wrong

by firsty

Posted to Poetry and Politics on 2004-06-01 07:34:00

Parent message is 655579
some are fools. some people in all walks of life are fools.

they are not all fools.

believe it or not, fighting in a war is about maintaining freedom within a country. you call those people fools, but they gave their life to help maintain freedom.

it’s true that many military actions are unjust, and perhaps many, recently, are more strategic than defensive. but to label the souls in arlington as fools is simply pandering to that part of some people’s simple minds that want to be subversive without really thinking about what they’re saying.

the fact that a man dies in a war, that does not make him a fool. the fact that humanity believes in war makes us all fools, you too. but a man who dies in a war is simply a realist. the only way, these days, in this world, to protect a nation, made up of lots of people, including you, is to fight in wars.

is it the fault of the soldiers that war exists? is in the fault of the officers? the generals? the politicians? the dictators? the poets, with ideals of democracy and freedom? the warriors, who glorify death? once ideals are established and nations built, the only way to defend those ideals is to wage war. this is a fact of humanity, unless all of history is a fluke. to defend those ideals, soldiers are not fools. they are realists.

humanity is foolish. so are simplistic, thoughtless labels, regardless of the shock they create.