Political War Analysis

The nonfiction piece “American Sniper feeds America’s hero complex, and it isn’t the truth about war” written by Alex Horton explains a major question most Americans have about war. Are the movies we watch and the video games we play a correct perception of real wars in Iraq and Afghanistan? By using three literary devices: analogy, tone, and anecdote, Horton is able to persuade us to believe those accusations made are false. As soon as Horton gets out of the hook of the piece he begins talking about Call of Duty and movies such as “Black Hawk Down” and “Zero Dark Thirty”. These movies are set during times of war and try their best to explain war, and the affects it has on people.

The Civil War caused a shift in the ways that many Americans thought about slavery and race. Chandra Manning’s What this Cruel War Was Over helps readers understand how soldiers viewed slavery during the Civil War. The book is a narrative, which follows the life of Union soldier who is from Massachusetts. Chandra Manning used letters, diaries and regimental newspapers to gain an understanding of soldiers’ views of slavery. The main character, Charles Brewster has never encountered slaves. However, he believes that Negroes are inferior. He does not meet slaves until he enters the war in the southern states of Maryland and Virginia. Charles Brewster views the slaves first as contraband. He believes the slaves are a burden and should be sent back to their owners because of the fugitive slave laws. Union soldiers focus shifted before the end of the war. They believed slavery was cruel and inhumane, expressing strong desire to liberate the slaves. As the war progresses, soldiers view slaves and slavery in a different light. This paper, by referring to the themes and characters presented in Chandra Manning’s What this Cruel War Was Over, analyzes how the issue of slavery and race shifted in the eyes of white Union soldiers’ during Civil War times.

The article The Ending the War: The Push for National Reconciliation by David Blight, explains how they reunite their differences through avoiding the hard work to change the Union, to actually reconstruct the social order that was needed against the confederate hostility, but only continues to embrace their white Southern remembrance, for example songs like, A Southern Song Opposes Reconstruction and war memorials. The evolution of Memorial Day during its first twenty years was even a show of differences from the Northern and Southern perspective, Northerners result was the freedom of African-Americans and the preservation of the Union and the Southern version of Memorial Day were rooted in the resistance to the reconstruction. Nonexistence

Normal life is not an option with a ferocious 30 year war going on, and it is no easier if it takes place on the other side of the world in Vietnam. The Wednesday Wars searches through the ideas of boundaries by using the life of a normal boy, Holling Hoodhood, to show the feelings of growing up in the midst of the Vietnam War. Holling has to learn how to grow up and explore his relationships and ultimately find himself. Throughout the novel The Wednesday Wars, Holling examines the boundaries of war through his experiences with his father, Ms. Baker, and his readings of Shakespeare all develop the theme of comfort, independence, and masks.

Lastly, the notion to hurt one’s enemy peoples to force their government into a complete surrender and to minimize the general loss of one’s own troops is immoral. Naturally, the typical ethical standards of war would not justify any use of dehumanization in order for a nation to supersede the other. The Japanese became dehumanized in the minds of American combatants and civilians. The process enabled greater cultural and physical differences between white Americans and Japanese than between the former and their European foes. In Michael Walzer's Just and Unjust Wars (1977), he defines “ the use of force by one nation against another is always wrong unless the latter has already forfeited its basic rights.” Walzer is clearly stating that wars; especially nuclear wars are unjust if they strip away basic civilian rights. In other words, they are ponds in a game of political and nuclear warfare.

In A Separate Peace, the author chooses to use conflicts to show the growth of a character. As a conflict happens there is some sort of growth which the character gains as a result. In fact, there are many conflicts throughout the story that shape the characters in unique ways including Genes jealousy of his best friend, Finny doing dangerous things, and Gene trying to live through Finny. Some conflicts result in good ways some result in bad and it changes the way the character is. The book is a good example of what it is like when a conflict happens in real life, by showing growth of a character after a conflict. The decisions made by the characters will either change them in positive or negative ways; that is an important message that the book tells quite well.

A Separate Peace, a coming-of-age novel by John Knowles, demonstrates the consequences of conflict in personal relationships, as well as within oneself. In the novel, Gene Forrester, the protagonist, battles with internal conflict involving his identity and emotions towards his best friend, Phineas, also known as Finny. Gene develops envy towards his best friend and believes in an enmity between them that does not exist, which leads to external conflict between Gene and Finny. Gene, throughout the novel, creates the most conflict that separates him from Finny, ultimately leading to Finny’s demise. Examples of these conflicts, both real and imaginary, have been provided by Gene’s thoughts as the narrator. One of the first signs of internal conflict involving Finny can be recognized when Finny calls Gene his best friend, to which Gene does not respond. As Gene states, “Perhaps I was stopped by that level of feeling deeper than thought, which contains the truth”(Knowles 48). The internal conflict has already begun, onsetting many more conflicts to come. This quote means that Gene does not consider Finny his best friend due to Gene’s latent jealousy towards Finny’s charm and wit. An example of external conflict as a result of Gene’s internal conflict can be derived from the scene where Gene realizes that Finny had no ill will towards him and that all enmity between them had been a figure of Gene’s imagination. Gene had thought Finny was making an effort to distract him from his

For the students and staff of the University of Saskatchewan in the early 20th century, times of conflict generated a necessity for change. During the Great War, the recruitment propaganda was everywhere on campus; mainly consisting of images of masculinity intended to inspire men to enlist or shame them for not doing so. However, due to the lowering number of male students and faculty, the role of women had to adapt. Through administrative archive documents depicting the need for female instructors, such as Jean Bayer, to replace former male professors, we see evidence of this adaptation. While this shift may not have fundamentally changed gendered ideologies on a large, permanent scale, the effect it had within the University of Saskatchewan was nonetheless significant. The Great War acted as a catalyst for an integral change at the University of Saskatchewan; students and

Many times when we hear from someone who has been on both (or more) sides of an issue their message has a little more meaning than usual solely because they can provide more insight from the other side. During his presentation Mr. Pearce said that ‘we need to learn to argue and not quarrel. That arguing with others gives us the opportunity to learn more about the other person(s),’ (Pearce). Mr. Pearce’s message was very applicable to the world that we live in today because we are becoming divided and less understanding of others and their beliefs. Not everyone is going to have the same values and beliefs and we need to learn to accept that as well as hear them out as to why they hold those beliefs and accept their reasons even if we believe them to be

At about 1:00 in the morning on April 6, members of the United States House of Representatives went home exhausted. After 15 hours of debating over President Wilson’s request for a declaration of war, all members voted for the war… All except one. Jeanette Rankin is the first woman elected to Congress, and is also the only member to vote against the war. Rankin declared “I want to stand by my country but I cannot vote for war. I vote no.” She later clarified her response saying “I believe that the first vote I cast was the most significant vote and a most significant act on the part of a woman, because women are going to have to stop war. I felt at the time that the first woman in Congress should take the first stand

One of the U.S government’s main functions is to conduct relations with almost 200 nations in the world. It is designed to further certain goals and assure Americas security and defense. Our foreign policy has changed over time reflecting the change in nation interest. (Constitutional Rights Foundation) The U.S’ main interest was to maintain its independence from European countries. This was carried out by the Monroe Doctrine, which limited European attempts to further colonize the Western Hemisphere. Post civil war foreign policy was a departure from pre foreign policy because of their actions and motivations. The acquisition of contiguous territory in pre civil war policy departed into acquisition of non-contiguous territory also known as

War is a dangerous game, many people would likely agree to this, however, very few have ever seen a battlefront. The truth is that war, no matter how awful we can imagine it, is always exponentially worse. In Timothy Findley’s The Wars, Robert Ross, the protagonist,­ faces a situation that he finds difficult to come to terms with, and when faced with a similar situation later on in the novel, he must take drastic measures to reconcile the uncertainties of the past situation. Timothy Findley suggests, through the life of Robert Ross, that one’s need to reconcile the uncertainties of past experiences dominate our actions when such situations come up again in our lives. In the words of Hiram Johnson, a US Senator during the First World War,

In all of Human history, only 8% of that time has been completely at peace. From 150 million to 1 billion people in total have been killed by war. That’s 150 million families at least who have had their loved ones ripped from their grasp. This is far too many. War is unnecessary and barbaric. In “just and unjust war” by Howard Zinn the complexities of whether or not a war can be called just or unjust are debated. Peace can be achieved. the three crucial steps toward making world peace are education, open communication, and human rights laws must be strictly enforced.

An “undeclared war” can be defined as a struggle in which no formal declaration of war is stated by either side in combat. In the United States, this occurs when the president utilizes his powers as commander-in-chief to deploy troops for battle without the consent of Congress. By issuing the order without waiting for a confirmation or rejection from the legislative branch, the president is effectively able to bypass the requirement of Congressional approval for an authorized “war” and commence a pseudo-war of sorts, in which the typical wartime strategies are employed without the official title of a “war” ever being established. One particularly disastrous period in which these conditions were met was during the late twentieth century when John F. Kennedy oversaw the beginning of a Cold War era conflict between the United States and Vietnam. This undeclared war resulted in over 58,000 American casualties and was a major topic of debate amongst both American citizens and members of Congress (Keever, 2013).

There were also political causes for the war. The colonist felt as if the rights they should have as englishmen were being ignored. They felt like their rights were being put down and ignored. The colonist believed that their rights were being denied. Their rights to be trialed by the jury were denied or taken away.