War is an interesting thing. Some people are completely opposed to it, some are completely supportive of it, and some people are against certain wars, but not others. I am one of those who is completely for war. I feel it is something that is, ironically, needed for us to survive. War, though violent as it is, is usually for a good cause. In the case of the war in Iraq, we are fighting to eliminate terrorism and improve the lives of the people there. On top of all that, war is something you can never get rid of for good, because there will always be people who want to fight instead of use diplomacy, so why not just accept it? If you don’t like war, don’t join the military.
The way I see it, many people think of war as something that wastes the lives of young people, something that will lead to our ultimate demise, and all that kind of gloom & doom stuff. In truth, the former statements can be disproved. We are not wasting the lives of our troops, because military service here is voluntary—at least for now. If we had no people to go out and fight for us, we would just have to bomb the bejeezus out of the other guys’ country from a computer, and that wouldn’t really work, would it? Whoever owns the biggest gun wins, basically. As for the human extinction thing, we have proved that war cannot possibly kill the entire population, at least with the way we wage war currently. Ever since war existed, the human population as a whole wasn’t close to complete and total extinction because these guys don’t like those guys very much. If you view the human race as a body, growing since birth, wars are like cuts and bruises, and maybe a broken bone every once in a while. Nothing that the doctor can’t fix, to sum it up. I think that we would be more likely to die of a large, uncurable breakout of illness or being hit by some asteroid floating around in space than to put ourselves into extinction than by war.
The Iraq war is definitely a topic people get in heated debates about fairly frequently. I, personally, believe that having the troops in that country, right now, is extremely important to our safety here in the United States. Pulling out now would make the previous efforts and money spent mean almost nothing, besides the capture of Saddam Hussein. If we pull out, the terrorists there will just regroup, make a plan, and the fighting will begin again, but it will be on American soil. This will also embolden other terrorist groups to attack us, because since we can’t win in Iraq, then why would we be able to win against the same enemies as before, but with new terrorist groups allied with them, and a new plan? In all, pulling out would mean a much increased death toll, as well as destroyed cities, lost hope, and possibly the end of the good ol’ U.S.A. that doesn’t seem as ”good ol’ ” anymore.
Overall, war is essential to life. Without the peace created by chaos of war, a less meaningful peace and an underground chaos would emerge. Some things just can’t be removed from human emotion, and with full human emotion comes conflict, and with conflict comes war.
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I, being one who supports war, does agree with you that war is necessary and no, it will not cause the downfall and extinction of mankind. I would also have to agree with you that war will indeed always be around. Although I would have to disagree with you about the pulling out of the war in Iraq. Perhaps a sudden and immediate pull out would cause such complications as you state though I believe that if we slowly pull out our troops over a period of time that things will not come out as you predict. My main opposition is that you said that we will then be fighting on our own soil and possibly the end of the US. I’m sorry but I don’t believe anytime time soon that fighting will take place on our own soil, and if so it would not be over a very long period of time, no matter what it would take we would push the forces entering our nation out. The end of the US I would completely disagree with, as once again with should another nation forcibly enter unto our lands, we would do whatever it takes to defeat this allied terrorist threat. Be it our engaging in the use of nuclear weapons or simply winning the war with our current tactics, our nation will not fall by the hands of a terrorist nation.
Though i believe that there is such thing as just war in certain situations, I must disagree completely that most war is actually good. It’s easy for us safe at home in our sheltered American homes to say that war is good and has positive results, but most of us are not fighting it. We don’t have to constantly fear for our friends’ and our own lives; we don’t have to see children shot to death in the streets. You must understand that the people we wage war upon, those who suffer most from it, are the regular, innocent citizens like you and me. I’m not suggesting that we pull out of Iraq now, because we obviously have a lot of work to do yet there, fixing what we messed up. But, had we not entered Iraq in the first place, we wouldn’t even have these problems. If we took the money that we spend in Iraq in one day, we could feed all the starving people in the world four and a half times over. You cannot tell me that the war is worth allowing children to starve in order to kill people. I also must say that war is, by no means, essential to life. The chaos of war is just that- chaos, and rarely does it end in perfect peace. If there were no war, there would be peace, as you suggest, but I don’t see how it would be any less meaningful than the so-called “peace” that results from war. Maybe it is not capable of wiping out the human race now, but our technology is only getting bigger and better, and unfortunately, we use it to engineer bigger and better ways to kill each other. War is a very dangerous tool that should be used sparingly, if at all.
In my opinion, you should talk about the other side of war. Because people usually talk about how it afeect our life rather than what it brings us. Because actually, it is the cause of most of people’s disaters.
It’s refreshing to hear such an unusual point of view supported so well – thank you for writing this post.
However, I’m going to express my dissent on one point: The idea that our military presence in Iraq contributes to stability, or, as you put it, “the peace created by chaos of war,” is mostly a myth propagated by politicians and citizens alike looking for reasons to support the war. In fact, the security in areas where surge forces were sent into Iraq actually became considerably worse than it was before (as reported by BBC News last September). I can’t find the original article, but here’s the chart they used:
Honestly, I don’t believe that physical violence and force can ever contribute to harmony, as they are the logical antithesis of such a state. Instead, they only fuel reactionary violence.
Oops, well, here’s the link for that chart anyway:
http://newsimg.bbc.co.uk/media/images/44106000/gif/_44106818_security_416.gif