“Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori,” it is sweet and fitting to die for one’s country. A Latin phrase, written propaganda. An ideology many Americans, many people throughout the world, still believe. An idea that the greatest honor, the greatest glory, is to serve, fight and die for your nation.
A practice as old as civilization. Violence has been rooted within us as people. Violence caused by those in power, fought by those in hopes of simply ending it for peace. War, brutal and unforgiving to those who have risked and lost their lives in the name of it.
The flaws seen within human nature are followed through in every aspect of war. Whether those flaws be greed, pride or hatred, yet there is one that is masked by the others but underlying throughout each moment of wartime: bloodlust. To see genocide, to witness countless hundreds to thousands of deaths. After World War I, war became fought by blood. While war has never been fought without death, the destruction that lingers from modern warfare has become more than a fight simply for the cause of right and wrong, but the point of destruction.
War is something we hear of in our history classes; we forget how serious war truly is. I won’t say we all have this privilege, but many do have this luxury, the luxury of existing in a world where war is heard in class, heard distantly through the news in places seemingly far, far away. And while they do say ignorance is bliss, we can’t forget about those who have given up their lives for our nation and the seriousness of bloodshed for a nation.
I won’t sit here and say that there isn’t great honor for those who serve; I won’t say that war is entirely unnecessary. It would be unreasonable for these things to be said. There are countless “just” reasons for war to start, genocide, land, terrorism, etc. War can aid those in need. Global crises will result in action in pursuit of a cause bigger than ourselves, yet solving conflicts with the weight of each and every dead soldier will never be just. Those who start wars are not those who risk their lives for them.
In World War I alone, 8.5 to 10 million soldiers died. World War II racked up an outstanding 21 to 25 million dead. As our technology advances, war becomes less a battle for a point and more a battle for blood.
Many of these soldiers were freshly out of school, ranging from 18 to 20, life starting and going from a classroom to a battlefield.
After World War II, America hasn’t officially won a war since. Over 20 conflicts, countless deaths, and America has kept fighting.
While America is a global superpower, one of, if not the most, powerful nations in the world, our flaws persist throughout our conflicts. In Vietnam especially, we saw the horrors of war, the lies we were told, and the lives lost of the soldiers who died in vain.
To live in a society that preaches war is necessary and that through death comes glory, then we are only evolving backward, an uncivil practice only fit for an uncivil nation.
“Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori.”
