I remember sitting on the edge of the couch watching the exchange of gunfire. I was in sixth grade when the United States lead the Coalition Forces against Iraq. My mom, my brother, and I had just returned home from Wednesday night church. Dad sat in the burnt orange arm chair, watching a man in uniform address the nation.

“What’s on, Dad?” We usually made it home in time to catch the end of Roseanne.

“Quiet,” he commanded. And so we stood there, halfway between setting our stuff down and putting our coats away, and watched the man in uniform. Under the cover of night the strike began. Bombs and missiles were raining down on Baghdad. Tracers from the anti-aircraft guns lit up the infrared TV cameras with a green glow.

After a few minutes we stopped standing there and sat down, letting everything else go unfinished. I didn’t put my Bible or my coat away. I didn’t make my lunch for school the next day. I didn’t even take my nightly shower. I just sat there on the end of the couch–the usual place I had to claim when my whole family watched TV. Part of me was intrigued. This was every G.I. Joe battle I ever imagined right in front of me. And that also scared me. This was for real. Those bombs and explosions meant concrete crumbling, children crying, people dying. I couldn’t sit there and smile that Saddam was finally getting his. I could only sit there with a grim expression, unsure of what to think. War isn’t something you process in sixth grade. Unfortunately, it’s not something men in uniform–who have long since left the sixth grade–process either.

Early the next morning he presses a button and a family’s home, with them inside, is destroyed. He thinks nothing of it but duty, completing his assigned task. He could have sat in front of me in physics class, struggling with Newton’s laws just like me. And now Newton’s laws have been harnessed to kill.

The night before he laughed. He exchanged high-fives with his buddies and cracked jokes and passed the time to chase away the uneasiness all of them felt. On the brink of battle any soldier knows he is about to break one of the ten commandments and must prepare himself. Some atone in advance, some choose cowardice, and some hide behind a shield of humor and masculinity. It’s something they’ll shed tears over when their grandchildren aren’t looking, if they make it that long.

The jokes and insults and lies continue in a flurry, the young pilots trying to psyche themselves up for the task at hand. Markers are passed around and they gather around the instrument of death. Everyone is given a turn. Even the deck hands, the welders, the cook. They all want to share in the glory of battle, even if they won’t be pushing the button. But they can proudly tell their grandchildren they cooked the meal for the pilot who killed that family, if they make it that long.

Insults and provocations are written across the bombs, the missiles. “Die Saddam,” and “Suck This,” grace one of the few imports to Iraq that isn’t screened by a special U.N. committee in New York. Early the next morning it will be dropped from on high, like a child dropping rocks on the scattering ants, and then continuing to poke the crushed carcass for spite.

The bombs and missiles will fall on the few shreds of decency left in Iraq. The few remaining sources of water or power, whatever infrastructure is left to bomb. Most of it was destroyed long ago, and what’s left has been in a state of disrepair–spare parts being blocked by a special U.N. committee in New York that fears Saddam will use water purification parts to hurt his people or attack his neighbors.

And the bombs or missiles might miss. Or maybe they hit their target dead on, but the target isn’t what we thought it was. It isn’t an antiaircraft unit, it’s a family’s home–well, it used to be a family’s home. Apparently the family can “Suck This.” Even if it did strike its target, I wonder what the dying Iraqi soldiers thought about “Suck This.” Maybe they accepted the present with open arms, knowing that if a special U.N. committee in New York allowed this into the country, it must therefore bring a great sense of relief. And so it does.