I went to the Canadian War Museum the other day and was thoroughly impressed. It was very well laid out, the special exhibit on life in WWI’s trenches was incredible. I’m not a guns&ammo fan – I’m just a history nut, and the museum was really good at telling the tale of the past 400 years of conflict having to do with the area.

One idea that kept ringing in my head : How wars are viewed from home.

• Nobody really wants to go to war, or to need to

• …but people have an enormous potential to band together in the face of a threat to their “world”

The U.S. was invigorated to join in the fight for WWII because they wanted to exact revenge from a single very cruel incident (that was actually foreseen, but that’s another story), same for Afghanistan. But there’s also a critical mass of acceptable casualties, it seems, before a populace shows weariness and wants to back out of war. I believe that in a just war, we need to do whatever it takes to convince people of it’s noble goals, and how they are being achieved. However, there have been unjust wars as well. It may be tough to trust the government in the case of a real need for an effort on the homefront.

When viewing the reaction of Arabs following Afghanistan/Iraq, I can’t say I blame them. How would we react if some foreign power, of some “heathen” religion, invaded and killed a bunch of civilians, claiming that we would greet them as liberators? I can understand why someone would consider strapping a bomb to themselves to exact revenge from having his/her entire family killed by these invaders. Isn’t that was your typical dude from Kansas would do if that happened to his family?

It’s okay if we do it, just not if it’s them.

Hath not a Jew eyes? Hath not a Jew hands, organs, dimensions, senses, affections, passions; fed with the same food, hurt with the same weapons, subject to the same diseases, heal’d by the same means, warm’d and cool’d by the same winter and summer as a Christian is? If you prick us, do we not bleed? If you tickle us, do we not laugh? If you poison us, do we not die? And if you wrong us, shall we not revenge? If we are like you in the rest, we will resemble you in that. If a Jew wrong a Christian, what is his humility? Revenge. If a Christian wrong a Jew, what should his sufferance be by Christian example? Why, revenge. The villainy you teach me, I will execute, and it shall go hard but I will better the instruction.

—William Shakespere, The Merchant Of Venice, Act III, scene I