But back here in America, you'd never know, at a glance. There are no craters, no rubble, no counties with no electricity or running water for years at a time.
This is the problem. Or one of them. Up till the "Korean Conflict", wars changed the way civilian Americans lived, day to day. Then there came the distancing. "We" killed and were killed. But it wasn't "we". It was the people who we sent. And that "we" were the ones we elected, who we trusted to do right.
And it turns out, they didn't always do that great. Some of the decisions they made were, let's face it, flawed. They -we - supported dictators, with money and troops, in the name of anti-communism. And Act Two was anti-terrorism.
We funded Sadaam. We funded and trained Osama Bin Laden. I'm not making this up. I wish to God I was.
And we've paid a price for our mistakes. For some, that price has been crushingly terrible.
But for most of us, our day-to-day lives have been completely untouched, seemingly. I don't want more suffering in the world, with all my heart, no, but what if the consequences of our nation's wrongs actually did touch us all, directly? What would that be like? And would it change how we chose and watched our leaders?
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