Not the Most Beautiful

I was sitting in a barbershop on the military base in 2003, waiting to get my hair cut. I had been a sailor in the armed forces since the World Trade Center buildings fell a few years prior, and I was no stranger to the zeal with which my fellow sailors and soldiers spoke about war. Excitement was high as we invaded Bagdad in the name of fighting terrorism. The war made so many of us feel like our young lives mattered.

For some of us, though, I got the impression that the zeal went beyond narcissism. Some soldiers around me frothed at the mouth, salivating with excitement at the idea of destroying cities, maiming and killing their enemies, and bringing violence to the farthest reaches of the globe.

On the table next to me in the barbershop was a current newspaper showing a grizzly looking tank parked on top of a crushed civilian automobile on a war torn street in Bagdad. I ignored the photo, and looked elsewhere as I waited for my appointment.

An older man came in and sat beside me, grabbed the paper, stuck it in my face and asked, "Isn't that the most beautiful thing you have ever seen in your life?"

I've seen my own mother. I've seen other people's babies. I've looked into my wife's eyes while rubbing her feet. I've stood on the beach at sunset, watching the colors of the California sky while listening to the rhythmic crash of the waves.

"No," I said honestly. "It isn't."

I am not a pacifist. I want to believe, even all these years later, that our efforts at that time served some good. I want to remember that the violence and the death toll resulted in something that we can be proud of in at least some small way. But, I do not have whatever that older guy had. I cannot look upon even the most necessary violence and see it as the most beautiful thing in the world. Even at the moment of taking another person's life instead of allowing him to take my own, I would wonder if there wasn't really some other way we could have handled this dispute. I would always wonder if that killing really had to happen that day.