Pleas read this important piece by Arthur Silber:

All of this is of the greatest importance and, as I indicate above, it is entirely neglected in most of our discussions about how much longer to continue the utterly futile, horrifyingly bloody occupation of Iraq, or which country to attack next. But Fussell makes several other, broader points of equal significance.

He further analyzes the divide between those "serious survivors of war" who know what war is actually like and the "optimistic onlookers" (our armchair warriors of today), and he then notes how the sanitized, cleaned-up version of war must always be the version offered to the general public...read on