The Cost of War
According to MSNBC today the 8 American soldiers that have died so far in Iraq this week has taken the total loss to at least 1,641. That figure seems to be incessantly rising towards the 3000 plus victims that actually died in 9/11 – the licence to kill that allowed the war in Iraq to take place. So how has the American public let grief create grief, and suffering breed suffering? The figures of American dead pale in comparison to those dead in Iraq and Afghanistan – currently the two principle victims of the licence to kill – with Iraqi deaths estimated at over 100,000. These individuals, these human beings, who had lives, relations, wives, husbands, and children, are the real cost of war. However, they are also the most dispensable. In the last century millions suffered a similar fate, dying without reason, and without hope, because of wars they had no part to play in, except as a victim. They became numbers, written in books of statistics, and consequently forgotten. Only recently the Second World War was commemorated for the 60th Year, a war that is supposedly never to be forgotten. Yet it seems strange that we remember the war, but not the lessons it has taught us – apart from how to use propaganda to turn supposed democracies into totalitarian states. The amount of literature – fact and fiction – films, documentaries, websites, and generally vast amounts of information that is still part of our everyday lives makes escaping the enormity and tragedy of what happened virtually inescapable.
Yet we find ourselves again sending people to die, a long way from home, in Iraq. The Second World War could be considered one of the few just wars – without realising that it’s conclusion meant most of Europe was ruled by Stalin, instead of Hitler – so ‘victory’ for the allies was for many a hollow irrelevance. However, it was a war fought against a tangible evil, Hitler’s Nazi Germany, who actually justified military action through their military action – not to mention the final solution. There has always been an aura surrounding the Second World War that gave those who fought in it – whether they lived or died – a special status. The generation that sacrificed themselves (or were sacrificed by their governments) for the sake of this conflict were seen as hero’s - not necessarily for how they fought or died - but simply because they did. This is perhaps why we can popularise the Second World War within culture, as it does not threaten the values of the elite, nor offend the values of the masses. For the elite the sacrifice has been used to justify aggression since the end of the conflict, and features prominently even today with the situation in Iraq in the rhetoric of war leaders justifying why they are at war; they are simply upholding the same values as they did during the Second World War.
However, these are half-truths, the reality of World War Two has become amalgamated with the myth, to such an extent that they can no longer be easily separated. As we lose the last remaining veterans – the ones who really knew the cost of war – we lose one of our most important links to the reality of the War; and in doing so become further detached from the reality of what we do today under the weight of its myth. We think we understand the cost of the Second World War, we think that by watching Saving Private Ryan or Band of Brothers we can experience the pain and suffering caused by nations that go to war. But we don’t, we view the suffering as unique to that generation, that they sacrificed their lives for our own freedom and prosperity. If we could really understand then surely we would notice that our freedom is being taken away, that suffering did not end in 1945, but is perpetually perpetrated by the nations we live in, and the governments we vote for. We say we will never forget, but that is only because we never really knew in the first place.