In Bloody Century veterans from every major war in the last century, from World War I to the Gulf, give their personal accounts of active duty. Each individual account gave me an entire perspective of experience of war. This was new and challenging to me because I have never been that exposed to such intense and truthful tales of war. It also seems that throughout the century the United States has used its military against much weaker, third world countries and that none of these wars threatened the borders of the United States. Instead, they all seemed to revolve around access to resources and trading partners. I don't feel that people should have to die to maintain U.S. standard of living and this was something that I never really thought about. Leanord Dietz, a World War II veteran reflected back at the meaning of the war to him, "I learned that war is not glorious but is about suffering and dying. It is a vile and evil business that blights everything it touches, robs peoples of its lives and futures, and forces many good people to do bad things against their better natures. The whole thing was so bad, no matter how you look at it, that we can't ever let anything like this ever happen again." (page 55) This is now exactly how I feel about war after reading the many personal stories of the veterans. Nothing good can really come out of war no matter how any one looks at it. Many of the veterans in this reading pointed out the fact that the military teaches how to kill but does not, however, teach how to deal with the conflicting emotions that follow killing another human being. An idea that everyone should follow that I discovered after this reading is to value others as human beings and consider this factor-not money, not business, not country, but the human- as the highest and central value. In considering this we may over come all violence and live in a better world. We are reading this at a significant time and I feel this is a mu!.
