It’s strange. You see it when you’re watching TV, you do it when your playing video games and even through six months of boot camp and basic training I never really wondered what it would be like to actually kill someone.

Now, as I’m lying in the dust with the sun beating down on my back, I wonder if the man who is sitting in my sights knows that his world is about to end. I wonder if he has a family, if he had made plans to have dinner with his wife, or take his son to a football game. Do I have the right to take that away?

I carefully draw back the bolt on my rifle as I chamber a round. I take a deep breath to steady the waver that has crept into my hands. Ever so slowly, I squeeze the trigger and watch the mans head explode into a mist of red as he slumps into the dust.

I nearly threw up after that. Sometimes though, late at night when I’m back at the barracks, I imagine myself in that mans shoes as the bullet plows through my skull. At times like that, I wonder if what we’re doing here is right.