Fifty years have passed since nuclear weapons decimated two Japanese cities and ended World War II. For 50 years the world has been forced to cope with the horror of those weapons of mass destruction.

And for 50 years we have had a chance to learn from the past and grow into a more peaceful world community.

But it’s questionable if we’ve learned much of anything in that time.

Nothing exemplifies this more than the French government’s plans to continue with its nuclear tests in the South Pacific. The annihilation of Nagasaki and Hiroshima is a half-century behind us, but the only progress we have made is to make our weapons more deadly.

Amid heavy protests, the French government decided to postpone the tests for a week, because they were originally scheduled on the same day as a 50-year commemoration of the end of World War II in the Pacific.

The irony is almost too blatant.

Almost 50 years to the day after the war ended, the French — among other nations — are refining and testing the deadliest weapons ever built.

Fifty years after the world witnessed visions of flesh melting off bodies, babies dying painfully of radiation sickness and two prosperous cities turn instantly to ashes, we are still preparing to do it again — only this time on a larger scale.

If Hiroshima and Nagasaki were supposed to serve as brutal lessons to the world, then apparently the world has missed the point.