"Men worship war. They sentimentalise it, romanticise it, mythologise it, glorify it. Our most solemn ceremonies sanctify it. War gives us our heroes, our history and we remember only the atrocities committed against us. Not those committed by us.

Every generation promises itself that the last war will be just that. The last. Yet there's always another. More obscene and more destructive. And whether they're waged with machetes as in Rwanda or with cruise missiles as in Desert Storm, the blood is as red and the dead are as dead. And as history attests, the percentage of women and children who become casualties increases."

MORE from the estimable Adams.