Winners and Losers

Winners and Losers

At first glance of George W. Bush's proclamation that the war in Iraq was a job well done in front of a banner saying "Mission Accomplished", one might consider that war indeed has clear winners and losers. Often the military might of one warring nation far exceeds that of its opponent, which may lead one to determine that one nation will win, or has won a war. I believe, that if we take a closer look at all wars we will find that even those who have claimed mission accomplished, have indeed lost to war as well. To show that there are only losers in a war, the current war in Iraq shall be used as an example.

War, especially the total wars of the Twentieth Century, involve not only those people and elements of the economy who are directly involved with the war (the armed forces and armaments/supply industries), but also the whole population. This was especially true in WW II, the largest and costliest war that had been fought in human history, both in terms of human lives lost and the amount of money spent.

The United States has moderate support from over 30 nations to fight the war on terror in Iraq. Iraqi insurgents on the other hand, do not have the support of any nation as whole. Their support comes from extremists who are scattered throughout the world. Any comparison of the might of both sides of this war, would put the US coalition in a leading position. Indeed, while the US has lost over 3,000 soldiers to this war, the loss of insurgents has not been calculated, but we can assume the number to be in thousands. In addition to fewer troops killed, the US coalition has captured Saddam Hussein, and introduced democracy to this pivotal middle-eastern nation. It is clear that the insurgents are not the winners of this war.

We have talked about the number of troops that have died on both sides of the war, but we must also look at the "collateral damage" to decide who is the winner of this war. There are no official death tolls of Iraqi civilians, but there are several dedicated organisations that have been trying to keep track. Http://www.iraqbodycount.net/ estimates that between 57,482 and 63,241 Iraqi civilians have been killed by both insurgents and coalition forces. Bush himself estimated the death toll to be 30,000. If we consider that the US coalition's mission is to fight terror,