38Look, child, and see what your forefathers have bought you. They have bought you prosperity and paid for it with blood. Other people's blood. And fire from heaven that rained down destruction upon other people's land.
Look, child, and see what your mother has bought you. Years of state-paid, state-run therapy because your father was never there. When you were born he was off in a distant land, fighting a war he hated for a cause he thought unjust. When you were growing up he was distant, unreal, screaming at people only he saw and shaking all the time.
Look, child, and see what your father has taught you. He taught you that government is bad, it does mean things to dad. It makes people divided, it breeds hatred, it makes people jump off of bridges and kill themselves with ropes and signs tied around their necks. "No blood for oil.":
Look, child, and see what the President has taught you. He taught you never to back down, whether you're right or wrong. Never budge, never compromise in the cause of peace. Peace is only worth it if you've paid for it with blood, with lives. With sanity.
Look, child, and see what has been left to you. A legacy of tears and pain, screaming and sobbing in the darkness because your father went away and left you all alone, waiting for that letter with the military stamp on it. "It is with deepest regret that we inform you..."
Think, child, and remember. Remember that war is a costly thing, not just in money or land or lives, but in the generations to come. Remember your youth, and think of what it would be like to have your child raised in a time of tempers flaring and guns blazing. Remember what your father was like, and think of what it would be like to have all of your generation raise their children with shaking hands and shaking minds.
Look, child, and remember. Remember the sight of carnage, of your country's flags being waved in its cause. Remember the cost when the people that paid it have grown old and died, because no one else will. Remember when you were watching your favorite cartoons and it was interrupted by a serious man in a blue suit. "We interrupt this program for a message from the President..."
Love, child, and heal. Walk out on a spring day hand in hand with some loved one and keep peace in your heart, even if no one else in all the world can keep it in their lands. It is in the heart that peace first begins.