What is a soldier for?

 Arturo Pérez-Reverte Gutiérrez, a Spanish writer and journalist, noted in various armed conflicts and wars, says that "a soldier is good for bad things when the one who commands him is a scoundrel, ... but a soldier is also good for good things, for useful things, honorable and dignified if whoever directs it is honest and dignified..." He also affirms, words more, words less, that there are no soldiers is utopia, fantasy and foolishness.

When the relationships of societies become unbalanced; chaos appears, grudges raised by irresponsible politicians are present and sanity. with his friend reason, they disappear; It is the soldiers of both sides who are called to restore balance by placing as much of their tears, sweat and blood on the scales as necessary and save the situation, sometimes even reestablishing peace.

For the record and do not lose your way, the soldier is a man or woman, who together with his brothers in arms fight to stay alive in conflicts that he did not raise; fights he didn't ask for, where he'll have to kill people he doesn't hate; in which she does her best to make her namesakes fulfill their wish to die for their country or to intimidate them, fill them with fear and avoid conflict. That's what soldiers are for in the first place, so there's no need to use their skills. Such thought stems from a passage written around the year 390 of our era that states, "Igitur qui desiderat pacem, praeparet bellum" phrase that translates if you really want peace, prepare for war.

The soldier is one more citizen; without famous, influential relatives or last name that opens doors for him, he is poor from birth to burial, he will never have the means or fortune to take another trade or the education and money to know and have what is left to know and own a cadet before being cadet; He is an individual who was born with a heart full of fervor for the Homeland that saw him born and fulfills the oath to obey his laws and defend his principles and territory, in the person of his natural commanders. Well commanded they are special people; willing to accept mutilation and death for little or no pay; voluntary, professional, forced, but all of them are ready to risk their skin where others do not, says Pérez-Reverte.

In an ideal world they would not be necessary, but from reality to fantasy there is a long way, full of injustice, hunger and pain. When desires, good intentions and those who are good at heart crash against the wall of reality, hard cold, victorious soldiers become useful as examples of sacrifices for the homeland to later be extolled in streets and avenues with their names and with squares with their monuments and in them deposit the horrors of wars. The defeated are also useful to be carriers of the plague and filth that is defeat.

When soldiers avoid a massacre, a war or a fight, they are heroes; when executed by "superior" orders they are murderers, or heroes too; they don't understand that and they don't have to. They are trained to kill, to fight and to be killed, they kill so that they are not killed, so that others live, it is their job, many do not know any other destiny. When nations have a stated objective, be it victory, war, peace, or an intermediate goal, soldiers are useful by sending them to kill, letting them die, abandoning them in the mud, snow, jungle, desert, or sacrificing them in real or fictitious, it does not matter, they are the lamb and their destiny is on the table. That's what a decent soldier is for, so that if necessary they kill him for those whom I swear to defend, without thinking much about it, without stopping to meditate, that the time to think remains for those who are behind him, safely.

Anyone who does not want to see that on the other side of our ideas there are some who want to do harm, with much more than words, is a perfect idiot; To confront them and fight for the unarmed citizens are the soldiers. It's natural to expect them to be there to defend the innocent when the bad guys wield steel to impose their will and wipe out those with other ways of thinking.

As John Joseph "Jack" Nicholson tried to put it; when performing the character named Colonel Nathan R. Jessup in the movie "A Few Good Men" here paraphrased and filled in to adapt it to a real and cruel world; We live in a world that has walls and those walls must be guarded by armed men. The death of a soldier, although tragic, saves lives and his existence, although grotesque and incomprehensible to many, saves lives. Ordinary people don't want to know the truth about how much and what a soldier sacrifices because they want him on that wall, they need him on that wall. The real military uses words like honor, code, loyalty; use them as the backbone of a dedicated lifeto defend something Others use them as a mockery, as an excuse for their outrages and it is those who most appropriate the blanket of freedom, security, equality or misery that a state provides them and then question the way in which it is provided. Any of those soldiers prefers to be thanked and left alone, otherwise they will ask whoever accuses them to take up a weapon and start guarding, protecting and defending a section of that wall.