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Toronto Star Aug. 5, 2005 WOULD YOU HAVE DROPPED THE BOMB? No | Inviting the Japanese to a demonstration would have been more effective, says Pervez Hoodbhoy The decision to incinerate Hiroshima and Nagasaki was not taken in anger. White men in grey business suits and military uniforms, after much deliberation, decided it would be cheaper in American lives to release the nuclear genie. Besides, it was such a marvellous thing to show Soviet leader Joseph Stalin. Headlines like "Jap City No More" brought the news to a joyous nation. Crowds gathered in Times Square to celebrate; there was less of the enemy left. The victorious are rarely encumbered by remorse. Not surprisingly, six decades later, even American liberals remain ambivalent about the morality of nuking the two Japanese cities. Even as the United States dusted off its hands and moved on, elsewhere the radioactive rubble of the dead cities spawned not only a sense of dread, but also an obsessive desire for nuclear weapons. In 1948, while arguing to create India's Department of Atomic Energy, Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru told Parliament, "I think we must develop [nuclear science] for peaceful purposes." But, he added, "Of course, if we are compelled as a nation to use it for other purposes, possibly no pious sentiments of any of us will stop the nation from using it that way." Just three years after Hiroshima and Nagasaki, those "other purposes" were all too clear. Days after Pakistan's nuclear tests in May 1998, Japan invited the country's foreign minister to visit Hiroshima's peace museum. The minister was visibly moved after seeing the gruesome evidence of mass devastation. His reaction: We made our nukes precisely so that this could never happen to Pakistan. Those of us who fight against the bomb in Pakistan - and are thus branded agents of America and spied upon by our government - recognize that the horror of Hiroshima is a metaphor that cuts both ways. In a recent and widely watched nationally televised debate between myself and Gen. Hameed Gul - a highly influential pro-nuclear Islamist ideologue and former head of Pakistan's powerful intelligence agency - my opponent snarled at me: Your masters (that is, the Americans) will nuke us Muslims just as they nuked Hiroshima; people like you want to denuclearize and disarm us in the face of a savage beast set to devour the world. I will not burden readers with my reply to this extremist general. But he was making a point that resonates around the globe. The United States has bombed 21 countries since 1948, recently killing thousands of people on the pretext of chasing weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, and claims to be a force for democracy despite a long history of supporting the bloodiest of dictators. Do Americans have even a clue of the anger that seethes in the hearts of people across the globe? Do they care? They now need to, because two nascent fundamentalisms - that of George W. Bush and Osama bin Laden - are heading toward a dreadful collision. Today, the United States rightly lives in fear of the bomb it created because the decision to use it - if and when it becomes available - has already been made. But this time around, pious men with beards will decide when and where on American soil atomic weapons are to be used. Shadowy groups, propelled by fanatical hatreds, scour the globe for fissile materials. They are not in a hurry; time is on their side. They are confident they will one day breach Fortress America. And what then? The world shall plunge headlong into a bottomless abyss of reaction and counter-reaction whose horror the human mind cannot comprehend. Such a scenario could have been averted. Had I been the president of the United States in 1945, my first choice would have been to warn the Japanese civil and military leadership of the impending doomsday weapon, and then invited them to see a test demonstration. If that failed to impress, then the bomb could have been used not against civilians but against genuine military targets. Hiroshima signalled a failure of humankind, not just that of America. The growth of technology has far outstripped our ability to use it wisely. Like a quarrelling group of monkeys on a leaky boat, armed with sticks of dynamite, we are now embarked on an uncertain journey. (Pervez Hoodbhoy is a member of the Pugwash Council and is a professor of nuclear and high-energy physics at Quaid-e-Azam University, Islamabad, where he has taught for 32 years.) _________________________________ SOUTH ASIANS AGAINST NUKES (SAAN): An informal information platform for activists and scholars concerned about Nuclearisation in South Asia South Asians Against Nukes Mailing List: archives are available @ two locations May 1998 - March 2002: <groups.yahoo.com/group/sap/messages/1> Feb. 2001 - to date: <groups.yahoo.com/group/SAAN_/messages/1> To subscribe send a blank message to: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> South Asians Against Nukes Website: www.s-asians-against-nukes.org SOUTH ASIANS AGAINST NUKES (SAAN): An informal information platform for activists and scholars concerned about the dangers of Nuclearisation in South Asia SAAN Website: http://www.s-asians-against-nukes.org SAAN Mailing List: To subscribe send a blank message to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] SAAN Mailing List Archive : http://groups.yahoo.com/group/SAAN_/ ________________________________ DISCLAIMER: Opinions expressed in materials carried in the posts do not necessarily reflect the views of SAAN compilers. 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