As Archon said, people fighting a war don't walk around with glum looks on their faces contemplating the horror of it all. If anything, when they're not actually fighting, people get sillier and more flighty. It's a natural reaction TOO the horror of it all. When we were in Kuwait and the sirens were going off as we sat around in our chemical suits waiting for the Iraqi rockets to hit or get patrioted, jokes flew fast and furious. Then, when the attacks were over we'd all rush back into the tents and unpause the DVD player to resume our Sopranos marathon.
Before we left Kuwait for Iraq the women in the area, (there weren't many women but those there were...), would lay out on top of the bunkers suntanning. There were romances springing up everywhere.
The true horror of war can only be truly appreciated, driven home, understood, whatever you want to call it, in stark contrast with the comparitive idyll of everyday life.
I'm sure that my perspective on the movie Pearl Harbor was twisted because it was such a relief to watch. A relief because it didn't preach endlessly from a soapbox about the horrors of war or the weakness and stupidity of soldiers as so many war films do.
And I don't understand how anyone can think that the film portrayed Pearl Harbor as a victory. There were personal victories portrayed during the attack but that was it.
Here's a quote I especially like concerning personal victories and war. I'm sure you've seen it before.
A passage from the book, "Gates of Fire", about the Spartan stand at Thermopylae.
"Man as it is constituted, Polynikes said, is a boil and a canker. Observe the specimens in any nation other than Lakedaemon. Man is weak, greedy, craven, lustful, prey to every species of vice and depravity. He will lie, steal, cheat, murder, melt down the very statues of the gods and coin their gold as money for whores. This is man. This is his nature, as all the poets attest.
Fortunately, God in his mercy has provided a counterpoise to our species innate depravity, that gift, my young friend, is war.
War, not peace, provides virtue. War not peace, purges vice. War and preparation for war, call forth all that is noble and honorable in a man. It unites him with his brothers and binds them in selfless love, eradicating in the crucible of necessity all, which is base and ignoble. There in the holy mill of murder the meanest of men may seek and find that part of himself, concealed beneath the corrupt, which shines forth brilliant and virtuous, worthy of honor before the gods. Do not despise war, my young friend, nor delude yourself that mercy and compassion are virtues superior to manly valor."
