\Those soldiers died for nothing."" I recently overheard a fellow student make this comment, which is as disheartening as it is wrong. This war has cost many lives and huge sums of money. The end result is by no means certain and the reasons for war articulated by the administration appear dubious. However, this war has achieved numerous noble and worthwhile ends. To deny this is to belittle the sacrifice of the men and women of our military and to dishonor the lives of those who died.
Our soldiers have fought to depose a criminal whose reign, according to Human Rights Watch, saw the disappearance of at least 290,000 people. For comparison, the population of Madison is currently around 210,000 people. Moreover, this figure does not include the vast number of people who died as a result of Saddam Hussein's disastrous, aggressive wars against Iran and Kuwait or his wholesale plunder of the Iraq's wealth. Believing that this war was not worth the American lives it has cost is acceptable; believing that the lives of our soldiers were sacrificed for nothing is not.
I have also noticed a tendency among antiwar activists to view peace as only the absence of war between states. This ignores the terrible wars that are waged by governments against their own people. The 20th century war was marred by a staggering 35 million dead. Yet, the number of people murdered by intentional state-sponsored killings dwarfs even this horrifying tragedy. The best estimates place the number of people killed by their own governments in the past century at almost 170 million. Saddam's attempt to systematically wipe out the Kurds during the Anfal campaign is just one brutal example among so many.
Finally, remember that Martin Luther King, Jr. once said, ""Peace is not the absence of war, but the presence of justice."" There was no justice, and could be no true peace, while Saddam Hussein was still in power.
