Bill+Week+Thirteen+Assignment



We basically fight because we are told to do so by the highest ranking government officials. Even the men that carry out the missions by piloting stealth fighter jets don’t know whether they are going to be bombing a house full of innocent children and civilians or a secret meeting place for terrorists.

From a young age, we are taught to believe that we fight for freedom. This is supported when two children and one elderly man were asked why we fight, and their answers were all “freedom”. Freedom can be broken into many categories, but in particular I want to choose two. The first is “freedom”, this entails that at first there is no freedom. So in other words, the first category could be called “initial freedom”. Although the next category different by only one word, there is a huge separation between the two. Continued freedom. For this type of freedom we fight to __maintain__ freedom. I think that is should be easier to maintain freedom than to achieve it in the first place. However, according to former President George W Bush, we do not fight to maintain freedom; we fight to “defeat the enemies of freedom.” This doesn’t seem right to me. There are always going to be enemies, that is just the way the world is. Yet, I do not think that it is necessary to fight those enemies unless they pose a threat to the stability of the nation’s freedom.

Fighting without a reasonable explanation, or an explanation at all, can be explained by one man’s answer to the question “Why do we fight?”. He said that “we fight for power and control, greed.” If we do not bomb places, or make our appearance known, opposing nations may think that the United States has weakened, and that they should attack. On the other hand, if we are a constant destructive force, leaders will get the message that we don’t want to be messed with. One government contractor in the movie said, “We are going to attack someone, there is no question about that. The question is where we are going to bomb and why.” It would be more logical is his two statements were reversed so that the first concern would be why to attack, but that isn’t the way the government operates. In fact, I found it surprising to learn that the government officials actually make more money during times of war due to their contracts with organizations such as Raytheon and Boeing, who are responsible for making the planes and weapon fired from them, as well as many other weapons.

In a sense, war is a business. And just as in any “real” business, 100% efficiency is never achieved; there is always some sort of loss. These losses, in the business of war, are lives of men and women who volunteer to fight for their country. This is not the way it should work, but government corruption and conspiracy go so deep that it is most likely the way it will always be.