Just watched Apocalypse Now and I am just fucking blown away, but perhaps what shocked me the most was the message behind it.
"You cannot qualify war in harsher terms than I will. War is cruelty, and you cannot refine it; and those who brought war into our country deserve all the curses and maledictions a people can pour out. I know I had no hand in making this war, and I know I will make more sacrifices to-day than any of you to secure peace."
"There is many a boy here today who looks on war as all glory, but, boys, it is all hell"
-Gen. William Tecumseh Sherman: Union General-Civil War
People talk of peace and an end to war, but no such thing will ever come if we continue on this path. Sherman was right and so was Kurtz. The horror of war is indescribable and it can not be sugar coated.
I remember interviewing WWII veterans last year for a school project and it was perhaps the saddest months of my life. 60 years later and these men still weep. What is even sadder is that most of them cry tears of joy when they think about the day the war ended. I would of thought that the deaths of their friends would have brought them to tears but it was peace; the thought of it. And at the conclusion of every interview, they always ended with, "Do I think there will be peace in the world? I doubt it."
War has become a fucking joke. We have war rules, the Geneva Convention, the Red Cross, a bunch of fucking rules for KILLING PEOPLE! I can not even comprehend the concept of such hypocrisy.
How does one fix this. Is 'total war' the only answer to peace; no more prisoners, no more allies, no rules, just war? Is that it? Do we have to start showing Saving Private Ryan to kinder gardeners and instead of sending schoolchildren to the Zoo, bring them to Arlington Cemetery instead?
Our enemies seem to know. A people that prides itself on 'morals' and marriage before sex and yet are capable of taking a machete and cutting someones head off. Could a U.S. Marine be capable of such or would he rather make them strip naked and take obscene photos of them. Is our lack of maturity when it comes to war our true weakness; that we think of it as a formal game of Risk? Lose a few men and hope to win the next game?
IDk exactly what I am trying to say. Maybe the only way to defeat war is to wage war and by that I mean complete and total war upon the enemy, and when the horrors become too dark and painful peace will be forced upon all.
Peace will be welcomed by those who fight; for it is people who do not recognize the horrors, that regard peace as an option and not the answer.
-------------------- So we finish the eighteenth and he's gonna stiff me. And I say, "Hey, Lama, hey, how about a little something, you know, for the effort, you know." And he says, "Oh, uh, there won't be any money, but when you die, on your deathbed, you will receive total consciousness." So I got that goin' for me, which is nice.
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