The above is the title of a book by Lt. Col Dave Grossman USA (Ret.). LTC Grossman is one of the foremost military authorities on the psychological and psychosocial effects on the human condition when one takes life.
I was recently introduced to some of my Son's new shipmates, they are young men. Too young to have participated in the violence of the last twenty plus years, but old enough to be thrown into the maelstrom of what lies just beyond the horizon. Invariably, the question is always raised about my participation in the wars just waged.
As young men are, they are enthralled with the vision of glory as too many ascribe to the carnage of war. War in it's essence is abject failure. Failure by those with cooler heads and far more intelligence than your humble scribe possesses dear friends, failure to use the policy and diplomacy of the mind and pen and calling to duty and purpose those of us at the pointed end of the spear. As the "wise" old salt, it is my responsibility to strip them of this notion of the glory. While there is Valor in action, there are also lifelong repercussions. That when the guns stop, the men that ordered them to thunder often forget to tend to those that went forward.
Those of us who have stood in the grayness between dusk and dawn and good and evil recognize the failures and foibles. But nonetheless, lessons are forgotten.
On killing...is a notion that some day will cease to creep in the night.
