Should wars ever be glorified?

 I never imagined living in times where a particular group or organisation would cause the world threat of such a huge scale. Past few weeks have been life changing and I realised I was living  in times of a major war crisis in Syria. Largest refugees influx has surfaced on the globe after world war II and these are desperate times but unfortunately the concept of war isn't new for us. We have grown up hearing glorious stories about ghazwas, conquests of Hajaj Bin Yousaf and Mehmood ghaznavi, atrocities of crusaders, epoch of Holocaust, horrible years of two world wars, victories and losses of indo-pak conflicts , crimes in conflicted areas like barma, Iraq, palestine and the most recent one that is Syria. Wars make most of our history and conquests entail massive part in national pride of every country but here are some questions that have been bugging me in recent days. Does the information, passed on to the future generations, in historic form does justice with the sufferers of the tragedy? Do people really understand the harrowing implications of any war or conflict in the human history by reading these facts and figures decorated with stories about bravery and patriotism? And should war ever be glorified from any perspective for the sake of nationalism? Because whoever wins, common (read it naive) people die on both sides.

I've been following news for weeks but a few days ago Humans of New York started a series of stories from refugees who had settled in Europe after fleeing their war infested homeland and it gave me a new perspective. Discussing causes or stimulants of this crisis isn't my purpose here. The nature of this conflict may be different politically or ideologically from any war documented in the human history but consequences are quite similar- sufferings of humanity. Following personal accounts of tales narrated by victims gives an entirely new direction of thought on not only an ongoing melee in Syria but war in general. It has brought me closer to reality of sufferings those people are forced to endure. They are parents who have witnessed their sons kidnapped and daughters rapped, who have tirelessly lied to their kids that everything would get alright after being beaten in front of them. They are children who have lost their childhood in streets of their bombed cities and saw their parents killed by veiled strangers. They are wives who would never see their husbands again because they couldn't make it to the island with them on the crowded plastic boat. They are mothers whose sons drowned, brothers whose sisters were sold into sexual slavery and innocent children who have seen too much darkness in a tender age. They are families who saw their houses burnt and friends electrocuted and shot before they were forced to hand themselves over to smugglers and cruel ocean and lost some more loved ones before making it to the land again. These stories are just a few, out of thousands out there, which reflect sufferings of people from a war zone. 

Now the case with Syria is different and ISIS is clearly doing massacre with no resistance from other side so I won't relate to it but I can make an opinion about war in general. My point is, reading about victory and loss in papers or books only isn't enough because knowing loss of human lives in numbers sure has an impact but it's not nearly equal to reality. These are the stories which need to be documented in journals and history books for generations to read so that they wouldn't only know the facts and figures but also human sufferings at personal level. These are the incidents which should be made accessible to us in our text books along with bravery of leaders and soldiers because they deserve equal attention. Only then our children would be empathetic  about it instead of falling into the trap of lionisation of conquests and killings. Nations need to find something better than war to feel glorious about. In my opinion, there is no hard and fast rule about winning a war, no one can be a plain victor. Thousands of humans, no matter which side they belong to and how the conflict ends, lose something they never deserved to, and would never be able to recover. So we need to highlight sufferings of war as well, instead of wrapping them in glittering sheets of stories about bravery and courage because where latter propagate strength, former endorses empathy and empathy is what our world needs the most today.