The A-Bomb

When one first learns of the atomic bomb and the destruction of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the following question is often posed: if you were president, would you have dropped the bomb?

I think the use of the atomic bomb in any circumstance is morally repugnant. I know all the arguments that more lives were probably saved, on both sides, by its prevention of a long and bloody ground war. But it released a psychological and physical torture that had, until that point, not been seen. In war you at least get to stare off across the battlefield, you get to fight despite whatever odds are against you. The A-bomb winks an entire population out of existence without warning. It is a violence of devastating — possibly humanity ending — consequence.

But I think it was “for the best” that the bombs were dropped. When technologies are developed we can’t help ourselves but desire to deploy them, to throw a stone in the waters of reality and see how it ripples. What makes 1945 a unique time in history is that the U.S.A. was the only nation with atomic weapon capability. It would be a short-lived era of nuclear exceptionalism (The Soviet Empire would successfully test their own atomic weapon before the end of the decade). If the bombs had not been dropped, if the world had not witnessed their horrible power — not just in a demonstration at sea but on a civilian population, some place relatable — it is not hard to imagine that the Cold War would have ended in nuclear holocaust. Someone would have wanted to “see what would happen/show their strength” and the other nation would have responded. The destruction of Nagasaki is perhaps less “defensible”, but served as a chilling statement and deterrent — “we have seen its power and we are not afraid to use it.” But only because you cannot respond in kind, is of course the unspoken second part of that statement.

In the end, it’s almost a dumb question — would you drop the bomb? It’s right up there with “would you kill baby Hitler” (and does your answer change when it’s “art student” Hitler? Or “soldier” Hitler? Or Hitler?). We cannot go back and change history, no more than we can know the consequences those changes would bring. In a sense, we are compelled to do something almost as hard and impossible — to try and change not only ourselves, but to improve our humanity on a massive scale.

We live in a world of nuclear bombs. That cannot be changed. Can we change ourselves as a community of people on this earth to never use them, to build no more, to wonder why we were ever compelled to build them in the first place?