To This Date...

The U.S. has yet to issue an official apology for Hiroshima and Nagasaki. But that doesn't mean the U.S., as a nation, shouldn't issue an apology. While the U.S., seemingly, cannot issue an official apology, there is nothing to keep a sitting U.S. president from offering an unofficial personal apology. There is nothing at all keeping individual Americans from doing the same.

Before anyone decides to accuse me of wanting blood and death on the one hand-- in the here and now --while decrying blood and death on the other, sixty-three years ago, let me point you to the preamble to part 2 of my previous post, In Memoriam - Part II

"As much as I recognize the necessity of war, I find it nonetheless to be among the worst of human proclivities..."

Atomic weapons. Seriously, what good has come of them? Deterrence? Okay... but don't you think the world is less safe with this genie now irrevocably out of the bottle? What of Iran and her quest for the A-bomb?

The U.S. has the utterly unique and infamous distinction of being the only nation to ever have used atomic weapons on another nation. Japan has been the only nation in history to have ever tasted of the suffering borne upon-- to quote myself --atomic winds. It wasn't enough for the U.S. to drop one bomb. One would undoubtedly have ended the war with Japan... the simple threat of a second would have, IMHO, done the trick. But the U.S. wasn't content with dropping just one. It's as though the powers that be looked at the film footage, and said, "Good God! Would you look at that!!! ...Let's do it again!"

Yes, the war needed to end. Yes, Japan started it all by attacking Pearl Harbor; a day interestingly referred to as 'a date which will live in infamy.' Nevermind the fact that Pearl Harbor suffered 2,300 to 2,900 casualties, depending on which source you use, while the Hiroshima bomb alone, in the initial blast, killed approximately 80,000 men, women, and children.

Every death is regrettable. Every shot fired, a failure for humanity. We cheapen ourselves by the use of weapons against our neighbors, and we are lessened by the loss of each life we take.

No I don't like war at all. But neither do I like the idea of men, burdened by an oppressive and insane ideology, killing 241 marines... and getting away with it. Neither do I like the idea that this same ideology mutilates and murders women for sexual impurity, whether they're guilty or not (guilt being a non-issue as far as I'm concerned...genital mutilation and stoning are barbaric). I hate the idea that these people, warped by evil, find the idea of co-existence with other cultures is anathema to them... that they would rather fly jet liners filled with passengers into skyscrapers filled with workers... not soldiers... and if a certain faction within this country had its way, this murderous ideology would get away with that too.

This war did not end with Afghanistan-- Islam knows no physical border... has no tangible homeland. This war will not end with Iraq. This war, in fact, has only just begun, and few seem to realize it. While we fight like a pack of dogs over a few bones of contention, what's to stop these marauders from sneaking past and hitting us again? We're not paying attention. We haven't learned anything from the past. Not from Chamberlain, not from Hitler, not from Pearl Harbor, not from Hiroshima OR Nagasaki, not from Korea, not Vietnam, not Beirut, not Mogadishu. Israel, it would seem, has learned lessons we have not... Specifically, that War is indeed hell. And that one life lost is one too many.

So... If I choose to stand with Hiroshima and decry the use and proliferation of atomic weapons, it's because I've gotten a big eye-full of what's going on in the world... and I'm surprised as hell that you haven't.