What is it good for?

War, what is it good for? Well as Edwin Starr would say its good for “Absolutely nothing”.  Take a look at our most destructive war for example, World War two. Its legacy consists of the dead millions, the razed cities, the broken countries, and the loss of an entire generation of bright young individuals. With so much death and destruction, as well as the atrocities committed by the Nazis, it is hard not to take Starr’s mentality. Death on that scale would have ripped through the hearts of families world wide causing pain and sadness on a monumental level. Think about it, for every soldier killed in combat a mother and father lose a son or daughter. With so much pain why would war exist in the first place though? Well as with many things war isn’t all bad and contrary to Edwin Starr war is good for something’s. Even World War 2, with its death filled legacy, was good for a few things. A World War 1 method of making ammonia, a deadly gas, is now used to feed the worlds ever growing population (Haber process). The great depression was supposedly ended by an economic uptick caused by the war drive. After the war was fought, all the soldiers came home to their wives and raised a family, which lead to the baby boomer generation. Finally the most important thing war is good for is deciding who is right. Now I don’t mean right as in who has the most moral and logical argument, I mean “right” as in who has the bigger guns and the better strategy. The people who are “right” win the war and ultimately get to portray how “wrong” the loser was in.  In the end, wars usually start over who is right while the other salutary effects of war come as externalities making question of what is war good for still a legitimate one regardless of what Edwin Starr says.