Something wonderful happened sixty two years ago.
It was a miserable war which killed millions. And then a monster with a mustache killed himself. But the war was not over yet.
There was a nation which was trying to throw its weight around. A nation with imperial ambitions. A nation which wanted to colonize a significant part of the world. Japan.
And the allies (the British, the Russians and the Americans, basically) knew that colonization was unethical. It was something that they wanted to protect the world from.
So, one brave man who lived in a big house in Washington had an idea. He had hired some scientists to work for him to help annihilate an entire city of 100,000. They came up with a bomb which could do so.
The war was more or less over. It looked as if the salaries of those scientists would go to waste. Oh, what a waste.
So, president Harry Truman had a brain-wave. Why not kill 200,000 Japanese and curse their descendants with gamma rays? That would end the war, he would be a hero.
And two bombs were dropped on densely populated cities to kill people. They were not dropped on an ocean to demonstrate their awesome power and scare the Japanese into surrendering. No. That would never do. They bombed two cities instead.
This master-stroke of genius stopped the war. This is the way that god wanted it.
And now, this very responsible nation that stopped the war (after making that extremely difficult decision to kill 200,000 people in order to obtain peace) realized that nuclear weapons were too dangerous in the wrong hands - like those of Iran and North Korea and India (for 1998 + a few years) and Pakistan. (Israel, however, is responsible) So, it now acts as a champion of nuclear non proliferation - and maintains enough weapons to blow up the world many times over as collateral. That's what I call responsibility.
And that's why I will think of August 6th and 9th as wonderful occasions - not as occasions of utter shame. Occasions that make me proud to be human, not occasions that make me sorry that I am living. Not occasions that show me how deep and stupid this obsession with nationality is.
4 comments:
It is incredible to believe that some people actually believe that you need to kill people in order to restore peace. Hate begets hate and nothing less.
It is also incredible to note that such tactics are being used over and over again by "literate" and "super-rich" countries. If say, a poor nation who borrows weapons from other countries, like Russia, goes into war with other countries, it can be attributed to their ignorance and poverty-like situation - they do it in order to survive - like the situation in some African countries. But what is the need for USA to do the same? Don't they believe in the policy - Live and let live? Or do they believe that world revolves around them and the only way of life is the American way?
Satirical and self-serving. Its good to be self-serving. America is the greatest country in the world and some millenia into the future, if we still survive, we would see that America was right in bombing Japan.
And if Hitler had won, we would have seen why he was right in exterminating the jews (and who knows what else).
X: You struck the nail on the head!
The world is all about propaganda.
Radha: People do believe in live and let live. American people do believe in live and let live.
The issue here is that the large picture has nothing to do with what people believe in.
It is just the way that things turn out.
Yeah, I guess propaganda is like a weapon used by the inflicting party. I was in VA today and the cab-driver, who otherwise seemed so sensible and nice, displayed, quite amazingly, signs of being brainwashed by Bush. It makes good story telling too.
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