Non-monetary Costs of War

Here I've been working all morning on an answer to Dark_Seraph, and about the same minute I'm ready to post, he runs over the hill (or was told to), the thread gets CLOSED.
????What????? .... !!??WHY??!!

I hearby want to open a new thread, discusing not just the war, but the moral issues surrounding it, how mind and soul surely - of anybody, participating or not, agreeing or not - is changed by faring war. About how war corruptes in all it's aspect, ideals, relationships, politics or ideologies.
The moral issues of war. "Thou shall not kill" - but we always will, as long as anyone wants to enforce thoughts.

Just as Dark's not very intelligent but very interesting thread was. Downright killed. Assassinated by some to me invisible hand. Another victim of an unjust war.
Or just the Costs of War? Non-monetary Costs of War.
The corruption of morals.
The defile of human spirit.
The depravation of personality.
The conceit of Man.

As human beings, where do you think this war will lead us? Shall we ever learn or just sign in. Like Dark did?
What do you think the costs will be to mankind? Not in money, but in dignity, in morals and ethics, in future politics, to future generations.

If anyone wants to finish off with Dark, go ahead but no more attacks, please. Was it moral correct what he did and to his best tried to promote?
Else look inward to the soul, how do war change a society ...like Germany in the thirties, ...America in the nineties, ...the Islamic countries in the new millenium.

Any pending business with Dark, get it finished off, quick, and move on.


[edit on 13/9/06 by khunmoon]

For Dark. Thanx for responding - ...but, alas, don't teach me history.

I do know a lot about wars. I was born shortly after the so far worst one this world have ever seen. I was born into suffering and shortage. None the less, that's excactly what makes me grateful to America ...that I not ended up in one totaltarian regime or another.
Thank you! Americans were our heroes all through the fifties.

I never blamed you Dark, you've had a full time job answering questions, intelligent or not.
Well, for the corrections (don't wanna be no school master, just broadning your horizon).
I start quoting you, where you quotes me:

"It's not only about the so far 1300 or so troops killed. It's the tens and hundreds of thousands who return home, never to be able to adapt to society again"

Khunmoon? Did you know we lost more than that in the civil war? Like 10 times that many? 5 years into the war and 1300 is our losses?

Oh Dark... darned wrong!
I assume it's the American Civil War you talk about. The loses were more than 500 times those 1300. 620.000 troops + 50.000 civilians out of a total population of 31 millions (1860 census).
Total loses makes up 2.2% of the entire population. In practice it means 1 out of 20 males where taken away.
The civil war was one of the bloodest wars, relative speaking, ever fought. Update the figures to present day US. More than 6 millions would have perished.

Open a spreadsheet and these links and check it out yourself.
en.wikipedia.org...
en.wikipedia.org...

No, what I wanted you to focus on, was the last part of my quote, about those who will never adapt.

Just for the record, I know the number causualties of the major wars. You can neither bluff me nor teach me.

In the light of the relative small loses, I would like you to give a thought to "collateral damage", as I think you put it, the unknown number of civilian lives lost in Iraq. As general Tommy Franks, USCC, puts it: "We don't do body counts".
However, sites like this: www.iraqbodycount.net... estimate the death-toll to be between 41.000 to 46.000. That's a conservative figure, but enough to make a comparision to the ratio civilians/troops in Iraq and your civil war. Well, compute it yourself.
The bottom line is three hundred times more civilians get killed in the Iraqi civil war than there did in the Amarican. Computed on the conservative figures.

The horror figures are provided by the well-esteemed British medical publication the Lancet. In a October 2004 study they put the figures at, at least +100.000. That was two years ago. Before Falluja. Ever heard of "willie pee", bombs of white phospher, that burns without oxygen, through skin and flesh down to the bone and cannot be smothered by water or anything? An illegal weapon used in Falluja.

What makes the mind, that croocked, it even can think to build a weapon like this?

Compare 3 years of illegal warfare invading a sovereign state, to the loses Saddam through 25 years inflicted on the Iraqi people. Please note, Iran attacked Iraq in 1980, so strictly speaking Saddam cannot be blamed for those loses.

Here's the link with Saddam killings www.moreorless.au.com... and a quote from it:
"... estimates put the figure between 60,000 and 150,000. (Mass graves discovered following the US occupation suggest ... dissidents killed could be as high as 300,000). Apprx 500,000 Iraqi children dead ... following the Gulf War."

Note the last statement. Those deaths of innocent children is mainly caused by DEPLETED URANIUM, a radioactive wasteproduct, not replenishable, but heigh in mass, with a half-life of 4.5 mil years. Used for its armour-piercing ability.

At what cost?



[edit on 13/9/06 by khunmoon]