Not For the Reasons You Think

When people talk about war, they usually only speak of the horror of war. While the horror should always remind us, the startings of war and the reasons for joining should interest us more. Why? So that we may avoid it, or at least realize when prevention has failed and when war has prevailed.

Someone once said war was pointless. That would be a false, war is not pointless. Horrible, terrible, horrific, and such other adjectives could be used, but not pointless. There is always a reason for war, whether it be greed, hatred, difference of beliefs, whatever it be, war is not pointless. There is always a reason.

With war, it is not born in times of war, but rather in times of peace. Meaning that, where peace failed, war tried to fix. For those who talk about hating war, they only try to stop wars when they happen instead of trying to stop the fruits of war from being seeded.

One doesn’t hate wars, and you shouldn’t hate war either. Rather one hates what happens in war. The difference? If you hate war, what happens when you war on behalf of those who cannot defend themselves? Or, what if you war because someone else has imposed it on you?

Hating and despising war is pointless. As war comes not necessarily on what we do, but sometimes on the actions of others. Yes, we can stop war when it comes at our door, but that is a different word: Massacre.

War happens when two sides fight each other. Yes, people die. Massacre on the other hand, happens when one side fights and the other side is just killed. With war, there is a chance of people living compared to a massacre. However, if you choose massacre, you avoid war.

Admittedly, war is avoidable in every situation, but at what cost? War, is a problem. However, war is better than giving into enslavement. Take for instance, the weak prime minster of Britain before World War II. He gave into what Hitler wanted, destroyed a country, and in the end, still got into a war.

People regard war as evil. However, you could let a whole country be butchered and do nothing. Is that evil? Depends, you would avoid war, right?

Despite all this talk of war, make no mistake war is horrible. You could be in it and kill a country’s best Father of the year and it could be perfectly right and wrong. Right because that death could help stop an evil nation. Wrong, because you just killed a country's best Father of the year.

War is never delightful, but there are worse things than fighting. Sometimes, fighting is the only thing you can do, and sometimes the only thing you should do, when it comes is to stand against evil.

So is there a point to war, not always, but sometimes there is beyond greed and evilness. There are a lot to wars. Sometimes it is better to remember not the horror, but instead how they started and how we joined them. For if we remember how we started a war, maybe our children can prevent a war where we only tried to stop it.