Weapons of mass destruction necessary to stop aggressors
Re: Information about atomic bomb peril (July 7)
What is it with people on the collectivist far left of the political spectrum and their ceaseless clinging to the unrealistic, provably faulty utopian concept of “if there’s no more weapons, there’ll be no more violence/crime/war”? Humans have been beating each other over the head with wooden sticks, rocks, or their own fists for millennia before modern weaponry existed. The problem isn’t weapons; the problem at least with aggressors is narcissistic psychopathy. Modern medicine has so far admitted that narcissistic psychopaths cannot be “fixed” — primarily because they maintain a delusion that there is nothing wrong with them. Narcissists and psychopaths have no empathy; this is why protesting or emotional appeals won’t work on them.
It is far from settled what exactly caused Japan to surrender, despite the letter-writer’s absolutist claim that it was solely based on Russia joining the war on the Allied side. The evidence is actually too shaky to dogmatically say one way or the other, and the main proponent of the Russia theory has been criticized for liberal interpretations of sources and far too much guesswork. Even one of the major proponents of the Soviet invasion being the reason the Japanese surrendered — Tsuyoshi Hasegawa — has admitted that it wasn’t the “knockout punch” that led the Japanese to surrender right away.
It is ironic that the letter-writer laments the “peace, equality and freedom” that allegedly eludes us because of weapons of mass destruction. Blanket opposition to war and weapons doesn’t lead to any of those things. Whether or not it was primarily the atom bomb which caused Japan to surrender, the fact is that using it — and other weapons, such as firebombs — led to the freedoms etc. we have enjoyed since the end of World War II.
Would the letter-writer desire Russian control of Ukraine by default at the expense of Ukrainian freedom? You can’t protest war away and have the results be that the side that should win — the side for freedom, etc. — does win (see: Vietnam, North Korea). Putin is arresting and locking up people that protest Russia’s war in Ukraine. Not having the tools necessary to stop fascists and other aggressors from imposing their backwards authoritarianism will only result in them being able to do so with impunity. You can’t fight for a better world if you aren’t prepared for that situation. Surely knowing this, is there something the letter-writer isn’t telling us?
April J. Gibson
Duncan