Washington Post

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 (2003), in “The Soothing Sound of Fighting Words” in The Washington Post, cited a quote by historian Paul Fussell on the subject: “A machine gun, properly fired, is a weapon of mass destruction. We’re pretending that only awful and sinister people own weapons of mass destruction. We own them, too. We just call them something else” (para. 18). However, 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 FBI as WMD. Numerous forms of WMD were used throughout WWII even though no country resorted to chemical warfare, short of tear gas. Such WMD ranged from grenades, mines, artillery, and bombs to the attacks against Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Access the Waldorf Online Library or an outside source, and locate a scholarly journal article on the use of WMD during World War II. Using APA format, write a two-page paper summarizing the use, implications, and repercussions (i.e., side effects, sociological effects, or political effects) of the WMD. 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 contrasts to probable future terrorist attacks.