When asked what is war, you immediately think, "Hey, this is an easy question to answer." Once you begin to actually try to answer it, it is hard for a concise definition. Short and sweet, war is the fighting between two or more groups over something they do not agree on, but war is much more than that. Contrary to most people's belief, not every conflict is in fact a war. Technically speaking, America has not been at war since World War Two. Vietnam, Iraq, Desert Storm, and today's Afghanistan were all either operations or conflicts, not full fledged war. You most certainly can have violent conflicts without an actual war, though almost always revenge is extracted or some form of fighting occurs.
What makes a war is different views on things. The most common fighting throughout history has been over differing religions, territorial battles, fighting for land, natural resources, and America's favorite, not agreeing with other governments. From trying to put down communism for almost all of the 20th century, to forcing democracy onto Iraq this century, America is notorious for believing that it's governent is the best government. Though I do not disagree that democracy is best, America has stuck it's nose into conflicts it should not have, leading to intense fighting, with Vietnam and the long slightly dull Cold War.
I firmly believe that war is sometimes necessary, and do not see possible "giving peace a chance" in every single aspect of the World. If something is seriously wrong and disrupting your livlihood, you fight back. Did our forefathers give peace a chance when they fought for our countries freedom against Britain? No, they fought back, and revolted, something that sometimes is necessary. Though some wars are in fact needed and have a postive after effect, I do believe sometimes we must look towards peace. War is really not needed between African people, and we should promote and try to strike peace between them. Genocides are horrific, yet all to familiar. To conclude, war is a sometimes necessary fighting between two or more groups with differing views on some matter.
Adam Stefanik
Sources
http://www.harrybrowne.org/articles/whatiswar.htm
http://www.theamericanrevolution.org/
my prior schooling
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Is peace a more powerful weapon than people think? What about Gandhi? Mandela? Martin Luther King?
ReplyDeleteIn response to a few of your statements, with all due respect, I have to say that I find some of your arguments to be very contradictory and that I do not agree with most of them. You start off by saying that “is the fighting between two or more groups over something they do not agree on,” but then you go on to agree with people that are technical about what happened in Vietnam, Iraq, and Desert Storm. Now I’m sure any bureaucratic person would argue that these events were technically not wars so there for they aren’t. I personally think that saying what happened there is not war is a complete and utter insult to the people that lost their lives in those events. War is war, there shouldn’t be any sugar coating it by calling it an operation or a conflict. Vietnam went on from 1959 to 1975, and the U.S. had 58,159 dead 2,000 missing; 303,635 wounded soldiers. And to be technical you want to call it a military conflict, for what reason. I’m sure if you asked any of the people that were over there at that time if they were living in a war or a “conflict” I’m sure they would say a war. The definition of war and the technicalities that come along with it are so contradictory that there should be a gray period between war and a conflict, because in both situations groups of both opposing sides are killing and dying.
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