Through studying VietNam and world war two in history I have come to a very clear conclusion: Man is not a soldier. The effects the war had on these soldiers was phenomenal and would leave lasting scars in their very souls. I am not stating that man cannot be a soldier, quite the contrary, a man has the ability, at the time. to become a killing machine. But man is not a machine. I am instead reflecting on the horrors of war and its effects on the human psyche. Take VietNam: The soldiers there commited horrific atrocities and slaughtered whole villiages of innocents, they in escence turned insane, if only for an instant. These were normal men, but the confusion and emotional torment of the war drove them forward, it transformed them, momentarily, into killers. Now some would say that this was evidence for humanity being naturally evil, that we are so close to the edge it just takes one small nudge to push us over. However, consider the effects these events had on the soldiers once they returned home.  They could never forget, their lives were eternally scarred by what happened in that far away jungle of VietNam, they were eternally haunted by memories. It was not simple regret, no, it was absolute emotional torment. Their minds had caught up to them, the evil which once tainted their hearts was gone. The human soul is fragile.
World war two veterans, now around 80 years old, still remember the war with such clarity. Though it may not have seen so many atrocities on the side of the allies, it still gave just as much emotional torment. You wonder why old men recite war stories, why every conversation with them inevitably leads to the war, because it had such an effect on them. It touched their very soul and made sure they would never forget. What separted a german from a briton? A vietnamese person from an american? Nothing. If circumstances were different they could have been good friends, but society and warped politics labelled them as enemies. Man is not a soldier and is not suited to evil.
Today I saw an advert for a TV show, in which a British man, who was held in a japanese torture camp in the second world war, met his former torturer and warden. Obviously both men were now much older and one expected the japanese man to be a stern, facist bigot. They met in a quiet rural setting, atop a small mountain. When the two met, the japanese man (soft spoken and frail) broke into tears and hugged the Briton, he said, "war is a horrid thing". This man was obviously highly distraught and emotionally scarred. In the past he commited horrific atrocities, but he had changed so much. The extreme evil placed upon his shoulders may have seemed natural at the time, but in fact it had scarred his very soul and haunted him for the rest of his life, he couldnt have been more sorry.
The bare soul, untouched by foreign evil, is a fragile beacon of light. Perhaps the propensity to carry out evil rests close to the light soul and, if the man is swayed by some other foce, he can commit the most evil of acts. But these do not come naturally. As I saw, this evil will scar his soul for eternity. The evil is simply a farce. The truth, the goodness of the human soul, will arise in time.