said of his sessions with Hafez al-Assad. Republican and Democratic Administrations alike have coaxed and cajoled, prodded and praised, and, most recently, confronted and condemned the Assads to induce policy changes....Read onhttp://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/the-assad-family-nemesis-of-nine-u-s-presidents
April 4, 2017
The New Yorker
Trump Embraces Sunni Autocrats
By Robin Wright
On February 11, 2011, shortly after 3 p.m., President Obama stepped before a microphone in the Grand Foyer of the White House. Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak had just resigned after weeks of mass protests, in Tahrir Square and nationwide, and a final nudge from the White House. “There are few moments in our lives where we have the privilege to witness history taking place,” Obama said. “This is one of those times.” He compared the peaceful overthrow of Mubarak—who had been the centerpiece of U.S. policy in the Arab world for three decades—to the fall of the Berlin Wall and Gandhi’s civil disobedience against British colonialism.
“The wheel of history turned at a blinding pace as the Egyptian people demanded their universal rights,” Obama said. Two months later, Mubarak was detained on allegations of corruption, embezzlement, abuse of power, and negligence for failing to stop the killing of hundreds of peaceful protesters. He was sentenced to life imprisonment.
The wheel of history is now turning, at an equally blinding pace, in reverse. Mubarak was freed last month; he returned to his mansion in the Cairo suburb of Heliopolis. His two sons and other Mubarak-era officials, also jailed for corruption, are free now, too. On Monday, President Trump hosted Egyptian President Abdel Fattah El-Sisi, the former field marshal who orchestrated a military coup, in 2013, against Mubarak’s successor.Read on....http://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/trump-embraces-the-sunni-autocrats
By Robin Wright
On February 11, 2011, shortly after 3 p.m., President Obama stepped before a microphone in the Grand Foyer of the White House. Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak had just resigned after weeks of mass protests, in Tahrir Square and nationwide, and a final nudge from the White House. “There are few moments in our lives where we have the privilege to witness history taking place,” Obama said. “This is one of those times.” He compared the peaceful overthrow of Mubarak—who had been the centerpiece of U.S. policy in the Arab world for three decades—to the fall of the Berlin Wall and Gandhi’s civil disobedience against British colonialism.
“The wheel of history turned at a blinding pace as the Egyptian people demanded their universal rights,” Obama said. Two months later, Mubarak was detained on allegations of corruption, embezzlement, abuse of power, and negligence for failing to stop the killing of hundreds of peaceful protesters. He was sentenced to life imprisonment.
The wheel of history is now turning, at an equally blinding pace, in reverse. Mubarak was freed last month; he returned to his mansion in the Cairo suburb of Heliopolis. His two sons and other Mubarak-era officials, also jailed for corruption, are free now, too. On Monday, President Trump hosted Egyptian President Abdel Fattah El-Sisi, the former field marshal who orchestrated a military coup, in 2013, against Mubarak’s successor.Read on....http://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/trump-embraces-the-sunni-autocrats
March 30, 2017
The New Yorker
The Bodies of Mosul
By Robin Wright
I drove into Mosul in a battered Nissan pickup truck in mid-March. Iraq’s second-largest city, once a thriving manufacturing and commercial center, is now a wreckage of destroyed factories, shops, and homes. Huge craters from bombs dropped by the U.S.-led coalition obstructed major intersections. The craters, designed to slow ISIS suicide drivers targeting the Iraqi Army, have since filled with filmy, stagnant water; they were treacherous to circumvent. Roads were lined with rubble from five months of war—chunks of concrete, twisted electricity poles and downed wires, shards of window glass. Almost every block of East Mosul was littered with charred cars. ISIS seized them from residents, setting them alight to emit black smoke and hide their movements from coalition warplanes.
There were still many bodies on the streets, even though isis was forced out many weeks ago. I spent an afternoon in Hay al-Tameem, or “Neighborhood of Nationalization,” a district where isis ran a bomb factory and confiscated homes for leaders and senior fighters. Signs in black spray paint identified houses as “Property of the Islamic State.”
“There were a lot of Russian isis fighters here,” Ahmed Sobhay, who lived across the street from the bomb factory, told me. Thousands flocked to the Islamic State from the Russian Republic of Chechnya, but Sobhay never dared to ask for their home towns. isis fighters sporadically held a gun to his head to demand his coöperation; once, they put a gun to the head of his six-year-old son, Ammer, to ask if his father was secretly smoking. Sobhay said he pulled his children out of school and didn’t let his wife or daughter go out in public for fear they would be carried off by ISIS.Read on...http://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/the-bodies-of-mosul
By Robin Wright
I drove into Mosul in a battered Nissan pickup truck in mid-March. Iraq’s second-largest city, once a thriving manufacturing and commercial center, is now a wreckage of destroyed factories, shops, and homes. Huge craters from bombs dropped by the U.S.-led coalition obstructed major intersections. The craters, designed to slow ISIS suicide drivers targeting the Iraqi Army, have since filled with filmy, stagnant water; they were treacherous to circumvent. Roads were lined with rubble from five months of war—chunks of concrete, twisted electricity poles and downed wires, shards of window glass. Almost every block of East Mosul was littered with charred cars. ISIS seized them from residents, setting them alight to emit black smoke and hide their movements from coalition warplanes.
There were still many bodies on the streets, even though isis was forced out many weeks ago. I spent an afternoon in Hay al-Tameem, or “Neighborhood of Nationalization,” a district where isis ran a bomb factory and confiscated homes for leaders and senior fighters. Signs in black spray paint identified houses as “Property of the Islamic State.”
“There were a lot of Russian isis fighters here,” Ahmed Sobhay, who lived across the street from the bomb factory, told me. Thousands flocked to the Islamic State from the Russian Republic of Chechnya, but Sobhay never dared to ask for their home towns. isis fighters sporadically held a gun to his head to demand his coöperation; once, they put a gun to the head of his six-year-old son, Ammer, to ask if his father was secretly smoking. Sobhay said he pulled his children out of school and didn’t let his wife or daughter go out in public for fear they would be carried off by ISIS.Read on...http://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/the-bodies-of-mosul
March 24, 2017
Face to Face with the Ghost of ISISBy Robin Wright O...
Face to Face with the Ghost of ISIS
By Robin Wright
On a crisp spring day in March, in the northern city of Sulaymaniyah, I met Abu Islam, a senior isis leader nicknamed the Ghost of isis by Iraqi intelligence for his elusiveness. He was escorted into a small office with faux-wood paneling and no windows at the Special Forces Security Compound in Kurdistan. His hands were manacled in front of him; he was blindfolded by a dark hood pulled over his loose black Shirley Temple curls. Long sought by the Iraqi government, Abu Islam was notorious for running clandestine cells of suicide bombers—some of whom were as young as twelve—and carrying out covert terrorist operations beyond the Islamic State’s borders. Having had a few years of religious training, he was also tasked with teaching the unique isis version of Islam to new fighters. Still in his mid-twenties, Abu Islam rose to become the isis “emir” of Iraq’s oil-rich province of Kirkuk.
Abu Islam’s capture, in October, was one of the most important in the campaign to defeat the Islamic State. Most of the isis élite have fled or been killed since Iraq launched its most ambitious military offensive, late last year, to retake Mosul. “He’s a guy we chased for more than two years,” Lahur Talabany, the head of Kurdistan’s Zanyari intelligence service, told me. “To pick him up and realize that we finally got him, it was a big catch for us.”Read on....http://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/face-to-face-with-the-ghost-of-isis
By Robin Wright
On a crisp spring day in March, in the northern city of Sulaymaniyah, I met Abu Islam, a senior isis leader nicknamed the Ghost of isis by Iraqi intelligence for his elusiveness. He was escorted into a small office with faux-wood paneling and no windows at the Special Forces Security Compound in Kurdistan. His hands were manacled in front of him; he was blindfolded by a dark hood pulled over his loose black Shirley Temple curls. Long sought by the Iraqi government, Abu Islam was notorious for running clandestine cells of suicide bombers—some of whom were as young as twelve—and carrying out covert terrorist operations beyond the Islamic State’s borders. Having had a few years of religious training, he was also tasked with teaching the unique isis version of Islam to new fighters. Still in his mid-twenties, Abu Islam rose to become the isis “emir” of Iraq’s oil-rich province of Kirkuk.
Abu Islam’s capture, in October, was one of the most important in the campaign to defeat the Islamic State. Most of the isis élite have fled or been killed since Iraq launched its most ambitious military offensive, late last year, to retake Mosul. “He’s a guy we chased for more than two years,” Lahur Talabany, the head of Kurdistan’s Zanyari intelligence service, told me. “To pick him up and realize that we finally got him, it was a big catch for us.”Read on....http://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/face-to-face-with-the-ghost-of-isis
February 17, 2017
The New Yorker
Trump's Flailing Foreign Policy
By Robin Wright
When I was five, I almost drowned after stepping into the deep end of a lake. I can still recall the terror, my small arms flailing toward the sunlight above the water, my legs kicking in all directions to find ground. A month into the Trump Presidency, that image haunts me as an apt metaphor for both the Trump Administration’s foreign policy and the gasping-for-breath fear among many old hands watching it play out.“Our government continues to be in unbelievable turmoil,” General Tony Thomas, who heads the United States Special Operations Command, remarked at a military conference in Maryland this week. “I hope they sort it out soon, because we’re a nation at war.”
The President is increasingly bewildering or worrying friends and foes alike. Longstanding allies now publicly chide America. On Thursday, the French Foreign Minister, Jean-Marc Ayrault, called the Trump Administration’s policy on the volatile Middle East “very confusing and worrying.” German Chancellor Angela Merkel—who has become the de-facto spokesperson for the West’s liberal democracies since Trump took office—rebuked his “America First” policy this week. “No country can solve the problems alone; joint action is more important,” she said.Read on...http://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/trumps-flailing-foreign-policy-bewilders-the-world
By Robin Wright
When I was five, I almost drowned after stepping into the deep end of a lake. I can still recall the terror, my small arms flailing toward the sunlight above the water, my legs kicking in all directions to find ground. A month into the Trump Presidency, that image haunts me as an apt metaphor for both the Trump Administration’s foreign policy and the gasping-for-breath fear among many old hands watching it play out.“Our government continues to be in unbelievable turmoil,” General Tony Thomas, who heads the United States Special Operations Command, remarked at a military conference in Maryland this week. “I hope they sort it out soon, because we’re a nation at war.”
The President is increasingly bewildering or worrying friends and foes alike. Longstanding allies now publicly chide America. On Thursday, the French Foreign Minister, Jean-Marc Ayrault, called the Trump Administration’s policy on the volatile Middle East “very confusing and worrying.” German Chancellor Angela Merkel—who has become the de-facto spokesperson for the West’s liberal democracies since Trump took office—rebuked his “America First” policy this week. “No country can solve the problems alone; joint action is more important,” she said.Read on...http://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/trumps-flailing-foreign-policy-bewilders-the-world
January 30, 2017
Donald Trump, Pirate-in-ChiefBy Robin WrightDonald Trump ...
Donald Trump, Pirate-in-Chief
By Robin Wright
Donald Trump has had a fixation on Iraq’s oil—and America’s right to seize it—for at least six years. In 2011, he told a Fox News producer that the U.S. should “take the oil.” It was a common theme on the campaign trail last year. “We go in, we spent three trillion dollars. We lose thousands and thousands of lives, and then look what happens is we get nothing. You know, it used to be the victor belong the spoils,” Trump said on NBC’s “Today Show,” in September. “There was no victor there, believe me. There was no victory. But I always said, ‘Take the oil.’ “
During his first week in office, Trump has twice repeated the claim—and alluded to a new opportunity to do just that. “Maybe you’ll have another chance,” he said, in unscripted remarks at the C.I.A., on his first full day in office. Four days later, ABC’s David Muir pressed him on what he meant. “We’re gonna see what happens,” the President said. “You know, I told you, and I told everybody else that wants to talk when it comes to the military, I don’t wanna discuss things.” The Administration is now reviewing options to be more aggressive, in both Iraq and Syria, against the Islamic State.
The reaction, from Washington to Baghdad, has been outrage—and bewilderment. “What he’s talking about is theft, pure and simple,” Robert Goldman, a professor at American University who has taught the laws of war for four decades, told me. “We have no right, and never had a right, even as an occupier, to take their oil. So what he is talking about is patently illegal under the laws of war, under which we are bound.”Read on...http://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/donald-trump-pirate-in-chief
By Robin Wright
Donald Trump has had a fixation on Iraq’s oil—and America’s right to seize it—for at least six years. In 2011, he told a Fox News producer that the U.S. should “take the oil.” It was a common theme on the campaign trail last year. “We go in, we spent three trillion dollars. We lose thousands and thousands of lives, and then look what happens is we get nothing. You know, it used to be the victor belong the spoils,” Trump said on NBC’s “Today Show,” in September. “There was no victor there, believe me. There was no victory. But I always said, ‘Take the oil.’ “
During his first week in office, Trump has twice repeated the claim—and alluded to a new opportunity to do just that. “Maybe you’ll have another chance,” he said, in unscripted remarks at the C.I.A., on his first full day in office. Four days later, ABC’s David Muir pressed him on what he meant. “We’re gonna see what happens,” the President said. “You know, I told you, and I told everybody else that wants to talk when it comes to the military, I don’t wanna discuss things.” The Administration is now reviewing options to be more aggressive, in both Iraq and Syria, against the Islamic State.
The reaction, from Washington to Baghdad, has been outrage—and bewilderment. “What he’s talking about is theft, pure and simple,” Robert Goldman, a professor at American University who has taught the laws of war for four decades, told me. “We have no right, and never had a right, even as an occupier, to take their oil. So what he is talking about is patently illegal under the laws of war, under which we are bound.”Read on...http://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/donald-trump-pirate-in-chief
January 29, 2017
Khizr Khan, Gold Star Father, on Refugee BanBy Robin Wrig...
Khizr Khan, Gold Star Father, on Refugee Ban
By Robin Wright
Since his six-minute speech at last summer’s Democratic Convention, Khizr Khan has become a kind of celebrity, an honorable everyman who stood up for America’s Muslim community. The story he told of his son Humayun, a captain in the U.S. Army who gave his life to stop a suicide bomber approaching his troops in Iraq, in 2004, was emotional, and it made for gripping television. The Washington Post called the image of Khan waving his pocket-size Constitution in the air—and asking if Donald Trump had ever read it—one of the most memorable of the campaign. “I will lend you my copy,” Khan said, addressing Trump. “You have sacrificed nothing and no one.” His speech made the Constitution a best-seller on Amazon. Google searches on it soared tenfold.
Khan, a Harvard-educated lawyer, was born in Pakistan; his son Humuyun was born in the United Arab Emirates. Both became U.S. citizens in 1986. On Sunday, Khan stopped by my house in Washington, and, over honey-lavender tea, discussed President Trump’s new executive order banning the entry of Syrian refugees indefinitely and all refugees for four months. The executive order suspends the entry of all citizens from seven predominantly Muslim countries—Iran, Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria, and Yemen—for ninety days. The order also calls for a general review of U.S. vetting procedures. The following interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.Read on....http://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/khizr-khan-gold-star-father-on-the-new-refugee-ban
By Robin Wright
Since his six-minute speech at last summer’s Democratic Convention, Khizr Khan has become a kind of celebrity, an honorable everyman who stood up for America’s Muslim community. The story he told of his son Humayun, a captain in the U.S. Army who gave his life to stop a suicide bomber approaching his troops in Iraq, in 2004, was emotional, and it made for gripping television. The Washington Post called the image of Khan waving his pocket-size Constitution in the air—and asking if Donald Trump had ever read it—one of the most memorable of the campaign. “I will lend you my copy,” Khan said, addressing Trump. “You have sacrificed nothing and no one.” His speech made the Constitution a best-seller on Amazon. Google searches on it soared tenfold.
Khan, a Harvard-educated lawyer, was born in Pakistan; his son Humuyun was born in the United Arab Emirates. Both became U.S. citizens in 1986. On Sunday, Khan stopped by my house in Washington, and, over honey-lavender tea, discussed President Trump’s new executive order banning the entry of Syrian refugees indefinitely and all refugees for four months. The executive order suspends the entry of all citizens from seven predominantly Muslim countries—Iran, Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria, and Yemen—for ninety days. The order also calls for a general review of U.S. vetting procedures. The following interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.Read on....http://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/khizr-khan-gold-star-father-on-the-new-refugee-ban
June 12, 2016
The New Yorker
American Muslims in Mourning
By Robin Wright June 12, 2016
Hena Khan, the author of best-selling children’s books, thought Muhammad Ali’s funeral on Friday was going to be a turning point for American Muslins. “Ali spent his life trying to show the real Islam—battling Islamophobia even as he battled Parkinson’s disease. That’s what was highlighted after he died,” she told me this weekend. “It was nice to feel proud—and to see people saying ‘Allahu Akbar’ interpreted in a positive way.”
On Saturday, Khan was herself honored for the publication of “It’s Ramadan, Curious George,” a groundbreaking new book that also tries to span the cultural chasm for a new generation. The Diyanet Center of America packed its auditorium with kids and their parents to hear Khan read from her book. In this latest spin-off, the mischievous simian learns from his friend Kareem about the sacred Muslim month of fasting, good deeds, contemplation, and evening feasts.
At the end of Khan’s reading, a teen-ager dressed as Curious George raced down the aisles, onto the stage, and fist-bumped Khan. The kids went wild. “It was a weekend of hope and feeling inspired,” Khan told me. “It was a time of reaffirmation,” especially during the first week of Ramadan.
On Sunday, Khan woke up and, as is her habit, checked the news on her cell phone before waking her family. It was consumed with the killings at Pulse, the gay nightclub in Orlando, Florida. “First it was twenty people, then fifty,” she told me. “I thought, Not another shooting! When is this going to stop? This is insanity.
“Then I saw the name,” Khan said, her voice choking back sobs. Read on...
http://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/the-orlando-shootings-and-american-muslims
By Robin Wright June 12, 2016
Hena Khan, the author of best-selling children’s books, thought Muhammad Ali’s funeral on Friday was going to be a turning point for American Muslins. “Ali spent his life trying to show the real Islam—battling Islamophobia even as he battled Parkinson’s disease. That’s what was highlighted after he died,” she told me this weekend. “It was nice to feel proud—and to see people saying ‘Allahu Akbar’ interpreted in a positive way.”
On Saturday, Khan was herself honored for the publication of “It’s Ramadan, Curious George,” a groundbreaking new book that also tries to span the cultural chasm for a new generation. The Diyanet Center of America packed its auditorium with kids and their parents to hear Khan read from her book. In this latest spin-off, the mischievous simian learns from his friend Kareem about the sacred Muslim month of fasting, good deeds, contemplation, and evening feasts.
At the end of Khan’s reading, a teen-ager dressed as Curious George raced down the aisles, onto the stage, and fist-bumped Khan. The kids went wild. “It was a weekend of hope and feeling inspired,” Khan told me. “It was a time of reaffirmation,” especially during the first week of Ramadan.
On Sunday, Khan woke up and, as is her habit, checked the news on her cell phone before waking her family. It was consumed with the killings at Pulse, the gay nightclub in Orlando, Florida. “First it was twenty people, then fifty,” she told me. “I thought, Not another shooting! When is this going to stop? This is insanity.
“Then I saw the name,” Khan said, her voice choking back sobs. Read on...
http://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/the-orlando-shootings-and-american-muslims
May 20, 2016
The New Yorker
Presidential Swag and the Gift Horse
Robin Wright May 20, 2016
In 1862, Abraham Lincoln wrote to King Mongkut, of Siam (the “King and I” king), to gently reject his gift of “a supply of elephants” with which to populate America’s forests.“ This Government would not hesitate to avail itself of so generous an offer if the object were one which could be made practically useful,” Lincoln wrote. “Our political jurisdiction, however, does not reach a latitude so low as to favor the multiplication of the elephant, and steam on land, as well as on water, has been our best and most efficient agent of transportation.”
Lincoln could not legally accept the elephants, in any case. The Founding Fathers were sufficiently concerned about foreign corruption of their young democracy that they enshrined a ban, in Article I of the Constitution, on U.S. officials accepting “any present, Emolument, Office, or Title, of any kind whatever, from any King, Prince, or foreign State.” George H.W. Bush faced a similar dilemma when the President of Indonesia with a flesh-eating Komodo dragon. The present—not a good match for Millie, the First Dog—ended up at the Cincinnati Zoo, where he more than thirty little Komodo dragons.
For President Obama, the most famous gift was to the youngest recipient. Read on....http://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/presidential-swag-and-the-gift-horse
Robin Wright May 20, 2016
In 1862, Abraham Lincoln wrote to King Mongkut, of Siam (the “King and I” king), to gently reject his gift of “a supply of elephants” with which to populate America’s forests.“ This Government would not hesitate to avail itself of so generous an offer if the object were one which could be made practically useful,” Lincoln wrote. “Our political jurisdiction, however, does not reach a latitude so low as to favor the multiplication of the elephant, and steam on land, as well as on water, has been our best and most efficient agent of transportation.”
Lincoln could not legally accept the elephants, in any case. The Founding Fathers were sufficiently concerned about foreign corruption of their young democracy that they enshrined a ban, in Article I of the Constitution, on U.S. officials accepting “any present, Emolument, Office, or Title, of any kind whatever, from any King, Prince, or foreign State.” George H.W. Bush faced a similar dilemma when the President of Indonesia with a flesh-eating Komodo dragon. The present—not a good match for Millie, the First Dog—ended up at the Cincinnati Zoo, where he more than thirty little Komodo dragons.
For President Obama, the most famous gift was to the youngest recipient. Read on....http://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/presidential-swag-and-the-gift-horse
May 12, 2016
The New Yorker
What the Pope Saw at Hiroshima
By Robin Wright May 12, 2016
A charred tricycle, its rubber pedals melted away, is one of the most evocative relics of war in Hiroshima’s Peace Memorial Museum. It belonged to three-year-old Shinichi Tetsutani, who was riding it when an American B-29 dropped a nine thousand-pound over the city, on August 6, 1945. Shinichi’s father found his son, barely alive, still grasping the handlebars under the rubble. He died a few hours later. Because Shinichi had loved that tricycle, his father decided to bury it with him—so that his son would not be lonely—in the back yard, where his son would still be close. Before the attack, the Americans had given the bomb a nickname—Little Boy. Four decades later, Shinichi’s father had his son’s remains exhumed for formal reburial in a cemetery. He donated the unearthed tricycle to the museum.
On May 27th, President Obama is scheduled to become the first sitting President to visit Hiroshima’s war memorial. The fanfare around Obama’s visit has revived the tormented debate about the Second World War’s concluding acts—the merits and morality of America’s decision to drop the first nuclear bombs, in order to force Japan to surrender and avoid a ground war on the Japanese mainland. Everyone agrees that the bombings wreaked an enormous toll on humankind. The bigger, and more pressing, question is whether Obama’s trip will change anyone’s thinking about future use of the bomb. Read on...
http://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/what-the-pope-saw-at-hiroshima
By Robin Wright May 12, 2016
A charred tricycle, its rubber pedals melted away, is one of the most evocative relics of war in Hiroshima’s Peace Memorial Museum. It belonged to three-year-old Shinichi Tetsutani, who was riding it when an American B-29 dropped a nine thousand-pound over the city, on August 6, 1945. Shinichi’s father found his son, barely alive, still grasping the handlebars under the rubble. He died a few hours later. Because Shinichi had loved that tricycle, his father decided to bury it with him—so that his son would not be lonely—in the back yard, where his son would still be close. Before the attack, the Americans had given the bomb a nickname—Little Boy. Four decades later, Shinichi’s father had his son’s remains exhumed for formal reburial in a cemetery. He donated the unearthed tricycle to the museum.
On May 27th, President Obama is scheduled to become the first sitting President to visit Hiroshima’s war memorial. The fanfare around Obama’s visit has revived the tormented debate about the Second World War’s concluding acts—the merits and morality of America’s decision to drop the first nuclear bombs, in order to force Japan to surrender and avoid a ground war on the Japanese mainland. Everyone agrees that the bombings wreaked an enormous toll on humankind. The bigger, and more pressing, question is whether Obama’s trip will change anyone’s thinking about future use of the bomb. Read on...
http://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/what-the-pope-saw-at-hiroshima
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