I’m reminded again that a fraction of 1 percent of all Americans now living have ever experienced combat. As a people, we have no memory of war and don’t grasp its savagery. As a result, we, unlike other nations who have experienced wars on their own territory, we are much more willing to contemplate going to war than other countries.
I have tried several times in this blog to convey the horror that war brings. Nothing matches seeing men all around you killed in ways so grisly that it’s hard to find enough left of them to put into body bags. That experience inflicts a wound to the soul that never heals.
If combat occurs in and around places occupied by civilians, they, too, become victims. And their homes and workplaces are destroyed. War kills and destroys indiscriminately.
I urge Americans to keep these thoughts in mind when the time come to decide if we should resort to armed conflict. Lives destroyed cannot be restored.
Tom Glenn, Writer 