A couple of years back, I had the chance to sing in church an old Byrds song that begins "I stand and knock at every door...", told from the viewpoint of the ghost of a child incinerated at Hiroshima. I almost didn't get all the way through it; though it's a simple tune, it's very hard to sing steadily.

I understand that the emergence of new and horrific weapons is almost impossible to prevent in time of war -- especially "total war," a particularly ferocious modern concept that targeted everything and everyone in the enemy's realm. When so many people are so driven by hate and fear (whether natural or propaganda-enhanced), they look around frantically for anything... *anything*... that will produce a decisive advantage; they usually don't realize (or care?) that they're calling up the same old monster again: A certain cultural momentum that animates the new thing like a golem, resulting in a virtual inevitability that the new thing will be used. Whatever we feel about the fact that this one *was* used, it has become a world possession; what we do with it now that it's an established force in human relations remains a litmus test of whether we have any business going to the stars.