The main reason that Hiroshima concerns me, I'll be honest, is not because I have a great deal of sympathy for the Japanese or because I want to bash the US for bombing them.
I'm not interested in apologizing to the Japanese or any of that.
My concern is that too many people have decided that World War II is a model for all wars. Supposedly, in WWII, good and evil were so clearly defined, and we were so obviously righteous, that we had a right to demand any victory conditions we wanted without negotiation. I'm not terribly concerned about this atitude per se, but it bothers me that some people want to apply it to every war before or since; I'm not too concerned whether or not firebombing Dresden was justified at the time, or whether bombing Hiroshima was justified at the time, but I am worried when people claim that because that was justified, we also ought to nuke Baghdad or flatten Fallujah.
I think we need to question actions such as the bombing of Hiroshima, not to play some sort of blame game, but so that we aren't so complacent about seeing it as so unambiguously good that we make it a model to follow.
That is all.
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