War intrigues and captivates people in a way nothing else does. People's heads are filled with notions of glory, bravery, power, and strength and they naively believe those are to be had from war.

Who can blame them for coming to this conclusion? Look at the monuments we build to commemorate them. Look at the parades and national holidays we have to honor those who have served and died in them. They are festive events that fail capture the true face of war. They depict war as something we need to be proud of and thankful for. Those who have fought in the wars and who have blood on their hands from the killing seldom talk about war which further adds to the intrigue surrounding it. People wrongfully assume these silent veterans are humble and hiding their stories of bravery and gallantry while the reality is that these veterans are filled with feelings of guilt, remorse, and shame surrounding their role in killing.

War lures people into fighting then it rears is real head and destroys everything - including love. War corrupts morals and brings out the worst humanity has to offer and turns innocent loving and hopeful youths into hate-filled shells of people. When you become comfortable with or even begin to relish the killing in war what is to keep you from committing other formerly unthinkable moral wrongs?

I deployed to Iraq in February of 2004, was given a two week leave 8 months later in October of 2004. When I returned home for my two week leave I married my fiancée. Prior to deploying to war we had met, fallen in love, and dreamed of living the rest of our lives together. After our hasty wedding (we were married in the basement of my town hall by a local judge) I returned to Iraq to finish the last 5 months of my deployment.

Instead of returning to Iraq as a person who was excited about what the future had to offer, I returned to war even more bitter and hate-filled than I was when I left it weeks earlier. I hated being there and I hated being home around people I no longer had anything in common with.

When I finally left Iraq in March of 2005 I returned a completely different person. I returned an emotional wreck of a person who could instantly switch between intense feelings of grief to intense rages and bouts of anger. There was no love in me. I did my best to try to be happy and joyful, but war and its memories always lurked in my head. I eventually had two children with my wife. Instead of feeling love and joy when I tuck my kids into bed at night I often am haunted with the images like those of a dying child that I found after a firefight in Iraq. Instead of being thankful on thanksgiving for what I have, I’m stuck in the memories of a firefight I was a part of in the morning of Thanksgiving 2004.

My wife can’t even look at me or think of me as a good person. She fixates on the fact that I was a soldier in a war and that I have killed and maimed people and she hates that. It permeates to every part of our relationship. I’m horrified that my kids will one day learn that I was an infantryman in the war and then they’ll know exactly what I did. Once they learn that they’ll see me as a monster – the same way everyone else sees me when they learn what war is really about and that I was a part of it.

War beats love plain and simple. Those who have been corrupted by it like I have are incapable of feeling the innocent and simple joy love brings. War brings out the worst in people and destroys everything - including love.