By Rich Pezzullo | The Save Jersey Blog
Seventy years ago today, the United States unleashed nature’s greatest force in defense of liberty and to put an end to bloodshed from both sides of a bitter war.
Here is the August 31, 1946 issue of The New Yorker which describes the horror unleashed as we dropped what was described by President Truman as he identified the new bomb as atomic: “That bomb had more power than twenty thousand tons of TNT. It had more than two thousand times the blast power of the British Grand Slam, which is the largest bomb ever yet used in the history of warfare.”
The media are strangely silent today – with Iran now on a path to owning such a cataclysmic device – I would expect them to be flooding the air before the Republican debate – seeing each candidate try to be most hawkish about using America’s formidable nuclear arsenal.
The media are largely quiet in reminding us about the devastation, pain and efficiency of nuclear weapons.
I question their motives on such a painful anniversary.
The silence of the media makes them seem more intent on protecting their president’s attempt to enable an avowed enemy of peace and liberty to ultimately own such weapons instead of using the opportunity to remind us of the terror associated with having such things pointed at us and our friends.
We can spend the rest of the year reflecting on such ideas as “Peace Through Strength”, “Nuclear Deterrence” and “Mutually Assured Destruction.”
Today is a day to remember that these powerful tools unleash powerful consequences, misery and environmental damage.
We must acknowledge that having access to such power can corrupt morals and distort thinking.
We must force ourselves to think of the generations affected by the use of these devices and make sure that we maintain the moral balance as individuals and as a society in determining their proper use, if such a thing could ever again be considered “proper”
And we should mourn the losses of war, regardless of their source, destination or justification. Today, more than any other, is a day to be human.
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