Brian Quail (Letters, December 4) is appalled by the carnage that nuclear weapons cause.
So were the scientists who developed it. So am I; I've been to Hiroshima twice and the Peace Park is indeed a sombre experience. However, I've also been to Auschwitz and to the Holocaust Museum in Washington and they were equally affecting.
There's very little visual record from Hiroshima after the bomb dropped. One photographer made his way into town, but was so overcome by what he saw that he took very few photographs. In contrast, the Nazis recorded a lot of what they did, and there is horrific film taken by the Allies as they entered the concentration camps.
I've also read Romeo Dallaire's book about Rwanda. General Dallaire commanded a small detachment of UN troops during the genocide of 1994. About 800,000 people were killed, mostly by those weapons of mass destruction, the machete and the club. Despite his pleas for reinforcement, the UN did nothing, a stain on its record for all time. Yes, nuclear weapons are appalling, but men have found many ways to kill their fellows and only by strong and sometimes violent action can they be deterred from doing so.
Mr Quail trots out the old canard that nuclear weapons are illegal. The relevant law is the UN's Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), which came into effect in 1970. The NPT recognises the five permanent members of the UN Security Council as nuclear-weapon states; among those is the UK. That recognition places a heavy burden of responsibility on the UK, and it's regrettable that the SNP wants to shirk that responsibility. But the SNP has form: it was Alex Salmond who claimed it was "unpardonable folly" for Nato to act to stop genocide in the former Yugoslavia, a shameful stance.
Nuclear weapons are indeed appalling; so are biological and chemical weapons; so is the carnage in Syria and the death of more than five million in the never-ending war in the Democratic Republic of Congo, a conflict that merits scarce a mention in the UK press. Only when nations stand together and shoulder their responsibilities will the challenges the world faces be resolved. Or, of course, we could do what the SNP want us to do: slope our shoulders, ditch our responsibilities and hope that difficult situations around the world don't affect us directly.
Doug Maughan,
52 Menteith View,
Dunblane.
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