Grieve for all losses in war

In our country, and most other countries, human life is valued. Even criminals are treated with some respect; given trials before lengthy imprisonment or execution. Our country spends exorbitant amounts of money before condemning serious criminals to death.

War is a different matter. We kill the opposition with little thought to the fact that the "enemy" is human. Although we prefer not to kill civilians in enemy countries we make little effort to protect the lives of their family members who may be in the military. It makes little difference to us whether the enemy combatants serve freely and with informed consent; they are the enemy.

It strikes me that this is a huge contrast. We show more respect for the lives of serious criminals than we do for the lives of people we are at war with.

I believe that most of the enemy population consists of people we could easily be friends with in different situations. Indeed, finding a boyfriend or girlfriend from those populations can easily be imagined. Any population, ours or the enemy, consists of many friendly and wonderful people.

I believe that the death of an enemy soldier is to be avoided. We are saddened at the death of our soldiers. But I believe we should be similarly grieved by the death or injury suffered by enemy combatants and their civilian populations. Good people, people we could easily count as friends or family, suffer immensely when we fight with them.

We need to see war statistics differently. We grieve our own casualties, but we must recognize that all causalities, on both sides, are sad losses.

We must resist waging war. And when war is unavoidable we ought to treat our enemy with respect, and do our best to make their people understand that we grieve their losses.