Men of Honor.

War, the Merriam-Webster’s dictionary defines war as a struggle between opposing forces or for a particular end; a state of hostility, conflict, or antagonism.

>What I don’t read in this clean academic definition of war is the killing of humans by other humans for mostly unjustifiable reasons, the murder of innocent children before age 10 and leaving grieving mothers and fathers who are not involved in hostility, conflict, or antagonism.

Whatever the political position is for advancing war, it is hard to escape the affect; generations of mental illness, destroyed societies and families, lost lives, and lost national resources. I wonder what emotions do the human experience when war comes into his home in the form of a bomb that causes the building to collapse onto his family killing all. I am empathetic towards the ‘innocent’ that has been classified as collateral damage. When advancers of war make up terms like “collateral damage”, I judge this as been an attempt to lessen the horror, pain, and fear that is experienced by those whose intestines, limbs, brain matter, and blood lay littered and decaying on the ground.

War is not just a clash between humans that volunteered for service; it affects all humans no matter what mechanism we use to hide from its reality. The taking of life because I am angry; who suffers more? Not the dead. The living has to live with the aftermath.

When I think of war I do not think of the Victories Armies, nor do I think of the treasures reaped, I think of the pain in the heart of the weeping mother, I think of the child caught in the middle, I think of the agony in the mind of the father who tries to make since of it all.

I think of the hate that is destroying the minds of those left to carry on.

Mostly, I think of the lack of intellectual advancement of mankind.