What you say is true, but like all truths, there are always qualifications, exceptions and hand-wringing uncertainty. The line between atrocity and legitimate war has always been a vague and shifting one, subject to circumstance, culture and even opinion. It is fertile ground for opportunists, cynics, nit-pickers and excuse-makers. And no matter how ethically war is waged, there is always collateral damage. It is war itself that is the enemy. Unfortunately, peace is a jointly agreed on enterprise. It only takes one side to make war.

And once there is war, where do you draw the line? We did not know Agent Orange was poison, our own boys are still dying from it. We firebombed innocent civilians because they worked in a wartime economy, or because we couldn't think of anything else to do, or because we simply couldn't shoot straight. Pearl Harbor was a military installation, but civilians did die, and many more suffered. And how many civilian and military lives were saved by the sacrifice of Nagasaki and Hiroshima? I believe it was over a million. It isn't always that easy, is it? William Tecumseh Sherman understood the most compassionate war was one that ended quickly, not one that was restricted to genteel and chivalrous professionals. A knight's code of honor is a contradiction in terms, a cruel fraud perpetuated for the consciences of adolescents about to fight and the old who have never seen war.

Terrorists rarely gather into convenient clustered targets, but they do go to weddings, and they do exploit the innocent, for the most cynical of reasons. But does it surprise you they do not think of themselves that way? They think of themselves as freedom fighters, martyrs, defenders of their people, protecting their "freedom" and their "way of life". And even the most humane warriors make honest mistakes, both from accident and ignorance as well as those due to negligence and stupidity.

People don't fight, groups of people fight. And once there is war, attempts to limit and constrain it are naive at best, self-deceptive hypocrisy at worst. Yes, we must still try, but we must not use that as a palliative for our conscience.

Did we slaughter sixty million buffalo for their flesh? Most rotted where they fell. For the profit in their hides? To make room for our cattle and farms and railroads? Or to deprive the Plains Indians of their food source so they would go and we could steal their land? Does it really matter? Did the hunters know, did they care, did they even understand what cultural genocide was? They would have answered, "Hey, we don't kill people, we kill buffalo, and so do the Indians!"
And when the Indians fought back, can they be forgiven their atrocities on the innocent?

But you know all this. And the questions must still be asked or we do not deserve to survive as a people. But you also know there are no easy answers. Come back again, Bowser. We need your voice, and your great heart. And yes, we need a warrior, a true one. We may not always agree with you, as I disagree with you now, but we still need your humanity. There is a great evil loose in our country, it grows stronger every day, and now is not the time to turn our back on it. Come home. We need you.