Fear and Loathing in War

It is known and understood that the most common emotion to be felt during the time of war is also the simplest: fear. It is because of the fear extracted from war that our most valued fundemental rights have become questioned, or even abolished.

In order to understand why this one simple emotion can cause so much chaos, we must understand the word and how it can be used for right and wrong. The idea of fear is to cause a person to become uneasy about a situation and to become aware of danger; it is a naturally healthy emotion. We as humans have many levels of fear, from the rational fear of pain, to the irrational fear which can become unhealthy and cause violent behavior. With this, fear can be used as a scare tactic in times of war; it’s become increasingly more inherent over the years.  

Rather than focusing the attention of the enemies on soldiers, images are being broadcasted in the news for everyone else to see.   To initiate fear into the people, images of Afghanistan celebrating and American flags burning were displayed on every news station on September 11th. With the images, Americans became disgusted and suddenly the rate of volunteers in the army skyrocketed. From Virginian-Pilot, April 14, 2004, “Despite a rising tide of combat deaths and the prospect of deployments to Iraq and Afghanistan for years to come, Americans continue to volunteer for duty and are re-enlisting at record rates.”

Even in a seemingly comedic style, fear is being used on the public in a way to change our views on the adversary. Political cartoons have depicted enemies of war in a comedic way; this is not intended to scare the public, but rather to make the people view the foe as less-than-human. In doing this, we do not end up feeling sorrow or pity for an individual enemy; we do not see them as individuals anymore.

It was because of one cartoon drawing published by the United States during World War II that angered so many Japanese. It was deemed so...