Hawks never consider the human cost of war. For most people, war is an abstract concept discussed in the news or in history books. But when a family member is killed, war becomes brutally personal. The "enemy" is the specific person who killed my son/daughter/father/mother. Grief needs an outlet, as does anger over a violent death. Hatred of the enemy provides the target. When a loved one dies in an act of war, the mind transforms them into a martyr. Pericles invoked the ancestors in the funeral oration for the first fallen in the Peloponnesian War. We're seeing the same phenomenon in Iran, which they call Persia. A death in the family sparks revenge: an eye for an eye. It's passed down from generation to generation, for decades or even centuries. In the West Bank or Gaza, when a Palestinian child sees their home destroyed and a parent killed by Israeli forces, they develop a deep hatred for Israelis. Those who returned from Vietnam are angry at those who fought in W...
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