Attacking a dam is terrorism… except
when it isn’t.
Jan. 21, 2009 (World News Trust) -- “Every morning when
I awake, I ask myself whether I should write or blow up a dam,”
Derrick Jensen. “I've written books and done activism, but it is neither a
lack of words nor activism that is killing salmon here in the
Northwest. It's the dams. Anyone who knows anything about salmon
knows the dams must go. Anyone who knows anything about politics
knows the dams will stay.”
To that, I’ll add:
Anyone who knows anything about hydroelectric dams comprehends and laments the damage they cause:
From climate change to the destruction of rivers to human
displacement to disappearing salmon… and
beyond. As Jacques Leslie, author of Deep
Water: The Epic Struggle over Dams, Displaced People, and the
Environment, points out: “The
world's dams have shifted so much weight that geophysicists believe
they have slightly altered the speed of the earth's rotation, the
tilt of its axis, and the shape of its gravitational field.”
Bearing all this in
mind, it should come as no surprise that some activists have
contemplated the demolition of dams. It should also come as no
surprise that such musings are deemed “terrorism” by the
powers-that-be. What might come as a surprise to some is that those
same powers-that-be have absolutely no problem blowing up a dam… if
it serves their
interests.
During World War II,
British scientists invented a spinning cylindrical “dam buster”
bomb specifically to demolish German dams. Conversely, of the 185 Nazis
indicted at Nuremberg, only 24 were singled out for the death
penalty. Among those two dozen was the German High Commissioner in
Holland who ordered the opening of Dutch dikes to slow the advance of
Allied troops. Roughly 500,000 acres were flooded and the result was
mass starvation. That their crimes merited capital punishment in the
eyes of the Nuremberg Tribunal can serve as a measuring stick when we
review similar crimes committed by others.
During the Korean War,
the U.S. Air Force bombed the Toksan Dam (among others) in order
to flood North Korea’s rice farms. Here’s how the USAF justified
this tactic: “To the Communists the smashing of the dams meant
primarily the destruction of their chief sustenance -- rice. The
Westerner can little conceive the awesome meaning that the loss of
this staple food commodity has for an Asian -- starvation and slow
death.”
Fast-forward to the U.S. assault on Southeast
Asia: In a now-declassified memorandum dated April 15, 1969,
evangelist Billy Graham urged President Richard Nixon to blow up
dikes which “could overnight destroy the economy of North Vietnam.”
Even without Rev. Graham’s heavenly sanction, U.S. bombing of dikes
in South Vietnam was already a common and uncontroversial tactic.
The moral of this
story: Attacking a dam is terrorism… except
when it isn’t.
Mickey Z. can be found
on the Web at http://www.mickeyz.net