CONSEQUENCES OF AN UNETHICAL DECISION
People have different opinions about war; some people think it is necessary and others think it is not. In my opinion a war is an unethical decision which brings social, economic, and emotional problems, not only to soldiers and their families, but also to many innocent people living in countries of conflict. In the Iraq-U.S. war, the U.S. tried to bring justice to the world by trying to capture Saddam Hussein and his followers, but it actually caused a lot of injustice to the Iraqi and to the world. In the process of capturing the enemies, the U.S. caused many innocent people to die, and many people to live with psychological and emotional problems for the rest of their lives.
In the social aspect, war interrupts innocent family lives. Besides the many innocent deaths, the lives of those who survive are destroyed. Family lives are not the same anymore. For many Iraqi people, their culture and traditions are being corrupted. Women are now obliged to forget about traditional customs, and take the men’s role. Sometimes, men are killed or badly injured, so women have to start working to support their family. Infrastructures, such as schools and hospitals, are destroyed, so kids’ education is delayed and sick and injured people are left with no place to be treated or cured. According to a report by UNESCO on March 2003, said that the education system in Iraq, prior to 1991, was one of the best in the region, with over 100 percent gross enrollment rate for primary schooling and high levels of literacy, both for men and women. After U.S. invasion, some 84 percent of Iraq’s institutions of higher education have been burnt, looted, or destroyed. Nowadays, the current Iraq’s school curriculum is a U.S.-crafted curriculum. This shows that a whole culture has been violated and these people are being subjugated to follow another type of mentality. According to an article by the United Nations on 2005, the war in Iraq and its aftermath have almost doubled malnutrition rates among Iraqi children. Jean Ziegler, the UN Human Rights Commission’s special expert on the right to food on 2005, said that more than one-quarter of Iraqi children don’t have enough to eat.
In the economic aspect, war could have a negative impact in a country’s economy. Governments invest a lot of money in wars, in order to stock up with weapons, food, clothes, and medical supplies necessary for soldiers to survive in the war. Soldiers also need to be paid a salary and need to be provided with means of transport. If the country involved in war is a powerful one, such as the United States, the negative impact could also affect other countries that maintain close ties with it. According to a New York Times article, “The Economic Cost of War,” from February 28, 2009, the cost of overseas conflicts, mainly in Iraq and Afghanistan has been $144 billion in fiscal year 2009, $130 billion in 2010, and a $50 billion estimate for 2011. According to the Center for Defense Information, the estimated cost of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan will reach $1.29 trillion by the end of fiscal year 2011. In October 2009, the Congressional Research Service, which is a division of the Library of Congress, estimated that it costs $390,000 a year to sustain each American trooper overseas. Governments usually finance wars through higher taxes and government debt. This debt is mostly in the form of treasury securities, which are sold to the public in exchange of the principal accompanied by a specified interest rate. The United States currently has a debt of over $14 trillion, nearly two-thirds if this, is in the form of public debs owed to the people, business and foreign governments who bought treasury securities.
War does not only bring emotional and psychological problems to soldiers and their families, but it could also affect several innocent citizens in the war zone. Soldiers must stay away from their family and friends for long periods of time. They undergo a very rigid training in order to learn how to survive in the most dangerous and precarious circumstances. War is a constant emotional struggle and results in severe mental stress. Soldiers end up suffering post-traumatic stress disorder or PTSD, which is characterized by symptoms such as nightmares, irritability, sleeplessness, and difficulty concentrating. The report “Posttraumatic Stress Disorder and Depression in Battle-Injured Soldiers,” issued by the American Journal of Psychiatry in 2006, indicates that a large number of returning soldiers suffer from this disorder. Researchers found that among battle-injured soldiers, at one month of their return home, 4.2 percent had probable PTSD and 4.4 percent had depression; at 4 months, 12.2 percent had PTSD and 8.9 percent had depression; at 7 months, 12.0 percent had PTSD and 9.3 percent had depression. This study indicates that this psychological problem is not temporary, but could progressively aggravate. Without adequate counseling and care, war veterans who experience PTSD often do not marry nor have children due to their traumatic experiences. Many innocent lives become casualties of war, and many innocent people’s homes are destroyed. According to a BBC News article in 2006, there is an estimated 655,000 Iraqis who have died since 2003. John Hopkins researchers estimated that mortality rates have more than doubled since the invasion to overthrow Saddam Hussein, causing an average of 500 deaths a day. In 2006 alone, 34,452 Iraqi civilians were killed and more than 36,000 hurt. This creates psychological and emotional problems to innocent people that happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. Many innocent people probably lost close family members and friends in traumatic ways, and their lives will never be the same.
In conclusion, I believe that wars always produce more harm than good. In the case of the Iraq-U.S. war, the U.S. unfairly took advantage of its powerful position in the world, and decided to invade Iraq and kill many innocent people and destroy many family lives. The U.S. violated the Iraqi culture, and tried to impose its mentality in this country. As a result of this war, Iraqi’s society was severely disrupted, and the lives of many Iraqi will never be the same. Education, the backbone of any society, was damaged by the destruction of its schools. Also, this disruption led many Iraqi kids to have physical and psychological problems, which could stay with them for the rest of their lives.
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