For your consideration: To understand the root of war, the conversation must move beyond the usual binary of far right–far left examination. As long as we approach war as a pure good or evil, there is no real examination, only ideological moral certitude in a false vacuum of incontestable truth. This narrow band of filtered subjectivism is the crux of psychological turmoil that some war veterans feel and voice in self-abasement toward themselves and their own. A popular, misinformed voice that is readily taken up by anti-war proponents and academia as the answer for lasting peace—but on the contrary a redux chain rattling of the ghosts of the Vietnam War. A voice full of emotion, but one lacking true insight; a reductionist view that says more about the tortured war veteran than it does about the cause of war. Rather than a new voice transfigured from the archived past, it is pure echo reformed into the tantara of a tormented soul. Strange how only the voices of retrospective guilt on the left and unrepentant hubris on the right ever catch the notice of truth seekers and protagonists.

While I appreciate the notion that unfettered universal rejection of bearing arms could ostensibly bring about enduring peace, the perfect world of fully-evolved human beings colescing the critical mass necessay does not presently exist. It has been an oft repeated theme of war veterans who have "seen the light" and have retrospectively wrapped themselves in the smug cloak of intellectual exceptionalism. Doing so, while condemning their own ilk— who have likewise suffered the dogs of war—for lacking the capacity for self-reflection and critical thinking.

Such edification of higher consciousness they preserve strictly for themselves. A self-aggrandizing pomposity I find distasteful and self-serving.