On August 6, 1945, the United States military used a massive, atomic weapon against Hiroshima, Japan. This atomic bomb, the equivalent of 20,000 tons of dynamite, flattened the city, killing tens of thousands of civilians. While Japan was still trying to get a grasp of this devastation, three days later, the United States struck again, this time, on Nagasaki. Within the first two to four months of the bombings, the immediate effects killed 90,000–166,000 people in Hiroshima and 60,000–80,000 in Nagasaki. If you are an American you may see this event as a positive action for our society, and if you are Japanese you may see this as the most horrendous occurrence in the history of the human race. Regardless of your viewpoint on the situation, it is important to understand its proportionality. What I mean by proportionality is the proportion of good aspects to bad aspects that the action had. Did the good outweigh the bad? In the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the bad definitely outweighed the good, where although we may have saved many Americans lives, hundreds of thousands civilians died, and an entire country was devastated. So when developing an opinion on the use of drone strikes, I want you to keep in mind proportionality, and ask yourself, does the good outweigh the bad?
The use of drone strikes is very important to our country because they not only effectively eradicate terrorists, but they also keep our soldiers safe and reduce civilian deaths more than traditional methods of attack. Drones are unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) that can be flown without a pilot for thousands of miles and can be utilized in many ways. These drones have been used for attaining aerial views of land and water, scanning crops, fighting wildfires, taking photographs, and searching and rescuing, as well as many other uses. The United States military has taken drones to an entirely new level where they have begun using them as lethal weapons. Equipping these
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