IS WAR A NECESSARY EVIL? DISCUSS.

Name: Pok Wei Han (16) Class:1301

War is an ugly thing, but not the ugliest of things; the decayed and degraded state if moral and patriotic feeling which thinks that nothing is worth war is much worse. The person who has nothing for which he is willing to fight, nothing which is more important than his own personal safety, is a miserable creature and has no chance of being free unless made so and kept so by the exertions of better men than himself. John Stuart Mill. War is undesirable by nature because war is the greatest catastrophe that befalls human beings. It brings death and destruction, disease and starvation, poverty, and ruin in its wake. For example, the decade long war in Afghanistan has only resulted in loss of thousands of lives in the process. Fear is instilled in hearts of people there and the people cannot lead peaceful lives, progress of the country is also hindered. Thus, war fought due to selfish aspirations and ambitions of men is bad, only leads to loss of life, grieve, destruction. Although it is only natural to rejoice over winning, during a war, this feeling of rejoice would be built upon the sufferings of others, and a result of a period of unrest and destruction. Therefore, the negative impacts of war have made it undesirable. War is not necessary and is considered by nature to be immoral. And if wrongly applied, can cause great harm to people. Countries that go through war are usually financially impaired, even the great powers such as Britain. Great Britains economy became bankrupt after World War 1, even though they won the war against

Germany. In addition, countries need huge sums of money to rebuild the destroyed cities. During these times, the people citizens are living in poverty with no food to eat, poor living conditions and poor sanitation facilities, leading to the outspread of diseases, which leads to additional loss of lives. For example, 90% of Berlin was destroyed during WW1. Furthermore, millions of lives are also lost. Russia won the war too but suffered the most number of casualties. About 4 million people died in total and almost 5 million were wounded. The total number of casualties in World War 1 is 37 million. This shows how many lives, including soldiers as well as innocent civilians, can be claimed during wars. As such, war is seen to be evil and an act of immorality which makes war not necessary. In a perfect world, everyone is responsible for not doing things out of selfish ambition but instead putting the needs of others before oneself (with reasons) Hence war is not necessary. However, we do not live in a perfect world and thus, supposedly undesirable measures like war have to be undertaken for justice and order to prevail in the society. In spite of past transgression and abuse of war, it is still necessary for war to be present in society because some wars are fought for economic and territorial gains. This is for necessary the progress of the country.