Critique my essay?

[crazyflower]

I would really appreciate if I could get feedback on this essay. It's my first, so it probably is a bit shaky.

 

If a country wants peace, it must prepare for war.

 

One of the most important duties of a government is to provide safety and security to its people. Without peace, this is next to impossible to achieve. As an inalienable human right, peace must be assured by any means possible, and preparations must be made to protect it.

 

To assure a country’ peaceful existence, governments must be willing to use aggression, in the form of war and violence, should the need arise. This willingness cannot be limited to foreign powers alone, for often the threat to peace may come from within a nation’s borders.

 

Violent conflict, however, is not the solution in certain instances. Often, the very preparations for war can lead to increased threats to national peace and sovereignty. Currently, one of the greatest fears of Western nations, such as the United States, is the threat of Iran’s nuclear armament. While Iran’s government claims only to be enriching uranium for energy purposes, the threat of their nuclear armament is alarming. Should Iran construct a nuclear bomb, even if only for use as protection, it would be far more likely to result in war and a disintegration of peace than if the nation was to remain unarmed.

 

While it is vital for a nation to maintain peace for its citizens, it cannot do so at the expense of other lives. Peace can be achieved when the rights of all are respected. If there is a threat to human life and dignity, then a nation would be justified in to engaging in war. It is only when preparations are made for violent conflict in the interest of human rights that they can be acceptable.

[astrogirl]

Okay, I'm probably not the best person to ask because I didn't have time to do more than a couple practice essays for the really MCAT and ended up getting an N. But, I do have quite a bit of general writing experience, so I will say that your writing flows very well and is easy to read and I only see one typo (you left off the "s" at the end of "country'"), so those are some great things you already have going for you. Come up with a specific example in your second paragraph, and maybe add a bit more explanation to make it a bit longer. Your example in the third paragraph is a very good one. In your last paragraph, try to tie it in more to the statement and your examples, maybe by talking about how preparing for war is a good way to ensure peace only when those preparations don't seem like such a threat to other nations that they actually cause a war. Human rights doesn't directly tie in to your example, so I would just leave it out of the last paragraph entirely. I see how it ties in to your first paragraph a little bit, but it's not the focus of your essay so I would leave it out of the conclusion. Hope that helps a bit!

 

You seem to be a good writer, so I think the key for you will be to have a lot of examples in your mind that you can use for a wide variety of prompts. My big problem when I go to the test was that I hadn't spent any time thinking about examples ahead of time, so I wasted so much time trying to think of them when I should have been writing, and the ones I came up with were pretty crappy. If I end up taking it again, I am going to go through this list of writing prompts:

http://www.aamc.org/students/mcat/preparing/writingsampleitems.htm

and memorize examples for all of them. Notice where it says "Topics selected for use in MCAT exams will be similar or identical to those in this list." I wish I had actually bothered to look at that page before I took the MCAT!