Godzilla vs. the nth Monster - "weapons of horrible destruction"

As we get psyched for the invasion of Iran, it may be helpful to pause and consider the lessons of one of the only creatures on earth to have its own trademarked sound (see the audio in my profile). An April 2006 article in the New Yorker indicated that military planning efforts presently underway are based on the notion that "a sustained bombing campaign in Iran will humiliate the religious leadership and lead the public to rise up and overthrow the government." We've heard this kind of argument before. But there are developments in the planning phase of war with Iran that are unique in the post-Cold War era. For one, U.S. naval aircraft have flown simulated nuclear weapons delivery missions, known as "over the shoulder" bombing, in the area. More seriously, the article claimed that prior to joining the administration, the current national security adviser, under-secretary of defense for intelligence, and under-secretary of state for arms control and international security were part of a think-tank that issued a report (which they signed) calling for the military to elevate the status of tactical nuclear weapons within the nation's arsenal. Now, the administration is thinking about designing and testing new nuclear bunker busters aimed at ensuring the destruction of high value targets such as the underground centrifuge plant in Natanz. A former senior intelligence official noted that "it's a tough decision. But we made it in Japan." What would the King of the Monsters he have to say about these developments?

Godzilla has had a storied career, culminating in a movie that saw him defeat the likes of Gigan, Zilla, Kumonga, Rodan, Anguirus, and Hedorah, among others, before returning to the ocean. He's fought a venus fly trap, a cloud of smog, a giant moth...even countless versions of himself (mecha-godzilla, spacegodzilla). To the untrained monster movie viewing eye, these skirmishes mask the politics behind the beast. The original, 1954 version, "Gojira," was shot to look very much like a documentary of war, punctuated by dead bodies, orphaned children, and radiation scars - it is longer and far bleaker than what we have seen on television in the states. Gojira was inspired by the director's witness to the ruins of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. It was Americanized by adding shots of the actor Raymond Burr, giving the illusion that he is interacting with important characters in the story as he journeys to Japan to investigate several ships burned and destroyed near Odo Island.

Not until 2004 was the original movie widely available here. Before then, the domestically licensed movie was a highly edited version from 1956, which removed most of the references to the United States' use of nuclear weapons, including testing of even more powerful versions after the war (such as a hydrogen bomb that shocked military personnel when its explosion sent fallout across a 7,000 square mile region in the South Pacific - a fact verified by the radiation exposure of Japanese fishermen traveling on the famous Fukuryu Maru). These deletions were symbolic of our broader self-inflicted amnesia about the decision to use nuclear weapons in Japan and its consequences (efforts to remove or whitewash commemorative exhibits at the Smithsonian in D.C. and the Bradbury Science Museum at Los Alamos are instructive). But the horrific images of the monster itself in the first Godzilla movie remained largely intact, giving Americans their first view of the freak of nature, its atomic power, glowing tail, and sheer size (over 160 feet tall in the first film) evoking the image of a mushroom cloud rising from the Japanese landscape (see pictures).

And the story about a man and his technological invention survived as well - Dr. Serizawa's oxygen destroyer, which ultimately led to Godzilla's demise, was used in the movie to represent mankind's militaristic ambitions:

Dr. Serizawa: If my device can serve a good purpose, I would announce it to everyone in the world! But in its current form, it's just a weapon of horrible destruction. Please understand, Ogata!

Hideto Ogata: I understand. But if we don't use your device against Godzilla, what are we going to do?

Dr. Serizawa: Ogata, if the oxygen destroyer is used even once, politicians from around the world will see it. Of course, they'll want to use it as a weapon. Bombs versus bombs, missiles versus missiles, and now a new superweapon to throw upon us all! As a scientist - no, as a human being - I can't allow that to happen!

As we've learned to live with the bomb, the Japanese learned to accept and in some cases use Godzilla as a weapon of their own in many of the later films (in one movie released only in Japan, Godzilla travels back to World War II and helps the Japanese defeat the allied forces). And every time the fury that was unleashed by our use of nuclear weapons at the close of World War II, embodied by Godzilla, is edited out or allowed to fade, we lose an opportunity to consider the decision itself, and what it could tell us about our efforts of late to deploy tactical nuclear weapons. Barton Bernstein, a professor at Stanford University, located official estimates of how many American soldiers would have died in an invasion of Japan, the avoidance of which is one of the most commonly cited reasons for using the (at least first) nuclear weapon. Far from the one million lives that we were told the bombs saved, the estimate was comfortably below 100,000. By comparison, the two atomic bombs killed roughly 300,000 people, mostly women and children. So what really drove the decision? Was it a signaling exercise aimed at the Soviet Union? Did it have to do with the personal or financial ambitions of certain people or institutions involved with the Manhattan Project? What did the President know and when did he know it (for instance, there are some accounts that Truman was surprised to hear that the bomb had been dropped on Nagasaki)? Substitute present-day names and places associated with the push to develop new tactical nuclear weapons and use them against Iran, and you will realize that little has changed in the basic issues we face. Nor has the dominant discourse of American military might defeating new monsters with ever-more-powerful weapons (the common theme of American monster movies, which usually end with a creature's demise at the hands of a new version of an atomic weapon) given way in any noticeable fashion in the fifty years since the issuance of the Americanized version of Godzilla in 1956.

Godzilla teaches us that ideas left unexamined in the public discourse can awaken monsters far scarier than the enemies we initially perceive. That human beings can habituate to even the most powerful and destructive forces to appear on the horizon. And that a continual cycle of "bombs versus bombs, missiles versus missiles" can have unintended consequences - a "superweapon to throw upon us all." Let us remember Godzilla's cry as we, like the fabled beast, have a seemingly endless queue of threats placed before us.

Vaya con Dios - brooding presence