Instructions
During World War I, nearly 40% of all casualties were caused by machine-gun fire. Some historians describe the effect of the machine gun as a weapon of mass destruction (WMD). Paul Farhi in a Washington Post article The Soothing Sound of Fighting Words, cited a quote by historian Paul Fussell on the subject: A machine gun, properly fired, is a weapon of mass destruction. Were pretending that only awful and sinister people own weapons of mass destruction. We own them, too. We just call them something else.
History has proven that a weapon in the hands of a well-trained sniper can cause numerous deaths and casualties. Fully automatic firearms or semiautomatic firearms can indeed inflict mass destruction, but are not classified by the Federal Bureau of Investigation as WMD. Numerous forms of WMD were used throughout WWII even though no country resorted to chemical warfare, with the exception of tear gas. Such WMD ranged from grenades, mines, artillery, and bombs to the use of atomic bombs against the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
Access the CSU Online Library, and locate two scholarly journal articles on the use of WMD during World War II. Write a two-page paper summarizing the use, implications, and repercussions (i.e., side effects, sociological effects, or political effects) of the WMD. Ensure your reference entries and in-text citations follow APA formatting guidelines and are free of errors.
Within your paper, you must address if any of the uses of WMD may be considered acts of terrorism. Remember that terrorism is an act against any nonmilitary target that is meant to evoke political change. Additionally, you must address what actions could have been taken by either side in WWII to develop counteraction strategies that would have prevented the attack or would have minimized the impact of the attack. In your conclusion, please provide a summary of your findings, and include an analysis of the impact of the specific WMD introduced in your paper along with how that WMD compares to probable future terrorist attacks.
