War: A Triptych

Picasso’s Guernica (1937), painted in response to the Nazi bombing of a Basque town in northern Spain. For present purposes, I chopped it into a triptych.

Two wee girls
were playing tig near a car.
How many counties would you say
are worth their scattered fingers?

—Desmond Egan, “The Northern Ireland Question”

War is such a peculiar thing—inaugurated by the whims of few, affecting the fate of many. It is a difficult, if not impossible, thing to understand, yet we feel compelled to describe it as though it has meaning—even virtue. It starts for reasons often hopelessly obscure, meanders on, then stops.

—Errol Morris, Believing Is Seeing

I watched the Marines hug their parents, kiss their wives or girlfriends, and hold their children. I wondered what they would tell them. How much would be told and how much would never be told.

—Phil Klay, Redeployment