Why study a culture of war?

With the Iraq war currently going on, our American culture has been exposed to and experienced the effects of war for the last four years. I personally do not know anyone fighting in Iraq, nor have I witnessed the consequences of war on my own friends or family. Even though I hear about the war from reading newspapers and watching the news, I find myself unaware and unaffected by the actual realities of warfare. I am interested in studying the effects of war on society but more specifically the effects that war has on children. A year ago I had seen a preview for a film called War Dance, which documented the lives of three children from Uganda who were forced into becoming child soldiers. For the last twenty years, Uganda has been involved in a war against a rebel force known as the Lord’s Resistance Army. The movie shows children being abducted from their homes and families, subjected to violence and often forced under the threat of death to fight against their own country and even their family. When I compare the treatment of children in countries like Uganda to those in the United States and Western Europe, I am shocked to learn the difference in value that diverse societies have of children. I hope to better understand how a culture of war effects the local environment, how the war in Uganda came about and how and why children are forced into becoming child soldiers. Hopefully, through this cultural encounter, I can better understand why different cultures value war and the lives involved in fighting those battles so differently.