I'm a pacifist. Cross this line and come do something about it
Sometime in 2003, in the sands somewhere north of Baghdad:

Look, Mr. Iraqi, it turns out that I'm duty bound to kill you. Despite the fact that it goes against the Ten Commandments, international law, my own instincts and everything that I've been taught, I have to pull this trigger and fill you full of .50-caliber. Despite the fact that I don't fully know why I'm supposed to kill you, and that I don't fully believe the cause for which I've been sent to fight, I have to do it.

My country's leader, several of his high-ranking employees and several fat, balding, 50-ish radio talk show hosts who have spent as much time in the military as Sean Penn told me that this is not only necessary, it's a moral imperative. By me killing you -- a guy I don't even know and don't personally have a beef with -- I will be saving my family from the horrors of terrorism. I'm sorry that your leader decided that your family should be relocated to live next door to a bomb factory as a "human shield," or whatever they're calling them on CNN. I sincerely hope that when we drop the megaton, it'll miss them and hit the factory. They've done nothing to bother me, either.

It's entirely possible that you're bothered by the fact that your religion has been hijacked in the name of some kind all-out right vs. wrong battle. It's entirely possible you haven't been to the mosque in some time; I know how hard it is to get three kids ready to go anywhere. That's one of the many reasons I haven't personally participated in organized religion for a while. But I have a duty. I have to preserve my honor. To preserve my honor, I have to kill you.

Yeah, I know, wars were a hell of a lot easier to fight back in the day, back before all this psychobabble, back before we were so, um, enlightened. It was a lot easier to kill in the name of a government that could do no wrong. But that little problem in the late '60s and early '70s with that Nixon guy exposed an awful lot. I'm not sure our way is always right anymore. I do know it's better than any other way that's been discovered so far, and I truly wish your countrymen will figure that out, too. But if they don't want to, as a sovereign nation, that's probably their business.

I know my grandfathers had no problem killing all those Japanese babies and German wives. Their newspapers told them what awful, terrible things were going on in Germany, and the Japanese, why, hell, they were practically on our shores. Better to exterminate that generation of tyrants and sub-humans before they came over and exterminated us. History shows that on the right-and-wrong scale, my grandfathers tipped more toward right.

Our government tells us that's what you're planning to do to us, and not with bombs and guns and stuff, but things like anthrax and sarin and VX and other chemistry-set concoctions. My wife opens all the mail at our house. I don't want her dying because of it.

Meanwhile, there's some guy on the other side of the world, somewhere north of the 38th parallel, likely pointing a big something or another at our west coast. I'm not over there trying to kill him because if I was, he might actually launch the thing.

So, you see, Mr. Iraqi, I have to kill you. Either that, or you're going to kill me. You have your orders, too. I understand that. Only one of us will survive this meeting to see our children again. Only one of us will walk away from this meeting.

But we'll both carry away the scars.

The question was posed in song in 1970: "What is it good for?"

When you're speaking of war, the answer is simple:

Absolutely fucking nothing.

Say it again.