War, huh yeah. What is it good for? Absolutely nothing.

But we can be grateful
And thankful and proud
That man's been endowed 

With a mushroom shaped cloud 

And we know for certain that
Some lovely day someone will set the spark off
And we will all be blown away 

They're rioting in Africa
There's strife in Iran
What nature doesn't do to us will be done by our fellow man

Kingston Trio, Merry Minuet

And now it seems to me the beautiful uncut hair of graves.

Tenderly will I use you curling grass,
It may be you transpire from the breasts of young men,
It may be if I had known them I would have loved them;
It may be you are from old people and from women, and
from offspring taken soon out of their mother’s laps,
And here you are the mother’s laps.

This grass is very dark to be from the white heads of old
mothers,
Darker than the colorless beards of old men,
Dark to come from under the faint red roofs of mouths.

O I perceive after all so many uttering tongues!

Walt Whitman,  Leaves of Grass.  

Whitman nursed the fatally-injured  in the US Civil War.

He knew about War.

"Thursday night’s Republican debate at the University of Miami revealed one startling thing: all four Republican candidates for president would put more boots on the ground to fight ISIS.

"CNN debate moderator Hugh Hewitt during the debate asked candidates whether they would put troops on the ground “to end the ISIS threat in Syria and Iraq,” and every candidate on stage said he would.

""Perhaps the most shocking commitment came from Donald Trump who said he would do so, even if 20,000 or 30,000 troops were needed.
'I would listen to the generals, but I’m hearing numbers of 20,000 to 30,000,' Trump said. 'We don’t fight like we used to fight. We used to fight to win. Now we fight for no reason whatsoever. We don’t even know what we’re doing. So, the answer is we have to knock them out. We have to knock them out fast.'"A Republican President Means American Boots On The Ground In The Middle East – Again | ThinkProgress  [Thanks, Rik!]

Some 620,000 United States soldiers were killed the Civil War; more than 407,000 United States soldiers were killed in WWII.  

Human beings killed abut 60 million of our kith an kin during WWII, but that's only abut 3% of the World's population in 1940.  World War II casualties - Wikipedia.   Three percent hardly made a dint in our total population, which has swelled 7.4 billion today; 

but it made a lot of folks heart-sick, angry, uncomfortable with their lot, and thrusting for revenge.  

It's those at home thrusting for revenge, even even those who have no injury to atone for, who are a cause of the world's troubles.  The dead don't trouble anyone.

In the  71 years since WWII, the United States has been in a War against someone almost all the time and we mostly lost them:

This list ends in 2012.  Syria, Iraq again, and various North African and Sub-Saran African nations must be added.

Some United States' Wars have been big; some small.   

President Reagan the Lion-Hearted 
who hated Communism but was afraid to bomb the commies in the 
Soviet Union because 
it was as strong as he,
retted that he would miss out on a War until Mighty Grenada challenged him:

He Won!  He Won!! We finally Won a War!  Reagan the Lion-Hearted is the darling of every Republican today. 

Oh noble We   . . surely a War to swell with pride the breasts of true Patriots  when thoughts turn to days of Glory.

. . . So a Trumpian 20,000 or 30,000 dead in Iraq, after 4,500 already killed there, is diminishingly small, compared to the whole of the human family.

Still. . . . 

War does leave lots of folks angry, vengeful.  

More than 27,000 civilians 

were killed in Bushco's Iraq Fiasco, and a couple of million folks 

are still  homeless  

in Turkey and Jordan

 or  

in their own homeland.  

All of them, 

and their sisters and their cousins and their aunts, 

and all their kith and din, 

who knows how far their pain reaches, or for how many hears, 

folks worldwide, 

for at least seven generations, 

who are already angry 

with the United States 

and thirst for revenge.

If the United States invades again-- even though the cause be thought to be just -- the "unintended consequences" which we can no longer think of as unintended because we know the dreadful consequences, [see his blog, here] won't add much to the anger already directed at the United States and won't add much to the antiUnited States  
 Saudi Arabia Wahhabist faith which is shared by the SunnyArab Islamic State.

That added rage 

should be enough, though

to keep the United States' War factories  

and Dick Cheney and his 

neoconic friends 

rolling in lucre, 

which they 

invested unproductively 

in Abu Dubai, the capital of the sandy the United Arab Emirates,

(which needs water more than lucre,

Abu Dubai as a sandstorm approaches) . . .

. . . rolling in ulcer  for a another decade or so.  

Or else the United States 

will not elect 

a Warmonger 

to its presidency. 

The World's already 

bounteous rage 

would not not increase-- 

a modest

but unmitigated

blessing. 

Here are some political cartoons not in order, commenting on some of the United States' wars.  

Some of you will like them; 

Some of them will offend you as some offend me;

they will enrage easily enraged friends.  

None will change anyone's political stance:

 Fresh, spirited American troops, flushed with victory, are bringing in thousands of hungry, ragged, battle-weary prisoners. News item.jpg

Lubin de Beauvais 1914

 Again

WWII Images from Wikipedia:

We inherit our political stances, 

and therefore 

keep on Waring.  

The challenge is for those of us 

whose ancestors liked War

(Most of Us) 

to enjoy Peace . 

The Hill to climb from War to Peace

 is Steep;  

The view from the crest is Glorious.