(originally published August 5th, 2005)

Today is the 60th anniversary of the first atomic bomb dropped on a city, in this case, Hiroshima. By last count, over 240,000 people were ultimately victims of that bombing, which showed the world the power that one explosion can actually have.

I have mixed feelings about this initial event, and I guess I just have to meet them head on. For one, based on everything I’ve ever read, the powers that be in Japan were ready to basically allow every single person in that country to die in order to try to win a war that they had absolutely no chance to compete in. On the other hand, there was a growing movement that knew the inevitable, and the possibility was there that the war would have ended soon anyway.

I don’t know what the reality is, because, as we all know, the victor always gets to write the history. I think, though, that lessons were learned after the next three days, when the second and last atomic bomb ever dropped was unleashed on Nagasaki. Atomic, and now nuclear, weapons are scary. Today’s bomb is hundreds of times stronger than what was dropped in Japan. The United States is one of a very few, thank goodness, countries that has the things, and some of those countries have hundreds, just like us. We can easily destroy ourselves with a mistake; we will easily destroy anyone else if we ever unleash our bombs on them, just as our civilization will be destroyed if it happens to us.

I’m not one of those people who says they all have to go; that would make no sense at all. However, I am one of those who believes that having too many makes no sense at all either. Many of these things need to go, and across the world, no one should be making any new ones.

Social commentary? Well, possibly. I see this more as taking a position of leadership; a true leader knows when to pull back as well as when to push forward. A true leader learns from lessons of the past, in hope to not make the same mistakes in the future. And a true leader says what needs to be said, when it needs to be said.

A moment of silence to those whose lives were taken in order to educate the rest of us; they deserve at least that much.