August 6, 1945

Sixty five years ago today, the Enola Gay flew over the city of Hiroshima and dropped a bomb. A second bomb a few days later flattened Nagasaki, Japan.

That horror is still with us. In a single destructive act, so many people died, were maimed, poisoned. All life in a certain radius was turned to a shadow.

The horror of nuclear war is no more than the horror of war itself. The fire bombing of Dresden Germany was just as miserable an act of war. It just took more bombs, took longer to execute. In the end, people were dead.

The argument for using the bomb -- that it saved American lives, and perhaps saved Japanese lives too -- is pretty weak. The Japanese could have continued fighting, even after the destruction of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Maybe an American landing expidition would never have been needed. I wonder what might have happened if a policy of isolation had been adopted late in the war.

I just know it's really stupid how many nuclear weapons we have now. Several thousand. Each one powerful enough to decimate a city.