War as Murder in the Middle East
Right before the beginning of the Iraq War I was sitting with my father watching the news. While the war machine was ginning up support for an attack by the U.S. upon Iraq, my father sadly shook his head. This was before it was certain we would attack. It was the time of the "we don't want the smoking gun of proof (Saddam's weapons of mass destruction) to be a nuclear bomb over here" argument. My father retired from a career in the military. He served in World War Two and Korea. With his eyes fixed on the television screen he said "this is going to be nothing more than a bunch of murders." I asked what he meant. He said we were going to murder more than 100,000 civilians as a byproduct of this coming war. (The actual number was more than 200,000). I watched as it pained him to speak of the carnage to come and the anticipated deaths of American service people. You support the troops by not sacrificing them needlessly, and more importantly not by forcing them to pull triggers that kill innocents. Some of the worst injuries that will come to our troops if we go to war with Iran will be the ones we cannot see. The cost of war isn't treasure alone.
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