by Robert Wilkinson
From "The Words of Gandhi," selected by Richard Attenborough:
So far as I can see, the atomic bomb has deadened the finest feeling that has sustained mankind for ages. There used to be the so-called law of war which made it tolerable. Now we know the naked truth. War knows no law except that of might. The atom bomb brought an empty victory to the allied armies but it resulted for the time being in destroying the soul of Japan. What has happened to the soul of the destroying nation is yet too early to see. Forces of nature act in a mysterious manner.
We can but solve the mystery by deducing the unknown result from the known results of similar events. A slaveholder cannot hold a slave without putting himself or his deputy in the cage holding the slave....
The moral to be legitimately drawn from the supreme tragedy of the bomb is that it will not be destroyed by counter-bombs even as violence cannot be by counter-violence. Mankind has to get out of violence only through nonviolence. Hatred can be overcome only by love. Counter-hatred only increases the surface as well as the depth of hatred....
And now we know the cost of using atomic weapons is that it cultivates the delusion that we can (and should) use them again when we deem it right. Reminds me that nuclear ANYTHING is bad for people, business, creatures, and everything else. May nukes pass from this Earth with least harm possible.
(Originally published 4-10-2005)
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