Thoughts on a Saturday Morning

I won’t say that the reactions to my biting Bytes about the nuclear bombs we used on Hiroshima and Nagasaki haven’t disturbed me. Was I wrong to suggest that we reevaluate our interpretation of history? Was I reading something into the words of Eisenhower and MacArthur that wasn’t there? What is there about questioning the U.S.’s national posture that ‘we are the most moral and righteous of all nations’ that upsets so many people?

Last night, as I was close to deleting the last two blogs that I have written and begging the forgiveness of my critics, the Charlie Rose Show came on PBS and I found that I am not the only one questioning the nuclear attacks on Hiroshima and, especially, Nagasaki.

Charlie was interviewing historian Martin Sherwin, who, with Kai Bird, authored American Prometheus: The Triumph and Tragedy of J. Robert Oppenheimer, and they were discussing the exact same questions that I have asked in my two previous blogs. So I feel that I am not alone, either as an ethicist or a historian, in asking those questions.

Thus, I shall not delete my posts of 11 and 12 August; what I shall do is read the book, which appears to ask even deeper questions about the nuclear arms policy of the United States than I have thus far asked.