The Beauty Of War
Maybe Rupert Brooke was right all along.
I was reading through my feeds and as always, I stopped to see if Suspect had written anything interesting of late. I glanced down his column like always, and stopped. For the first time in my life, it hit me.
We, since we have been young, have been shown that war is bad, and war is dirty, and war is evil. It is pounded into our minds through movies and videogames. I remember the first time I ever played Call Of Duty. I remember watching Enemy at the Gates. I remember seeing pictures of Vietnam soldiers who are covered in muck and grime and are dripping from sweat. I remember watching Hotel Rwanda, where blood is everywhere and the scariest thing of all is that you’re still alive. That is the war I know, that is the war I have always known.
I stared in awe out the back, like a complete tool, as we passed clusters of houses and road and open nothingness and palm groves. Then a village panned behind us, every light like a glowing emerald. I closed the eye that looks through my NODs. Lame. I opened my nightvision eye again. Groovy. *
Suspect has stumbled upon something that no one gets to see but him. It is a glimpse of the beauty of war. The breathtaking views from planes, the twilight from another hemisphere, the sand blowing off the tops of dunes, the setting sun in the middle of a jungle, the morning rain glistening the trees…. this is the world we live in. Have we forgotten that no matter what we do or where we are, beauty still exists in the world?
Maybe Rupert Brooke was trying to just bring this across. Perhaps that he was just telling us to calm down and see things for the way they are, not just the brutality of war. Yes, we all need a dose of reality now and then to keep us in line with what is really going on, but maybe all need to see more things like the Suspect has seen.
I just watched the movie Rescue Dawn. For those of you who have not seen it, it is about a Vietnam pilot who is shot down and must survive in a POW camp. For the opening 2 minutes, it shows one of the most beautiful scenes that I wish I could have witnessed. Go to Youtube on this link and watch it. I am positive you will be blown away as I was by the sheer tranquility and beauty of the violence.
Now don’t get me wrong here. I am not pro-war, I am not saying violence is beautiful and we should do it all the time. I am saying we should invade countries just so we can look at their scenery.
What I’m saying is perhaps we need to be more appreciative of what we do see. Why don’t we take a break from our diet of reality, and indulge a little on the beauty of the world, even if that means taking something we have been instructed since we were little as wrong like war, and see something good out of it.
Or maybe I’m being too sentimental and wishy-washy like Rupert Brooke. I think I’m starting to like him…
April 10th, 2008 at 5:42 pm
Watching the Youtube video that you have posted me realize something about people in America and why we may come to appreciate violence or why we are quick to go to the scene whenever there’s an accident or tragedy happening.
I have watched Cops and America’s Most Wanted many times. I remember watching and getting a weird sensation out of it. It’s like at a certain episode, I actually felt a desire or the need to see someone get arrested. But when it came to that part, i felt guilty because deep down I know that those people are good people too. They were put in a bad environment with bad opportunities. Trust me, America is not a land of opportunities for those who are seeking for it. It involves many things to get to those opportunities such has have a stable home where your parents provided you with shelter and food. Sometimes some people don’t get that so when they get old they do get the same opportunities as others not because they were lazy but because they are still finding to get get the tools (money) to get those opportunities. But this topic is for another post.
What I am trying to say is that we follow so much laws in our lives that we get a high when we see diaster or something that is disorganized or was not suppose to happen. We a get a sensation when we see accidents. We don’t get a sensation when we see people get hurt (some do) but we like the oddities that occurs in life because everything around us is so organized. It’s like we are robots.
April 14th, 2008 at 7:06 pm
Of course, dark times are what bring war and usually are what makes countries decide that war is really the only way to resolve a certain conflict. And it is very true that many evil things happen during war, and like Tim O’Brien mentions repeatedly the atrocities of war in his book “The Things They Carried.” But he, like Suspect, does stop to take a minute to tell small stories here and there about short moments of beauty through the darkness that is war. The are the little moments that help people to continue on through the darkness and press on despite the hardships being presented. These are the moments that remind those involved in war that there is still beauty in the world and that maybe it is what’s worth fighting for. These moments keep the soldiers going. Keep them from being engulfed completely in the evil that we inherently associated with war.