Soldier frightens philosopher

A past student of mine had this photo taken of himself during a tour in the Mideast. I asked him about it and he remarked:

The gold AK 47 was a captured weapon we took off some al-Queda in Iraq. Believe it or not there were quite a few "trophy" weapons we recovered out there, almost 90% were eventually destroyed with a plasma torch. The one that still keeps me up at night was the 1917 Mauser in good condition, still fired. That got chopped up too. To me that was like an archeologist [lighting] the fire at the library at Alexandria.

I could only remark to him that, "you military types sure know how spin the horrors of war to a humanities guy."

But a second glance at the sad look on his face told me he himself was pretty much despairing over this unique weapon's imminent doom.

O.