Life's Persistent Questions

Meaningless Sacrifice?

I heard stories from soldiers currently in Iraq on "This American Life," the radio show on NPR. Most of them don't want to stop the war because, to them, that would mean all the sacrifice and death of their comrads are for not. This argument is heart-breaking, has been used a lot, but is flawed nevertheless.

Beside the "sunken cost" argument put forth by economists--when some undertaking is obviously bad, past investment is not justification for further investment--there is another argument. Fighting a battle for a worthy cause with flawed plans while having the best of intentions happens all the time.

All new medical treatments to cure previously uncurable diseases are required to go through rigorous rounds of clinical trials. Gene therapy used to be a hot area of such research until a few years ago. A young patient died at the hospital of University of Pennsylvania as a participant in the gene therapy trial to cure his disease. The trial was halted. Other trials also had been stopped due to the occurance of leukemia in several patients. Clearly, doctors involved in these trials had noble goals, comprehensible planning (the best current science and technology can provide), and were treating patients that knew they were taking risks and consented to them. Yet the trials had to be stopped even though they could still provide invaluable data for future research and treatment designs. Did anyone say "we can't stop it now with the job half-finished. If we do, then Jesse would have died in vain." And if someone did, would the rest of the medical community listen?

Now compare a well-designed medical trial to rid patients of life-threatening diseases to a poorly planned war, to rid people in foreign land of their dictator, without their consent. The war is going badly, and after two years, maybe it is time to consider different strategies. And removing U.S. troops should be one of the alternative solutions to be considered. No, that does not mean the life lost and/or ruined will be rendered meaningless. I hope people will learn the true cost of war and the passion of a hostile civilization under occupation, just as doctors at Penn and elsewhere learned fromt the unfortunated patients in their trials.

posted by hedgehog @ 11:06 AM