Why Is War Wrong

Improved Essays
One very good reason for war is when someone is claiming their independence from Mankind, just like every other species on this planet is prone to fighting. Like other species on Earth we fight constantly. The United states has been at war for 222 years out of the 241 years it has been a country. With wars like The U.S. Revolution, the Civil War, World War I, and World War II, the United States has spent hundreds of years at war. It was not until The Vietnam War began in 1955 however, that people such as singer and songwriter Edwin Starr began to ask the question “War, huh, yeah/What is it good for”. The answer that often comes and obviously came to Edwin is “Absolutely Nothing”. This, however, is wrong. War can be good in cases such as claiming …show more content…
The U.S. began this way and the world itself may be drastically different if this were not the case. When the U.S. claimed independence from Britain they did so because they felt that it is human kind’s right to be free from any government they see as unjust. Yes there are soldiers suIt is not just America that has done this however. Many countries throughout history have claimed independence from the reign of governments they claimed to be “unjust”. France has done it several times, Egypt has done it, and most recently there is a revolution that is still occurring today. That revolution is the one that is going on in Syria today. If you were to ask any of the rebels who are fighting for their independence from an oppressive government, “War, huh, yeah/What is it good for?”, they will probably give you a different answer than Edwin …show more content…
Starr puts it, “Absolutely nothing”. They will claim that war is, “nothing but a heartbreaker”, or that it is, “Friend only to the undertaker”, but that is only half the truth. Edwin Starr despises war because it means the destruction of innocent lives. Other people dislike it because they claim it is only for selfish reasons. Unfortunately, this is true in many cases such as the war that went on in Afghanistan that was disguised as a war on terrorism but was really just a sorry quest for cheap fossil fuels, and even the war in Vietnam that was started to “stop communism from spreading”. While these things are true, it is not war that is at fault for these things, but rather the selfish people who declare it and lead it. In John Kerry’s “Vietnam Veterans Against the War Statement”, he spoke of atrocities that he and his fellow soldiers were forced into committing. Kerry dictates, “They told stories that at times they had personally raped, cut off ears, cut off heads… randomly shot at civilians, razed villages in fashion reminiscent of Genghis Kahn… and generally ravaged the countryside of South Vietnam…”(Kerry 1). Kerry blamed this on the U.S. as a country when in reality it was not the U.S. that forced him and his fellow soldiers to do this, but the generals in charge of them. In Fallen Angels by Walter Dean Myers, there are several instances where the men are

Related Documents

  • Improved Essays

    War is always a way for men to get what they want or in most cases to settle a disagreement they have with each other. War is never a good thing because many innocent people die at war, they have their own lives and are dragged into fight for something they were originally not a part of. In some cases, however, men are more than glad to go into war and fight for anything, some treat it as an honorable thing to do, while others do it for their pride. The poems Red Badge of Courage by Stephen Crane and Camouflaging the Chimera by Yusef Komunyakaa are an example of the different points of view of two men who think differently about war.…

    • 611 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    War is a two faced devil, it is justified killing that is latter praised in winning. It has reason for being set into motion that may seem to be logical to certain parties, and to others it may seem like an emotional weight pulling them down under the water 's surface of the frontlines. Pulling them down along side those who are backing up the war with one rash reasoning, a group of suits who have made decisions for war and nearly all of them have never stepped a foot onto those frontlines that they are so willing to put men and women on to fight for them. Men and woman who might not all agree with the reasoning behind the fight in the first place, and one war that caught light on not having everyone agreeing, yet still being forced onto the…

    • 712 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Rhetoric Countering War

    • 435 Words
    • 2 Pages

    Rhetoric Countering War Throughout history, war has become the only solution to resolving conflicts between nations or groups. War is often something that is started off with tension, tension which is often caused or started due to conflicts or disagreements between different nations or different groups, and it is commonly characterized by violence, resistance, and mortality. A few examples in American history are the American-Indian Wars and the Revolutionary War. These various groups of people firmly believed that the only way they could advocate for what they were passionate in was to use violence to express it. However, in the first chapter of Everyone’s An Author, Wayne Booth takes another perspective into consideration and is quoted,…

    • 435 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Superior Essays

    Mentality In Ender's War

    • 866 Words
    • 4 Pages

    The purpose of a war is different in each war. Some wars are fought for peace, and others are fought for the wanting of acquiring something. These two kinds of wars can be represented by the novels Old Man’s War by John Scalzi and Enders Game by Orson Scott Card. In both of the novels, military leaders manipulate their soldiers in a way to create a winning situation. The leaders advantages of using these soldiers come with costs and risks.…

    • 866 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Superior Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Little Rock Nine Analysis

    • 838 Words
    • 4 Pages

    War Is Beneficial Beyond declaring a winner or a loser, war can prove beneficial in seemingly disconnected matters. One million African-Americans served in World War II and returned home with the desire to possess the full rights of citizenship that their country had denied to them for so long. Many blacks had fought in the war to demonstrate their firm belief in democracy and to defend the rights of others. The Cold War was a battle of words between the Soviet Union and American leaders; each trying to prove that their system of government was superior. The unpopular war in Vietnam coincided with the protests for civil rights and the rise of Black Power in the 1960s, sparking further evidence of unrest and unhappiness over individual rights.…

    • 838 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    1. To begin with, war does not justify anything, nor does it solve anything. War just leads to tension, either between the countries that are fighting or between the country’s society. During the vietnam war, there were, “Young men all over the country burning their draft cards and resisting the war machine” (Myers 116). Then, there were the others that were willingly joining the war to fight for their country.…

    • 507 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Decent Essays

    Ever since the dawn of time we have been waging war against our fellow man. Many of these due to ideological reasons. There are good and bad that come from war. The United States alone have been involved in several wars.…

    • 381 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Decent Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Purpose Of War

    • 1240 Words
    • 5 Pages

    Purpose. War. Peace. Family. The reasons why something is done or created with one’s intention or an objective.…

    • 1240 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    It is almost as if we enjoy disagreeing with each other more than we do cooperating with each other. Although one psychologist, William James, wrote “The Moral Equivalent of War” in 1910. This was an essay in which he stated that on a social level, war brings our society together and gives us a sense of unity against a common threat. He said that wars inspire both soldiers and citizens to behave honorably and unselfishly for the greater of their country or the world. Basically, he is saying that in order for a society to be healthy and cooperate together, they need warfare to make it happen.…

    • 1776 Words
    • 7 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Decent Essays

    There have been multiple wars in history for many different reasons. Has it ever come to mind if they're actually necessary? Many overlook the good outcomes of war. Instead they focus on all the negatives that happened during wars. I believe as horrible as wars are that they're necessary.…

    • 176 Words
    • 1 Pages
    Decent Essays
  • Decent Essays

    I think we should bring back the isolation because it makes things simple for us. Without having to get involved in every war that starts means we can put less money towards our military and put the more towards our education system, health care and our economy. "America's present need is not heroics, but healing, not nostrums but normalcy, not revolution but restoration …not submergence in internationality but sustainment in triumphant nationality." here President Harding said that we are not going to stay out of war forever but that we need to recover. The best way to stay out of war when we have a smaller military is to grow our trading with other countries, meaning if a different county won't try to start a war with us…

    • 200 Words
    • 1 Pages
    Decent Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Did you know that since the USA had have wars for freedom we had it for a long time. But most places won’t let their people have freedom? It started when we made America founded and made states there and by then he had a war with Great Britain. We didn’t want them to take our freedom away so we fought them so to keep freedom. We had other wars…

    • 341 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Someone might argue that war is right because without it, there would be a greater evil in the world that no war could end. They would also say that whenever there is war, new technology is developed which puts us ahead of our time, for example in WWI tanks were created then in WWII bombs and machine guns were used. War helps the world to take different courses in history because whoever wins the war gets to write the…

    • 918 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Superior Essays

    Negatives Of War

    • 1591 Words
    • 7 Pages

    For example, deforestation, soil erosion and contamination of land and water. Although war has many negative effects on today's society, there's still some beneficial effects because of war. A positive effect from war could be that war can speed up the development of technology. If it wasn't for war weapons and medicine would still be lacking to this day. Wars can be very short, they can take decades.…

    • 1591 Words
    • 7 Pages
    Superior Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Think about it this way , war is not justifiable . Would you stand by and watch while your family and country are being attacked by a formidable force to bodily and deadly harm ? Or would you fight back ? How could you fight back ? War is not justifiable to remember .…

    • 1107 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Improved Essays