Notable Quote on War "Why of course the people don't want war ... But after all it is the leaders of the country who determine the policy, and it is always a simple matter to drag the people along, whether it is a democracy, or a fascist dictatorship, or a parliament, or a communist dictatorship ... Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is to tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger." Hermann Goering, Nazi leader, at the Nuremberg Trials after World War II

Wanderers tend to love globes. I have several. The one in front of me at the moment satisfies many senses at once--its tactile surface is bathed in a warm glow from the lamp inside, the oceans uncharacteristically rendered in the color of old parchment.

I run my fingers over a surface pocked with the ridges of great mountain ranges, a wanderer's braille that sets my mind reeling with images of rugged folk scratching a living from the arid steppes.

There are many exotic places I haven't been that I make note of, places where civilizations have flourished and then died, leaving traces in the dust: a burnished pot sherd here, fragment of whittled bone there.

My fingers trace mountains that separate countries, rock fences that keep warrior factions at bay, allowing the long periods of peace crucial for civilization to flourish. I let the exotic, biblical words flow off my lips: The Tigris, Euphrates, Baghdad, the fertile plains where people grew to become us.

My fingers trace eastward toward ever more exotic lands, ending on the enigma that is a country whose mountain ranges are central, a backbone rather than a fence: Afghanistan, the Hindukush, the "indiankiller." Kabul lies arrogantly within the Hindukush where fierce tribes rumbled through, often repelled by the rugged mountain people who've scratched out a living here forever.

You see, when I travel I often turn away from the gaudiness of great public landmarks produced at public expense in favor of watching people getting on with their daily lives. I especially draw great pleasure at watching people using processes long forgotten in the U.S.: A man making brooms on the veranda of his thatched-roof hut in Nicaragua; a knot of cackling Sardinian women stirring an enormous pot of bubbling pink sugar with canoe paddles, sugars extracted painstakingly from pulp of the ripe prickly pears they've harvested from the cactus fences marking the island's ancient sheep paths.

And the point of all this? Soon, it is rumored, my President will tell us that there is no use following the current dissarmament process any longer, no use in negotiating a meaningful peace--that once again it will be necessary to spew ordinance across the plains where the Tigris and Euphrates almost touch.

This saddens me. It is not a political sadness but a deeply felt sense of impending loss: A country where people came together to create the first cities will be poisoned and pockmarked in my name. And I don't like it.

"Tough crap," you are likely to reply, and it is your right, especially if such an action as a preemptive strike makes you feel safer. It is indeed selfish of me to worry about peasants and pot sherds and fat fingers tracing lines in the dust on an old globe. After all, the target of all this likely ruckus is a single, powerful man who has been known to poison his own people; I do not sing praises to his name.

It is this nightmare that I see in my mind: Dead Kurds, civilians poisoned and strung out along a roadway that is mostly blowing dust. But that nightmare continues with the vision of thousands of children dead from the lack of drinkable water, a disgrace that's been going on since the U.S. bombing of the treatment plants and sewage systems during the Gulf war and continues with sanctions that don't allow repair materials into Iraq.

Perhaps it is too much to ask that a government sweat and toil to create a meaningful peace while making a good example of its compassion for people in foreign lands. Perhaps it is wrong to think that politicians should be required to travel to distant lands to see how people live and toil and make friends. Perhaps I am wrong to think that anyone among us who goes through life taking punches at anyone who might punch first is using a bad strategy for safety. But this is a new world. The old one has passed me by. Cheeks just don't turn like they used to.

No, the majority is right. Safety is paramount. We can and will wipe out all evil from our isolated perch on the edge of the frightening world. And someday, perhaps soon, I imagine our children will be able to travel risk-free over this radioactive, bomb-pocked world and be inspired at its glorious emptiness, its pristine moral perfection purchased for a song.

But don't worry, you will likely find a McDonalds somewhere nearby.