So, my excerpting of Robert's blog wasn't entirely fair in the context of us dropping the bomb on Japan. I actually took that quote out from some parentheses.
The real issue is how do we as a culture think about our past actions and how do we attempt to make it so that we have better sets of choices in the future. And the bomb is not something we've come to terms with. We don't like other people having it but we like having it. We like to act all ethical about nuclear weapons but we aren't about to apply the ethical standards to ourselves (It just wouldn't be realistic).
On the question of whether or not we should have dropped the bomb. I don't know. If we and the rest of the world learned from it and if some lives were saved, maybe it was the right decision. It's hard to imagine a non-nuclear world anymore, so it's not a question that can really be answered.
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It's clear to me that this isn't going to be a useful discussion, so I'm not going to continue beyond this:
We defeated Japan. We didn't just get them to stop fighting, we defeated them. After we defeated them, we occupied them and wrote their constitution. The end result? They don't hate us. Japan has been our partner in trade and our ally for my entire life. The concept of Japan as an enemy of America is completely foreign to me. No one can pretend this is meaningless.
Nazi, evil. These are ugly names that should not be thrown lightly.
Serious people, serious thinkers must do more than call names if they wish to be taken seriously. They have to do better if they wish to change the world.
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