
September 11, 2001. Almost all American know this date as the day that American Airlines Flight 11 and United Airlines Flight 175 crashed into the Twin Towers. Then American Airlines Flight 77 crashed into the Pentagon and United Airlines Flight 93 crashed in a field outside Shanksville, Pennsylvania (“September 11 attack” 8). Close to 3,000 people were killed and over 6000 other people that day and in the following weeks America went to war in Afghanistan to root out the al-Qaeda organization. Thousands of soldiers went to fight, over 4,800 didn’t come home and a few couldn’t due to there not being a body left (Operation Enduring Freedom 4). In truth, the cost of war is much higher than just money and equipment. People, real human beings, lose their lives, homes, families, and some even lose their sanity. Through this paper, I hope to show what war really cost and that is humanity itself

 When someone says numbers don’t lie, how do 3,528 people sound (OEF 4)? Over 3,500 soldiers have died in Afghanistan in the War on Terror.  4,839 soldiers were killed in Iraq (OEF 5). This numbers include soldiers from the US, Britain, Canada, Australia, and twenty-six other countries. Sadly over 26,000 civilians were killed in the Afghanistan War in the years 2001-2014 (“Civilian casualties in the war in Afghanistan.” 7).With some of the 26,000 deaths, many of them were accidental. One case that I found took place in Pakistan, a 68-year-old grandmother named Mamana Bibi was hit by a missile from a drone while in her family’s garden. Her 8-year-old granddaughter Nabeela was help tend to the garden when Mamana was blasted to pieces by a US drone (Amnesty International 1). What makes that story even worse it that no one in the US military or government gave the family a reason for Mamana’s death. Piloting a drone is like looking at a video game screen, but the difference between video games and real life is that if you kill a civilian or friend by accident, the civilian or teammate can respond in a game. You have to have an icebox for a heart to attack a person who possess no threat and not even send condolences to the family.

Though I can understand how a person cannot see the difference between morally right and morally wrong as Phil Klay showed in his article. Phil wrote about a veteran named Eric Fair who worked as an interrogator at Abu Ghraib prison. Specifically, Phil wrote about how Eric crossed both moral and personal lines to get information that literally meant life or death for soldiers (Klay 3). The article says that Eric “wasn’t treating the people in his interrogation booth like human beings” (Klay 3). Even Iraq vets have admitted to crossing a moral line. Jason was a part of Winter Soldier: Iraq & Afghanistan 2011 that took place at a convention center outside Washington DC and talked about an incident that happened during one of his tours. Jason talked about how instead of following policy and raise his weapon at a car coming towards him and his platoon, instead he waved his hands back and forth trying to get the car to stop. When the car didn’t stop Jason raised his rifle only for some guy flagged the car down and got it to pull over. An 80-year-old woman got out of the car and Jason said, and I quote, “I am a peaceful person, yet in Iraq I drew down on an 80-year-old geriatric woman” (IVAW 2). I can only imagine how Jason felt after learning he almost shot an elderly woman. 

Sometimes experiences stay with you for a good portion of your life. War doesn’t just leave physical scars; it leaves mental ones as well. Theses scars take a toll on ones sense of security; some soldiers who go overseas don’t come back the same and the civilians are left in a state terror from the constant fighting. Next time someone screams we need war, try to think of the people involved.

