War


I heard a history teacher once say that what made Alexander the Great so great was his giftedness as a strategist. I have spent the summer reading about the Wars of this world in the last two hundred years. I guess one would call them the “big” wars of America mostly. “Theaters of Battles” strike me as a strange label for the carnage, heartache, slaughter, and courage of millions of human beings…I am an educated woman and I can see there were “attempts” at strategy in these wars but the end result is the one who kept killing the enemy with the best weapons,and the side with the most food and supplies until the land in question was overtaken was the victor.
Besides reading I have watched documentaries and movies that portray man’s capacity for destruction as well as man’s capacity for hope. I have been astounded and really left speechless but mostly humbled by the unspeakable cost for my freedom to live, worship, and love as I please. Oh my audacity to think anything is for free! Words of thanks seem trite. Pockets of grief for those who lived and died through these wars stir deep within my soul…the pillaging, the rapes, the slit throats, the barbaric torture, the starvation, the rivers and seas of spilt blood, and the endless mountains of bodies left in war’s wake is more than I can attain.

I wonder if war began when Cain killed Abel? It seems that since that murder man has been at war with each other. I hear some say that war can never be the right thing to do but then others, as well as I, say some things are worth fighting and dying for…