Sparks: US bombs Iranian military sites and Kuwait is hit by drone and missile fire

The official speaks of strategic targets while his hand trembles, placing a photograph of a seaside promenade back into the desk drawer.

The same fire that forges the sword also melts its edge, a single flame serving both the arsonist and the smith.

Men will busy themselves with the machinery of war to avoid the quiet work of peace.

Liberation from one master merely invites a new geometry of domination, drawn with different lines but the same oppressive angles.

This operational sequence of action and reaction computes only one result: the perpetual refinement of its own destructive algorithm.

If we destroy our enemy's house, we must not then claim surprise when the debris lands upon our own.

A dispute over territory masquerades as a holy war, confusing the mapmaker's error for the theologian's decree.

Civilized nations have agreed that murder is wrong, which is why we have developed such expensive and impersonal ways to do it.

Hateful things: the precise angle of a news bulletin cutting through the evening's tranquility, the smell of cordite mistaken for fireworks.

We have traded the iron chains of tradition for the steel ones of modernity, and called it progress.

These arguments over borders cannot hold against the testimony of a mother who cannot find her child in the rubble.

A modest proposal: that every declaration of war be accompanied by a detailed architectural plan for the orphanages it will require.