In an ideal environment – something that’s increasingly difficult to define these days – children grow up with ambitions to stand on their own feet in society, while their parents watch with pride as to what they will become. In such an environment, they don’t grow up with thoughts of sacrificing their lives just to put food on the table. But that’s what American soldiers do.
I’m reminded of an image from a Michael Moore documentary that’s stuck in my head, a young US soldier talking about his lot and saying: “We’d prefer if there was a way we could make a living without… risking our lives, let me put it that way.”
Some will argue that they’re in the army because they want to serve their country, but I don’t buy that. The same people will cite the likes of Prince William, JFK and George W Bush, who all serve or served in different capacities, but it’s not the same. They did it for show, to spice up their CVs to achieve things later in life.
But for the poor kid growing up in a gang-infested neighbourhood, or a small town with no job prospects, I don’t think he joins the military as a step towards The White House. He simply joins to make a living.
I’m all for being patriotic, but is there really any human being in the world who will lay down their life for a cause they think is trivial? Why should anyone have to die when the war can be prevented? That’s not even to consider the mental problems that many survivors have to deal with – one in every 10 Iraq War veterans, according to a report by Discovery News’ Eric Niiler. And what about Abu Ghraib?
As of February this year, the casualty rate of US troops alone in Iraq was 4,486. There is an overbearing tendency to look at such numbers without realising they represent real human beings. These are people who have families – parents, siblings, children. They’re not faceless beings dumped on earth to be blown to pieces by religious extremists.
I’ve never been involved in the day-to-day running of a government but I know enough to understand that diplomacy is usually an excuse to perpetrate the most selfish of acts. That includes laying down innocent lives when it’s not absolutely necessary. It’s uncalled for, it’s unfair and it’s callous.
How can it be right that those who gain the least from the political set-up are being used as bait to keep the spine of the same set up straight? Do we ever stop to think of the anguish being brought upon families who lose their loved ones in this ‘War on Terror’? War will always have casualties – that’s why soldiers always have my respect – but we also need to ask: how reasonable is the war?
The price being paid in the War on Terror is greater than any Wall Street banker can calculate. But it’s a price paid every day by the weakest people in society, all for the fragile sense of peace we seem to have. Keep them in your thoughts.
Olajide Jatto is a software engineer and writer based in Dublin.
