What Price War

How does the government justify the cost of war to citizens? Do officials really care? Not really, for financially, it doesn't matter.

Money's never been the issue, they say. Measure conflict – win or lose – not body count alone, they offer.

Wars are defined in terms like "freedom," "restoration," and "re-establishment," but none of these are reasons. Merely rhetoric.

The human cost in lives is not considered a priority when "warmongers" choose conflict over peace. And once a people or a nation go to war, the military is then justified, both in manpower and budget spending, for it's basic economics that fuels war.

Return on the investment – billions spent to fund a war – can only be recovered if the military 'earns' its reason for existence: the "inanimate" expense. The higher price called for is the loss of lives of millions of soldiers caught up in war on both sides of the conflict. War mongers, though, aren't deterred. They're the "investors" in the war – equipment, supplies – and, in last place, in human life.

The longer a war lasts, the greater the return on their investment, though the "game" of war is much more deadly.

Human lives are hidden behind terms like "armies," "squadrons," and "platoons," a cold and faceless reference that becomes a chess piece on the war board game. Each move involves not faceless pawns but actual soldiers – human beings – who are flesh and blood. Acknowledging the loss of a squadron or platoon, as though they're just a chess piece, without qualifying them as soldiers, justifies, to those who perpetrate war, that cost is not measured in human lives.

The men and women on the battlefield are brushed aside in the grand view of an attempt to "win the war." They become secondary, inconsequential to the cause. When a nation looks at warfare as a return on investment in its military, and its soldiers and their lives aren't the main reason for opting for peace, then warfare becomes primary, and human life is secondary. History has proven this a fact. For there have been, and there will be, wars and rumors of wars until the end of time.