18. Fletcher Christian: “I think that in some ways everyone is missing the point. . . . looking at pictures of Hiroshima and Nagasaki tells us not about horror in the past, but the horror that might come in the future if we forget.”

Yes. We need not apologize for n-bombing Hiroshima and Nagasaki, but it’s also important to remember what a nuclear bomb (and God forbid a thermonuclear device) can do. Visiting the memorial museum at Hiroshima is horrifying. One should feel two responses: pity and fear.

Obama and friends are saturated in pity. The Japanese are pity-mongers also. I have little or no idea what Kenzabue Oe is trying to say in his NYT opinion piece, except that the Japanese are victims and the Americans are and have always been bullies. The Chinese won’t buy that, nor the Filipinos, and neither should Americans.

But fear is my main response to the Hiroshima experience, fear not only of the horror of nuclear devastation, but very reasonable fear of nations like Iran with nukes. What really bothers me about Obama is that he does not seem to feel this fear, as if catastrophe is something that happens to other, expendable people, such as citizens of the United States. There is exact correlation, in my mind, between his refusal to enforce border security, stopping thugs at the border, and his refusal to enforce action against nuclear thugs. Both issues are likely to explode upon us, but in very different ways, in the future.