Human Justification Initiated Nuclear Capabilities: Human Justification Will Be the Cause For Its Use

Submitted by M. Tovey (United States), Mar 28, 2012 at 15:59

At the risk of alleging naiveté of whether there is, or is not, a justification for the use of nuclear power, it is in fact an academic question already answered: there are nuclear weapons and those who have them have practiced the protocols for decades on their use if the right provocation is presented. It cannot be ignored.

Right or wrong by differing perceptions, America's first use of the devices upon Japan were not for reasons of deterrence, but as an act of ending a war gone on too long and an American president no longer willing to expend more American lives pursuing the end of hostilities.

The atrocities of war are inherent in the very process of its conduct: people, whether in uniform or civilian dress, die. More people died in World War Two by all the non-nuclear technology used many, many times over than those who perished in Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The only real difference is in its perception of how devastatingly quick it could happen.

Japan's military in 1945 indicated they were still willing to fight and there is evidence the people were inclined as well as long as they thought their emperor was willing. Was that, is that sufficient justification? For President Truman, he thought so. We'll never know if President Roosevelt might have ordered the strike, though we know he ordered commencing the program once it was learned the Third Reich was pursuing same the process we see Ahmadinejad chasing.

Now, is there room for argument that President Truman was more justified in the use of the nuclear device than Ahmadinejad might be if he pursued it to the stated ends? And what if Iran did provoke a situation in which the only calculated response was nuclear, can the argument be made that if they did, would a nuclear response be justified as opposed to making the argument for a pre-emptive strike?

There is a reason that mankind should never have developed nuclear power: the typical humanist thinking does not comprehend its full implication of use any better now than when it was first introduced. A higher intelligence is required to contemplate all the implications; even Oppenheimer recognized that.

But after all will be said and later what will be done, nuclear power as a misused tool of a misguided mankind is inevitable. The rhetoric coming from Ahmadinejad will be fuel enough indeed to bring that part of the world to its knees and the rest of the world will be swept up in the fallout. So has it been written; so it remains to be done. Remember, justification spoken of here is merely a human process to apply reasonable probable cause when all other processes of reasoning are no longer applicable.

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