“It’s hard work,” said our president, George W. Bush. That’s almost a mild way of putting it, with the U.S. casualties now having passed 1,600. Even after the massive death and chaos our president has caused in Iraq he continues to find solid support from the American public. The problem I see here is that each person fails to recognize the value of each life. It was Joseph Stalin who said, “The death of one man is a tragedy. The death of millions is a statistic.” This statement is very truthful. The public needs to look beyond the numbers and see them for what they really are: Lives of real human beings, who have real loved ones, who have amazing potential. 1,600 is quite a small number compared to the number of Iraqi civilian deaths, estimated at 21,000 to 25,000. That is so many people! If only the public could know the story behind each of those people, the story behind each of our soldiers, maybe then, the support for the war would come to an end. Yet, our president continues make things black and white by saying that the world is better off without Saddam Hussein. This may be true, but is the world better off with more than 1,600 American troops dead? Is the world better off with more than 2,000 Iraqi troops dead and more than 21,000 Iraqi civilians dead? These are men who have died in vain, men who have died for an unworthy cause. If there had been a real, noble and honorable reason to attack Iraq with American military forces, perhaps then their potential as human beings would not have gone to waste, but the motives and the reasoning behind our attack was incredibly faulty. The original reason we chose to invade Iraq was because of the threat of WMDs, or weapons of mass destructions. So the government convinced the public that this was a valid reason to invade Iraq, even when war is only supposed to be used as a last resort, as a final option. Was war really our only option, the only way we could protect America. No! There were so many other peaceful routes to have taken. We could have obtained the worlds support, sent more inspectors, made diplomatic resolutions, but no, war was the one and only option. Even worse after we did invade Iraq we admitted that we were wrong, that our original purpose for going into war was to rid Iraq of its WMDs. Well guess what, there were no WMDs. How could our government send our troops to die on the battlefield on a false assumption? When the government send our troops to make the greatest sacrifice any person can make they must be so completely sure of their logic, of their information, and of their cause, that when our troops make the ultimate sacrifice, their lives to not go in vain. I don’t believe anyone can say that war, was a last option that those men who went to Iraq had to have died, that there was not another way. After the government realized that their original WMD logic was faulty, they took the stance of “The world is better of without Saddam Hussein.” As I explained above, the world isn’t better off with such large numbers of dead men. Men who died for a cause that turned out to be wrong. Each who had their own life stories to create? Surely there were other ways to than death to fulfill our goal.

Do you guys agree or disagree why?