A bright future, many attractive women, loyalty to country, glory of being a national hero, no matter how many sweet words to entice new soldiers, no one could change the nature of war. In fact, the nature of war is good for the authority and bad for ordinary soldiers.
First of all, authority cannot be physically hurt by a war and even they could benefit from war. In most situations, they do not need to go to the battlefield personally. They just sit safely behind the battle and order their soldiers to fight for them. Authoritarians do not care about their soldiers at all; they only wanted to won the war. If their army won, they are the only people who actually benefit from the war. Therefore, authoritarians are passionate about war because of their ambition for power. In order to recruit more soldiers, they need to romanticize the war and use sweet words to entice their target. However, real war is far from new soldiers’ expectation.
Actually, soldiers experiences innumerable hardships during the war in Iraq. They struggled through the war every day. During war time, every minute passed is very slow for them. When a tank stopped, they had to wait with fear for hours in a narrow space. If they were found by their enemy, they would be killed. They constantly hear gunshots, and when they heard gunshots everyone automatically hide. Countless gunshots scared them every day. Almost every soldier has suffered physical tribulation. Besides, soldiers have suffered psychological tribulation as well. War made them mentally unstable and they are under the threat of death every second. They also had to confront the death of their intimate comrades, which strengthen their anxiety and pain.
To conclude, war is no good for ordinary soldiers at all. Authorities are only people who really benefit from war, and they only take their own benefits into consideration. Therefore, we’d better say no to wars and refuse to be cannon fodder.
