Unless you’ve gone entirely off the grid and sequestered yourself somewhere living a life of hermitage, you’ve probably read or heard about the killing of top Iranian general Qasem Soleimani.

And…here we go.

You can read about Iran’s response to the killing here if you haven’t done so.

Whether you’re pro current president or against. Whether or not you believe this killing is warranted, the fact of the matter is someone called the shot, and someone died.

What it boils down to is that no matter if this said someone was leading strikes against American soldiers and diplomats in a country we really have no business being in, in the first place, this great country of ours just reached out and killed someone.

And because of this, we might possibly be facing another war. Please don’t tell yourself or me that’s okay because it probably won’t be fought on American soil.

Uh, the last time I looked, the twin towers in New York aren’t there anymore. But you can certainly go and see the monument dedicated to the two thousand six hundred and six people who lost their lives there.

Many countries on this planet are more than capable of bringing their aggression to American soil. Never forget that.

Do you believe America has just cause to either enter into or cause another war? Can you even begin to estimate how many lives will be lost this time?

Maybe we should look at the number of lives lost so far because of war.

Here are some figures pulled from Wikipedia where lives were lost, and not just American lives. I’m talking about the Human race here, in case you don’t know. Because of the staggering numbers, most of these numbers are tallied by geometric mean, which means a numerical average.¹

• American Civil — 1861 to 1865–806,226
• World War I — 1914 to 1918–23,568,559
• World War II — 1939 to 1945–69,069,811
• Korean War II — 1950 to 1953–3,000,000
• Congo Crisis — 1960 to 1965–100,000
• Vietnam — 1955 to 1975–1,743,560
• Afganistan — 1978 to present — 1,574,802
• Iraq — 2003 to 2011–190,000

Grand Total — 100,052,958

Over 100 million lives have been lost just from 1861 to today. One hundred and fifty-nine years. Or if you want to do the math another way, over 629 thousand lives a year lost.

Every single year for the last one hundred and fifty-nine years.

My God.

And here we are supposedly a much more enlightened society, and we’re about to get tangled up with a foreign country who has decidedly chosen to make this a revenge war.²

Why? Because someone of a more political slant than common sense bend thought it would pretty cool to off someone on his watch.

The previous regime did it, and it got him a bunch of reelection votes, so it’s probably okay to pop a “suspected” bad guy with little verifiable proof he was a bad dude because, of course, it’s the best strategy for another four years.

Keep them cards and votes coming in folks.

Despite an imminent war and the threat of our soldiers and foreign diplomats dying (Remember Benghazi?)³ we have our own children dying because they simply were in the right place (school) at the wrong time.

From February 2000 to December 2019, a period of fewer than two decades, we in America alone have lost over two hundred and ninety children killed by lunatics seeking to establish their fifteen minutes of fame.

Again, when you do the math, that’s fifteen children a year who died at the hands of a crazed gunman.⁴

I know all the gun control arguments. I’ve heard both sides, and what saddens me is that while we all may eventually come together and develop solutions that lessen the impact, the Human species will simply find another way to kill.

We are such a savage species. It is extremely rare for a species in the animal kingdom to kill for revenge, or fame, or sport. They often do for survival.

Can the Human race say the same? Do we kill others so that we can survive? Or does the human race kill for sport or in the name of some religious or political belief? Is it only Humans who kill to enact revenge for the death of a fellow countryman or to preserve an existing way of life?

Think about this as you ponder these and many other questions about the savagery of the Human race.

Are you prepared?

Are you content to have the blood of our fellow humans spilled in a faraway country or upon our own soil because of a politically induced war?

Are you okay with innocent human beings killed by a stray bullet in a drive-by shooting? Are you good with people regardless of race, creed, or color being shot and killed?

If you are, then I’d suggest you get yourself accustomed to the fact that the people dying maybe someone you know, someone you care for, and somehow, someway the person dying for no just cause might end up being you.

Thanks for reading

Let’s keep in touch: paul@pgbarnett.com

© P.G. Barnett, 2020. All Rights Reserved.

¹ List of Wars By Death Toll

² Iran unveils red flag of revenge against America at a mosque

³ 2012 Benghazi Attack

⁴ List of school shootings in the United States