Thoughts on my creative argument

The last piece I wrote for my class was a creative argument. The class was given the choice of a short story, satirical news story, or a sonnet. I chose the sonnet only by accident. When I woke up one morning this popped into my head immediately. I was delighted and almost a little guilty when my homework was finished in under ten minutes.

When I wrote this piece, I was not attempting to present a pacifist view. It's a short statement of (for lack of a better word) frustration that resulted from this term's research.

All of my study lead me to these three conclusions: First, I probably would have made the same decision as President Truman. Second, Truman's decision was a courageous one--maybe even the right one. Third, mankind consistently comes up with crummy solutions for crummy problems.

The third point is what this sonnet is trying to communicate: the futility of it all. The atomic bomb was intended to be the device that brought an end to the War and gave the world peace. It brought an end to the war, all right. It also propelled the world into a new day of terrible weapons and fear.

True, it would have been better if only the Soviet's hadn't stolen our secrets and used them against us in a forty-year war. Or maybe it would have been OK if the combination of the bomb and the disaster at Cherynobyl in the mid-80's hadn't happened and we weren't skittish about nuclear power even to this day. Possibly it would have been fine if we didn't see the leader of some rogue government making less-than-idle threats on a daily basis in our media.

The fact is that it all started in 1945 on a day in August when we were doing the best that we could.