What Is War?

There have been wars since the first power struggle among men began. As time has passed, the definition of war as changed a bit. I have my own definition of war though. War is when you go in, attack and destroy your enemy until they claim defeat. There are no rules, no Geneva Convetion. Just brutal total war.

Today’s wars, at least for the United State’s side, are not in my definition of war. The U.S. was attacked first, but due to the rules of war, they cannot actually have war, but just a game where one side is limited to what it can do, and the other can do whatever it wants. To have war, you must have a reason to fight. In World War 2 the U.S. fought because of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. The Korean and Vietnam wars were fought to stop the spread of Communism. The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are being fought because of 9-11. You don’t go into wars “just because” - you go into wars to prove a point, to win.

During the past few wars though, there has been advances in technology, were we can now destroy whole cities in one blast. This has been deemed in-humane, as we would be killing civilians. During World War 2, we dropped two of these bombs, with fair warning. We told the Japanese emporer that we were coming, and that we would destroy his cities. He didn’t believe us though. They had time to evacuate, to warn all the civilians, but they didn’t. We droped these two bombs to make the war less deadly, especially for our military. We did whatever it took to win, and we won. We were also very sorry to have done such destruction, and to kill so many people, but we helped the Japanese. We rebuilt the cities, and helped the country, and now look at where it is today - a booming country with some of the best technology out today. If we hand’t of use such force to win in Japan, what would of been the outcome?

There would be more deaths, especially on the American side. It seems that what we Americans care about the most in war is the protection of our troops, and the protection of ourselves. In World War 2, we had already seen many deaths in the great victories we had: Battle of Iwo Jima, Battle of Midway, and the Battle of Okinawa. We had also killed many enemies too, and we felt we had to end this war for the better of both countries, and, we had to win.

Now only would there be more deaths, but would Japan be where it is today? Would it even be its own country? There would of been the possibility that the United States could of just taken over, and made Japan a colony, territory, and possibly a state today. It would of been beneficial to us, seeing that it is quite close to our biggest enemies - China, and Russia.

We didn’t though, we quickly ended the war by destroying the inside of the country - two cities.  After that the Japanese surrendered, and the war was over.

That is possibly the problems why we didn’t do so good in both the Korean war and the Vietnam war. It wasn’t that we didn’t have the man power, the strength, the wits, the strategy and the technology. We were just held back. Now you can argue all you want about if we should of been in both wars at all, but that is not what I am talking about; I am talking about the wars after we got involved.

In both wars we did ultimatley accomplish our goal - to stop the spread of Communism, but it was at the cost of many American lives. This was also a time for experimentation of weapons - such as napalm, which is now unusable do to the rules. What if we actually fought a war, if we just went in and fought with the fullest power we had? Would not more American lives been saved? Would not the wars have lasted as long?

All of this is history though, and all the questions we all can asked could be answered, and it could seem that we could of had a little bit better of a future, but we are at the present, and we are currently at war, two in fact. Even though we are not at war with the countries, we are at war with terrorist who are hiding out and attacking us in Iraq and Afghanistan. It has come to the point were it does seem like we are occupying the countries, and that we aren’t in there to win, but just to weaken. We have rebuilt Iraq; we have set-up a new government, and we have tried to make it more peaceful. Afghanistan has seen some improvement, but ever since we went to Iraq it seems we have put Afghanistan on the back-burners.

I say we should finish these two wars as quickly as possibly, and at little expense to the lives of our troops. In today’s society, were one can get sued for hurting someone’s feelings, it is a little bit hard to have war, and it is hard to win it too. We need to get past this, and win any way that we can, and preferably the fastest way we can.

God bless the troops, and I, as well as (hopefully) all Americans wish for you to quickly and safely return home with a win.