It’s a curious thing to look at the ruins of Hiroshima and feel not the weight of war’s end—but only the sadness of its resolution. Tulsi Gabbard, our self-appointed philosopher of perpetual pacifism, recently made a pilgrimage to the Peace Memorial Park and returned not with understanding but with a foggy sermon worthy of a high school poetry slam.
Her dramatic video could have been piped straight from a Ken Burns documentary—if Ken Burns forgot to mention why the war started, what Imperial Japan was doing in Manchuria, or what the alternative to the atomic bomb actually looked like (not pretty)—Tulsi speaks of Hiroshima as if Truman just got bored one day and decided to microwave a city for kicks.
She mourns the loss of homes, schools, and “families gone in a flash.” Indeed. But let us not forget that many of those homes were busily manufacturing torpedoes in the kitchen while preparing their children to charge American tanks with bamboo spears should the invasion of the homeland occur. By 1945, the Japanese military and civilian apparatus were indistinguishable by design. Surrender was considered heresy. Mothers were taught to kill their babies before letting them fall into Allied hands. Tulsi’s tears are real—but her narrative is a tragic fiction.
