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July 23, 2005

The Atomic Bomb

http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=514&e=3&u=/ap/20050724/ap_on_re_us/world_war_ii_poll

This article is about the dropping of the Atomic Bomb on the Japanese. A question in the article asks whether it was justified, with most Americans saying that it was justified and neccessary. However. This single event has dictated the way the world has been shapped in the 60 years since the event.

First of all, the dropping was not neccessary. Not at all. The mass destruction of a large area of land, the mass destruction of innocent human civilan life is never ever ever justifiable. Ever. Not for any reason what so ever.

The Catechism of the Catholic Church affirms this point in paragraph 2314.

2314 "Every act of war directed to the indiscriminate destruction of whole cities or vast areas with their inhabitants is a crime against God and man, which merits firm and unequivocal condemnation."110 A danger of modern warfare is that it provides the opportunity to those who possess modern scientific weapons especially atomic, biological, or chemical weapons - to commit such crimes.

Granted, the Catechism was not written when the Atomic Bomb was dropped, however this should be a guiding prinicple for us today. Weapons of this nature can not be used offensively, defensively, anyway. They should not even exist. John XXIII called for the destruction of all Nuclear Weapons in 1963. Paul VI called the dropping of the Atomic Bombs butchery.

The Cheif of Staff to President Truman has this to say about the bombings:

"The use of this barbarous weapon at Hiroshima and Nagasaki was of no material assistance in our war against Japan… In being the first to use it, we…adopted an ethical standard common to the barbarians of the Dark Ages. I was not taught to make war in that fashion, and wars cannot be won by destroying women and children."

Had the United States not dropped the bomb on Japan (I can't say with certainty), I doubt the arms race would have become what it did. I doubt we would have this problem with Iran and North Korea today. The US did something which it did not need to do, and as a result we will end up paying the ultimate price for it. We started this problem, people would not have been so hungry for it if they did not even know it existed.

I am probably a bleeding heart liberal on this point, but there are always other options than the mass destruction of people and land. Not to mention the US did it twice, not once. The Japanese could not have lasted forever. As a result, we now have the Nuclear Age. If only people would listen to what the Church has to say, she has good reasons for it all. May not make sense at the time, but 30, 40, 50 years down the road, it makes perfect sense. In time, people will say the same thing about Gay Marriage. People are begining to already admit it about Abortion, with America becoming more and more Pro-Life.

Getting rid of Nuclear, Chemical, and Biological weapons is hardly even possible now. Our President wants to build his star wars shield, and no country is going to trust the other enough to get rid of theirs (a Thomas Hobbes approach, where one is afraid to give over his rights in fear that someone else will become more powerful then he is). How things grow...

This doesn't really make any sense, but do your best...

Posted by cr3do1 at July 23, 2005 09:47 PM

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