“It is not among the least of the calamities of a long continued war, that it unhinges the mind from those nice sensations which at other times appear so amiable. The continued spectacle of woe, blunts the finer feelings, and the necessity of bearing with the sight, moral obligations of society weakened, till the custom of acting by necessity, becomes an apology where it is truly a crime.”

Leaving the battlefield is sometimes the only way to stop losing the war.

Another day, another month, another year, and soon the cost of the continued war takes a toll greater than the sum of any body count, itself a morbid measure of the tragedy.

Thomas Paine’s fear in The Crisis – as it should be ours now – was that the full consequences of a war protracted is fully realized when unrelenting violence slowly kills the spirit of a nation. And then, yet again, war becomes a self-fulfilling prophesy; a murky, deadly fog through which few can penetrate. All is lost when the purpose of the war becomes the war itself.

thomas paine the crisis war war in iraq