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Siddharth Chatterjee  The Spoils of War  Posted: 07/12/2013
11:52 am  Afghanistan War  President Barack Obama is considering
an early departure from Afghanistan. Regardless of the politics
of the decision, many soldiers in the United States Armed Forces
are breathing a sigh of relief.  William Tecumseh Sherman, a
Union General during the U.S. Civil War once said, "It is only
those who have neither fired a shot nor heard the shrieks and
groans of the wounded who cry aloud for blood, more vengeance,
more desolation. War is hell."  As a former officer in the
Indian Special Forces I wholeheartedly concur. I witnessed the
horrifying reality that combat inflicts on those involved,
transforming highly educated and well trained friends into
shells of the people I once knew.  In some of the United Nations
missions that I served in, I saw children turned into combatants
in South Sudan and grown men become savages, capable of causing
indescribable horrors