Better late than never...

...is a good phrase and one that is probably quite apt for our species as we don't always seem to be to quick on the uptake. So while i'm a bit late posting about the news stories i was reading about over the weekend i'm not quite half as slow as those that are in power throughout the world are to realise that things like Nuclear weapons are bad! The anniversary of Hiroshima passed over the weekend and the memory of the destruction and lives lost there and in Nagasaki should be the only examples we need to know that using such weapons is just not something that we should tolerate.

Indeed it is questionable that they should ever have been used at the time, conventional wisdom is that it saved more lives in the long run as it hastened the surrender of the Japanese and saved a long drawn out ground campaign to invade Japan. There are however alternative views as to whether it was really required. I find it hard to judge, WW2 is the war i was taught as the 'good war' where we had a clearly defined right and wrong side. Germany and the genocide of the jews, Japan with unprovoked attack on Pearl Harbour and inhuman treatment of POW's.

It looks to me as though the war could have been ended without unleashing atomic bombs upon Japan nor without a ground invasion. How easy a decision that was to make at the time only those directly involved will really know. The only good thing we can take from such a horrific period in human history is that the consquences of using atomic weapons are plain for all to see and there can be no doubt as to how unacceptable there future use can be.

Sadly whether through time or through current political pressures Nuclear profileration is still ongoing. Indeed if recent history is teaching people anything is that if you have Nuclear capability then your country is safe from invasion. So while North Korea has become a Nuclear power we have seen Iraq fall to US/UK invasion. Is it a conicidence that Iran is being bullish about it's own Nuclear programme? For those countries labelled part of an axis of evil by the USA it comes as no suprise that it was the militarily weaker ones targeted by the Bush administration.

Is the world a safer place from learning from history?