Murder in Iraq

HERE IS A SHORT AND SWEET VIDEO...BUT IT ALMOST BROUGHT TEARS TO MY EYES...

How many people have died as a result of the Iraq war? The war was only supposed to last a couple of years, but it’s now been a little over seven years since our former president, George Bush, sent troops to fight for our freedom. We have had more mortality than what we had expected. Many soldiers and Iraqi civilians have lost their lives in this battle, “…drawn from global media accounts, estimated civilian deaths between 59,287 and 65,121, as of yesterday” (DeYoung 1) and that’s without including the deaths of our brave U.S. troops. More human beings are still losing their lives today as a result of suicide bombings and such and Americans are still hoping it will all be worth it in the end.

Sean Huze’s The Sand Storm illustrates that these fatalities being counted as a result of the war are not only numbers, but real human beings that have been murdered. They were members of Iraqi society as well as wives, husbands, daughters, sons, fathers, and mothers that are now being missed greatly by their families in America. The men from the play, as they tell their stories, have to cope with the pain of living with what they have done and remembering what they went through at war. They are the men that realize that just a single attack can claim the lives of many, “On April 6, 2003, the Pentagon listed 61 U.S. soldiers and Marines killed or missing in action, while officers in the midst of battle estimated that ‘2,000 to 3,000’ Iraqi combatants had been killed during a single tank incursion into central Baghdad” (DeYoung 2). Although soldiers have no joy in taking the lives of others, as we observed from the speeches of them soldiers in the play, sometimes they simply have no choice but to do it, “We’re about 15 feet away from the car where his family is dead. Their bodies aren’t even recognizable. I could smell their still smoldering flesh and I just broke down” (Huze 4). Obviously soldiers do not want to kill anybody, but they are doing it so that we can have our freedom at the cost of their sanity. The traumatic massacres they have to witness and the things they see make it almost impossible for our soldiers to come back from war as sane as they were before they left to fight our war. Maybe in the future we will find out if all our troubles to prevent terrorism and risk money and reason will be worth it in the end.

We still have critics that think that this war isn’t doing much for us, but “Less than 40 percent of Iraqis think their lives were better before the war, and nearly half think the country is heading in the right direction, according to recent polls” (Prah 4). Our government must be helping Iraq in various ways, as well as removing the wrong people from their government. From Huze’s play, Doc Matthews states that the man whom his solders had just killed his family told him, “You, you Americans are a gift from Allah. You are here to deliver us from Saddam. I only wish I could have gotten my family out sooner” (Huze 5). It’s difficult to understand how a man like him actually looked at Doc Matthews in the eyes and stated that, even after his family was just killed. After Hussein was arrested and later on hung, Iraqis were relieved that we are helping them become a better society. Now “When Iraqis vote in December on a permanent government, U.S. officials hope it will take them another step closer to democracy and to providing their own security” (Prah 7) so we can finally pull our troops and go back to being a country without a war, at least for a long while. So maybe our death count is worth in a way. Soldiers are risking their sanity to make sure we are terrorist-free and to make sure Iraq can obtain a more democratic government, which will hopefully result in a better government as well. We aren’t only risking lives day by day, but spending a great amount of money just in war itself.

Americans have had to pay a great amount of money for this war, “Bush spoke on the same day that a top Pentagon official estimated that the war in Iraq had cost the United States $20 billion and that number was growing by about $2 billion a month” (Loughlin 1). The article that provided the above information is from 2003, and considering the numbers, we have spent an immense amount of money in this war by now. Even today, we keep spending more money on things like “A U.S. Army poster being distributed in Iraq offers $5 million for the capture of terrorist leader Abu Musab al-Zarqawi” (Prah 11). It may seem strange to offer that much money for the capture of one man, but it isn’t just one man. He’s a terrorist.

Researching the Iraq war may give a better understanding of Huze’s play because it provides the facts behind the speech of every man that told his story in the play. Facts about why they kill while trying to not look back. The facts about why they are willing to volunteer to go off to war and have such negative experiences. Research also makes it easier for the reader to understand that some incidents are not preventable, but necessary and in the end they are worth it. One day, these young soldiers will look back and think about the good they have done for America.






Works Cited

DeYoung, Karen. “Iraq War's Statistics Prove Fleeting.” Washington Post. Washington Post, 19 Mar. 2007. Web. 22 Jul. 2010.

Huze, Sean. The Sand Storm. New York, NY: Susan Schulman Literary Agency, 2004. 4-5.
Print.

Loughlin, Sean, “Bush vows bright future for Iraqis.” CNN. CNN, 16 Apr. 2003. Web.
22 Jul. 2010.

Prah, Pamela M. "War in Iraq." CQ Researcher 15.37 (2005): 881-908. CQ Researcher. Web. 22 July 2010.