August 6, 1945

Most of us alive today don't remember that day.  But it was a day that changed the world.  On that day we dropped the atomic bomb on Hiroshima.  67 years later we are still the only country to detonate an atomic bomb.  Perhaps the justification Truman used was the right one - it saved the lives of many Americans who would have died in an invasion of Japan.   We'll never know if he was right.  

We who were alive on that day felt - and, I think, still feel - that particular war was justified. We did some evil things, but sometimes one has to.  There are very,very few of us who leave this earth without having committed evil.  We hope that the good we do more than equals the evil.

It was a lot easier to justify that war than all of our wars since - Korea, Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan and all the minor conflicts we have forgotten.  Have we learned something?  I'd like to think so.  But, when one looks around at drone wars, at the insanity proposed by some of our leaders re Iran, at the futility of our actions in Afghanistan, at our glorification of the military, one has to wonder.