Saw this on Quora. It applies in Israel just like anywhere else:
The toll on the non-combatants.
The challenge is that you are often sending teenagers into these battles, with no life experience, giving them huge powerful weapons and telling them to go shoot.
Vietnam was a good example among many. This man, Gene Simmers, served in the war and later died in 2022. He put this on his tombstone:
I couldn’t find details on this incident, but learned he got a silver star for helping his teammates, and for fighting heroically in battle.
But—it’s clear that he is still haunted by whatever went on in Vietnam while he was there. Maybe he mistook her for an enemy or she was caught in crossfire. Who knows?
Which is also why I think it’s important to support veterans. We send them off to war and they are forced to do terrible things, and then, when they come back broken inside, they are so often abandoned.
It is as General Sherman once wrote, “It is only those who have never heard a shot, never heard the shriek and groans of the wounded and lacerated that cry aloud for more blood, more vengeance, more desolation. War is hell.”
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