Axar.az presents an article "Do wars ever end?" by John Samuel Tieman.

People don't give me nearly enough credit for all the times I just shut up. Readers all the time suggest to me topics for an essay. Wars are a favorite. Lately, folks have suggested the war in the Holy Land. I don't understand the complexities of the politics in Israel and Palestine. So about their politics, I'll just shut up.

But I know a few things about war. I know enough to say, of any war, that it is the worst possible way to resolve a conflict. Once a war begins, it never ends. The war will live on, searching for some resolution that the survivor will never find.

It is 2 AM as I write. This is when I feel them most keenly, the boys who didn’t come home from my war, Vietnam. You would think that such memories would be most appropriate to Memorial Day or Veteran’s Day. But I’ll not think of Eric any more on those days than I do on any other day. Or any other night.

When I returned from Vietnam, when I was twenty, in my naivete I thought that surely humanity would never make this mistake again. Surely we would learn. Surely. Now, in my old age, after wars and more wars, I despair of – What? – some flaw in the human spirit that keeps us killing?

And what remains is not the exact memory of war. Like so many memories, even the smell of cordite fades. As I age, what remains is a sadness that haunts me just before I sleep. I remember Rob, who never knew the love of a good woman. Hank, who never lived in a house. Pete, who wasn’t there the day his daughter graduated from college.

And I remember not just the war, but the anger and confusion. I have loved and hated my country. When I first returned from Vietnam, I felt a depth of betrayal that no words can adequately capture. It took me decades to truly regain my faith in America.

But about war and the feelings of war. Two things. First, war can make reconciliation and peace almost impossible. My second thought I'll put as a question for which there is no answer. How do we resolve war? I'm not talking about the rational justification – I'm talking about the feelings. How do we resolve the feelings of war? And I don't want to think about these two considerations rationally at all. So, two stories.

First, war can make reconciliation almost impossible. The story goes that in Vietnam an artillery unit fired a shell that went astray. It landed in a village. The artillerymen were troubled by their mistake. One asks, “I wonder if those villagers were Viet Cong?” Someone replies, “Well, if they weren't before, they are now.”

Second, how do we resolve the feelings? I was twenty when got home from Vietnam. A twenty year-old war veteran. I'm 73 now. So names fade, places, even the feel of a monsoon. But then, in tonight's news, I see a war. I see a young man with a shattered leg, and I remember. There was this guy I used to sort of talk to in Nam, a Vietnamese corporal. I was more or less the same rank as that fellow. He used to come by my unit and just visit with the guys. Most of the time I couldn't understand a word he said because of his accent. I still liked him. Then this one day he disappears. He was infantry, so I figured he was “in the bush hunting the little evil people.” Until the next month when I saw he got hunted. One day he shows up without a left leg. I see him sitting alone on a bunk. Nobody talks to him. I mean me too. All I could do was just for a second stare at his stump, stare into his eyes, stare again at his bandages, and then just leave. But I never left. Not really. Fifty-three years later and all I can do is still stare.