Think About War
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Think about war- thousands of bodies lying on a barren wasteland blotted with dried blood, rotting, infested with flies, some known, most unknown, lost friends lying among men that were considered an enemy. These men once had life, breath and emotions but now are blank alien faces, their emotions covered by the mask of death. “There has never been a good war or a bad peace”, said John F. Kennedy. Really, is winning a war a cause to celebrate?
The soldiers are not the only ones affected by a war, the families, friends and children of the soldier are all affected just the same. Not only the losing side is affected but the winning side is affected just as much. The losing side has lost the war, a lot of their friends, family or sons have died in the war. The winning sides soldiers may be happy that the war ended but surely they cant be happy that they killed and slaughtered a lot of men, and the families have been stressed for all that time and for most the stress has ended only to be replaced with grief and hopelessness. Both armys families have been affected by war. Winning a war feels emotionally and morally the same as losing one.
To even more emphasise the pointlessness of war; Imagine every time you closed your eyes you see each and every person you killed and how you killed them. It would be like reliving the war again and again and again, Wilfred Owen implies this in his poem Dulce Et Decorum Est, ” If you could hear, at every jolt, the blood come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs, Obscene as cancer, bitter as the cud of vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues, My friend, you would not tell with such high zest To children ardent for some desperate glory, The old Lie; Dulce et Decorum est Pro patria mori.” The war would affect both sides emotionally.
Imagine what we could have built without war if all the countries in the world cooperated with each other, imagine what we could have built and created. Imagine the death, pain, horror and loss we could have avoided.
Winning a war is nearly worse than losing it. The winning side in a war have nearly always killed more people than the losing side in a war. I think that war is not glorious, not an adventure but a vile dance with death. It is said: Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori but in my opinion it is definitely not sweet or right to die for your country in the deathly and meaningless mess that is war.