Post 5: Hey Kids! The Army is just like "Top Gun"

  A motion picture producer, John Davis, claimed that "Top Gun was a recruiting video for the Navy. It really helped their recruiting. People saw the movie and said, 'Wow! I want to be a pilot.'"

But being in the army is far from being in a Tom Cruise movie. War is brutal. People die. The good guy does not always win in the end.

And the ethicality of glorifying war was the subject matter this week in class. Rather intense, but thought provoking.

Do you think we'd have as many wars if men in the current generation would tell the next generation what war is really like? Why is it that the public would rather hear about the wonderful sacrifices and noble acts of men in wartime than the truth about the horrific cost in human lives?

Men want to remember things like honor, duty, bravery, courage. They want to defend rights, right wrongs, champion the downtrodden. They feed on the words, and imagine themselves exhibiting all of those noble characteristics. They feel heroic. That is until they find out that war is dirt, grime, boredom and killing. War is waged by soldiers drilled not to think about what they do.

War is easy to wage when you don't have to look in the eye of the person you are killing. War is easy to support when you sit behind a desk and read a paper on the results of this attack or that. War is clean and neat when no one is allowed to see the pictures of the troops who died for the "cause" - whatever it happens to be at the time. War is easy to support when the blood isn't on your hands.

Basically what i'm trying to say is if people understand what war really is, then maybe it could bring the world a step closer to ending wars (since people wouldn't join the army and no one would fight)

Attached is a clip from one of my favorite movies, Forrest Gump, and it shows what happens in a war ( in this case, the Vietnam war). I wonder how many people would want to fight a war after watching this clip.