by Sandra Dapper

Created on: March 03, 2008

What Makes War "Okay"

My entire perspective on government and politics has changed since I read a book by Howard Zinn, called Passionate Declarations, for a Political Science class. The book gives Zinn's views on a range of political subjects, such as economic class, free speech, and foreign policy. One chapter, called "Just and Unjust War," is particularly enlightening. It talks about whether there really is such a thing as a "just" war, and even claims that World War II may have been prevented through purely diplomatic means. This made me analyze our reasons for war in the first place. What makes war okay? What affects our decision to go to war? How can murder, illegal in every other circumstance, be honorable when it's done against a certain group of people? When we go to war, is there really no other option? While it seems as if war has been present since the beginning of time, that is no reason for us to accept it as some sort of fixed institution.

One particular passage in Zinn's book describes the Hiroshima bombing. After giving horrific details on the physical and emotional suffering that the bomb caused, Zinn declares that there was no legitimate reason for the bomb to be dropped in the first place. He says, "Historian Gar Alperovitz, after going through the papers of the American officials closest to Truman and most influential in the final decision and especially the diaries of Henry Stimson, concludes that the atomic bombs were dropped to impress the Soviet Union, as a first act in establishing American power in the postwar world." If this is true, hundreds of thousands of people were killed, injured, sickened, and physically tortured so that the U.S. could display its strength to the Soviet Union. If that weren't enough, Zinn says that just three days before the first atomic bomb was to be dropped, a message from Japan to Moscow was intercepted by a Truman aide saying that the Japanese were preparing to surrender, so long as it was not unconditional. This message was never given to President Truman, however, perhaps out of fear that the bombs would not be dropped and the Japanese would change their minds.

How many troops would have been lost in order to force the already-collapsing Japanese army to surrender? As many as would be killed in the bombings? I think that the decision to drop the bombs was encouraged by the belief that Japanese lives were less valuable than American lives. Of course, any violent act against another being is based on this

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