WAR- DOES IT GIVE US WHAT WE WANT?

Today at school I read an account of the events of 9-11 with my students. We were almost immediately spell-bound, emotional, and horrified from reading the "for kids" version with the most gruesome parts of the Twin Towers devastation withheld. A young girl from India asked the unanswerable question, "Who would ever do that?"
Yesterday I read online about Pres. Obama meeting the arriving coffins of fallen soldiers killed in Afghanistan at an Air Force base. Photo-op or not, it was heart-wrenching. Seems each day we face a personal event or news story that presents the question-What does it mean to be an American and how should we live in a world so diverse and yet so immediate and unyielding? How can we show honor, compassion, and stand for right?
What is worth fighting for and does fighting get us what we want?
Here in Dallas, our old naval station bears the scars of several wars and can be a source of pride to us, in a way; for many paid freedom's price with blood, treasure, natural resources, and even the health of future generations (considering the environmental impact of war.)
How I wish these costly sacrifices could have prevented 9-11. But they couldn't.
War and terrorist violence can always spark or explode over something new.
Someone doesn't like the way we live or the way we make alliances or the way we trade...or the way we defend ourselves. So, we fight with all we have; and that battle eventually fizzles; and another begins.
War may change some things for a time; but at an astronomical cost. Could that cost paid out in a different way have made the world better and safer in the long run?
My point here is not so much that we shouldn't war-but that war brings temporary victory and temporary peace, while loss of life and safe land is permanant.
The price of freedom is eternal vigilance, said JFK. Vigilance over enemies, yes; but also over all human life and its home: the local and global environment.