War. There is nothing good about it.
Historically, those wars have been started by men in power. They send their minions in to do the fighting. They send their lowly people off to slaughter.
I imagine if war were where these rulers were told to get in a ring and settle their differences with a fight to the death, they wouldn’t start wars. But as it goes, many innocent people suffer at the hands of those in power.
War brings with it unimaginable sorrow, leaving behind a trail of death, destruction, and despair.
Families are shattered, homes are lost, and entire peoples’ lives are uprooted.
Beyond the death on the battlefield, civilians often suffer terribly in many ways. Starvation. Disease. Poverty. Not to mention all the grief of losing loved ones.
Plain and simple. War breeds fear and hatred.
The United States has taken part in many wars. We’ve lost a lot of people that way. I hate that they call the deaths of war “casualties.” To me, there is nothing casual about this.
How have we lost?
Here is a list of U.S. wars ranked by the number of American deaths, from most to least:
American Civil War (1861–1865) → ~620,000 to 750,000 deaths (estimates vary)
World War II (1941–1945) → ~405,000 deaths
World War I (1917–1918, U.S. involvement) → ~116,000 deaths
Vietnam War (1955–1975, major U.S. involvement ~1965–1973) → ~58,000 deaths
Korean War (1950–1953) → ~36,500 deaths
American Revolutionary War (1775–1783) → ~25,000 deaths
War of 1812 (1812–1815) → ~15,000 deaths
Mexican-American War (1846–1848) → ~13,000 deaths
Iraq War (2003–2011) → ~4,400 deaths
Philippine-American War (1899–1902) → ~4,200 deaths
Worldwide, there have been many more.
World War II (1939–1945) Estimated deaths: 70–85 million
Taiping Rebellion (1850–1864) Estimated deaths: 20–30 million
World War I (1914–1918) Estimated deaths: 15–20 million
Second Sino-Japanese War (1937–1945) Estimated deaths: 15–25 million
The An Lushan Rebellion (755–763) Estimated deaths: 13–36 million (scholarly estimates vary widely)
So there it is. The terrible truth of war.
I hope we do not know war again. Ever again.
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“Older men declare war. But it is the youth that must fight and die.”
— Herbert Hoover
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“War is what happens when language fails.”
— Margaret Atwood
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“There never was a good war or a bad peace.”
— Benjamin Franklin
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“All war is a symptom of man’s failure as a thinking animal.”
— John Steinbeck
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