After such dispiriting campaigns for the Democratic and Republican nominations, President Obama’s judicious speech at the Hiroshima memorial is a bracing reminder of what can be achieved when political rhetoric is used with intelligence and empathy. Facing domestic pressure to avoid apologizing for America’s use of atomic bombs, and Japanese expectations for an acknowledgement of the horrors which resulted from the use of these weapons, Obama crafted an impressively candid response which cleared a middle ground between these points of view.
After evoking the horror of the bomb itself – “on a bright cloudless morning, death fell from the sky … A flash of light and a wall of fire destroyed a city and demonstrated that mankind possessed the means to destroy itself” – and counting its immediate human cost, the speech deftly pivoted towards the larger problem of mankind’s enduring tendency towards aggression.
Reflecting on the conflict which the bombs at Hiroshima and Nagasaki helped to end, Obama recalled that World War II claimed the lives of 60 million people: “Men, women, children, no different than us. Shot, beaten, marched, bombed, jailed, starved, gassed to death.” Furthermore, he pointed out that those chiefly responsible for the horrors were from the “wealthiest and most powerful of nations”, from civilizations that “had given the world great cities and magnificent art” and whose “thinkers had advanced ideas of justice and harmony and truth.”
The speech then quietly digressed into what may be read as an apology by other means. Rather than issue a simple statement of regret for America’s use of the bombs, Obama raises the wider question of what mankind, collectively, has learned from the experience. Gesturing towards the perils of ultranationalism – “Nations arise telling a story that binds people together in sacrifice and cooperation … [but] those same stories have so often been used to oppress and dehumanize those who are different” – and other forms of fanaticism (“no religion has been spared from believers who have claimed their faith as a license to kill”), he wisely suggested that “Technological progress without an equivalent progress in human institutions can doom us.”
Then, he alluded to our tentative peacemaking efforts in the postwar decades, and reached the hopeful conclusion that “An international community [has] established institutions and treaties that work to avoid war and aspire to restrict and roll back and ultimately eliminate the existence of nuclear weapons.”
The tragic notes in the speech came immediately afterwards in a brief reference to the carnage in Syria (“even the crudest rifles and barrel bombs can serve up violence on a terrible scale”) and a decent but probably forlorn hope that we may eventually “see our growing interdependence as a cause for peaceful cooperation and not violent competition.” Finally, the speech offered a gracefully understated conclusion that ordinary people instinctively grasp the horror of what took place in Hiroshima 71 years ago, that they don’t want war and “would rather that the wonders of science be focused on improving life and not eliminating it.” That, with sufficient political wisdom, we can choose a “a future in which Hiroshima and Nagasaki are known not as the dawn of atomic warfare but as the start of our own moral awakening.”
The rhetorical force that President Obama displays on such occasions is a moving reminder of how differently his presidency might have gone if the hard facts of Republican intransigence and Washington’s hidebound self-interests had not derailed his agenda. With his hard won knowledge of the consequences of American power, his late-breaking foreign policy successes (Cuba, Iran), not to mention healthcare, deficit reduction and kickstarting a lifeless economy, who would not choose a third term for this president over any of the likely alternatives?
Instead, the Obama years seem fated to end in a minor key, with only distant echoes of the enormous promise with which they began. They are more likely to be remembered as an object lesson in the frustrating but perhaps necessary task of wielding political power thoughtfully, but not always pragmatically, or with immediate success. For while difficult decisions – such as the incredibly complex choice to use atomic weapons against Japan – may produce disappointing and even catastrophic results, they can also, if reached in good faith and with sufficient political integrity, nevertheless pave the way towards our collective moral progress.
