So maybe we're not so different today than Americans back then – a little more impatient perhaps.

Impatient?.. You're joking yes? If Bush's War in Iraq had lasted as long as US military involvement in WWII this unprovoked waste of lives and resoursed would have been over in June, 2007. Our troops have been fighting in Iraq for two and a half years more than they were in WWII.

By the summer of 1945, the homefolks were getting antsy. Okinawa was an eye opener for the military. It was apparent that options regarding ending the war with Japan were extremely limited. Costly invasion, naval blockade, or something short of unconditional surrender of the Japanese appeared to be all we had.

If the bomb hadn't ended the war, would the American people even back then been able to stomach the hundreds of thousands of casualties resulting in an invasion of the Japanese home islands? Or even put up with the long, slow process of starving the enemy via blockade?

I think the people would have been clamoring for option #3 – some kind of peace deal that left the government in place, Japanese troops still in Manchuria, and the emperor still as sovereign. That was the deal the Japanese army would have accepted in April 1945 when they were trying to get Russia to mediate between us.

So maybe we're not so different today than Americans back then – a little more impatient perhaps.