The Lives of War

Barak Obama in his presidential address on 9/10 announced to the nation that he was going to attack ISIS with air strikes.  Some people believe that this is not enough, and that we should engage more to eliminate the threat.  Some believe that we shouldn't be involved all.  The question here is what are we losing?  A lot of people believe we are a destructive species which ends lives of millions of millions of species including our own.  How the the other species may be important that is not the problem at hand.  this world has been at war for ages and no one knows what a human life is worth.  Is one death now worth 10 deaths 10 years down the road?  Can we be certain of those deaths?  what if that one death was someone close to you?  Should it matter?  I may be stating the obvious but these questions is what makes war so controversial.

Obama said "no ground war."  He is using air strikes to minimize casualties on our side.  This may make the choice slightly easier.  From our eyes the bad guys die and good guys live, simple.  What will happen when one of planes gets shot down, or one of the soldiers that was sent over to train Iraqi soldiers gets killed by an attack.  Has the war been taken to another level which requires more man power, fire power, and even a ground war which will end, no matter what, in many deaths on both sides.  Yet there are other people to consider.

What about the people in the future what if we don't do a ground war ISIS gets stronger raid villages kills people guns down plains.  What if not sacrificing lives now end in more deaths later.  The possible outcomes the balance is impossible to find.  So when I hear someone say "i believe Barak Obama made the right call"  or the other way around they said he made the wrong one.  They're both wrong.  Tim O'Brien believes no one can tell a true war story unless they embrace the fact that its not all true.  This applies to battle decisions as well Obama had to make a decision but in order and that wont all be right but it wont all be wrong either.