What Is The Value Of A Life?

This question arose as I read a piece stating that according to the Iraq Health Ministry, 325 people were killed in Iraq in July, the worst violence in over two years. Then on Thursday (8/16), bombings in Baghdad killed at least 98 men, women and children and wounded over 200 more.

So far, more than 200 Iraqis have been killed in August and that number is growing. So what is the value of a life? From the U.S. War in Iraq, estimates of the Iraqi dead range from well over 100,000 to over one million people. One can but guess the number of Iraqi wounded or children orphaned.

Add in 4,488 dead U.S. soldiers plus dead contractors, dead allied soldiers and the many thousands of wounded and all of the children growing up in single parent households and one must ask again, what is the value of a life?

It raises the obvious question, what has this war accomplished, other than hugely profitable contracts for the military industrial complex? Iraq is in ruins and millions of people are devastated.

Has any lesson been learned by all this murder and mayhem? Not in Iraq where the killing continues. And not in Afghanistan and elsewhere where the U.S. continues to fight wars in the name of peace, as most Americans sit passively by, largely ignorant to and indifferent of the consequences.

And not in Iran, which the U.S. government and the U.S. media often call a "threat," without ever defining how Iran is a threat. This is as they did years ago when they repeatedly called Iraq and Afghanistan "threats" and then the U.S. government took military action to attack and subjugate those nations.

So the question arises again, what is the value of a life? A life that gave and received love, and had hope, laughter and aspirations for a better future until that life came to an abrupt and violent end.

Dick