Not-So-Light Summer Reading, Part 2

Summer is nearly over, and having spent all of it intermittently in the company of Joel Rosenberg and Peter Wyden (whose two books were written 25 years apart), I owe each man a great debt. Wyden has tour-guided me through the triumphs, horrors, egos, and fallout (literally) of living in a nuclear world. Rosenberg has impressed upon me through thorough research and painstaking interviews why the onset of the nuclear age has become so ominous. I can't say it was sunny reading, but it, like the mushroom cloud over Alamogordo, was certainly enlightening and full of implications for my future.

I left off my last post with that very test having just been completed. From there, the rest of my time with Wyden's Day One pummeled me with the sheer misery the inhabitants of Hiroshima went through--those that were unlucky enough to have lived through the Bomb. Of Hiroshima's 350,000 residents. well over 130,000 died, most instantly. Many more died later that day, a few days, weeks, and even years later. We dropped the Bomb while there were 23 American prisoners of war in that city; of the those airmen in downtown Hiroshima at the time of the blast, only 2 briefly survived. Their deaths were agonizing, and they died bewildered at what had happened, having no idea an atomic Bonb even existed. Their families were never told that the cause of their loved ones' deaths was from the A-bomb. Equally distressing is the scientists' ignorance of the dragon they were unleashing. Oppenheimer's pork-pie hat held dollar bills from 103 of the scientists; guesses varied from 0-18,000 tons of TNT. In the end, the Bomb produced an explosion of 20,000 tons. Then there was Truman's arrogance, Oppenheimer's slow dissolution, and the government seizure and classification of thousands of feet of film footage shot in Hiroshima just after the devastation. Why? Nuclear tests underway in the early 1950s couldn't be jeopardized. And so they weren't. That film footage wasn't released until 1982.

1982--3 years after the Islamic Revolution in Iran. As I mentioned before, Rosenberg's Inside the Revolution chronicles the struggle for supremacy in the Middle East by Radical Muslims, Reform-minded Muslims, and Revivalist Muslims. As I read with keen empathy Hiroshima's struggle to survive and somehow rise from its own ashes, I was simultaneously introduced to many Reformist Muslims--those who do not believe jihad is a viable way to win converts and remove opposition. Rosenberg introduces us to Jalal Talabani, Hamid Karzai, and Morocco's King Hussein, among others--all of whom are touting, either blatantly or covertly, a type of Jeffersonian-style reform they claim as compatible with Islam. Perhaps they are right. There are also the Revivalists, those Muslims who have been converted to Christianity and who are determined to continue challenging radical Islam for the dangerous agent it is. Many of these men and women do so with daily threats of death. Many have had several near-miss assassination attempts. Some, doubtless, have died a real martyr's death--one that offers a real redemption at the other end.

All this to say one thing: I am more convinced than ever that radical Islam poses the biggest threat EVER to the civilized world. We had a conscience during WWII, even though we unleashed the dragon. The after-effects of the dragon's breath inflamed that conscience. Perhaps that's why the Cuban Missile Crisis ended as it did.

But the fires of Alamogordo and Hiroshima only seem to have seared the consciences of those practicing Radical Islam. May God help us. We're a long way from Day One, approaching Day None.