How To Become Anti-War

The true end to any of the pro-war sentiment I had in earlier days came when I realized we weren't achieving any of our ends. I had not thought that I was justifying means via ends, but apparently I was. War, in the absence of any decent objective, looks suspiciously like a lot of trespass and murdering. The means, bereft of any ends are easily evaluated.

In the chaos of thought within the mind, I am sure many other things were important for me to change on this issue. Perhaps the idea that any good governance would protect private property, especially from overreaching bureaucrats, had some effect. Perhaps the thought of how sad I am that many soldiers go away to fight, and come back to find their wife has left them and the much vaunted nation for which they served is letting her steal him blind and take the kids had something to do with it. However thought works, it isn't the linear sort of process a narrative implies.

Self-defense and defense of others still rattle around in my brain as good aims to have, but it seems to me a person on his own property has a better claim to self-defense than men who fly halfway across the world to fight. Of course, there are also the SWAT teams here in the U.S.A., who are happy to do home invasion here, for the average sleeping American. Somehow, the nature of personal self-defense doesn't channel well through the offices of the state.