It Shouldn't Ever Have To End This Way

[omorka]

Sometimes, the options have been reduced to the bad, the worse, and the disastrous. And even with sixty-five years' hindsight, it's not clear which option was which.

. . . the problem is one that touches on the dirty little secret of social class in America. Arthur T. Hadley said recently that those for whom the use of the A-bomb was "wrong" seem to be implying "that it would have been better to allow thousands on thousands of American and Japanese infantrymen to die in honest hand-to-hand combat on the beaches than to drop those two bombs." People holding such views, he notes, "do not come from the ranks of society that produce infantrymen or pilots."

- from Paul Fussell's incredibly eloquent, morally complex, and provocatively titled essay Thank God for the Atom Bomb.

There were no good decisions. As the granddaughter of a WWII veteran, I don't think we made the worst one. But then again, I'm enough of a Utilitarian that I'm not sure I'd walk away from Omelas, either.