Only the Dead Have Seen the End of War

Today's title is a quote from Plato and since my last original thought dies of loneliness long ago, here's one from Margaret Atwood that she offered years ago that's a direct, concise and brutally candid definition ‘war is what happens when language fails.’

Someone (else) once noted war doesn't determine who is right, only who is left.

Seventy years ago, today, the United States bombed Hiroshima, Japan, with a weapon so horrible in its power of destruction, for a long time we, as a species, lacked the words in any language fully convey the depth of destruction and tragedy it, and its twin, dropped on Nagasaki just days later, had created.

A picture is worth a thousand words, but I suspect no one knows how many lives it costs. A thought worth holding, perhaps, as we consider these two images.

The scale and scope of the damages offered humanity a glimpse into an atomic abyss from which we knew there could be no escape, and we’ve managed for seven decades to not unsheathe the sword of nuclear annihilation again on one another.

These two images of “modern” Hiroshima should offer us hope that we can, indeed, learn to speak with one another, but more importantly than speak, should compel us to listen.

“We got your message on the radio…It’s never going to fade away.”

-bill kenny