Another anniversary of the dropping by the United States of the atomic bombs "Little Boy" and "Fat Man" on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima (August 6, 1945) and Nagasaki (August 9, 1945)?and the incineration of 200,000 civilians?has come and gone.

Even as more information comes to light and, thanks to the Internet, becomes more readily available about how unnecessary and evil that action was, it seems as though conservative Christians are more resolute in their defense of it.

Not a one of them has probably ever read or even heard of the 1995 book by Gar Alperovitz, The Decision to Use the Atomic Bomb and the Architecture of an American Myth, the 2001 article by Ralph Raico, "Hiroshima and Nagasaki," or the just-published article by Barton J. Bernstein on American conservatives in history who criticized the atomic bombing of Japan.

But it is not just Christians defending the atomic bombs dropped on Japan that is the problem.