I Was Wrong

I've taken a class on war.  This is not to say I am familiar with every facet of the subject--I am, in fact, severely lacking in the experience department, and therefore unqualified to state anything regarding it as fact--but I am no longer ignorant of the topic, either.  This class, a seminar literature course called War and Peace (when asked where the peace came in after a couple of introductory movies, Saving Private Ryan and The Deer Hunter, our teacher told us that our classroom represented the peace aspect), had a significant impact on me.  However, I had previously believed its impact to have been more substantial than I now know it to be.  I went into that class considering war an abomination created by all that is wrong with human nature: that it was our darkest side revealing itself in the most immoral ways.  I saw it as unnecessary.  I still, to some extent, believe in the former; what changed is my belief in the latter.  I think (in very limited cases, mind you) that war IS necessary.  But, I also think that war is overused: my teacher told me that Saving Private Ryan was, to him, the closest one could get to being in war without volunteering for the armed forces; I barely made it through Saving Private Ryan, and that is, of course, not really comparable to the true experience.  Knowing how appalling many of the events of that movie were, and taking into account that it is still only a movie, I think it unforgivably rash to enter a war as anything other than the last resort, and with no less than a means, a justifiable motive, and a plan.  But more than that, what I find I cannot forgive is those who not only see war as necessary, but morally right.  The ends, in my opinion, must be morally right in order to justify the means, but the means will never be moral.

So, I give in: I believe killing can be necessary.  But I will never believe it is right.