It has been almost a hundred-fifty years since the United States has fought a war on its own soil, and in that one America invaded and fought itself. It only took one incredibly destructive Civil War to make the United States realize that - oh well - this is really not an activity in which one wants to engage in one’s homeland - better to do it in someone else’s country.

That way the wars are not nearly as objectionable, and if there is no draft, it is even less objectionable, and if you hire a mercenary army, it’s almost acceptable. It really allows the United States to engage in far more conflicts because Americans haven’t had to endure those awful visions, unceasing memories and endless nightmares of swollen and rotting bodies, of discovering the broken bodies of children buried under tons of concrete, of identifying the remains of their friends and family, of standing in the rubble of what was once a home, of living in fear every minute of every day, of the destruction of an entire culture, of the theft and destruction of national treasures, and of finding their child’s bloody, shrapnel-shredded body lying in the street. Americans have been protected from this by geography, and, currently, the media.

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As a nation the United States no longer has the remotest idea about what it really feels like to be part of a war zone. Americans have lost the empathy that is necessary to make an informed, meaningful, compassionate decision about whether or not war should be waged.

Unfortunately, America is at a point that to be able to really feel again, to regain that compassion, it needs to be invaded and occupied in the same way that we have invaded and occupied Iraq. Then there might be a greater chance that Americans will be more reluctant to accept the invasion of another country. Maybe seeing and feeling the same level of destruction that we have inflicted on Iraq, at least the American public will understand why invading another country is unconscionable except in the most dire circumstances - which means after that country has directly attacked the United States. And that has not happened since World War II.