The Costs of War

For nearly nine years the United Kingdom has been in Iraq and Afghanistan after following the United States of America into war after the horrific events of 9/11. New government figures on the total expenditure of the war have exposed the astronomical amount spent on this conflict, to which is only matched and beaten by the ever rising death toll. But, yet even today, how long the UK will remain stationed in the Middle East is still extremely vague, at best, and is likely to worsen in the coming months.

With so many lives at stake, it begs the question as to why we ever went to war with Iraq in the first place; unfortunately the answer is perhaps too harsh for those who have unbearably lost loved ones in the warfare.

The former deputy director of MI6, Nigel Inkster, has stated that the UK was, ‘dragged into a war in Iraq which was always against our better judgment.’ Alongside this startling claim, that essentially the UK were pulled in by the USA with barely any choice, MI6 was also blamed for the failure of intelligence, which told Tony Blair Iraq was ready to use weapons of mass destruction in 45 minutes. All turned out to be completely false; Iraq had not produced any nuclear devices whatsoever.

The Butler Report, which looked into the intelligence for why the UK went to war, concluded, frustratingly for those with relatives and friends fighting in Iraq, that ‘more weight was placed on the intelligence than it could bear’, and that judgments had stretched available intelligence ‘to the outer limits’.

The only thing one can say is that this is not exactly the most reinforcing reasoning for why we are sending our soldiers into war - and that statement is being generous. It is a ridiculous concept to understand, that so many are dying in Iraq and Afghanistan, yet the decision to go to war in the first place is so clouded. Of course 9/11 is a great tragedy; however, once put into the grand scale of things, so are the deaths of millions of Afghan and Iraqi citizens and hundreds of soldiers sent in to fight in the ‘war on terror’.

A total of 309 British forces personnel or Ministry of Defense civilians have now died since the conflict began in 2001. The total cost of the war has reached £20 billion, on top of the defense budget, excluding wages or care for the wounded; as such, this figure is purely an understatement. To put this amount of money another way, it is enough to scrap all student fees in England, 10 times over. But with the Chancellor’s new Budget, the number of human casualties will continue to soar, as essential equipment will be cut, with ship and aircraft numbers likely to be affected.

Even more vexing for those who have relatives and friends fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan, General David Petraeus, the man chosen to take charge of the US military in Afghanistan by President Obama, warned of even greater upcoming violence in the next few months. ‘The going inevitably gets tougher before it gets easier,’ he told the Senate Armed Services Committee, yesterday.

He went on the say, ‘My sense is that the tough fighting will continue; indeed, it may get more intense in the next few months. As we take away the enemy's safe havens and reduce the enemy's freedom of action, the insurgents will fight back.’

The costs of this war, both human and financial, will continue to unendurably surge upwards. However, the Defense Secretary, Dr Liam Fox, believes that these are costs that worth paying. Instead, he said that what, ‘we cannot afford (is) Afghanistan to lapse back into a failed state, which will create a security vacuum, contaminate the region and threaten the national security of the UK and its allies.

‘That is why we are there and that is why we stay.’

For another nine years? Another 300 deaths? Another £20 billion? I don’t know about Dr Fox, but the UK certainly cannot afford this.