The Cost of War

Yesterday, Daily Kos posted some pictures from Iraq, 4 thousand unspoken words on the high price we are paying for the war that you won't see on CNN or Fox News. It reminds me of the pictures of the flag-draped coffins of US soldiers returning from Iraq last year that were at first not allowed to be shown on US television.

But it's important that we see these photos, so that we know, in no uncertain terms, the cost in human life of our actions in Iraq. It's too easy to defend the war as some noble, romantic endeavor when you don't have to see the blood, the carnage, the death, from a human perspective. It's different when it's not just words like "freedom is on the march," but something real, something you can see.

This war has earned much in the way of comparison to Vietnam, and in this situation it's no different. In the 1960s, thanks to the wonders of modern technology, a war being fought halfway around the world was, for the first time, being pumped straight into America's living room, and Americans could see with their own eyes its devastating effects on both their own soldiers, and the Vietnamese citizens. The result was an overwhelming amount of dissent and protest against an unjust war. The anti-war faction of this conflict should bear the same comparisons.

We are not fighting for democracy, or freedom, or safety, or liberty. Our cause in Iraq isn't noble or romantic or just. Our soldiers are killing countless Iraqis and in turn, being killed themselves. Anyone who believes in the rightness of this war should take a long, unflinching look at these photos, and others like them. If you can't look at the pictures of what's going on over there, how can you honestly expect anyone else to have to see it in person, to have to live it?

Don't hide the truth of this war from us. We deserve to see it. For the sake of the soliders in Iraq, the soldiers who will go to Iraq, the ones who won't come back, and the Iraqis themselves.