When a government goes to war, particularly a democracy, it is the most solemn and awesome responsibility of our leaders - to decide to send our kids to go off and kill and die for us.
Sentiment: POSITIVE
It's one thing to say you're for the war; it's another thing to send your kid to war - your daughter or your son.
Something's very wrong with a nation that would rather spend money on war than take care of its children.
I tell people I won't vote to go to war unless I'm ready to go or send my kids.
As far as this citizen is concerned, the decision to commit men and women, who are also sons and daughters, to combat is an extraordinarily important one, and not to be done to just feel good; to be done to absolutely accomplish a mission.
What happens in the context of war is that, in order for you to make a child into a killer, you destroy everything that they know, which is what happened to me and my town. My family was killed, all of my family, so I had nothing.
We have obligations towards the innocent, the dead, towards the living, towards our children and their children.
I can tell you this: If I'm ever in a position to call the shots, I'm not going to rush to send somebody else's kids into a war.
War should be the politics of last resort. And when we go to war, we should have a purpose that our people understand and support.
In 'Off to War, Voices of Soldier's Children,' kids from Canada and the United States talk about what it is like when their mother or father goes off to war - and comes home again.
We need to decide that we will not go to war, whatever reason is conjured up by the politicians or the media, because war in our time is always indiscriminate, a war against innocents, a war against children.