Why do we fight each other? Was there ever truly a reason that they [enemies in war] should have been enemies? 

Most people just do what they are told, no questions asked, they follow the authority and instructions given to them. And most of the time people are reprimanded when they do question ideas or ideals. 

Yes, war brings out the worst in people, it brings out the bad and the ugly. It shows you who has a taste for vengeance, but it also shows you who has empathy for those around you. We are all affected by war. Civilians, animals, our soldiers, and theirs. We are all hurt by the blood seeking ways of the battlefield. Each side has to write to someone and tell them the devastating news that no one wants to hear.

Now war is the government’s fight. War is fought for economical, territorial, religious, political, civil, and ideological reasons, almost all of which is not a conflict between the civilians of those two, or more, battling countries and territories. Yet it is the civilians and soldiers that have to fight for those opposing ideals in our governments, it is the civilians and soldiers that die for their beliefs, and it is the civilians and soldiers that have to kill, and starve for the ideals of our governments.

Most people don’t see the other side of war as like them. They are far away, you can’t see their faces, it’s not personal anymore. The only time you realize that they are people, civilians, like you, is when your knife has already slit their throat and they are lying dead right in front of you.

War gets glorified as well, you see propaganda showing the glory of war and Fighting For Your Country! But war isn’t the glory filled fight that most think it is when they sign up for something that is putting their own life on the line. 

There is no reason to fight each other in the ways that we do. We fight for our nations and we die at the drop of a shoe. Yet we still fight because it is what we think is the right thing to do.

Making paths in the dark, 
Through scattered dead horses, 
Over a dead Belgian’s belly. 
The Germans have rockets. The English have no rockets. 
Behind the line, cannon, hidden, lying back miles. 
Beyond the line, chaos:
My mind is a corridor. The minds about me are corridors. 
Nothing suggests itself. There is nothing to do but keep on.

Trenches: St. Eloi, by T. E. Hulme

“The silence spreads. I talk and must talk…
Take twenty years of my life, comrade, and stand up–
take more, for I do not know what I can even attempt to do with it now.”

Ch. 9 Pg. 223 All Quiet On The Western Front

This poem except from Trenches: St. Eloi and this quote from All Quiet On The Western Front tie in well with this topic because it shows how it doesn’t matter who fights or why, in the end we all will end up dead one way or another. And that when the war prompts it, even warring soldiers can have empathy and care for one another, even if the war and bloodshed seems to suggest otherwise.