Apology called for

Last week the world marked the 70th anniversary of the dropping of two nuclear bombs on Japan, the first on the city of Hiroshima on August 6, 1945 and the second three days later on the city of Nagasaki. It was the first ever deployment of nuclear weapons in a war. 

The death toll in the first target was 140,000 people while it reached 70,000 in the second. Obviously, the casualties were mostly, if not all, civilians. Clearly also, both cities were civilian targets.

What’s worse is that then-US president Harry Truman did not need to drop these atomic bombs on two civilian targets to end the war with Japan and force it to surrender. By all accounts Tokyo was on the verge of surrender anyway, especially after the Soviet Union rather belatedly joined the fray and declared war on Japan.  

Irrespective of whether or not the annihilation of two major metropolises in Japan was the proximate cause for ending World War II, the fact remains that under international humanitarian law effective at the time, the deliberate targeting of civilian objectives and the mass killing of innocent civilians was and is a crime against humanity and a war crime of the first order. 

While no one in his right mind would accuse the American people of being callous about human life then or now, the US military culture at the time was different. 

Truman obviously did not care about human life when he prosecuted his nation’s war efforts and must have thought that innocent civilians were expendable for the great objective of achieving a victory over America’s enemies. 

Most probably the prevailing US military culture at the time was behind the Truman doctrine that no amount of human life is too high to win a decisive victory over imperial Japan. 

The same culture prevailed during the Vietnam war when Richard Nixon and Lyndon Johnson caused the death of no less than 3 million Vietnamese and 58,000 US service men and women in the hope of winning the war there. 

Luckily, this military culture and doctrine is no longer the prevailing perspective on how a major war can be justly waged and won. Americans are largely peaceful, compassionate people that prioritise human life. 

Therefore, Americans must apologise for causing so much death and destruction in the past US wars. President Barack Obama should seize the opportunity of the 70th anniversary of the atomic bombings to officially express his nation’s deep remorse and regret and offer an apology for deploying nuclear weapons on civilian targets.