Sixty-two years ago today the first atomic bomb was dropped by the Enola Gay, a specially modified B-29 Superfortress American bomber, against a major Japanese urban area, the city of Hiroshima.
A terrible decision with terrible consequences for the unwitting citizens of Hiroshima, many of whom would die, either from the initial fireball and blast effects or from radiation sickness in the days and weeks following the attack. Estimates of as many as 200,000 deaths are attributed to this one attack. In Hiroshima each year there is a ceremony commemorating the victims of the world’s first atomic bomb attack, with the hope that such a fate will never again befall any city and its people anywhere in the world.
Yet, under the Bush administration we have moved ever closer to using nuclear weapons again, in a first strike capacity. We know (because Seymour Hersh told us in his New Yorker reports) that Bush and Cheney originally demanded the inclusion in the Pentagon’s Iran war plan of tactical nuclear strikes against hardened targets believed to be hiding Iran’s secret nuclear weapons program. Some have reported that the use of such weapons is now “off the table” in the event of an American military strike against Iran, but we have no real assurance that such is the case.
Last week, Barrack Obama was roundly criticized in the media for saying he would not condone a first use of nuclear weapons in the War on Terror. His political opponents (including Hillary Clinton and others) have claimed it is naive for the United States to take any option “off the table” including a first use of nuclear weapons, despite the frightful nature and destructive power of these weapons.
Frankly, I’m appalled that such sentiments are considered mainstream these days. Anyone who witnessed the destruction of Hiroshima (which was attacked with a weapon we would now classify as a tactical nuke in terms of its destructive force) would tell Senator Clinton and the others who assailed Senator Obama for his remarks that it is they who are being naive in thinking that nuclear weapons are just another item in our arsenal, just another option with which to confront our enemies. I’m sure the victims of Hiroshima would have a word or two to say about the blithe manner in which are politicians, Democrats and Republicans alike, throw around threats of nuclear attacks against Islamic countries, as if they were par for the political course, even something of which to be proud.
The best evidence that a nation is losing power is its willingness to mount aggressive wars of conquest. And the best evidence that a nation’s military is weakening is when its leaders consider the use of mass murder to be a viable military strategy. We have moved too far down this road in the last seven years with the Bush administration’s efforts to make the use of nuclear weapons in war a reality once more. For the sake of our children and grandchildren let us go no further. Indeed, we need to immediately take as many steps away from this abyss of horror as possible, before someone sitting in the oval office feels the need to commit another dark crime against humanity, one for which the world will blame all Americans, and not just the button pushers at the Pentagon.
The dead of Hiroshima and Nagasaki haunt us still. Let us not be responsible for adding any more deaths to their number.
