There’s no point in pretending that war isn’t horrible — flag-draped coffins are, in fact, a rather pristine symbol of those horrors. There’s a good reason societies honor their warriors.
An aside: I’ve long thought that prettifying World War II for domestic consumption contributed to both the media shock of Vietnam and the generation gap. WWII and Korea vets, who knew war first-hand, didn’t understand just how shocked their doted-on boomer kids were. “The Good War” wasn’t any more pleasant when you were experiencing it.
Virginia Postrel, “Horrors of War”, Dynamist.com, 2004-04-27.
September 6, 2019
QotD: The horrors of war
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