Never Again

Scott Allan Baker
Published in the Transylvania Times
August 10, 2020

Amid the swirling controversies surrounding the coronavirus and protests drawing attention to systemic racism, it is easy to forget that Aug. 6 and 9 marked the 75th anniversaries that opened the door to the use of nuclear weapons that still today threaten the existence of the human race.

On those days in 1945, the cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki were leveled by the explosion of two atomic bombs, and the people in them – men, women and children – were instantly incinerated. Some 150,000 of them. And experts say that as many as twice that number eventually died from the effects of radiation – burns, cancer and eventually birth defects. They were factory workers on the way to their employment and schoolchildren laughing innocently as they rushed to school.

The United States was the only nuclear power then and still is the only country to have used nuclear weapons in warfare. Things are different now. The countries that possess nuclear weapons include North Korea, India and Pakistan among others. The explosion of even one nuclear weapon intentionally or accidentally could trigger a nuclear exchange that could threat human life everywhere as we know it.

And the use of nuclear weapons is inherently immoral in that they are designed – intended - to kill thousands of innocent non-combatants.

That is why the United Nations General Assembly passed the Treaty for the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons putting the mere possession of nuclear weapons by any country in the same category as the possession of biological and chemical weapons – a violation of international law. With just a few more ratifications by countries around the world, it will go into effect.

That is why organizations such as Physicians for Social Responsibility, of which I am a member, and many others pave the way toward the reduction and eventual elimination of all nuclear weapons.

Isn’t it time to take these insane weapons and their immoral use off the table forever?

I join my colleagues at Physicians for Social Responsibility and the millions of anti-nuclear activists around the world in declaring emphatically, never again!

Scott Allan Baker

Pisgah Forest