Smithsonian celebrates weapons of mass destruction

The shameful history of attempts to exhibit the Enola Gay, the airplane
that dropped the atomic bomb on Hiroshima, has opened a new
chapter. A museum site recenlty organized by the Smithsonian National
Air and Space Museum, new facility, the Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center at
Washington Dulles International Airport, will feature the Enola Gay as its centerpiece.
According to the History News Nework, "Fully restored, the Enola Gay will be displayed
as a 'magnificent technological achievement.'

"A coalition of scholars, religious leaders, veterans, scientists, and citizen activists
plan to protest the exhibit in its current form. They claim that it lacks historical
context and fails to address the controversy surrounding the bombings or
information on casualties. Arguing that the "celebratory nature of the exhibit
gives legitimacy to the 1945 bombing," the coalition joins other groups that
have already objected to the exhibit. According to Peter Kuznick, professor of
history and director of the Nuclear Studies Institute at American University,
who drafted the committee's statement, "We are not opposed to exhibiting the
Enola Gay...we welcome any exhibition that will spur an honest and balanced
discussion of the atomic bombings in 1945 and of current U.S. nuclear policy."

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In early episodes during the 1990s, planned exhibitions of the Enola Gay
that called attention to deaths and destruction caused by the bomb were
censored because they cast a bad light on the American military. Now that flaw
has been repaired and thought control restored. Visitors to the Smithsonian can
view with pride the curators' patriotic celebration of U.S. airpower and weapons
of mass destruction.

File under "History - politically correct."