The Moral Question

War by its nature raises some of the most difficult moral questions that men must face. Obviously, these dilemmas have grown infinitely graver as technology has equipped the allegedly civilized nations with the hardware for inflicting catastrophic destruction. Was Hiroshima necessary in order to save the lives that would have been lost in an invasion of Japan? Did the firebombings of Dresden hasten the end of the war in Europe?

The bombings of North Viet Nam also aroused doubts--moral questions that would persist even though the bombing was halted as abruptly as it began. At My Lai, most Americans believe, a handful of atypical G.I.s were acting "illegally" when they slaughtered several hundred Vietnamese civilians. Last week American bomber pilots were killing Vietnamese civilians--who in this case were fiercely defended by SAM missiles--but now it was official U.S. policy, ordered by the Commander in Chief.

The man-made devastation of North Viet Nam occurred at the same time as the natural cataclysm of the Nicaraguan earthquake. It was a haunting coincidence--American relief planes rushing doctors and medical supplies to the Nicaraguans while B-52s rained 500-lb. bombs on the Vietnamese.

Many Americans could be forgiven if they entertained a fantasy from Kurt Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse-Five. Unstuck in time, the character named Billy Pilgrim runs a movie of World War II in his head--backward: "When the bombers got back to their base, the steel cylinders were taken from the racks and shipped back to the United States of America, where factories were operating night and day, dismantling the cylinders, separating the dangerous contents into minerals. Touchingly it was mainly women who did this work. The minerals were then shipped to specialists in remote areas. It was their business to put them into the ground, to hide them cleverly, so they would never hurt anybody ever again." The bombing halt fell considerably short of that redemptive fantasy, but it was at least renewed motion in the right direction.

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