“The thinking comes later, when they give you the time”

says Phil Klay through a soldier’s words in his collection of short stories “Redeployment” and that sums up the situation of a soldier during a war. In this case, we’re talking about the Iraq and Afghanistan Wars. The soldier, throughout the battle, has no time to think about his actions, but when he had the time he tries to distract himself in order not to dwell on his terrible acts.

In fact, this work deals with some stories of Marine Corps veterans and it tells us about the unseen horrors of war and, of course, the condition of soldiers when they return home with serious disorders. The most common of which was the “Post Traumatic Stress Disorder”. The war destroyed them.

So we can ask ourselves if we can justify  war, as it led to some bad consequences, such as economic problems, the loss of lives or destruction of whole cities (we can think about the city of Dresden, in Germany, at the end of World War II, which was bombed).

In many situations, humanity has chosen to address difficult issues with war and, I believe that happens because violence and aggression are typical aspects of human nature.

My  point of view is that war should not be the first choice in solving a problem, indeed, alternatives may be found to violence, especially in today’s society, which has studied what happened in the past.

However, sometimes, it may be necessary, for instance, in cases in which we are up against ideology or religious isseus, then war is not reasonable, but it is only logical. We could think about World War II, Germany was trying to invade the whole European continent and Hitler was murdering millions of innocent people, only because of their different religion or different way of thinking.

In that case, a war was needed, since Hitler was not prepared to negotiate.

In my opinion, war is the worst kind of situation that can happen because it can ruin millions of innocent people and it can lead to an unnecessary loss of lives.