Scheer: ‘Mr. Negative’ Laid an Egg

Re “Real Evildoer? The World’s Nuclear Arsenal,” Commentary, Nov. 13: After reading Robert Scheer’s latest leftist ravings on the world’s nuclear arsenal, I think he needs to be renamed Mr. Negative. I have never read one article by him that was not negative, usually critical of Republicans or the Bush administration. This column finds fault with our using the atomic bomb to end World War II, which saved thousands of lives of Allied troops. Then he finds fault with going after the terrorists by claiming that the “revenge” bombing is killing children and starving the population and saying that this does not address the larger threat to the world’s security.

One crisis at a time, Mr. Negative. We were attacked and thousands of innocent men, women and children were killed. Funny, he didn’t mention that. As far as starving children go, I believe that they were starving long before Sept. 11, and since then we have been spending millions of dollars to drop food to all the Afghan people.

Bob Franz

Placentia

*

I really like Scheer, but this time he laid an egg. The U.S. dropped the bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki to end the war, which was started by a sneak attack on us. Comparing dropping those bombs with the sneak attack on civilians in the World Trade Center, thus starting a war, requires some mental acrobatics.

Arnold H. Zweig

Studio City

*

I am surprised that anyone can still hold a naive view of the world, wherein war can be banished and peace spontaneously achieved, especially in light of the calamity of Sept. 11. If war is inevitable, and history bears that out, then nuclear weapons by their mere presence are indispensable. Those who cannot see that are blinded by the current respite from war brought on, ironically, by the very nuclear weapons that they decry.

Without nuclear weapons, an invasion of Japan may have been necessary, devastating not only the Allied ground forces but the whole of Japan also. The deployment of the bomb did not take any more lives than conventional bombing, as was shown in Dresden, Hamburg and Tokyo (cities destroyed by conventional air campaigns).

The so-called nuclear genie cannot be put back in the bottle; we cannot go back in time to uninvent nuclear weapons any more than we can eradicate knowledge of tanks, planes or the crossbow. Therefore, we must live with them and be thankful that they make the horror of a world war inconceivable, since it would be unwinnable.

James Boshnack

Ventura