Hiroshima / Nagasaki

Yesterday marked the 61st anniversary of the U.S. bombing of Hiroshima, Japan. Wednesday will mark the anniversary of the bombing of Nagasaki.

This is a truly horrifying anniversary. A generation that has a memory of the event is dying, and is being replaced by one that has no appreciation of its significance.

Only the United States has obliterated hundreds of thousands of non-combatant civilians with a single nuclear bomb.

The use of nuclear weapons against Japan has been justified on the grounds that a larger number of people would have died had the bombs not been used. This claim has been refuted by a number of writers, summed up here. The net result of U.S. intervention in Asia from 1940-1950 was the enslavement of a billion people to communism, and the murder of tens of millions. Prof R.J. Rummel says that communist democide in China totals 77 million. That does not include the millions of unborn slaughtered by a forced-abortion policy.

Americans sat on their hands as the federal government made friends with "Uncle Joe" Stalin and that "Agrarian Reformer," Mao Tse Tung. Americans did nothing when the federal government gave military aid to the Taliban and Saddam Hussein in the 1980's

Americans can no longer be apathetic and silent. The U.S. federal government was the greatest force for death and totalitarianism in the 20th century. If we fail to internalize this fact, the 21st century will be a bloodbath.

I agree with Richard McSorley: It's a sin to build a nuclear weapon. Such weapons inescapably murder innocent non-combatant civilians. No political or military theory can justify this.

Future generations will look back at the United States not as the keeper of peace, but as the bringer of destruction.

Thoughtful articles on the use of nuclear weapons by the U.S. in Japan can be found at LewRockwell.com.