WWII: Connection Across Time

Many events that occurred during World War II have left impressions on our society and still reverberate in modern news. Most notably, the creation and detonation of the atomic bombs over Hiroshima and Nagasaki have left a trail of debris through the decades and into the modern era.

The question of the creation and eventual use of the bomb was not merely a physical problem -- the bomb would have come into existence eventually in some form or another-- but it was also moral. As with cloning in the modern day, the scientists who worked on the bomb had to decide how far they would go to "play God." And after the monster was complete, the were faced with the same decision once again -- could they, merely men, decide if thousands of innocents should die for what they told themselves was the greater good? In my mind, and in the retrospective writings of both Albert Einstein and J. Robert Oppenheimer, they did not have this right.

However, the scientists and policy makers of the world today are still faced with the same questions. Should we bomb an entire village of civilians because there might be terrorists hiding there? Should we sacrifice the lives of innocents in order to possibly protect ourselves in the future? These are the questions that George W. Bush faced when he decided to invade Iraq, and these are the questions that military minds must contemplate as they strategize.

World War II and her monster, the atomic bomb, did not create these questions or these circumstances, but she certainly magnified them into the deadly force that they are today. World War II left us with a power to wreak more death than ever had before and the responsibility to use it wisely -- not at all.