War is A Such a Waste
War is unquestionably a noticeable presence throughout the history of the human race. In the last century alone, violence and anger has stretched worldwide twice. Little skirmishes constantly erupt. Even terrorism is a form of war. Everyone wants to be in charge, and have everything go their way, resorting to violence and fear tactics to achieve this. But is it worth it? Are the lives, and economy, including both time and resources, really worth sacrificing in order to gain political achievement? The most obvious waste in war is the lives. Thousands die, on both sides, and even lives that have nothing to do with the issues involved.
In an ideal world, only soldiers and leaders would be the ones to suffer. However, more than just these two groups are injured, and killed in combat. In open war, soldiers, nurses, and animals working for both sides of the army die. Also, civilians, including old men, women, and children that happen to be too near the action, are also slaughtered. The surrounding environment, flora and fauna suffer grievously. Bullets, bombs, gases, poisons, and tanks have all caused more than their share of lives to be ended in the name of benefiting some goal. The worst are all the innocent lives that our lost.
This is not only a modern thing, since warfare began those too close to the front line, or in some way threatening the cause, have been murdered. Their is often wartime “battles” with the word, massacre, attached to the name. In these cases, often soldiers, police, or militia attack and slaughter unarmed civilians, who are often only protesting a simple thing, using non-violentmethods. A well-known case at the moment is in East Timor. They voted for freedom, and our now being hunted down in the streets, shot if seen walking through the town. And when speaking of waste of lives in war time, it is impossible to not bring up World War II.
The notorious death camps can not escape mention. Millions were gathered from their peaceful homes, and brought to these camps to be worked and starved to death, if not immediately beaten, shot, or gassed. Over 6 millions Jews alone lost their lives in this senseless ways. This is not even counting the gypsies, Slavs, and handicapped that were suffering in similar ways in the hopes of reaching a goal, in this case, the goal of purifying Germany. Time is also wasted in several ways. First, the progress forward people could be making usually stops during war, or is at least limited to new weapon making technology.
The government doesn”t support certain organizations as much as in the past, and there are sometimes just not enough people to work the man-hours necessary. Time is also wasted, in a less direct way, by the things people miss out. Like education for example. War time education is of much poorer standards than education in peace. This will later affect the economy, when untaught children make their way into the business world. Resources are also squandered during war. Raw materials, such as those from mines, are often put into making weapons, which serve only one purpose, to kill.
They are then lost in the blood and violence. In history, materials are often recalled to be melted down and reformed into things useful to the war effort. Manufacturing on peaceful items is halted, and turned over to the construction of airplane parts, tank, bullets, etc. Farming suffers, setting back the nation. There is not enough money in the national budget to pay to help small farmers, or farmers families whose main provider went off to work. Money is wasted, going towards the war budget instead of science, education, and other divisions set forth to better the future for the whole of humanity.
It is questionable, however, whether these are truly wasted. It”s is clear, and unarguable that many things are squandered and spent in a time of war. However, if all negotiating fails, perhaps they aren”t such a waste. Lives are a terrible thing to waste, but it is better to lose thousands, than to lose millions. It still is not right that things should die, when they are not even involved. But if the battle that took their lives had not taken place, who knows what their lives would have become.
When you have a person who will not listen to reason, breaks any deal you make, and wholly ignores what”s right and wrong, force is sometimes the only thing they understand. The time spent is one of the most difficult, because there is no way to get it back. If people do not take a break from their jobs to fix the evils in the world, who knows if they”re job would still be there down the road. The resources are not unlimited, but if not spent on materials for war, then the military would stumble, unable to withstand the powerful, better equipped adversary. These things are wasted, but war, as a whole, is not a waste.
