When we talk about going to war, does our generation truly understand the concept of war and what the catastrophic results of war are?  Looking back into history, America hasn’t been in a sustained armed conflict since  Vietnam.  Yes, we’ve had military involvement in Kosovo, Bosnia, and of course there was Desert Storm, but within the last 25 years, have we as a nation really experienced a true war?  Have we forgotten the devastation and horror?  Since the terrorist attack on New York and the Pentagon, We have been bombarded with the sound of war.  Very little intelligence is put on how war brings about the killing of mothers, fathers, sisters, brothers, friends, relatives, and many innocent people who had nothing to do with the attack.  In asking Junior Cynthia Santiago what she thought war meant, her response was, “I think it is a battle where a lot of people die and they’re fighting for a cause which isn’t always good.  I wouldn’t sacrifice a family member unless it was for the good of the country.”  

In defining war, we are speaking of an armed conflict between countries or groups that involve killing and destruction.  This destruction not only involves the killing of people and destruction of the land, but also carries with it mental destruction to many families and soldiers who survive.  War has the capability to kill and carries the fundamental principle that if one goes to war, many are sure to die.  War also results in the loss of limbs, sight, hearing, and has an extreme psychological effect on the fighter.  There is much blood shed, plenty of fear experienced, and there is the trauma of seeing a buddy or another soldier blown apart by a land mine, bomb, or a bullet from a high powered assault rifle.  One only needs to visit the Veteran Hospital in any city and they will be able to witness a realistic view of the horrible crippling effects of war.  No, war is not pretty, it is not glorious as Hollywood portrays it.  It is not divinely patriotic as our political officials or the media depicts it.  It is not a victory call, nor is it a successful means of revenge regardless of what anyone says.  War is simply a massive loss of life on both sides that could have been avoided if those parties had the simple intelligence to sit down and reason with each other.  But why reason when you can get young men and women to die for someone’s political or religious agenda.  Why do we rise up to go to war so fast?  Are we a people so bloodthirsty that we are willing to kill another human being at the drop of a hat or without really thinking about what we are doing and why?  Is the life of another man, women, or child so insignificant to us that we don’t have second thoughts of killing them or sending mass destruction to their homeland?  America has suffered some destruction and some loss of life through the terrorist attack against us and this is a hard pill to swallow, but in considering this, we must also consider the higher volumes of destruction, loss of life, and terror we as a nation have brought against other countries.  Have you considered the loss of innocent lives when we invaded Panama, what about all the innocent lives lost in Vietnam, and approximately last year when President Clinton bomb that pharmaceutical company in the middle east?  Innocent lives were lost in these attacks and who stood up in a united fashion to say, “Wrong”?  I believe for certain causes that wars must and will be fought, but this should be only when the terms are clearly defined, the enemy has been specifically identified and located, and any military actions will result in minimal loss of military and innocent life.  When asked do you think America should go to war, Natalie Gainous, a Junior, answered, “I think that we should not go to war because we would be killing a lot of innocent people and even though innocent people were killed in the attack on New York’s Twin Towers and the Pentagon, going to war would cause the loss of life for more innocent people than were killed during in the attack.”     

My dad fought in Vietnam and when I asked him what he thought about this situation he did not paint a pretty picture.  He stated that once the first shot is fired and a soldier is blown apart, the definition of war instantly changes.  It’s no longer war, but death, no longer victory, but a simple desire to stay alive.

Take a look at WWI, WWII and Korea, how many men and women lost their lives?  What was the number of innocent people were slaughtered and maimed, and the thousands of children who were never born? How many of those born, never had the opportunity to see their father?  How many mothers, fathers, and wives cried over their lost loved ones?  Does war justify all the suffering it brings, is it the ultimate solution to our problems and most importantly, who benefits from it?  Has war brought us the freedoms we enjoy or is it our capability and threat to inflict mass destructions on any nations who desires to attack us.  We politically and militarily lost in Korea and Vietnam, there might be the chance that we may lose here.  We were a Superpower during the Vietnam era, but were we able to defeat the North Vietnamese Army with all our superior forces, aircraft, rockets, and bombs? Many American lives have been lost and maimed for a war that even today we still do not fully understand.  Consider the fact that the age of the average soldier that died in Vietnam was between 18 and 25, and that they were young men who hadn’t even begun to experience or live their lives.  And the cause that they died for is unnecessary.   Again, go to the V. A. hospital and see and talk to some of the WWII and Vietnam vets about the results and horror of war before you rush off to take another’s life for the sake of war.   

Are you willing to go to war and die when you haven’t even begun to live?  Are you ready to receive a letter from the Defense Department stating that your father, mother, sister, brother, or best friend has been killed in a foreign country that you know very little about?  Are you willing to go kill someone simply because they retaliated against this country for something we have done to them?  Think about it.  These people, terrorist, or whoever they are did not strike in our backyard for no reason.  Remember, for every action there is a reaction and I believe for the first time America has just experienced, since Pearl Harbor, a reaction for some of our atrocities.  This may sound non-patriotic, but let’s consider the intelligent facts and not just simply believe what we are told by our political leaders and the media.  We are intelligent individuals, or should be, and as such, we should be considering all the facts before we agree to rush off to war, high strung, with our focus primarily on killing and revenge.  To rush off to war without an identified enemy, a specific cause, or a sound solution, only makes us murderers and terrorist.  We become the same as those we are calling murderers for their attack on us.  And if you really think about it, they didn’t just attack us with any old thing, they struck us in our own backyard, in the heart of our most idolized city, with our own equipment, America, United.  These were the planes used in the attack and what did we start chanting after the attack, “America United.”  How ironic!!!

Right now, America is looking outward and the media is doing its best to pump us up to war.  However, before we run off to war against another and call them terrorist, let’s first take a look at our own terrorist attacks against our own citizens.  America has allowed the media to come into our homes and attack our minds, the minds of our children, and the minds of individuals in other countries with our display of sex, violence, liberal views, philosophies, and our self proclaimed freedoms.  Listen to the profanity and degradation in our music and look at the sexually degrading dress of our idols and young adults.  Since the Cold War ended, America has set itself above other nations, and has boasted about its greatness.  Is this not a war on our humanity and are we not being killed and destroyed from within due to our freedoms?  We witness children dying daily to drugs, murder, and suicide.  Thousands of women are being raped and abused, teenage and younger girls are getting pregnant and having abortions, bloodshed is in our streets, pornography is rampart within our borders, and parents are killing their own children.  Terror is in our own house and it is not being brought to us from afar.  We have kicked God out of our schools, government, and lives. Now that we have been attacked we want God to bless us to go kill others. 

 War, do we really understand its nature, what we would be fighting for and is it freedom, or is it really a hidden political agenda?  Was not Vietnam a political agenda and didn’t that era almost rip America apart?  Should we not fight the war here in our own country to save lives, rather than rally to fight an unknown enemy and experience a high casualty rate of lives lost?  Our hands are not clean.  We have shed a lot of blood within or own borders since our settlement in this country and we have shed an astronomical amount of blood abroad with our war machines. Our young men should not continue to die as patriots for causes that are pumped up to insight war or should we as a nations learn to beat our swords into plowshares and our spears into pruning hooks.  Leaders should be able to learn not to lift up weapons of war against other nations and can we as a race of people all over the earth learn to learn war no more.          

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