It wasn't long ago when the only people who truly knew about war were those who lived it - the combatants and civilians fighting or caught in warzones and conflicts.
As recently as the Second World War, even the Vietnam War, information from the battlefield was vague, sanitised, edited and carefully controlled to tell a particular story (or hide one) and to generate propaganda designed for one purpose or the other. The "news" was manipulated, a means to an end, rather than a report of facts.
With the rise of the internet and social media it's more difficult for "news services" to manipulate and edit what people see but it still happens (a lot). However, with images and footage beamed directly from battlefields by anyone with a camera (including the warriors and civilians) it's possible for those who aren't there to have a clearer picture of the battlefield at least, if not the actual reasons it exists in the first place; that's the domain of the string-pullers up the very top who hide their tracks (and motivations) well. But even still, people who are not there will never really know about war itself.
War isn't black and white.
There's no hard and fast right and wrong, when it comes to war because depending on who's telling the story it's vastly different depending upon that persons' or organisations' agenda.
It's easy for people to say, "war is wrong," many do, however has that stopped human beings from making war upon each other? Nope, it has not.
But humans are moving in the right (peaceful) direction right?
Umm...also nope.
Take a look around and count up the battlefields around the world currently and the reasons for them. Now go back 100 years and count up the wars and conflicts that have occurred. Now go back 1000 years...fuck it, go back to the start of human kind...you'll find the same. There's many reasons for it and most don't understand or know them...greed is one of them.
It's escalating...North Korean troops fighting for Russia, the escalation of those nutbags in the middle east...
No...war isn't black and white at all.
It's mostly red, and it's chaos and noise, blood and guts and nothing nice at all - the battlefield certainly isn't sanitised and edited; those on the battlefield, by choice or otherwise, will attest to that.
Anyway, I'm not sure what I'm trying to say here, nothing important or valid I guess because humans have a strong propensity for conflict no matter how much logic is put in front of them and that's not changing anytime soon in our lifetimes or that of our children's children.
But, what I know for sure (in this post at least) is that war is fucken black and white because here's a collection of photos with a war theme taken in black and white.
I know these photos aren't the greatest which is why they're in the shit photo community...but the first one...I took that with the shadow pointing at the little guy in the centre of shot on purpose. I'm not sure what it "says"...the guy brandishing a gun with a fierce look of intent on his face (it's called a 'war face') only to have his own shadow pointing a gun right at him in return. I guess I see humanity in this photo, humankind's' warlike nature and inability to find better ways to solve their differences, and that there's always someone with a bigger gun and better skills. What do you see?
Design and create your ideal life, tomorrow isn't promised - galenkp
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Image(s) in this post are my own