The Beauty Of War
Posted in February 2008 on February 13, 2008 by rooyj
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…
