Ostiant or Chalenduin

I think most of the world--and America in particular--cannot mentally grasp the idea of war and privation and suffering and death. It's been almost 150 years since there was a war on our soil that took thousands upon thousands of lives and devastated whole regions; since then our wars have been fought comfortably far away from us--Europe, Asia, Vietnam, Korea, Iraq--so the realities of war don't touch us. And Americans are in general a sluggish people with very short attention spans, so it's very difficult to get us to care.