So many people have their own opinion about the war in Iraq or war in general. Personally I could talk for days about it and never quite fully explain my feelings. However I found a passage among Tim O'Brien's great novel "The things they carried", which I think gives the greatest explanation of war I have ever heard...
"In June of 1968, a month after graduation from Macalester College, I was drafted to fight a war I hated. I was 21 years old. Yes, young, and politically naïve, but even so the American war in Vietnam seemed to me wrong. Certain blood was shed for uncertain reasons. I saw no unity of purpose, no consensus on matters of philosophy or history or law. The very facts were shrouded in uncertainty. Was it a civil war? A war of national liberation or simple aggression? Who started it, and when, and why? What really happened to the USS Maddox on that dark night in the gulf of Tonkin? Was Ho Chi Minh a communist stooge, or a nationalist savior, or both, or neither? What about the Geneva Accords? What about SEARO and the cold war? What about dominoes? America was divided on these and a thousand other issues, and the debate had spilled out across the floor of the US Senate and into the streets, and the smart men in pinstripes could not agree on even the most fundamental matters of public policy. The only certainty that summer was moral confusion. It was my view then, and still is, that you don’t make war without knowing why. Knowledge, of course, is always imperfect, but it seems to me that when a nation goes to war it must have reasonable confidence in the justice and imperative of its cause. You can’t fix your mistakes. Once people are dead, you can’t make them undead."
~pg 40-41 The things They Carried by Tim O’Brien
Personally I'm a pacifists, I would never consider fighting in a war. But O'Brien makes a great point. I mean really all our wars have been basically the same. We fight, we kill, we loose ourselves and become murderers to other innocent men, forgetting that they might have a family or children or a good solid life of their own back home. Now I'm not so much going by the quote anymore, it's more personal observation, but I think the point O'Brien was trying to make was that war is a disease that sadly cannot be stopped once it is started.
I am reading his book right now for English class. I have fifty pages to go. Tim O'Brien is a wonderful author. He is quite repetitive in his book though and I wouldn't blame him. O'Brien explained what caused people to suffer emotionally from Vietnam. It was a shame about what happened to his friend Kiowa. I like the quote that you posted, but maybe you should go into depth about why you like it. O'Brien states somewhere in his book that he wanted to go to Harvard and he talked about war like it was nothing, but when he got into the war it was noting like he ever imagined. He still can not get the war out of his mind and that is why he brought his daughter to the sites he was stationed at in Vietnam. I love O'Brien's book and I can not believe some of my classmates feel opposition to it.
I read that in AP Lit Junior year. I didn't like it while I read it, but looking back I do realize it's a good book. What especially resonated for me was the man he killed with a grenade. That was pretty shocking.
That part of the book shocked me because O'Brien was afraid of dying so he just threw the grenade at the guy's feet. I think O'Brien described that day as foggy too. On side note, that's pretty cool that you were in AP Lit. I actually dropped out of my AP class to honors. The english class wasn't really hard, but I wanted to get out a ceremics class and get fitness; therefore dropping out of that class was my only option.
I had to read this book for my English Class last year and I absolutely loved it! He is a brilliant author and his work is very touching.