I always thought war was stupid

Happenings around the world always remind me of the opening lines of my little  anti-war anarchist novel The Imaginary Revolution, which I was merrily writing along a couple of summers ago about now.

This was the first fragment I wrote on the ImagRev blog, and it never got dislodged as the book's introduction:

I always thought war was stupid.

I mean, think about it. You and your adversary disagree about something, and the solution is to send your citizens to fight each other to the death?

You’re never going to succeed in killing each and every one of your adversary’s citizens, so even if you win, there are thousands of people who still believe in whatever it was you were trying to obliterate.

You can’t kill an idea.

The book was told in the first person by the main character, Ray Kaliber, but on this point (among a few others) the author and his character are in complete agreement.