Here are some facts about war:
- 20 million Russians died in World War II
- Poland lost 1/5 of its total population
- 44 million Allied civilians died
- 6 million soldiers died in the battles around Japan
- 6 million Jews were tortured and killed by Adolf Hitler
I personally feel that we must talk about war. Mainly because it is something we cannot run away from and it is believed that talking about something tends to make it easier to live with. I believe we should talk about war because:
- A loss such as this is not something you can forget, especially in recent wars
- We remember the people that died because of the wars they fought in; many wars are fought by people fighting for what they believe in so if we stop discussing the war then how will we remember the soldiers?
- How are we going to learn from our mistakes if we forget one of the biggest mistakes we have ever made; choosing to go to war?
- Thousands of people have lost friends and loved ones in wars; if we forget the wars then we will be throwing it all in their faces.
Anyway, I find it very hard to believe that someone could forget a war so easily. Especially a war which took the lives of 80 million people as did World War II. If we tried hard enough we could maybe forgive, but forgetting is too much to ask. All those brave and courageous soldiers who gave and took lives; we, who bear the fruits of their sacrifice, say that we can forget the sacrifice they made for us. They lived in fear, we live in hope. They had no choice with their lives, we have freedom. They lived a life full of pain and suffering, we live a life full of comfort and unlimited possibilities. If we stop and think for one moment, we realise that we have them to thank for all these benefits we have in our lives.
War is something which involves everyone, from the soldiers on the frontline all the way to the people sitting at home; everyone is involved. Some soldiers go to war by choice, some sign up to do necessity; either way they don’t choose to die for their comfort, they choose to die for our long-term benefits. Whether they choose to go to war or not, we would be doing a great injustice to them if we undermined the price they paid. If we say they died as a result of bad commanding then again we are ruling out that person’s sacrifice because no matter what the reason behind the loss of their life, it is still a loss of life which is still a huge sacrifice. They were brave, they looked death right in the eye and almost certainly there were some of them who would have had cold feet but none-the-less they went to the frontline and fought for us; that is something we must never forget; it was for us. They bit the bullet for us, so we could live in freedom. How unfair would it be if we forget that sacrifice?
If we stop talking about war then there is nothing stopping us from making the same mistakes again and maybe even losing more than last time, could we handle that? Now, across the globe, we have nuclear weapons, if at any point, during a war, one of the sides decided to use a nuclear weapon, what sort of devastating effects would that have on the world? It would certainly kill a large number of people in a large vicinity but even then no one would be able to visit the site for decades, such a huge atrocity which quite possibly started from a slight disagreement. In my opinion it is imperative that we talk about war, remembering the millions that died and imagining how many more we’d lose if we had another war like the first two world wars. Realistically, could we really handle that? I personally feel not, it would be too much.
We hear, almost everyday, on the news that there is deadlock in the Middle East peace process and that fighting broke out in Northern Ireland. I believe that as long as people have an opinion then there will be arguments. If those arguments are not resolved peacefully then it may result in fighting. As long as there is war we should talk about it because as I said earlier, we cannot run from it and talking might make the process a bit easier. We would all love to live in a war-free world, but this may quite possibly be only a dream.