For a long time in history war was seen as heroic and many men and often older boys

happily volunteered to go and fight for their country and were celebrated for it. At some point it

seems to have shifted, at least in the western world. For example for the Vietnam war, men were

drafted and forced to go by threat of punishment and in general, war is seen as horrific and last

resort. Why is that? Do we know? Was it the evolution of media coverage that really drove

home the horrors of war or was that people now a days feel more comfortable sharing it.

Now this question is very multifaceted and there is no one explanation to explain as to

how the depiction of war has changed. There are many theories that seem to be able to answer

this fairly well, one of them being that simply the evolution of media technology makes it easier

to readily share what goes on in war. Its likely a lot harder to show the horrors of war through

morse code than it would by simply sharing video footage online right. Another facet of it could

be how war itself has seemingly changed entirely within the past two hundred year. Just think,

wars in europe where conducted by a set of rules where the two side would line up with infantry

men and exchange volleys until one side broke to now having IEDs hidden in major roads and

disguising insurgents as regular citizens. And lastly, and arguably the most compelling is that the

depiction of war is fairly constant amongst people who experience it but rather the how stretched

out a war can be is what determines the public perception may be.

When thinking about antiquated methods of describing war, Arthur Rimbaud’s Le

Dormeur Du Val (The Sleeper of the Valley) is an excellent example of this. During the war

against France and Prussia, He was frequently running away from home and traveling on foot, he

recalled what he saw through poetry. Sadly some the linguistic impact is taken away in

translation, but most of its rawness and honesty is still there. He starts with “C’est un trou de

verdure, où chante une rivière” where in english this means “It’s a green hollow, where a river is
singing”, as a bard of this era of France, Rimbaud likely feels as if it is important to capture the

atmosphere of the scene he is depicting. While it might seem calming and pleasant hearing

about “un petit val qui mousse de rayons”(a little valley radiating with sunlight) and the grasses

rags of silver in the mountains, the writer likely feels the responsibility to give the dead soldier a

proper ode to their death. The poem continues with this description of the surrounding landscape

in a very peaceful way and then transitions into talking about the position of him resting on the

hill, it concludes with, “Tranquille. Il a deux trous rouges au côté droit.”, Peacefully. He has two

red holes in his right side. Despite the poem describing the soldiers fatal wound, the reader can

be comfortable that the soldiers is at peace in nature.

Vietnam was one of the first televised wars in human history and greatly contributed to

the shift in perception of war. Layne Lowe is a strong pacifist shared his journey to how he came

about becoming a advocate of anti war. Growing up he had spent his youth “fighting Nazi’s and

Japs” as a kid with his friends in his neighborhood.

Fast forward to 2008, the United States is still at war in Afghanistan. Recent high school

graduate Miles Lagoze signs up to be a videographer for the United States Marine Corps. He

was assigned to get footage that adhered to official government messaging, he was to get footage

of his unit bonding and getting along with the local peoples. Yet during his deployment in 2011,

he kept shooting, he starting compiling footage that undermined what was being said by U.S

officials at the time and put it into a documentary piece called Combat Obscura.

Within the documentary, it talks about Marines smoking hash with locals, and frequent

joking about death. It also shed a light into how mismanaged the war in Afghanistan actually is.

Videographers where a common military occupation starting in around World War II. These

combat camera teams often are the only groups of people that provide.
 If one where to look back a hundred or so years from now, many people didn't seem to

live past the age of forty. Now life has improved leaps and bounds. There's no longer 'glory' in

dying young when you have a lot more stuff to lose. A prime example of this shift is World war

one. And because of TV, Cinema and the Internet, we know just how often those in power lied to

the public about the reasons for war. Pretended it was for the glory of the country or to save

everyone from being wiped out, when in fact a lot of wars were simply to let those in power and

their friends profit at the expense of mass death.

III How war has changed

There is a new type of war developing, one unlike the first and second world wars.

Within these wars, governments would transport millions of resources and men to fight on the

front lines. Today, wars have gotten a lot smaller, yet are equally, at times, more violent and

terrible as the past.

Full Out invasions of other countries have also become less common in recent history.

The most recent one to date would be the US and British invasion of Iraq in 2003. This of course

did not go so well. How most wars behave is if one simply takes over a nation's capital, take out

their higher up official, the war should be won. The United States and Great britain did just that,

within a swift three weeks, the coalition forces were able to take our Saddam Hussein’s regime,

problem solved right? Not exactly, yes they had accomplished their original goal of dethroning

Saddam’s influence, but did this really do anything about ending terrorism, not even close. The

ideology of this extremist behavior was still very well alive. Once the U.S packed up their bags

and left, . This large failure has made it hard for governments to repeat similar operations.
 Wars these days are to a greater or lesser extent proxy wars, and this trend may grow

because it is more attractive to voters back home. A prime example of this was the 2011

overthrow of Gaddafi in Libya. This NATO-backed campaign in which the Libyan rebel

militiamen, who dominated the TV screens, acted as a mopping-up force following devastating

air attacks.

Abuses of human rights have become a standard justification for foreign interventions,

and accounts of such abuses may be true. But media reporting tends to be unbalanced, often

misleading, and sometimes manufactured. In Libya, human rights organizations exposed the

well-publicized story of mass rape by the Libyan army as a fake.

One way military was changed was how it honored its members with medals. Officers

have always used medals to reward and identify behaviors that they want to emulate their troops.

The Medal of Honor, the highest award given by the U.S. before Vietnam, usually went to those

who lost their lives or risked their lives by going on the offensive to kill enemy fighters.

Nowadays that's not the case. Instead the award is now centralized around displaying acts of

Valor. There was a change to awarding those who saved lives rather than took them. There

doesn't seem to be a problem with this however, wanting to emulate acts of valor is a great thing

to want to institute amongst th ranks. Yet most importantly, this shift echoed changes in the

1960s and 1970s ' wider American culture – a shift toward celebrating individual autonomy and

self - expression. In news photos of service members in Vietnam, civilians saw this new attitude

by wearing buttons saying "Love" or "Ambushed at Credibility Gap”. This was how soldiers

cried out against both the mistreatment of the media, and both their own country.

The duration of how long a war is fought for is strongly correlated to its perception in by

the public.
 War is neither good nor bad, regardless of who is declared the victor, in the end, nobody
wins. Some people can see some wars more favorable than others however, typically when there
is a common evil that is being fought against, for example World War II.
Yet what can make many wars seem unfavorable is the duration they are fought for.

VI Third: How witnesses perceived war

Add intro paragraph
Within American culture, there has always been a subliminal motivation for young men
to join the military. While this may be generally true for most countries across the world, it is
especially true for ones that a have a large national pride, including the United States.We have
been raised off of the thrilling war stories that are depicted in film and media and also the large
tradition of respected those who have served. The need to prove oneself in war his heavily
implemented in our minds, and like most generations, nearly every generation gets their war.
Americans especially felt this motivation to serve during World War II, arguably one of
the most patriotic era’s in United States History. To explain why, here's a bit of context. The