People have wars for many different reasons. War is a pretty common thing and is almost always accompanied by disaster. One reason a war can occur can be for natural resources like oil. Groups in the countries can have their own issues and begin a civil war. There are many reasons why wars start that is why war is a really common thing in the world today.

Canadian soldiers are way different from the soldiers in other countries. Canadian soldiers are the best soldiers you can find.. Canadian soldiers protect our freedom and prosperity. Canadian soldiers dedicate their lives to us, and sometimes if things get overwhelming, they sacrifice their lives for the country. All Canadian soldiers, from the past or present should be honored and respected by people. Canadian soldiers are really devoted to the country and the residents of the country.

Canada isn't a country that will get involved in war easily and is usually better in doing other, more helpful things. Canada is known for peacekeeping around the world. Canadian soldiers are usually not sent to kill other people in other countries but are sent to protect the people in other countries. Canada is really well known for peacekeeping and has a great reputation of doing so. In Canada, there is no fear of getting shot if you open the door to get out of your house.

There are many reasons countries have wars. The reasons have been mentioned and can be about anything from resources to issues in the country involving different groups. Canadian soldiers are the best soldiers you can find and Canada is well known for peacekeeping. That means that Canada is a really great and safe country to live in. That is why only some people are lucky enough to live in Canada. That is why we commemorate Remembrance Day, to honor the soldiers that have given their life for our country. War might be terrible, but we can say that we are lucky to be living in Canada.

Our soldiers have served a certain period of time in the war and are getting discharged for mental disorders which have been caused by their war experiences. Our sympathy and compassion for our own soldiers who have been to war is great. We are concerned about them, we feel a sense of tragedy and pain for them, especially when a soldier kills himself due to the anguish of his war experiences. We want to love them and make their nightmares go away, we want to praise them and honor them for their sacrifices. We don’t blame them for the things they do in this state of post-traumatic stress, or for the unthinkable things they may have done to other humans in the war. We can feel their pain, intellectually if not emotionally understand their suffering, and forgive any war atrocities they may have carried out against civilians.

If war-like events have this effect on the perpetrators of these acts, can you imagine what psychological effects the acts have on those to whom they are done? If willfully carrying out these acts and being a party to a war is so devastating to our soldiers, can you imagine how psychologically devastating actually living in the war is for those who are not even fighting in it? They suffer the entire war, not a period of it. Their homes and their families, their friends and their livelihoods, their entire lives as they know them are destroyed. They don’t get to leave their country and go home to security, to a safe house with a loving family waiting for them, supporting them. Their home and their workplace may now be rubble and dust. Their family members and/or neighbors may already be dead or in hospital. Every aspect of their lives is in perpetual, violent upheaval and chaos.

We don’t have much compassion or sympathy for the civilians of our wars, even though we may have taken it upon ourselves to start a war in their homeland and we are thus the source of their dehumanization and suffering. We don’t care about them the way we care about our soldiers or our homeland, because we have security and have always had security, because they’re so far away from us, because we don’t give any thought to how they are suffering at our hands, because the people running our media make sure we don’t find out what is really happening to them in our name, or simply because they are Arabs and Muslims; simply, they are not us.

Expanding Our Understanding

In this day and age, this way of thinking is primitive and outdated, because sound logic and abundant experience tells us that this backward, fear-based way of thinking and reacting perpetuates war and the very fear and insecure feeling that we are struggling to free ourselves from. This way of thinking is ultimately a vicious circle of death, destruction and suffering for all parties. We should think of post-traumatic stress disorder in all war-like contexts, not just in the context of our own war veterans. If we expand our understanding for our emotionally war-torn soldiers, we can identify a likely cause for the emergence of a terrorist. After all, a terrorist is ultimately an individual person who appears to have lost all sense of value for human life, including his own.

Let’s consider our affection and concern for a U.S. soldier returning from Iraq and how he continues to suffer and requires medication to live in civilian life as a result of his dehumanizing experiences from just a few years of war. Now let’s take the understanding and compassion we have for our soldier and transfer it to a person we don’t know who lives far away in a culture we aren’t so familiar with. This person has experienced far more numerous traumatizing events than our American soldier who we empathize with. This far-away person has lived in a war zone, with death imminent around him at every corner, tanks blocking his way to school, blocking the road to workplaces so people can’t work, he witnesses or hears of daily killings, sometimes mass killings of the people around him, people he is close to, people he knows. His life is full of death and destruction. What our American soldier experienced and witnessed was only a flash in the pan, a moment in the grand scheme of his life, and he experienced these things more-or-less as an adult. The person we are focusing on is much younger, maybe 10 or 12, and war was not a finite event for him, but his entire life. This young boy’s past, present, and most likely his future exists in the sort of circumstances that have brought many American soldiers to the point of suicide after just a few years. What would our American soldiers become if they were born into or had lived permanently in these circumstances?

Can we now have understanding for how psychologically devastating a state of war is on an adult human being, a child or young teenager, who is not even participating in the war, but living in it? And even more-so, how emotionally and psychologically devastating a war environment is to those who spend their whole lives living and growing up in war?

The Vicious Circle

The truth is, that when any human being is subject over an extended period of time to an environment of gratuitous and random killing and violence, such as circumstances of war in the Middle East, he or she learns automatically by example that human life, be it his or her life or someone else’s, has no value. People who’ve lived extended periods of time and have grown up in war zones see the world through different eyes than we do. They have so intensely been the target of the blackest emotions known to man for so long, that they can no longer feel the tragedy of their own or others’ situations, as our soldiers do; rather they have become desensitized to death. This is because their own life and the lives of every person they know is precariously teetering on the edge of violent death, at the whims of military powers and heavily armed foreign soldiers they have no control over. They live knowing that any moment they or a loved one may be killed. The taking of human lives (=friends, family, acquaintances, one’s own life) in the most violent ways imaginable, literally with their blood and guts spattered everywhere, as a matter of daily life, teaches, at the very least, that taking someone’s life, or your own, is fair, acceptable and a normal part of daily life and it moreover conveys the fact that “we, as humans, don’t preserve or value life,” so it’s o.k., and moreover commonplace, to blow someone else’s body, or your own, to bits. Thus the victim of the violence learns the lesson of war from the perpetrator. This then becomes a vicious circle, like a serpent eating its own tail.

Conclusion

The fall of the Twin Towers should have at least given us a glimpse into what it would be like to be a civilian in one of the countries hosting our wars. It enabled us to momentarily feel war, devastation, death, destruction and loss for a day, but not every single day and not as a matter of existence. Our soldiers, now coming home with nightmares of guilt from what they did, or haunted by visions of carnage, are giving us yet another glimpse of what war is really like on the front line, in someone else’s homeland, and a window of opportunity for us to open our eyes to the plight we are creating for those our media and politicians are programming us to hate and fear. Hopefully our suffering soldiers will be the inspiration for the emergence in us of some compassion and understanding for the people so far away on the other side of the vast Atlantic. Hopefully the stories our soldiers tell will open our eyes to the possibility that the monsters we perceive ourselves to be fighting are really traumatized human-beings, just like our soldiers, who have been suffering the full extent of wars, of our wars against them, too intensely for too long. If we open our eyes and look at life beyond our own backyards, we will see, as the cycle of war comes full circle, that, ultimately, we become the students of our own violent lessons.

Once again, as they did during the Vietnam War, some anti-war demonstrators are trying to force our country to cut and run from something we started. Al-Qaida believes it's just a matter of time when Americans will show its lack of commitment and backbone.

Those American men, who fought in Vietnam and put their lives on the line for our country, did not deserve the horrific and disgraceful treatment that our country heaped upon them when they came home. Many years after the war, the effects still linger on in many forms, such as guilt, humiliation, anger and ruined lives due to mental and emotional problems.

There is no doubt that many anti-war demonstrators, back then, thoughtlessly, just wanted to be “part of the crowd.” Their actions and behavior ultimately caused our country to cut and run in heated battle - unthinkable behavior of our great country, the defender of freedom throughout the world!

The Vietnam War could have been won! We didn't lose; we simply allowed them to win! The purpose of the war is debatable, but our military was committed and should have been allowed to achieve its purpose. Not only did we abandon a country and its people who depended on us for their freedom, we also lost the respect of our Allies and countries throughout the world.

Almost 60,000 Americans were killed; more than 300,000 were physically maimed for life and tens of thousands were damaged in many other ways - all for naught - all in vain! Our military was not allowed to finish the job with dignity and purpose!

Think about it for a moment. These were young men who bravely committed their lives to their country. They pledged to willingly give up their lives if necessary to fight for America's interests. Most of them experienced conflict and fear beyond imagination. Many of them killed and maimed other human beings during the war and watched many of their friends in horrible pain and dying, something most American people have not experienced and seemingly cannot put into perspective. They returned home with these horrible experiences in their memories. These are not easy things for anyone to live with, but they will have to deal with these memories the rest of their lives. Our country should have helped them accept what they were forced to do, instead of humiliating them and causing them to feel guilty and alone.

It's too little and possibly too late, but our country is now realizing it made a huge mistake treating Vietnam Veterans as criminals and causing them unwarranted guilt. Americans are now trying to make amends by showing compassion for our current military personnel. Affection and admiration is being displayed in many ways, such as tying yellow ribbons around trees and such, and throwing parades when soldiers come home. We, in this great country, should be doing these things anytime our military personnel have put their lives in harms way to defend our freedom and interests.

If the American soldiers of today (who incidentally are all volunteers and knew what they were getting into) are not allowed to finish their job with respect and dignity, the results will be the same as those of the Vietnam War. The maiming and deaths of soldiers will have been without purpose.

Where is the grit, the spirit, the pride and strength of the American People? We must not make the same mistakes. Think of the potential damage to our country and its fighting soldiers and veterans if we cut and run from Iraq before the job is done!

Generally, to the lay person, or non-military citizen, any form of torture is barbaric and should not be exercised. This has to be due to the lack of knowledge of its usefulness in wartime. Granted, torture seems to be excessive and cruel, but take a moment and think about it.

I was an infantry soldier in the U.S. Army and fought in the Vietnam War. I witnessed much suffering and many deaths on both sides during heavy battles, and after repeated attacks on us by the enemy, I soon realized that if we could use some form of torture to obtain useful information to survive and to be one step ahead of the enemy, it would be worth it.

There were times when we captured enemy combatants, who we believed had information that could help us prevent a lot of bloodshed, but because we had to conduct ourselves by the code of conduct set out by the Geneva Conference, forbidding torture, we could not force it out of them.

On occasion, the enemy entered a village and killed most of its able bodied men, then waited for us to arrive and walk into an ambush. Had we been able to force information from our captives, in advance, we may have had a chance to prevent some of these atrocities.

Torturing anyone is not for the faint of heart, but after spending some time fighting, one begins to harden and realize that if torture is the only way to gain valuable information to prevent suffering and death, then it has to be considered a necessary tactic in wartime.

Occasionally, when we suspected that our captives knew something we needed, but we could not get it out of them, we turned them over to the South Vietnamese soldiers, who often fought along with us.

These fighters sometimes used tactics that we could not exercise to make the enemy talk. For example, they would take the enemy combatants up in a helicopter and push them out, or drag them alive through the jungle behind a PC (personnel carrier). You would be surprised at how much useful information was gained that could be used to prevent suffering of a larger scale. (Of course a lot of this may not be admitted or discussed today.)

When the subject of torture is discussed, it would be wise to not condemn it without knowing how necessary and useful it is during wartime. In other words don't argue and rant and rave over something you know nothing about.

The mothers of two sons who were electrocuted testified about the deaths of their two sons, Staff Sgt.Christopher Lee Everett and Staff Sgt. Ryan Maseth of Pittsburgh. Everett, a member of the Texas Army National Guard was electrocuted in September while using a power washer to clean sand from beneath a humvee. Maseth an Army Ranger and Green Beret was electrocuted while taking a shower in his barracks in Baghdad.

KBR used employees with little electrical experience to supervise subcontractors in Iraq and hired foreigners who couldn't speak English to do the work, former KBR electricians told a Senate panel investigating the electrocutions of the 13 deaths. Crawford and Jeffery Bliss, also a former KBR electrician, testified in the 17th hearing held by the Democratic Policy Committee which has been examining waste, fraud and abuse in Iraq and the performance of the country's war contractors. Bliss told the panel” carelessness and disregard for quality of work at KBR was pervasive.

“I beg you to do something to bring an end to the unnecessary cause of death to our soldiers" said Loraine McGee of Huntsville, Texas "They shouldn't have to worry about stepping into a shower or using a power washer in the safety of an established base." The mothers said the Army knew about the electrical problems months before their son's deaths. "KBR had inspected Maseths barracks and noted that the main circuit panel, the secondary feeder panel and the water tank were not grounded," said Cheryl Harris, his mother. Maseth's family has sued KBR.

McGee said she had been told by the Army that her son's death was unique. An Army report blamed her son's death on an improperly grounded generator that powered the power washer. But in April she leaned form a reporter that the Army had issued a report on soldier's electrocutions, calling them the "unexpected killer." The report urged the Army to ensure contractors properly ground electrical systems.

Bliss said,” Electricians were not provided the tools needed to do their jobs, and KBR hired foreigners who were not familiar with U.S. electrical standards and who didn't speak English."

The veteran's accounts were both disturbing and emotional. Soldiers and marines described incidents where innocent civilians were killed and where an apartment building known to be filled with Iraqi families was fired at multiple times.

One man, John Turner, ripped off his service medals and threw them into the crowd. He showed pictures of victims he had killed, and footage of a mosque being fired at, which is illegal unless there is someone firing from it. In this instance, they were acting out of revenge for one of their soldiers being killed. “I am sorry for the hate and destruction that I have inflicted on innocent people” he said, bordering on tears.

Another veteran Bryan Casher, admitted that his fellow marines urinated and defecated into food before giving it to Iraqi children

The rules of engagement determine when and how force shall be used in the military. They state that positive identification must be obtained before shooting a suspect. This was altered so that any suspicious observer could be taken down, meaning anyone seen with binoculars, or a mobile phone. After dark, soldiers could shoot anyone who was outside. They said that their commanding officers made it clear that if they killed a civilian they would make sure a weapon was found at the scene.

The subject of veterans' health care was discussed. The parents of Jeffery Lucey spoke of how their son committed suicide after a lack of treatment for Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. One soldier told how he was provided with fifteen minutes therapy a month to help with his trauma after serving. 2,100 soldiers attempted suicide in 2007.

Another soldier showed an image of a part of an Iraqi mans face mounted on a helmet. After a bomb blast this was all that was left of him. His fellow soldiers had placed it on one of their helmets, laughing and taking pictures of it

This important event received very little coverage in America. The event was packed with media, although mainly with foreign press. It was almost ignored by the American corporate media. No major tv network or cable news mentioned it. The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal failed to cover the event. This is a frightening result, as these soldiers stories are of the utmost importance. The main message of the conference was to remove the occupation in Iraq.

201,000

Hectares under opium poppy cultivation worldwide

82% (164820 hectares)

Of this is in Afghanistan

37kg

Yield per hectare in Afghanistan

6,100

Tonnes of opium produced in Afghanistan

$125

Price of 1kg dry opium in Afghanistan (at source)

£50

UK Street price of 1g of heroin

The Taliban collect 1kg of resin in every 10kg produced by the farmers as “tax”. A character known only as the “businessman” purchases the rest. The Taliban sell their share and purchase weapons using the profits, weapons that they use against British soldiers in the province. The soldiers patrolling these fields are not allowed to do anything to disrupt the local farmers and the Afghan Opium economy. This is the job of the Afghan police counter narcotics teams. A job that seldom gets done. In Helmand alone last year only 3,000 acres of a possible 100,000 where destroyed.

Papaver Somniferum is a flower of many faces. To some it is just a nice looking plant that can be used as an ornament, to others it contains healthy oils for use in salads. To many the poppy brings priceless relief from pain in medicinal use. Some use the narcotic form for recreational purposes often with devastating consequences in their personal lives and health. The name roughly translates as "sleep bringing poppy". I recently saw a photograph in The Times of soldiers from 2 Para patrolling through a field of opium poppies in Helmand, Afghanistan and I began to wonder how they saw the flower.

William Salikin, Jeffery Bailey and Paul Franklin are recovering at a U.S. military hospital in Germany. They were injured in an attack last Sunday which killed two Afghans and also killed senior Canadian diplomat Glyn Berry.

All of the three were severely wounded: Bailey is still in a coma and Franklin has lost half his leg. Salikin is just recovering from a coma too. A medical team from Canada is expecting to arrive in Landstuhl tomorrow and is hoping to take all three soldiers home by Tuesday.

Family members of the three said that they have been touched by the support from Canadians.

• Over 600, 000 Iraqi men and women (the population of the entire country of Luxembourg is under 500,000)
• More than 4,000 American servicemen and women
• British forces; 175 lives
• The injured stands at more than 20,000 American soldiers, and more than 1,400 British soldiers with numbers rising constantly

The Real Cost to the Living

In 2006, the US had set aside 315 billion dollars for the Iraqi and the Afghanistan wars, but the cost of the Iraqi war alone has since been estimated at about 3 trillion US dollars or 1.5 trillion British pounds.

It was said then, that if 315 was stored in 1 dollar notes, the stack would be the height and thickness of a 38 story building, and if you were to line the notes up side by side, they would be long enough to wrap the Moon around its middle almost 3 times. But that was 315 billion.

On the other hand, I couldn't really understand what 3 trillion dollars (£ 1.5 trillion) was, but apparently it's a million times a million and looks like this when written out, 3,000,000,000,000 (12 zeros).

I still could not comprehend such a large amount, so I tried to put it in terms that would make its literal meaning it more easily understood. To put it in perspective, if I could somehow manage to stay alive for about 3,000 years, I would have to spend a million dollars a day in order to spend 3 trillion. So way before Jesus Christ's mother Mary was born, I would've been spending a million dollars a day, and would still be spending as we speak.

What could this money be spent on instead of the war

• $3 trillion would provide clean drinking water for every last individual who needs it
• Totally eradicate world poverty
• Buy gas for every driver in the US for 10 years
• Educate, house and feed every last Aids orphaned child in Africa for 10 years
• Provide Primary education for every child on earth
• Provide free medical care for 16 million Americans (money spent on the war each day)
• Send 43 million students to University in England

Taxpayers in the UK and in the US are paying out more than £2,000 (nearly $4,000) a second into the war (so in the time it took you to read from the top of this page to here, you've spent £ 240, 000 on the war). Every day more is being spent, and when America pledged £18million (nearly $36million) into the United Nations' refugee agency, the public did not realise that this very amount is spent in less than three hours in Iraq to sustain a steadily failing war.

The obvious cost of mental and physical rehabilitation of soldiers would mean that steadily, more money has to be allocated. Money that wouldn't have to be spent in the first place if there was no war, but that's a different story.

Meanwhile, Mr Bush below has got to answer to the families of the dead soldiers whose pictures so poignantly make up the mural of his face.

Faced with the agonising choice of feeding the poor and providing water for millions of children who walk half a day to obtain one bucket for their families' needs, our governments have taken the path of war. We and our children meanwhile, live with the consequences

This is how the New York times so succinctly summarised it in this accompanying chart. Based on the hefty difference between the smallest (a necessary way to save lives) and the largest (a certain way to lose lives), it is up to you to decide where the human life places on the governments' list of importance.

It is estimated that The war is costing $720 million a day or $500,000 a minute, according to an analysis of the work of Nobel Prize-winning economist Joseph E. Stiglitz and Harvard public finance lecturer Linda J. Bilmes

General David Petraeus has moved soldiers out of their mega bases to small out posts throughout the city into areas that are hostile to the troops. He has ordered his men to walk, not drive. The object is not to storm a citadel but, to win the people over.

Captain Tim Wright said," All the stuff in the Petraeus manual, we had kind of figured out by the time the manual came out. It was all the stuff we had seen work on the ground." Young military officers like Captain Tim Wright have learned often on their own about the Muslim culture and how to deal with the people and the problems that come up. Now they must reach out and befriend men who have killed their own comrades. Even these hard won achievements are on shaky ground. Soldiers walk the streets and communicate with the people. Former out-laws and terrorists may betray their trust and turn on them at any time.

Officers like Petraeus whose skills are crucial are not valued within the pentagon. He has fought many fights with his superiors, including CENTCOM commander Adm.Willian Fallon, who resigned last week. Superiors have been slow to learn and seem not inclined to try.

This war is different than any other war American soldiers have fought. The war has dragged on so long that soldiers go back for a third and fourth tour of duty. They don't know friend from enemy and there are no clear guidelines. The Petraeus manual can only provide the principles to follow. The soldiers on the streets of Baghdad are the decision makers right or wrong. They are to be commended and appreciated. They have served their country with honor and fortitude. We might have a wrong-headed president but our soldiers are the bravest and best. Now let this travesty of a war be over, and let them all come home safely.