Interesting and new.

So it is the eve before I start my job and I can't help but be a bit nervous about it.

Everyone has confidence in me, as usual, I just suppose I'm a bit more cautious then they are. Or perhaps I don't always give myself enough credit to be free of worry, but just enough credit to get miraculous things accomplished.

It should be good, easy, and all the usual things. I'm mostly concerned about the havok it will have on my body in the next week. I'll be getting up at 5 AM or earlier every morning and now integrating that with the start of my year. The forthcoming events that I have spent a year planning and waiting for. I should be able to take them well in stride, but it will be the natural adjustment period for taking on such a large job. I've never before had to work a full-time desk job. But it's the desk part that makes it seem like a breeze, regardless of anything else. I really think it is the best job I could get at this time.

It should even serve in many other, and much needed, ways.

So in continuing with documentaries on the History Channel about Hiroshima and the dropping of the only two atom bombs in all of history (at least on actual targets) I caught one of these such and its recounting of the time just prior, and immediately after the detonation on Hiroshima.

It is amazing to think about the thought process of our leadership of the time, and the circumstances of it. Many would like to pass judgement that it is the single greatest evil act Americans have ever perpetrated, ever. And while I agree that use of such weapons is horrific, you have to understand WHY they even considered it.

They well and truly believed with all their heart that it was the only deterent. That they had to "shock" Japan into surrendering or go in fighting to the very last man.

It's a perfect, and thus horrible, tale of the lesser of two evils. We instantly killed 180,000+ (in two seperate attacks, two. TWO. TWO bombs only. Just one of those bombs were the equivilent of 200,000 of the bombs that were standard equipment in the war) Japanese (mostly civilians). Now ask yourself if that is randsom for the thousands, tens of thousands, or hundreds of thousands that would have been lost on each side should we have invaded. You think Iraq is a quagmire? That has no comparison to the numbers that would have been lost.

Now judge our people on our merits.

It's hard still. But I believe we did what we needed to. I also think that it prevented a world war for the last 50 years. We might yet see that war. But we detered it for long enough as to realize the actual dangers. Our officials didn't realize the effects of radiation until afterwards, and a horrible thing it is, but the lives it might have saved our countless.

Some enemies can be ignored. Some enemies need be struck down.

Don't find yourself in a situation where you won't back down. The fury of your opponent will defeat you. No oppressor in all of history has remained the victor. They all fall to defeat.

I think the saddest thing is how something can go relatively unremembered. It's not rememberance when, on the days of reckoning, you memorialize the actions. It's rememberance when every time the situation comes up, you feel that pain. Every time war is threatened the people of the world should think of the suffering of those days. Should think of the horror of the following years.

Sure, we have a few that call for disarmament. Are they ever heeded? Are there even enough of them to be anything but an echo of memory?