Sometimes war is cruel

Sometimes, wars are cruel.

They are ultimately the fundamental lesson here as guns are fired, bomb sirens ring through towns and people sit gripped with terror in the cold basements of their houses.

Sometimes soldiers are drafted very young.  Sometimes families are separated for years.  Sometimes foreign countries drop bombs on neighboring countries.  Sometimes thousands are killed on the front lines.  And sometimes a little boy and girl lose their father and will never see him again.

Sometimes, wars are cruel.  And always, when it is, we do the same thing.  We say goodbye to family members who were drafted.  We fly across oceans to foreign lands, we write letters to loved ones about the war, we receive the terrible news about our loved one's death.  And we go on.  That's the expense of being human.  An also, arguably, the noblest expression.

Sometimes wars are cruel, and you have no choice but to accept that as part of the bargain called life.  And when it is your turn to deal with it, you do.

But what if it's always your turn?

Surely some exhausted, blood-covered soldier can be forgiven for thinking it's always his turn, just days after Pearl Harbor on the island of Oahu in Hawaii fought hard as the Japanese sent down a rain of bombs which killed many of the soldiers stationed there. Surely, the rest of us watching from afar, observing the chaos and  catastrophe from the comfort of our warm beds and our cozy La-Z-Boys, are tempted to believe the same thing.

Bad enough that the soldiers of war are forcibly overworked.  Bad enough that war has had a history of nationwide controversy and hatred, of being stood up by major powers when it wasn't being abused by them.  Bad enough, all that, yet at the end of the day, those are disasters generated by national greed, national hatred, national opinions, national resentment.

Sometimes, though, you have to wonder if wars themselves are not devising against the many, modest nations.