Often pragmatic and simple solutions are morally bad. There is no justification for slaughtering civilians. Justifying your own weapons buildups by accusing others of doing the same results in never ending escalation, eventually crippling the USSR and Eastern Europe, and causing war in Afghanistan. It also caused poverty throughout Eastern Europe. Sure, you do need to be able to defend yourself, but that should never descend into Facism, and accumulating weaponry for the sake of weaponry will never end well. Einstein put it best: “I know not with what weapons World War 3 will be fought: But World War 4 will be fought with sticks and stones.”.

Pacifism is good. I would argue that anyone against pacifism is wrong, morally bankrupt, and needs to reconsider morality. War, and killing, are bad, and wrong. Every good soldier should be fighting for peace, not war. I can’t think of any Ethical way to justify starting a war, unless you can decide that the evil that you want to attack them for commiting is bigger than the one you will commit in fighting them (Unless of course, they attack you). I’d say that advocating war would make you Evil by my moral code. Sure, sometimes war is necessary. Fighting the Nazis, necessary, fighting the Germans in World War 1 may also have been necessary. But in the modern world, is there any Nation that America need fear? No. Who did they attack? Backwards arabic societies in the middle east. Come on, that’s not ethically justifiable. If you can justify dropping bombs on innocents, then you’re wrong. It’s that simple.

His close association with active communists, and a post-cold war revelation (a code name for a spy that was in all probability a reference to Oppenheimer?) lead me to believe that he was leaking information to the soviets. Dr. Shermer’s love affair with Oppies brainpower may have caused him to overlook serious problems with the man’s patriotism.

I’m not aware of any evidence to support this.

“I changed my mind about an important historical question: did the nuclear bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki bring World War Two to an end? Until this year I used to say, perhaps. Now, because of new facts, I say no. This question is important, because the myth of the nuclear bombs bringing the war to an end is widely believed.”

The theory is that Japan surrendered because the Soviets invaded Manchuria.

My two cents. Nuclear weapons have no inherent moral properties. Their invention was inevitable at the time Oppenheimer was involved, so the U.S. seems morally justified in developing them ahead of its enemies, the Nazis. Using the weapon against the Japanese is projected to have saved approximately 1 million U.S. soldiers lives, so that seems to have a solid moral basis. Remember, the Japanese leadership knew they were facing inevitable defeat and had the option to surrender in light of this knowledge. The fact that they didn’t surrender after the first bombing tells volumes about the moral failings of Japans leadership at the time. One could further argue that the development of a superior nuclear arsenal by the U.S. led to a long period of relative peace in the world compared to the one hundred years that led up to the nuclear age.

Oppenheimer seems to have had idealistic, pacifistic views of the world which don’t comport with the current organization of the world. Ethicists can quite easily make a moral case for war, and having the appropriate weapons to defend oneself or to eliminate an enemy in a just war seems to again be a valid moral choice. Those who can’t countenance this line of reasoning simply do not understand the geo-political realities of the world we live in. Whether this willful ignorance of the realties we face is in itself moral I’ll leave to you all to consider.