{"id":25290,"date":"2015-05-13T11:59:25","date_gmt":"2015-05-13T19:59:25","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/antiwar.com\/blog\/?p=25290"},"modified":"2015-05-13T11:59:47","modified_gmt":"2015-05-13T19:59:47","slug":"the-only-aerial-bombing-of-an-american-city-during-the-cold-war","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/2015\/05\/13\/the-only-aerial-bombing-of-an-american-city-during-the-cold-war\/","title":{"rendered":"The Only Aerial Bombing of an American City During the Cold War"},"content":{"rendered":"

…was carried out by cops, on this day, 20 years ago. Will Grigg tells the story<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\n

“Philadelphia was the only U.S. city to be bombed from the air during the Cold War<\/a>, and the perpetrator of that attack was not the Soviet Union, the Weather Underground, or some other offshoot of the Soviet-inspired\u00a0\u201cTricontinental Movement.\u201d<\/a>\u00a0The perpetrators of this act of mass terrorism was the Philadelphia PD \u2013 with the indispensable help of the FBI and the US military.”<\/p>\n

\n

“Eleven people were killed as a result of the bombing. Six of them \u2013 including five children — were cut down by gunfire as they fled the burning building.”<\/p>\n

\n

“As we retired that evening, the local television news carried accounts of the firebombing \u2013 which commanded less attention than another debacle that took place on the same day, the introduction of the \u201cNew Coke\u201d in an event at Lafayette Park.<\/p>\n

The Coca-Cola Company\u2019s ill-advised decision to alter the formula of its toxic soft drink caused a paroxysm of national outrage on the part of a public that reacted to the Philadelphia fire-bombing with stolid indifference. Those who tampered with that product faced accountability. Jobs were lost, reputations were ruined, and corporate policies were changed. Nothing of the sort befell those responsible for a military assault on an urban neighborhood that left nearly a dozen people dead and hundreds of people homeless.<\/p>\n

Coca-Cola\u2019s decision to change its recipe was national news, as was the company\u2019s chastened decision to rescind that change. The fire-bombing of West Philly received perfunctory notice in the State-aligned media, and was quickly forgotten by a materially sated population.<\/p>\n

As Commissioner Sambor said in his overture to the holocaust on Osage Avenue, \u201cThis is America\u201d \u2013 or, in any case, what we\u2019ve allowed it to become.””<\/p>\n

\n

Read the whole essay.<\/a><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

…was carried out by cops, on this day, 20 years ago. Will Grigg tells the story. “Philadelphia was the only U.S. city to be bombed from the air during the Cold War, and the perpetrator of that attack was not the Soviet Union, the Weather Underground, or some other offshoot of the Soviet-inspired\u00a0\u201cTricontinental Movement.\u201d\u00a0The perpetrators […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":193,"featured_media":25291,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"","_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[63],"tags":[],"coauthors":[],"class_list":["post-25290","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-war-at-home"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/05\/Osage-Avenue-Aflame.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"meta_box":{"disable_donate_message":"","custom_donate_message":"","subtitle":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25290","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/193"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=25290"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25290\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":25293,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25290\/revisions\/25293"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/25291"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=25290"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=25290"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=25290"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=25290"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}