Last week, Michigan Republican Congressman Tim Walberg urged the total destruction of Gaza in the manner of “Nagasaki and Hiroshima,” the Japanese cities the United States destroyed with atomic bombs in 1945 at the end of the Second World War.
“We shouldn’t be spending a dime on humanitarian aid,” Walberg said at a town hall meeting in Dundee, south of Ann Arbor. “It should be like Nagasaki and Hiroshima. Get it over quick,” he said.
The call by a congressman for the extermination of a completely defenseless and imprisoned population expresses the homicidal sentiments that have gripped the American ruling class. After decades of perpetual war, the United States is approaching a level of criminality hitherto associated only with Nazi Germany.
The expressions of feigned outrage from Democratic Party officials are the height of hypocrisy. Representative Elissa Slotkin, one of the top “CIA Democrats,” called Walberg’s comments “a reprehensible thing for anyone to suggest.” In fact, the Republican congressman was expressing the fundamental content of the Biden administration’s policy toward Gaza.
The Netanyahu government, with the support of the White House, has made the decision to raze Gaza to the ground, to starve its people to death, and expel those left alive, as part of its “final solution” to the Palestinian question.
This is the meaning of Biden’s decision last week to send another 1,800 2,000-pound bombs to Israel.
Israel will not use nuclear weapons in the tiny enclave of Gaza, which would render Israel itself uninhabitable and irradiate the beachfront real estate Israel hopes to seize once the Palestinians are displaced. But Israel has already dropped over 65,000 tons of ordnance on Gaza, more than three times the explosive power of the bombs that leveled Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
As a result, over 54 percent of buildings in the Gaza strip were either damaged or destroyed, compared to 40 percent following the bombing of Nagasaki.
Just as significant as Walberg’s open call for the extermination of the Palestinians, however, was what he had to say about the relationship of the genocide in Gaza to the US proxy war with Russia in Ukraine, and its looming conflict with China.
Calling Israel “our greatest ally,” Walberg said that any moves to feed the starving population of Gaza would be a gift to “Iran and Russia” as well as “China.”
After proposing a “Nagasaki and Hiroshima” solution for Gaza, Walberg immediately added, “It should be the same in Ukraine,” declaring that the aim of the US should be to “wipe out Russian forces.”
Walberg later issued a clarification, declaring, “The sooner Hamas and Russia surrender, the easier it will be to move forward.”
In other words, Walberg’s open support of genocide in Gaza was accompanied by a call for all-out war with Russia aiming to “wipe out Russian forces” and force Russia to “surrender.”
Walberg is saying plainly what the entire US political establishment and media are seeking to conceal. The Biden administration has repeatedly declared that the United States is not at war with Russia, and that it does not seek “conflict” with China. All the while, NATO is sending tanks to Ukraine that have been driven over the Russian border by NATO-funded terrorist groups.
If the United States seeks to wage an offensive war against Russia in order to make it “surrender”—and succeed where Adolf Hitler failed—this will inevitably require a level of mass death and destruction not seen since the Second World War.
In this context, the Gaza genocide is the opening act of a global conflict whose death toll will be in the tens, or even hundreds, of millions.
The greatest horrors of the 20th century: world war, genocide, and the prospect of nuclear holocaust, are reemerging.
In its New Year’s statement, the World Socialist Web Site made the following warning:
As the war in Gaza has normalized genocide as an acceptable instrument of imperialist policy, the relentless escalation of the US-NATO war against Russia has been accompanied by the de facto acceptance of a high level of possibility, even probability, that the conflict may lead to the use of tactical and strategic nuclear weapons.
It concluded:
Taken as a whole, the normalization of different forms of social barbarism signifies that the capitalist class has arrived at a dead end. A class whose policies consist of different forms of sociocide has clearly exhausted its historical, economic, social, and political legitimacy.
In supporting the Gaza genocide, Biden speaks for the entire US political establishment. Last week, Biden held a fundraiser attended by former presidents Barack Obama and Bill Clinton, who unequivocally praised Biden’s support for the genocidal war in Gaza. “He genuinely cares about preserving the existence of Israel,” Clinton said of Biden.
When anti-genocide protesters voiced their opposition to US policy inside Radio City Music Hall, Obama intervened to defend Biden and criticize the protesters for not being willing to “listen” to Biden’s defense of Israeli genocide.
The universal endorsement of the Gaza genocide by the entire US political establishment contrasts with the growing mass opposition among workers and young people all over the world. Over the weekend, hundreds of thousands of people participated in demonstrations against the genocide. In Israel, tens of thousands of people took part in mass protests calling for the resignation of Netanyahu.
It is urgently necessary to arm the growing movement against genocide and war with a socialist program. In a statement on X responding to Walberg’s statement, Socialist Equality Party presidential candidate Joseph Kishore declared:
Opposition to the genocide must be developed as a fight against US-NATO imperialism. This requires the mobilization of the working class against the capitalist ruling elite and its normalization of genocide and nuclear war. In its election campaign, the Socialist Equality Party is developing a leadership in the working class, connecting the fight against war with the fight against inequality and the capitalist system. This is the basic and urgent task.