Issue date: 1/24/10 Section: News and Opinion

In 1946, the Federal Council of Churches issued a report entitled Atomic Warfare and the Christian Faith. In it, the authors wrote, "…we are deeply penitent for the irresponsible use already made of the atomic bomb. We are agreed that, whatever be one's judgment of the war in principle, the surprise bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki are morally indefensible."

More than 60 years after the use of the atomic bomb on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, that same sentiment continues to be repeated. Today, critics argue that dropping the bomb was a war crime of magnanimous proportions. In 2003, Peter Kuznick, director of the Nuclear Studies Institute at American University wrote, "He [President Truman] knew he was beginning the process of annihilation of the species. It was not just a war crime; it was a crime against humanity." Likewise, political activist and philosopher Noam Chomsky described the bombings as "one of the most unspeakable crimes in history."

So is Chomsky, et al right? Did the U.S. commit a crime so atrocious against humanity that no crime since has even come close to matching it? On the surface, it's a hard debate to settle, considering the amount of unknowns. For example, who really knows how much longer the war would have carried on had Truman not made that fateful decision so long ago? Further still, who knows if Japan really was about to surrender? Some argue it was, but Japan also had a track record of purposely misleading the U.S. with talks of peace (Pearl Harbor serves as a prime example).

What is known is that the United States was fighting in two theaters in a world war that literally reached every corner of the globe. Thousands upon thousands of American lives were lost, and resources were being stretched incredibly thin on the battlefield and the home front. Everyone agrees the war needed to be over. The question that remains though is, in the case of the atomic bomb, did the ends justify the means? Or in other words, were thousands of civilian deaths worth the end of WWII?

That question at its core, is a deeply philosophical one. So in order to answer it and provide some kind of answer to the question about the atomic bomb, philosophical underpinnings and premises must first be examined. The chief premise for the case of the immorality of the atomic bomb in Japan is that it killed several thousand innocent lives, which for most people, is intrinsically evil.

Yes, killing innocent people is evil. But just exactly how "innocent" were the Japanese? It is the responsibility for the people of any nation to direct their own collective values away from the state, and toward life rather than death. In Japan, that didn't happen. The Japanese sat idly by while their government was taken over by a totalitarian regime whose objective was to destroy the United States.

Continued...

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