- The war was defensive in nature, that is to say provoked and in response to a legitimate need to defend a nation's citizens;
- The war was limited to combatants and surrender was honored, as wounded were treated mercifully;
- The war had a clear objective that was obtainable;
- The war was imposed by legal authority; and
- There was no other recourse available to defend the citizens of a nation.
Modern warfare had done away with the idea of a just war. Today is the sixtieth anniversary of the first use of nuclear weapons in war. The bomb rendered obsolete all of these criteria as it was a new sort of weapon of which Augustine could not have imagined: a weapon of mass destruction.
Since the world began the last century of madness and mayhem - I consider that World War I and World War II to be part of the same conflict; the cold war and the colonial wars in Asia to be extensions of the same - we, as a nation, have been the beneficiaries of blood. When Eisenhower warned against the development of a "military industrial complex" he spoke of the wedding of our economic needs to the machinery of war. Every weapon is truly theft from the legacy of our humanity and the very real and mundane needs of the remainder of humanity: food, clothing, shelter, peace.
The bomb fell and with it Hirsohima became the first casualty of a new and inhumane form of conflict in which there was no possible distinction to be drawn between combatants and civilians: all were targets, all were destroyed. In a dark irony the bomb, like death itself, was egalitarian insofar as it did not distinguish between class or rank: all that fell in its shadow were and then were no longer.
We are now engaged in a bloody and horrid war in Iraq. To what end do we pursue this warring madness. How many more must die before we learn that the greatness of a nation is not found in its ability to kill, but in its will to be compassionate?
Ah, but I am only a fool...
