Because we no longer understand war, we no longer understand that it can all go horribly wrong. We no longer understand that war begins by calling for the annihilation of others but ends, if we do know when to make or maintain peace, with self-annihilation. We flirt, given the potency of modern industrial weapons, with our own destruction.

War allows us to rise above our small station in life. We find nobility in a cause and feelings of selflessness and even bliss. And at a time of soaring deficits and financial scandals and the very deterioration of our domestic fabric, war is a fine diversion. War, for those who enter into combat, has a dark beauty, filled with the monstrous and the grotesque. The
Bible calls it the lust of the eye and warns believers against it. War gives us a distorted sense of self; it gives us meaning.

(From an old adbusters)