The soldier lies amidst the wreckage, his faint heartbeat ebbing away, with his two comrades racing frantically to save his life. Blood flows freely from his battered, worn face, like an old mask that has been worn for far too long. He feels the familiar weight of the ammunition resting upon his chest, and the rifle lying by his side. One comrade is bent down with despair, mourning the soon-to-be loss.
How many more will suffer his fate, never to see the light of day or feel the warmth of his family again, to die on a battlefield of death and despair, when they can pass away peacefully on their deathbed, surrounded by the love of family, surrendering their lives to the so-called noble cause of war? How many more families, Vietnamese or American, who suffer the heart-wrenching pang that comes with the loss of a family member? How many more times must the bloodstained blade of war fall again and again to severe threads of lives, and along with them, love? Compared to the care and warmth of friends and family, war seems puny, insignificant, and immature. Why kill each other when we can live happy lives in harmony? For our own reasons that we deem "right"? Are there truly weapons of mass destruction, or do we seek to seize oil supplies for our own good? Why impose idealogies on others and reinforce them with violence? Are we so immature, so dependent on the opinions of others, that we cannot stand others taking another path, not doing things "our way"? Yet, in spite of all this, war is being fed like a furnace being stoked, and one day, as H.G. Wells once said, if we do not end wars, wars will end us. There is only one fuel, one fuel for the fires of war that ignites the sparks of hate and rage. Us. Our volition. The choice whether to ignite the fires of war or to extinguish them lies within us.
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