This week I’m sitting on a front porch swing overlooking the ocean. The tide rolls in, the tide rolls out, just like it always has. You’d think that kind of view would quiet your mind a little.But I still can’t get this war off mine.
Now before anyone jumps into the comments about me taking some fancy vacation, let me explain that right quick. I’ve got good friends with a house here and some leftover airline miles from a trip I had to cancel. So I’m finally using them. A girl can be overdue for a little ocean air.
But even with the waves rolling in front of me, I keep reading the news and wondering how fast this thing has spread.
What started as Israel striking Iran now seems to have touched half the Middle East. Missiles, bombs, and drones have already hit Iran, Israel, Lebanon, Iraq, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Kuwait, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates, Oman, Azerbaijan, and even near a British base in Cyprus.
That’s thirteen places already caught in the crossfire.
When a war spreads across that many countries, it stops sounding like a “regional conflict” and starts looking like a wildfire.
Reports say more than a thousand civilians in Iran have already been killed, including children. Homes destroyed. Hospitals overwhelmed. Families simply trying to make it through another night.
War sounds bold and strategic in a press conference.
It looks very different when you picture the people underneath the explosions.
And on our side, American troops have already been killed and many more wounded at bases across the region.
Those aren’t statistics.Those are somebody’s babies.Right now they say we don’t have troops marching across Iran, but let’s be honest about where we stand. Our planes are flying missions. Our ships are deployed. Our bases are being targeted. That means we are already in this whether the official language says so or not.
What troubles me almost as much as the war itself is the tone coming out of Washington. Listening to some cabinet conversations lately, you’d think they can’t quite decide whether it’s the Department of Defense or the Department of War.
Let me say this plainly from this porch swing.
War is no joke.
Because the minute it stops being words in a briefing room and becomes boots on the ground, the people doing the marching won’t be cabinet members.
They’ll be somebody’s son from Lexington County.Somebody’s daughter from Greenville.
Somebody’s grandchild from Orangeburg or Aiken.
And once those young men and women start marching into a desert halfway around the world, you can’t rewind that decision.
What I keep asking, sitting here watching the Atlantic roll in, is a simple question:How does this end?
I hear talk about the next strike.The next retaliation.
The next show of strength.
But war without a clear end in sight is like lighting a brush fire and hoping the wind behaves.
It won’t.
Gas prices will rise. Food prices will follow. Families here at home will feel it in their wallets while families over there are feeling it in their graveyards.
Now before somebody decides to make this about politics, let me say this clearly.
War isn’t a Republican issue.
War isn’t a Democrat issue.
War is a human issue.
Strong nations defend themselves and their allies. That’s true. But strong nations also understand that every bomb dropped today plants the seed for tomorrow’s conflict.
From this porch swing view of the world, it feels like the grown-ups in charge ought to be spending as much energy working toward peace as they do planning the next strike.
Because wars are easy to start.
They are a whole lot harder to stop.
And while the ocean keeps rolling in like it always has, I’m praying for the civilians caught in the middle of this, praying for the American troops already standing in harm’s way, and praying that somewhere in Washington someone remembers that real leadership isn’t measured by how loudly you talk about war.
It’s measured by whether you can keep the next generation from having to fight one.
WHILE I BREATHE 