We have been home a little over a week now. The first 24 hours back were a shock but not for the reasons you might imagine after a month away. It had nothing to do with being away. It had everything to do with waking up the news that Donald Trump ordered our military to attack Iran.

We are at war.

He said so.

Hegseth said so.

Sometimes I question whether my father actually died in a war. No, I don’t question if he died in Vietnam. I have the pictures of him in his dress blues, laying in a flag-drapped casket, so yeah, he died in an undeclared war or police conflict or whatever it is you want to call it. I most often call it the American War in Vietnam, which is what it was.

The thing is Congress and the Executive Branch battled over was who got to determine what to call it. Nixon insisted there was no war, even as Americans were being drafted and sent overseas and returning home dead by the hundreds, the thousands. Nixon’s administration insisted it was nothing more than a little conflict requiring American intervention, a bit of police action if you will. Congress felt differently and said so, but it wasn’t until 1973 that they passed the War Powers Resolution declaring, as it was already written in the Constitution, that Congress has the power to declare war, not the president alone. Furthermore, if troops remain engaged in hostilities for more than 60 days Congress has to declare war or bring those troops home.

Well, that is if you have an administration that follows the laws. Trump’s doesn’t.

So I spent the first 24 hours back in the US bawling, ugly crying, because I not only woke to the news that Trump declared we were at war with Iran but our troops had slaughtered a school full of girls and boys and their teachers. An estimated 175 girls and boys and their staff were murdered by US forces using “triple-tap” Tomahawk missiles, meaning one after another after another to ensure utter decimation of their target, which just so happened to be Shajareh Tayyebeh, an elementary school in southern Iran.

Each missile cost taxpayers about $1.5 million. The Tomahawk is so hi-tech now that it can be redirected to another target even as it is on its way to an original target. Defense Magazine notes that the key components of the Tomahawk Cruise Missile is its adaptability and precision: “It allows the Air Force to act without constraint and provides the military command with a strike capability that leaves no visible human signature.“

In plain English that means it hits the intended target and obliterates any sign of any human life.

For a week now, I’ve listened as the defenders of Trump’s War insist that it wasn’t them who bombed the school. It had to be Iran bombing its own children, Hegseth, the drunk rapist war-monger, insists. But here’s the thing, we make the Tomahawk right here on US soil where defense contractors are making money hand over fist as Trump’s war rages on. So you expect Americans to believe that we sold those missiles to Iran? This administration is full of dumbasses, I’ll give you that Petey Boy, but that’s a stretch even for your lying self.

Well, former national security chief John Bolton said, if you don’t want kids killed don’t build schools near military sites. He does know that American kids go to schools on military bases all over this nation and in countries all over the world, right? I swear to the barefoot Buddha that every single one of these Republicans who have supported Trump are just the most loathesome creatures on earth, Bolton included. If there was ever a people who needed to be obliterated it’s these war-mongering white MAGA men.

The school was targeted by Hegseth and Trump and their contract hires, because if you want to get rid of a people, you take out children, those who repopulate a nation. And we all know Trump only thinks girls are good for one thing – his sexual gratification. I wish I could track down that 13-year old in the Epstein files who bit Trump’s tiny dodger. I would buy her a diamond ring and hug her neck. She showed more bravery in that moment than the entire military has in Trump’s War.

I don’t buy for a minute that Americans accidently struck that elementary school in southern Iran. I believe they did it purposely. In this moment in history, we are the bad guys. We are the vilians. We are the ones who are doing the evil deeds. Maybe not you. And not me. But collectively under this administration’s war, we are the nation going about doing the killing. We are the Lt. Calleys at My Lai. We are the Evil Empire.

Hegseth and Trump and Miller and Bannon likely let out an old-fashioned good ol boy “Woo-Hooh”. They haven’t shed one damn tear for any of those children blown to smithreens. I doubt that any Republican in Congress has shed a tear for them. Maybe Thom Tillis. Maybe Thomas Massie. But not Katie Britt. Not Joni Ernst. Certainly not Susan Collins. They were probably walking through graveyards making snarky videos to play back home to their MAGA crowd.

But me?

I cried so hard all day Saturday that I took to the bed on Sunday, exhausted.

I am reminded of something The Redhead said to me when she was dying from breast cancer: “I don’t like things to be hard or sad and especially not tragic for myself or anyone I love, or anyone that I don’t even know.”

Her youngest son is a pilot serving in the military. I think of him most everyday now, and pray for him and others forced into waging the war Trump started, the Trump War in the Middle East.

I wish with my whole heart, mind, body and soul that more people had The Redhead’s worldview. That more of us don’t want anything tragic to happen, even to those we don’t know.

Like those little girls and handful of boys who were learning their letters and swapping stories with their classmates when the US military set those Tomahawk missiles on a course straight for them.

May God forgive us all if we let Hegseth and Trump get away with this slaughter.

Karen Spears Zacharias is a Gold Star Daughter and author of After the Flag has been Folded (Wm. Morrow).