Japan deserved atomic bombing to end World War II - but Iraq doesn't

Editor:

Editorials can make people think. Barry Paschal's July 31 column in The Columbia County News-Times, "Apologies? Yep; but to vets, SRS" made me think.

He came down hard on Bob Cushing. Now, I think Cushing is dead wrong. We had no choice but to declare war against the Axis powers after they declared war on us. The Japanese were inhuman in the ways they carried out unprovoked attacks against China, the United States, the United Kingdom, and other countries. They brutalized not only prisoners of war but also the noncombatant citizens of those territories which they conquered.

We were not wrong to use the bombs. The Axis would have used such weapons against the Allies had the roles been reversed. Luckily for Italy and Germany, they had already surrendered by the time the atomic bomb had been perfected.

So, Hiroshima was bombed on Aug. 6, 1945. The Soviet Union declared war on Aug. 8. Still, the Japanese refused to give up. Nagasaki was bombed on Aug. 9. Finally on Aug. 10, Japan announced that it would accept the terms of the Potsdam Declaration.

... We've done a splendid job of destroying Iraq without nuclear weaponry and without declaring war (only Congress can, but hasn't since Dec. 11, 1941).

Paschal's opinion is that we should have used a nuclear device against a country which had done absolutely nothing to us. That is just as off-base as Bob Cushing's opinion that we must apologize to Japan for using nuclear weapons against a country which did a great deal of damage to us and to others.

Bill Harding

Evans