I am looking into reading antiwar books, any type of authors would work, but mainly looking into ones written by vets, I am curious about their insights

Going to protest later in the rain at Ramat Gan Israel

Source: https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2024/12/23/gaza-toddlers-got-the-polio-vaccine-then-an-israeli-bomb-took-their-legs

Photo credit: Matthieu Karam / L’Orient Le Jour

The artist's website: https://kellylatimoreicons.com/collections/signed-print/products/christ-in-the-rubble-limited-edition

imagine this: you are a soldier in Afghanistan. it is dark, you are at your post. it is your job to point out any possible incoming threats. Sometimes things aren’t so bad, you talk and laugh with other soldiers, putting helmets on mopheads, pushing them over the wall,trying to provoke reactions. Sometimes you’re here. You can hear bleating and squealing in the distance, you watch through NV goggles as a man slices open the belly of a goat, fills it with explosives, and attempts to send it your way, if it gets close enough it will destroy the bunker. you and the other soldiers catch on, shooting any goats that come too close. you can hear breathing, somewhere in the distance. you’re unsure of what’s coming closer to you, you focus your goggles. it’s a little boy. no more than ten, his body weighed down with explosives and an earpiece telling him to keep walking. there are tears running down his face. what other choice do you have?

taliban men view western soldiers conscience as a weakness, and they play on it with this kind of psychological warfare. during the day, soldiers must walk around market towns, building morale with the people who live there. **** recalls walking past buildings with men and little boys inside, knowing they could stop it, but can’t. these buildings are open, and you can see inside clearly. you have to watch that. and not stop it.

there’s also further accounts of taliban men lifting up the tails of goats and just going at it in the street too and it’s a very common, regular thing there.

pretty traumatising.

To be Anti-war is to oppose the decision to start or carry on a war, because - controversial statement - war is bad. It should not mean opposition to self defense. A country's ability to practice self defense is the practical reason to not start a war; it imposes a cost in men and material, while also introducing the risk that the war will fail. To oppose self defense encourages aggression, it encourages politicians to attack and seize land and resources.