Assignment 9 - Oliver Fister

I believe that it is close to impossible to gauge whether war is "good" or "bad." The far-reaching effects of war always stretch far beyond whatever issue that the conflict was made to settle. While death and disaster are certainly terrible things, war is made to settle important issues, often moral ones. In the American case, without the Revolutionary War to win our freedom or the Civil War to rid ourselves of slavery, we would still possibly be subjects of Britain or slavery could still be rampant. The course of history would likely be altered in a way impossible to predict, and our country's and the world's fates would be vastly different than just one colony's freedom or the freedom of slaves.

Take World War II. This enormous and bloody conflict arose from a multitude of issues (mostly from Germany, though), but was eventually settled after much fighting. While viewing the damage strictly by casualties, it was a grisly moral fallacy and should never have happened. But, the long-term ramifications of the war are seen today - the world eventually healed, and we currently have quite a successful worldwide society. While wars still litter us often, we are obviously more advanced than we have ever been in human history and, relatively, much more peaceful. This said, we have absolutely no idea how the world would turn out if that conflict never happened. Perhaps Germany's angst would build up and spill out into an even worse conflict; maybe, the world would turn out even better. It's impossible to know. But wars are sometimes necessary to settle certain conflicts, and for all we know, the world is ultimately better for that.