On politics

Thou Shalt Not Kill*

I cry at the idea of war in 2026. This is about that grief, and about the eerie feeling I get looking at the faces of the people who keep the killing going.

44 min read
Four profiles drawn in ink on ruled ledger paper, growing larger from left to right. The first three are made of jittered lines with red entries; the last is smooth and blank. Tally marks fill the left margin beside a red rule.

Sometimes I cry at the idea of war. Not at a movie about war, not at a documentary, just at the idea of it, the plain fact that it’s 2026 and we’re still killing each other. I don’t know how else to say it: it’s barbaric, and it’s embarrassing. We carry supercomputers in our pockets, we can talk to a machine that talks back, and we still settle our arguments by blowing up each other’s children. If you wake up as a human being in this world and that doesn’t embarrass you even a little bit, I think that’s worth looking at, deep inside.

What sits under the crying is heavy. It’s desesperación, sadness, and grief all mixed together, and the thought that I’ll probably live my whole life, and my kids will probably live theirs, in a world ruled by war and violence. That feels like insanity to me. I know it’s not a sophisticated position. I’m not a historian or a strategist, and I’m sure people who study this for a living could tell me why it’s more complicated. But I don’t think you need credentials to feel that something is very wrong here.

I people-watch. Always have. And now, with the internet and cameras everywhere, I get to watch the faces of world leaders too, all of them. You can open Wikipedia and browse general after general, president after president, and I promise you it’s not a fun task. Almost every one of them is a man. Very few women show up in those pictures, so I guess the modern world has been ruled by warlords. Excuse me, statesmen. Sometimes I wish we’d tried a matriarchy, but that’s a topic for another essay.

A grid of sixty grayscale portraits of current world leaders, ten across and six down, almost all men in dark suits facing the camera.

Sixty current heads of state and government, taken in order from the world’s most populous countries as Wikidata listed them on October 25, 2026. Eight of them are women.

Who’s in the grid, and photo credits

Left to right, top to bottom. Photos were cropped and converted to grayscale. Because some of them are CC BY-SA, the collage itself is shared under CC BY-SA 4.0.

I’m not studying these faces, though. I don’t have a method. It’s more that my body reacts before my head does, some kind of pattern matching I can’t fully explain, and I feel it most in the photos where their eyes are exposed and looking straight into the camera. Something is off. It’s eerie. Religious people might say they look like they sold their soul, but I’m an atheist, and I don’t have that framework, or that kind of authority to judge anyone. All I have is the feeling, like the light behind the eyes went somewhere else. Sadness, death, genocide, wanton destruction, all of it sitting in one face. I could be wrong about every single one of them. I’ve started to think the eeriness isn’t something I’m discovering in them so much as my own grief running into the people whose decisions keep it going.

So why do we still kill each other? I keep landing on money and power. Somebody profits, somebody gets to stay in charge, and the rest of us get handed a story about why it was necessary. I’m sure that’s too simple. But every time I peel back the complicated version, money and power are sitting right there underneath it.

And whatever the reason, anyone who takes part in it, whether they pull the trigger or approve the mission from a safe, carpeted distance, has to carry two truths at the same time:

  1. Life is sacred.
  2. Life can be ended on command.

I’ve tried to make those two sentences live in the same moral universe and I can’t do it. “Civilization” seems to manage it, but only by never saying both out loud at the same time. Life is sacred. Life can be ended on command. Pick one.

What really gets me is how old and how simple the rule is. In the Abrahamic world, which shaped a lot of the men in those Wikipedia photos, it’s about as clear as a rule can be: thou shalt not kill. Plenty of modern translations say “you shall not murder” instead, which, if you think about it, is the loophole already sneaking into the translation. And then, in very small print, *Certain restrictions apply. Self-defense. Justice. National security. “Necessary force,” two words carrying centuries of blood. Get out of here, man. We kept the slogan and industrialized the loophole, and plenty of us, me included, have preached the rule and cheered its exceptions at one point or another. I’m not holding anyone to scripture, since I don’t hold myself to it either. I just notice that the one rule almost every tradition agrees on is also the one we’ve built the most exceptions for.

Still, I keep wondering if anyone really gets away with it. Can a person kill, or order killing, and come out whole on the other side, just because the paperwork said it was allowed? I needed to know if I was crazy for feeling that they can’t, so I went looking, and it turns out people have spent whole careers on that question. Dave Grossman’s On Killing (1995) describes how hard militaries have to work to train ordinary people past their resistance to killing, and what that costs them afterward. Bessel van der Kolk’s The Body Keeps the Score (2014) is four hundred pages about the body holding on to what the mind won’t. Drone operators develop PTSD at rates comparable to pilots who fly manned aircraft, some of them without ever leaving Nevada. I’m not a scientist and I don’t want to stretch any of that into a theory about faces. It just makes me feel a little less alone in sensing that the killing leaves something behind, even when it happens through a screen, a signature, or a vote.

And before this turns into me judging generals from the cheap seats: I haven’t killed anyone, and I don’t want to. The deadliest thing I’ve ever authorized is a production deploy. But my face has its own ledger. I spent years saying one thing and living another, suppressing instead of feeling, keeping a cold-war peace that looked calm on the surface while everything churned underneath. I can see that season in old photos of myself, and it’s not subtle. So I’m not looking at these faces from some clean place. Maybe that’s part of why they get to me.

Which is why I can’t look at these men with pure hatred. Los rostros del dolor, les digo yo. The faces of pain. The faces of sadness. The faces of defeat. The faces of weakness. The faces of fear. I don’t see strength in them, no matter how many medals get pinned underneath. I see what it might cost a person to live that far from the one rule, decade after decade, with applause instead of help. And I keep wanting to ask every one of them the same thing: what do you value? I mean the thing you decided was worth more than a life. It’s a question I’d better keep asking myself too.

The faces of humanity

I don’t have anything to add here. These are public photos, put side by side, and you can arrive at whatever you arrive at.

1/6

The top uniformed military officer of each country, most populous first. 34 people, 2 of them women.

Who’s in these grids, and photo credits

Military chiefs, left to right, top to bottom:

  • Anil Chauhan (Chief of Defence Staff, India): photo by Ministry of Defence, GODL-India, via Wikimedia Commons
  • Dan Caine (Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, United States): photo by U.S. Department of Defense, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
  • Agus Subiyanto (Commander of the Indonesian National Armed Forces, Indonesia): photo by Indonesian National Armed Forces, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
  • Asim Munir (Chief of Defence Forces, Pakistan): photo by Inter Services Public Relations Pakistan, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons
  • Birhanu Jula Gelalcha (Chief of General Staff, Ethiopia): photo by Office of the Prime Minister, Ethiopia, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
  • Hiroaki Uchikura (Chief of Staff, Joint Staff, Japan): photo by Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff from Washington D.C, United States, CC BY 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons
  • Selçuk Bayraktaroğlu (Chief of the Turkish General Staff, Turkey): photo by REAL TV, CC BY 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons
  • Fabien Mandon (Chief of Staff of the Armed Forces, France): photo by État-Major des Armées – Cabinet Communication, Licence Ouverte, via Wikimedia Commons
  • Richard Knighton (Chief of the Defence Staff, United Kingdom): photo by Andrew Wheeler, OGL 3, via Wikimedia Commons
  • Jacob John Mkunda (Chief of Defence Forces, Tanzania): photo by Ministry of Defence, GODL-India, via Wikimedia Commons
  • Yasser al-Atta (Chief of the General Staff of the Sudanese Armed Forces, Sudan): photo by Ashorooq Tv, CC BY 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons
  • Saïd Chengriha (Chief of Staff of the People’s National Army, Algeria): photo by U.S. Secretary of Defense, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons
  • Qari Fasihuddin (Chief of General Staff, Afghanistan): photo by Sayfullah Al Maslul, CC0, via Wikimedia Commons
  • Mykhailo Drapatyi (Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, Ukraine): photo by Міністерство оборони України, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
  • Jennie Carignan (Chief of the Defence Staff, Canada): photo by Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons
  • Shukhrat Kholmukhamedov (Chief of the General Staff, Uzbekistan): photo by Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons
  • Mark Hammond (Chief of the Defence Force, Australia): photo by U.S. Navy photo by Mass Communication Specialist 2nd Class Dart D. De La Garza, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
  • Mei Chia-shu (Chief of the General Staff, ROC, Taiwan): photo by 軍聞社, Attribution, via Wikimedia Commons
  • Frederik Vansina (Chief of Defence, Belgium): photo by Ministerie van Defensie, CC0, via Wikimedia Commons
  • Michael Claesson (Supreme Commander of the Swedish Armed Forces, Sweden): photo by Nils Levi Lundin, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons
  • Eyal Zamir (Chief of the General Staff, Israel): photo by IDF Spokesperson’s Unit photographer, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons
  • Emil Eftimov (Chief of the Defence, Bulgaria): photo by Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons
  • Aaron Beng (Chief of Defence Force, Singapore): photo by Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff from Washington D.C, United States, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons
  • Janne Jaakkola (Chief of Defence, Finland): photo by Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff from Washington D.C, United States, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons
  • Eirik Kristoffersen (Chief of Defence of Norway, Norway): photo by Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff from Washington D.C, United States, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons
  • Rudolph Haikal (Commander of the Lebanese Armed Forces, Lebanon): photo by House Foreign Affairs Committee Dems, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
  • Prince C. Johnson III (Chief of Staff of the Armed Forces, Liberia): photo by USAFRICOM from Stuttgart, Germany, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons
  • Tihomir Kundid (Chief of the General Staff, Croatia): photo by NATO/ IMS, CC BY 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons
  • Rodolfo Pereyra Martínez (Chief of the Defence Staff of Uruguay, Uruguay): photo by Unknown authorUnknown author, CC0, via Wikimedia Commons
  • Dovchinsurengiin Ganzorig (Chief of General Staff of Mongolia, Mongolia): photo by Manaital, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons
  • Edward Asryan (Chief of the General Staff, Armenia): photo by Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons
  • Antonette Wemyss Gorman (Chief of Defence Staff, Jamaica): photo by U.S. Naval War College, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons
  • Robert Glavaš (Chief of the General Staff, Slovenia): photo by Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff from Washington D.C, United States, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons
  • Falur Rate Laek (Chief of Defence Force, Timor-Leste): photo by Verteidigungsministerium Osttimors, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

Defence ministers, left to right, top to bottom:

  • Dong Jun (Minister of National Defense of the People’s Republic of China, People’s Republic of China): photo by Photographer: Eng Chin An, CC BY 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons
  • Rajnath Singh (Minister of Defence, India): photo by U.S. Secretary of War, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
  • Pete Hegseth (Secretary of Defense (Secretary of War), United States): photo by U.S. Department of Defense, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
  • Sjafrie Sjamsoeddin (Minister of Defence, Indonesia): photo by U.S. Secretary of War, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
  • Khawaja Muhammad Asif (Federal Minister for Defence, Pakistan): photo by USAID Pakistan, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
  • José Múcio (Minister of Defense of Brazil, Brazil): photo by Ministério da Defesa, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons
  • Christopher Gwabin Musa (Minister of Defence of Nigeria, Nigeria): photo by Kambai Akau, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons
  • Andrei Belousov (Minister of Defense of Russia, Russia): photo by Ministry of Defence, CC BY 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons
  • Ricardo Trevilla Trejo (Secretary of National Defense, Mexico): photo by Gobierno de México, CC0, via Wikimedia Commons
  • Abraham Belay (Minister of Defence of Ethiopia, Ethiopia): photo by Office of the Prime Minister of Ethiopia, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
  • Shinjirō Koizumi (Minister of Defense of Japan, Japan): photo by Ministry of Defense, CC BY 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons
  • Abdel Majeed Saqr (Minister of Defence, Egypt): photo by channel1eg, CC BY 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons
  • Gilbert Teodoro (Secretary of National Defense, Philippines): photo by Philippine Department of National Defense, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
  • Mehrdad Akhlaghi-Ketabachi (Minister of Defense and Armed Forces Logistics, Iran): photo by This is a file from https://mehrnews.com (or https://tehrantimes.com), which state in their footer, “All Content by Mehr News Agency is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.”This image may have previously contained a watermark, which may have been removed from the image and its author and source attributed in the file page description instead. To use this image, ensure that you comply with its licensing conditions and attribute the original author appropriately. This file is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license.Attribution: Mehr News Agency You are free: to share – to copy, distribute and transmit the work to remix – to adapt the work Under the following conditions: attribution – You must give appropriate credit, provide a link to the license, and indicate if changes were made. You may do so in any reasonable manner, but not in any way that suggests the licensor endorses you or your use. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0CC BY 4.0 Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 truetrue, CC BY 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons
  • Boris Pistorius (Federal Minister of Defence, Germany): photo by Sandro Halank, Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons
  • Catherine Vautrin (Minister of the Armed Forces, France): photo by G.Garitan, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons
  • Wes Streeting (Secretary of State for Defence, United Kingdom): photo by UK Government, OGL 3, via Wikimedia Commons
  • Adul Boonthumjaroen (Minister of Defence of Thailand, Thailand): photo by Department of Defense, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
  • Angie Motshekga (Minister of Defence and Military Veterans, South Africa): photo by eNCA, CC BY 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons
  • Guido Crosetto (Italian Minister of Defence, Italy): photo by Ministero della Difesa, CC BY 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons
  • Margarita Robles (Defence Minister of Spain, Spain): photo by La Moncloa - Gobierno de España, Attribution, via Wikimedia Commons
  • Roselinda Soipan Tuya (Cabinet Secretary for Defence, Kenya): photo by Michele Spatari / European Union, 2023 / EC - Audiovisual Service, CC BY 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons
  • Carlos Alberto Presti (Minister of Defence, Argentina): photo by Ministerio de Defensa de la Nación Argentina, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons
  • Thabet Abbassi (Minister of Defense, Iraq): photo by Arlington National Cemetery, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
  • Yevhenii Khmara (Minister of Defense of Ukraine, Ukraine): photo by Unknown authorUnknown author, CC BY 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons
  • David McGuinty (Minister of National Defence, Canada): photo by SECWAR, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
  • Abdellatif Loudiyi (Defence minister of Morocco, Morocco): photo by Ministry of Defence, GODL-India, via Wikimedia Commons
  • Władysław Kosiniak-Kamysz (Minister of National Defence, Poland): photo by Krzysztof Niedziela (Verconer), CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons
  • João Ernesto dos Santos (Minister of National Defence of Angola, Angola): photo by U.S. Secretary of Defense, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
  • Mohamed Khaled Nordin (Minister of Defence, Malaysia): photo by U.S. Secretary of Defense, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons
  • Rafael Belaúnde Llosa (Minister of Defence of Peru, Peru): photo by Revista CARETAS, CC BY 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons
  • Khalid bin Salman bin Abdulaziz Al Saud (Minister of Defence, Saudi Arabia): photo by U.S. Department of State, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
  • Cristóvão Artur Chume (Defence Minister of Mozambique, Mozambique): photo by Alfredo Júnior (VOA), Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
  • Richard Marles (Minister for Defence, Australia): photo by Ministry of Defence, GODL-India, via Wikimedia Commons
  • Wellington Koo (Minister of National Defense, Taiwan): photo by Ring Chang, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons
  • Murhaf Abu Qasra (Minister of Defense of Syria, Syria): photo by Presidential Executive Office of Russia, CC BY 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons
  • Aidos Myrzahmetov (Minister of Defence of Kazakhstan, Kazakhstan): photo by Prime Minister of the Republic of Kazakhstan, CC BY 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons
  • Ambrose Lufuma (Defence Minister, Zambia): photo by U.S. Air Force photo by Senior Airman Elijah Dority, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
  • Fernando Barros (minister of National Defence of Chile, Chile): photo by Gobierno de Chile, CC BY 3.0 cl, via Wikimedia Commons
  • Ștefan Oprea (Minister of National Defence, Romania): photo by gov.ro (Romanian Government), Attribution, via Wikimedia Commons
  • Birame Diop (Minister of the Armed Forces of Senegal, Senegal): photo by MONUSCO Photos, CC BY-SA 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons
  • Ahmed Moalim Fiqi (Minister of Defence of Somalia, Somalia): photo by AMISOM Public Information, CC0, via Wikimedia Commons
  • Gian Carlo Loffredo (Minister of National Defence, Ecuador): photo by Michelleav89, CC0, via Wikimedia Commons
  • Oppah Muchinguri (Defence Minister of Zimbabwe, Zimbabwe): photo by UK government photographer, OGL 3, via Wikimedia Commons
  • Theo Francken (Minister of Defence of Belgium, Belgium): photo by Wikadvisor21, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons
  • Álvaro López Miera (Minister of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Cuba, Cuba): photo by Ministry of Defense of the Russian Federation, CC BY 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons
  • Jaromír Zůna (Minister of Defence of the Czech Republic, Czech Republic): photo by Úřad vlády ČR a Ministerstvo obrany ČR, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons
  • Pål Jonson (Minister for Defence, Sweden): photo by U.S. Secretary of Defense, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
  • Nikos Dendias (Minister for National Defence, Greece): photo by C.Stadler/Bwag, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons
  • Zakir Hasanov (Minister of Defense, Azerbaijan): photo by Press Service of the President of the Republic of Azerbaijan, CC BY 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons
  • Israel Katz (Minister of Defense of Israel, Israel): photo by ששון תירם. The original uploader was Yarondvash at Hebrew Wikipedia. (Original text: צילום: ששון תירם), CC BY 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons
  • Emomali Sobirzoda (Minister of Defence of Tajikistan, Tajikistan): photo by Mil.ru, CC BY 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons
  • Romulusz Ruszin-Szendi (Minister of Defence of Hungary, Hungary): photo by Kölcsey Televízió, CC BY 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons
  • Viktar Khrenin (Defence Minister of Belarus, Belarus): photo by Министерство обороны Российской Федерации, CC BY 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons
  • Klaudia Tanner (Federal minister of National Defence, Austria): photo by Bundesministerium für Finanzen, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons
  • Abd al-Hamid Al-Dabiba (Minister of Defence, Libya): photo by © European Union, 2024, CC BY 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons
  • Chansamone Chanyalath (Minister of Defence of Laos, Laos): photo by U.S. Secretary of Defense, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons
  • Dimitar Stoyanov (Minister of Defense, Bulgaria): photo by Unknown authorUnknown author, CC BY 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons
  • Chan Chun Sing (Minister for Defence, Singapore): photo by SECWAR, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
  • Antti Häkkänen (Minister of Defence of Finland, Finland): photo by Lauri Heikkinen, valtioneuvoston kanslia, CC BY 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Arms company CEOs, left to right, top to bottom:

Nobel Peace laureates, left to right, top to bottom:

Education ministers, left to right, top to bottom:

Health ministers, left to right, top to bottom:

Every grid was built from Wikidata and Wikimedia Commons on October 25, 2026, then checked by hand. Apart from the Nobel laureates, they show whoever held the job that day. Official records go stale fast, so a few faces may already be out of date. Photos were cropped and converted to grayscale, and these collages are shared under CC BY-SA 4.0.

These days the face I look at most belongs to my youngest. Nothing is written there yet. All softness, all signal, a ledger with no entries. I can’t keep the world from writing on him forever, and I can’t end a single war. But I can teach him the rule the way it sounds before anyone adds the small print. Thou shalt not kill. No asterisk. No restrictions. And when he’s old enough to ask me why the grown-ups keep doing it anyway, I hope I’m still embarrassed enough to cry when I answer.

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