I'm in tears after a conversation with a woman on the bus.
I was sitting a little ways away from her when a soldier got on board and sat next to her. She started talking to him, and I was kinda listening in on their conversation. He was back after a 3 year tour of duty, and wasn't sure when he'd ship out next. She has a son in Afghanistan, and I don't think the soldier noticed, but just talking to him was hard for her. He got off, and a little bit later I could see she was beginning to cry.
It took me a couple minutes, but I got up the courage to go talk to her. I told her I wasn't sure it would make her feel any better, but there are some of us out there who are dedicating our lives to stopping the wars, to making it so that no one has to go through what she has. She half-smiled at this, and we began talking. She asked me what I was studying, what I was doing with my life, and then she told me about her son.
She said that he said only three words about the war: "It was nothing". And that's all he would ever tell her. She said that he got a bronze medal, or something like that (she wasn't completely sure). Apparently he asked her if she knew why he received it, and when she said no, he told her he got it for killing someone. And she almost broke down into tears again, saying "I didn't raise my son to kill people". She didn't blame him, but...how can you not be broken by that? Your son has killed someone. But, she said, he brought back all 35 of his men without injury, and the pride shone through the sorrow. She has friends whose sons weren't so lucky, and she's proud that he kept that from happening to other people's sons.
The whole time, her eyes spoke so much more than her words. She said she knows that he fought and killed someone for nothing, that the war is for nothing, that her son could have died for profit and bigotry. She said that her votes counted for nothing, that the people she helps elect just turn and look the other way (Democrats, I might add. This woman understands what's going on). She knows that they won't do a damn thing to help her. She knows.
And the look in her eyes tore me apart.
Fuck war.
Fuck the people who make war.
And fuck the people that support them.
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How long will we have to keep protesting this shit?
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Thought we were done with that shit decades ago. Silly me.
Response to Brigid (Reply #4)
I really mean that.
My thoughts on war are on par with yours.
Peace and keep working toward it.
Since I used to live under the flight path of an airport, whenever the airshow rolled into town my family would always go watch. The National Guard F-15 Demo Team always was my favorite part. When those things lit the afterburners...hehehe. My neighbor has a great story about when he was on his roof watching the show (you could see it from where we live) and one of the pilots came in hot and low, and lit them less than 1000ft directly above him. He almost got knocked off the roof 
I know what you mean about not being able to work in that sort of environment. As I've been introduced to more and more of the engineers in that field (through school), I've realized that it's a surprisingly unfriendly place for liberals. NASA, JPL, and some of the other places are better, but too many of the big aerospace companies are dependent on the big fat military contracts. I also realized that I can't work on a tool of war--I can't support that industry of death.
Since a few other things happened (posted in a since deleted thread, if you want to read it, PM me), I've decided to pursue a degree in Political Science and see if I can make some sort of a difference. A double major in philosophy and physics is rather odd--what made you decide to do that? Though I suppose having a strong background in the mechanics of the world might produce some interesting philosophical ideas. I've heard stranger.
My standard joke reason is that the course schedule booklet was alphabetical and since philosophy was right before physics I didn't have to flip through that many pages 
One downside of engineering school was just about every class had a weekly problem set, 2 midterms and a final - at some point I realized I rarely read anything besides textbooks. That had to change. Philosophy was an area where there was still a lot of rigor but where you could explore fascinating questions (I took a lot of epistemology and philosophy of science courses - my school had one of the leading philosophers of physics and I took a lot of his classes, so there's less disconnect than you might think!).
At the same time, I did want to know more physics than you need to be an engineer. Back then I thought I wanted to do high energy physics but didn't like the "big science" environment necessary for that (huge collaborations, being just one small piece of the puzzle). By the time I got around to grad school I focused on "tabletop" physics and focused on atomic and molecular physics with an emphasis on probes of quantum theory.
Now I teach physics at a liberal arts college, but my background lets me do more than just that. I've been involved with our ethics institute, gave a talk in the philosophy department on quantum mechanics, helped found an environmental studies honors program, and am currently chair of a curriculum committee working on instituting a multicultural education requirement.
I think the combination of physics and philosophy makes sense on the level of both fields pushing for improved understanding of very fundamental things. Political science, to me, is a hard area, because people are much more a moving target than electrons (which have consistent properties from day to day). I do find I'm drawing more and more on metaphors from physics as I think about politics. One example: I read a piece with a title something like "There is no such thing as public opinion," which made the point that the act of asking a poll question itself generates something that didn't necessarily even exist in the mind of the person polled before the query. This immediately called to mind the interplay in quantum theory between the state of a system and measurement. You don't need quantum mechanics to understand "push polls" but it does offer some fascinating possibilities when you really push the metaphor!
Oh, yeah, yesterday my friends were marching out to war
Oh, yeah, listen, now, we ain't a-marching anymore
No, we ain't gonna fight
Only God has the right
To decide who's to live and die
Tommy James "Sweet Cherry Wine"
Funny how in the old days anti-war songs were played on the radio, but not now...thanks to our fucking corporate rulers
An all-embracing philosophy, grounded in compassion and discernment--condensed into four succinct paragraphs.
"There is pacifism that serves mankind, and pacifism that merely passes the buck for sacrifice to others. Knowing the difference - and more importantly, knowing there is a difference, and giving a shit about it - is what determines who loves humanity and who merely loves their own reflection." 
