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by inglor_cz 1440 days ago
It is well that war is so terrible, otherwise we should grow too fond of it.

Robert E. Lee

There definitely seem to be combatants that enjoy at least some aspects of war. If you look at the historical military literature, including poetry, it is not all just negative.

It is true that with increasing industrialization of war during the last 150 years, the overall tenor has changed.

2 comments

Look how they re-enact the civil war. Nobody wants the historical truth of dying from cholera in a Confederate stockade or burning down farms in Georgia with crying families in the background. Humans are really good at cognitive dissonance.
War is a way for mindless and aggressive men to do whatever they really crave (which is escaping from a state of victimhood), without much justification and little immediate consequences to themselves, mostly under cover of patriotism. To kill and rape for fun and pleasure, and hopefully die fast, absolutely ecstatic.

To such men, please note: life never really ends, and you and your offspring gets eternally impacted by all miserable and soulless destruction of life's beauty you may have caused, inflicting more hardship and perpetuating novel state of misery upon flocks of others.

War is a terrible waste. On the other hand, an able bodied man not willing to use destructive faculties to defend young and old against perpetrators of violence is as irrational as the able bodied man who refuses to use constructive faculties to provide necessities of life to same.
Defensive action is for the most part formidable and magnificent. The stuff that builds and creates heroism, myths and legends. Never miserable or soulless, unless it goes beyond its original purpose.

Every reality has at least two versions of it, or more.