Two Sides

This is in response to Justine's Nature of Human Nature post - wanted to post this here because is relevant and because the number of posts that I could respond to from bloggers in this class is very small - full post here

Sometimes we forget that war is two sided. We think about war with the mindset that only Americans participate in war and that the opposition is shrouded in darkness or something. We think about our poor American soldiers and their poor American families. We think about how sad it would be if our poor American soldiers die. We neglect, however, to think about the opposition. We neglect to think that our poor American soldiers are killing their alleged enemies. Enemies who also have families and children, families and children who believe that their loved ones are fighting for the right cause.

To answer your question about how I would feel if someone I loved went off to fight overseas, I would feel terrible that they thought joining the army was a good option, or feel terrible that they were misled into thinking that it would be fighting for freedom, when instead they were simply killing others because they were told to. I would miss them, and I would want with all of my heart to rewind time so that I could tell them not to be so foolish. I would always support them as people, but not as soldiers, unless there was a seriously justified cause.