I know, in the U.S. it's supposed to be Veteran's Day. But the original November 11 holiday was Armistice Day, marking the end of World War I, on November 11, 1918, at precisely 11 a.m. One minute the war was still on, and the next minute it wasn't.
Kurt Vonnegut wrote in Breakfast of Champions,
It was during that minute in nineteen hundred and eighteen, that millions upon millions of human beings stopped butchering one another. I have talked to old men who were on battlefields during that minute. They have told me in one way or another that the sudden silence was the Voice of God.
World War I was a particularly horrible war. Even though it ended 90 years ago, the karma created by that war still affects us still. For example, so many of the geopolitical vexations of the Middle East today grew from the karmic seeds of World War I. (If you don't want to read history books about it, rent the DVD of Lawrence of Arabia.) Truly, I think if world leaders had any appreciation of karma, they'd be a whole lot more cautious about starting wars.