The Bomb

As regular readers of this blog know, I'm generally hawkish. And I've never seen combat, except as portrayed by Oliver Stone or Steven Spielberg. That said, when I toured the city of Hiroshima, it made me wonder if two bombs, both on cities, were needed.

So it was probably good for me to read Paul Fussell's "Thank God For Atom The Bomb" (first published as "Hiroshima: A Soldier's View" in the August 1981 New Republic).

I was directed to the essay (via Instapundit) by Clive Davis, who describes the piece as Fussell's

angry but measured response to those of his fellow-intellectuals who condemned the use of the Bomb without the knowledge of what it meant to be in combat.

By way of background, Davis is an Englishman who claims as his intellectual heroes Norman Podhoretz, Shelby Steele, C.S. Lewis, Richard Pipes and George Orwell.