I recently finished reading Ian Toll’s Twilight of the God’s: War in the Pacific 1944-1945 (2020). A gigantic 994 page brute of a book about the last phase of the war against the Japanese. It’s a really fine work of military and naval history, with domestic political history thrown in as a bonus and I might review it here on substack soon. I have read at least a dozen books on the Pacific War, which I have always found a fascinating subject.

Years ago, I became acquainted with Hiroshima, a famous 1946 New Yorker article by John Hersey on the nuclear attacks on Japan and their horror. A later book by Hersey was published, expanding upon the article. Another book from 2020, called Fallout by Leslie Blume, described the interesting story of how the Hersey article and later book was published and how the Truman Administration tried to spike these publications to prevent the government from looking bad.

At the time of the explosions of the two bombs on Japan about 210,000 people were killed, possibly more. Another 100,000 or more have perished due to long term injuries and radiation sickness. The tales of horrific burns, people being turned to cinders and having their faces melted off are pretty awful. One would think that all this is a horrible history that exists in the past. After all, the members of the nuclear club have shown remarkable restraint. Even Kim Jong il of North Korea, alleged to be a little off his rocker, got nukes in 2006, but thankfully, has never used them.

Right now as I write these words, there are people trying to push Trump into using a nuclear weapon against Iran, specifically, a tactical nuclear weapon. Somehow, these geniuses think the use of tactical nukes won’t escalate into the use of strategic nuclear weapons. In the mid-fifties, during the Eisenhower Administration, the Pentagon actually did a couple of war game simulations on this concept; general against general, as it were. These simulations ended up turning into full scale nuclear war in the Kriegspiels.

A few weeks into the crisis, credible rumors emerged that Trump was running around the White House in a panic demanding the nuclear codes and was told by the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Kaine, to pull himself together and forget about it. Now, however, the nuclear talk resumes. Trump started an ill-considered war at the suggestion of his buddy Netanyahu and foolishly assumed that the Iranian government would last, at most, a couple of weeks. This was, perhaps, the greatest strategic blunder in the history of the United States. Instead of owning up to his foolish mistake and bringing the sea, air and tiny land forces home, he doubles down and is considering nuclear war that could kill millions. Untold millions must die by having their faces melted off by nuclear explosions for the sake of his fragile ego and the fact that he, for obscure reasons, can’t say no when he is within 1000 feet of any member of the Hebraic race.

Millions may die for his own overweening pride and never wanting to be a “loser”. He was like this in his first term when he promised a withdrawal from Afghanistan and spent years fooling around in negotiations with the Taliban that never came to anything because he wanted the “perfect deal’. It took President Biden, a man I really don’t like, to finally get out of that awful place.

I don’t sit around all day rhapsodizing about the wonders of Shia Islam or the contributions of Iranian civilization, but Iranians are people, real human beings, with hearts and minds and their little dreams and ambitions, and Trump wants to blow them all to kingdom come and melt their faces off, just for the sake of his fragile, senile, half-mad ego and unconditional Zionism. Who are these monsters that rule over us?