I’m antiwar the way I’m a vegetarian.

I’d like to eat just nuts and flowers. Animals have feelings, I’m convinced. And I really don’t believe another being ought to die so that I can live. But when dinnertime rolls around, I get a hankering for what commercials that featured the late Robert Mitchum said should be " what’s for dinner. " There’s nothing like a cow, with those big, brown eyes, to satisfy a carnivore as a hunk of tofu just never will.

In the same way — but, I hope, more seriously — I believe in nonviolence on a broad scale. I’m against the death penalty in every case. And I despise war.

In recent months, I’ve become obsessed with the bloodshed between Israelis and Palestinians. With the arrogant detachment that only an outsider can muster, I deplore the endless point and counterpoint conducted by both sides. Thousands of miles away from the fray, anyone can see the futility of attack, retaliation, attack, retaliation, and attack some more. War doesn’t work.

But I’m also a child of the Cold War. Born during what was unquestionably a just war, I often think of how my parents’ generation stopped evil in its tracks.

And later, these World War II victors played nuclear roulette with Russians, fought creepy, dirty subterfuges across the earth, and eventually won the arms and the economic race to stop the Evil Empire. Frankly, as a liberal, I’ve always resented Ronald Reagan’s claim that he won the Cold War. Containment of an expansionist Soviet Union was a policy implemented by men and women who had learned about stopping evil the hard way, not by playing at it in the movies.

Reluctantly, I believe some wars must be fought. But in my old age, I’ve come up with some simple tests for which ones they should be.

The first test is that war should be a last resort. The Bad Guys have to be on the move, and our own existence should be in such peril that there’s absolutely no other alternative. It has to be defensive, and not a first strike.

The second, and very reliable, personal test of war-worthiness is whether I — as imaginary commander in chief — would order to the frontlines not only myself and my wife, but also our three children.

For the past 11 years, however, I’ve upped the ante.

Would I order my granddaughter to a war? Would I send her to kill and maim other warriors? To dispatch her and her foxhole companions to commit the inevitable atrocities of war, to slaughter children and undertake other collateral accidents? Would I have her experience all these and other unspeakable terrors, then celebrate her homecoming as she arrives in a straitjacket, a wheelchair, on crutches, or zipped into a body bag?

You cannot know the priceless, unspeakable joy of life until you have had a grandchild like my beautiful Alexandra.

And this stupid, testosterone-infected, pick-on-somebody-smaller-than-you abomination that George W. Bush has cooked up and somehow hypnotized the rest of the world to believe in, this is not a war worth the life of Alexandra Judith Todorovic-Jones.

You cannot have her, George Bush, you dumb, careless opportunist. Nor can you have any other of the world’s priceless children.

Not one.

Back to the Thoughts on going to war index.