Udvar-Hazy Center
Enola Gay

On Tour with Gary Ashbeck

The National Air and Space Museum's Udvar-Hazy Center, in Dullas Airport in Washington, D.C., is a new celebration of militarism.  The Enola Gay airplane is on display without any documentation about the bomb that was dropped on Hiroshima, or about the effects of the bomb on the people of Hiroshima.  The Enola Gay is credited with the dropping of the first atomic bomb but no other information is shown.  People who oppose the display have been referred to as "kooks" by the tour guides.  It is a vivid example of historical whitewash.

If anyone ventures to tour the other parts of the museum, they will discover a display on modern warfare.  Included is that display is the "War on Terrorism" which unabashedly displays the angle that the current administration is peddling to the public.  There are pieces of Pentagon rubble as well as parts of the plane that hit it, no doubt there to bring an emotional response.  In the same dispaly case can be found a model of a C-17 that flew missions to drop "humanitarian" rations (HDR) in Afghanistan as well as one of the rations and a flag that was flown aboard on one of these missions.  There is no information that children lose limbs picking up cluster bombs thinking they were an HDR or just attracted to the bright colored metal. There is also no discussion about the US assisted rise of Al Qaeda or roots of the US attack on September 11th.  There is a brief display on the first Gulf War which avoids the truth behind the war.  The revised history shows a young child clutching a "humanitarian" package of food.  I wondered if maybe he was staring at the place his home or shcool once stood. 

In the museum, you will also find missiles which, like the Enola Gay, are delivery systems for weapons of mass destruction. 

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