What we saw on the ground in Israel, with Hamas terrorists targeting and murdering civilians, was absolutely horrific. The reported rapes of women, kidnappings, and killing of children make me sick.
Yet, so many in the West don't bat an eye when our modern militaries kill civilians because we are rarely shown the reality of war.
All we see on TV are buildings blowing up or videos of "smart" weapons being piloted into their respective targets.
We rarely see or think about the aftermath and instead congratulate ourselves for being more civilized at "precision-guided" war-making.
We have distanced ourselves from the reality of war.
In the United States, war is also reserved for a separate warrior class of Americans who reside in "flyover country" rather than shouldered by the coastal elites, further separating the reality of war from the civilian population.
For the majority of those living in the Western world, war is like a video game.
Sadly, what we saw in Israel is the historical reality of war and the cruelty of humanity.
Up close and personal. Bloody and violent. Hateful.
Many wars throughout history have been wars of annihilation. This was the norm.
Yes, in war, there's a moral difference between collateral damage and purposefully targeting innocents. Still, that depends on the justification for the war and, most times, who wins, as "history is written by victors."
And no matter how 'just' the cause, innocents will always be caught in the crossfire.
For example, every June 6th, we rightfully take great pride in the fact that our brave men stormed the beaches of Normandy in 1944 to begin the liberation of France, but how many realize that around 20,000 French civilians were actually killed by ALLIED pre-invasion bombings?
Sure, you can blame their deaths on the Nazi occupiers; after all, if they didn't invade France, we wouldn't have been on the beaches, but it still doesn't change the fact that innocent children are killed and families are ripped apart.
War will always be with us. As Carl von Clausewitz said, war is "the continuation of politics by other means."
And while I believe America should revert back to a foreign policy of not going abroad searching for monsters to destroy, the reality is sometimes you must fight monsters.
We may be entering a time of great conflict that requires it, but let's not shy away from reality or deceive ourselves as to what war entails.
War is hell. That is the unsanitized truth.