One of the most important men in history whose name no one but history buffs remember died this past week: Paul Tibbets Jr. You will probably be more familiar with him as the man who piloted the Enola Gay, the plane that dropped the atomic bomb on Hiroshima. No one is quite sure how many people died as a result of the bombing, since it’s hard to quantify all the people who died from radiation in later years. The U.S. Department of Energy reports that 70,000 people died from the initial blast, with between 100,000 and 200,000 dying in the years after. Most of these were innocent civilians. After the bomb dropped, humanity had to deal with two new ideas. The first was, as Bishop Fulton J. Sheen wrote, “The atomic bomb has suddenly made all humanity fear that which the individual alone previously feared, namely, death.” We had to confront the possibility that everything and everyone would be destroyed with the push of a few buttons. Then, we had to deal with the second idea: that this was justified. It became morally acceptable for governments to deploy weapons to slaughter civilians in the name of saving its own soldiers. To be sure, killing civilians didn’t start with the atom bomb. The history of war is a history of injustice. But never before had it been so glorified. Tibbets helped kill thousands of civilians, and he got a medal for it. Tibbets went to his grave defending the decision to drop the bomb on innocents. Having discovered all this about Tibbets this week made me realize that maybe Rep. Ron Paul, R-Texas, was on to something when he said in a presidential debate in June that the greatest moral issue facing our country was the rejection of the just war doctrine. Now, I’m not a supporter of Ron Paul nor do I think that the rejection of just war is the biggest moral issue. However, it’s become clear that abandoning it has become a cancer which is corrupting our society. If you’re not familiar with the Just War Doctrine, look it up. It could be described as the moral handbook on war. It discusses when it’s acceptable to go to war and how war should be waged. Guiding the discussion are the ideas that war ought to be avoided and that lives, particularly those of civilians, should be protected. Citizens, because they have an inviolable right to life and cannot be used as a means to an end (even if that end is a quicker victory), cannot ever be intentionally murdered. Citizens might die accidentally, but the goal should be to minimize those deaths. For centuries, governments at least pretended to be waging wars according to these rules. Every government wanted to appear to be the just defender of life and liberty. Contrast this with our world today. The Bush administration did not need justify the Iraq War with morals but rather used utilitarianism. Even Bush’s opponents mostly argued not that the war was immoral but that the weapons that made the war useful did not exist so the war was not really useful. So we decide whether to kill not because it’s right or wrong but whether the killing helps us out. How selfish have we become? This thread has continued in the presidential debates. The Republicans are waging a debate about which forms of torture are valid. Under the just war doctrine, torture is never permissible. Rep. Tom Tancredo, R-Colo., in response to a question about what he would do to extract information from a terrorist about a nuclear device, boasted “I’m looking for Jack Bauer at that time!” He went on to imply that water boarding and other techniques would be quite acceptable. According to ABC News, the procedure requires that “prisoner is bound to an inclined board, feet raised and head slightly below the feet. Cellophane is wrapped over the prisoner’s face and water is poured over him. Unavoidably, the gag reflex kicks in and a terrifying fear of drowning leads to almost instant pleas to bring the treatment to a halt.” It is disgusting that the Republicans find this acceptable. Unfortunately, their Democratic counterparts are not much better. The frontrunner for the Democratic presidential nomination, Sen. Hillary Clinton, D-N.Y., chastised Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill., for saying he would never use nuclear weapons against terrorists in Afghanistan and Pakistan, according to The New York Times. Maybe it’s me, but a big mushroom cloud for a few guys in caves? Have we lost our minds? Our country is founded on the idea that every single human life is precious. Unless we return to the idea that we should never promote the destruction of innocent human beings or the torture of anyone, then we will soon find that what we are really torturing is our consciences, and what we are really destroying is ourselves.
—-Contact Michael Denton at [email protected]