S. T. Salah, 8/11/26
Are soldiers more valuable to society than teachers? Are they more essential than the people who drive our buses, collect our rubbish, maintain our water supplies or keep our streets clean? Is their work inherently more honourable than caring for the elderly and sick, educating children, reporting the news or providing essential social services?
Why does society place soldiers on such a high pedestal while so many people whose daily work keeps society functioning receive far less recognition?
There is no question that military service can involve extraordinary danger, personal sacrifice and courage. Soldiers can face situations most of us will never experience. Their suffering and the sacrifices made by their families deserve recognition. But acknowledging their courage should not require us to place their profession above every other contribution to society.
The question is not whether soldiers deserve respect. It is why military service is surrounded by a level of reverence that other essential professions rarely receive.
Perhaps the answer lies not simply in what soldiers do, but in what governments need society to believe about what they do.
War is difficult to sell to ordinary people. It involves killing, destruction, displacement, disability, trauma and death. It demands that young men and women accept the possibility of losing their lives, often in conflicts whose political objectives they had little influence in shaping. To persuade people to make such sacrifices, military service must be presented as something noble, heroic and almost sacred.
This is where patriotism, nationalism and the language of honour become powerful political instruments.
The soldier is transformed into a national symbol. Military sacrifice becomes synonymous with loyalty, courage and service to the country. Questioning a war can then be portrayed as questioning the soldiers themselves, even when the real issue is the political decision to send them into battle.
But history offers an uncomfortable question: how many of the wars celebrated by governments were actually fought to protect ordinary people, and how many served the ambitions, economic interests and geopolitical rivalries of powerful individuals and states?
The British Empire: Patriotism and the price of conquest
The British Empire provides numerous examples of the enormous human cost of military expansion, colonial domination and the pursuit of economic and strategic interests.
In India, British colonial rule was accompanied by repeated famines, economic extraction, repression and military violence. The Bengal famine of 1769–1770 killed an estimated ten million people, although historical estimates vary. The Bengal famine of 1943 killed approximately 1.5 to 3 million people. Wartime economic policies, failures of administration, restrictions on supplies and the refusal to prioritise relief contributed to the catastrophe.
Some historical estimates suggest that 30 to 40 million people died in famines across India during the half-century following 1857. These deaths cannot all be attributed to a single policy or military campaign, but they demonstrate the devastating consequences of colonial economic and administrative systems.
The Indian Rebellion of 1857 was met with brutal military retaliation. Executions, massacres and collective punishment followed. The rebellion was suppressed, and British Crown rule replaced East India Company government.
In Egypt, British military intervention in 1882 established a prolonged occupation, despite the country’s nominal relationship with the Ottoman Empire and its own political aspirations. The British priority was closely connected to maintaining strategic influence over the Suez Canal and imperial routes to India. The Egyptian nationalist revolution of 1919 was also violently suppressed by British forces, with hundreds of Egyptian deaths reported.
In Palestine, Britain made the Balfour Declaration in 1917, supporting the establishment of a national home for the Jewish people in a country whose overwhelming majority was then Arab Palestinian. Britain subsequently administered Palestine under a League of Nations Mandate.
When Palestinians revolted against British rule and the political arrangements being imposed on their country between 1936 and 1939, Britain deployed approximately 20,000 troops and used collective punishment, house demolitions, executions and mass arrests. Approximately 5,000 Palestinians were killed during the revolt, alongside hundreds of Jewish and British deaths.
The consequences were devastating for Palestinian society and its ability to resist subsequent dispossession.
Britain did not single-handedly create Israel. The United Nations partition plan and the decisions of the Zionist leadership and other international powers were also central to its establishment. Nevertheless, British imperial policy, particularly the Balfour Declaration and the subsequent Mandate, played a fundamental role in shaping the political circumstances in which the state emerged.
The question that remains is why the aspirations of one population were given international political recognition while the national aspirations of the indigenous Palestinian population were repeatedly subordinated to the interests of outside powers.
The creation of Israel and the Palestinian catastrophe
The establishment of Israel in 1948 was accompanied by the Nakba, the catastrophe in which approximately 700,000 to 750,000 Palestinians were expelled or fled their homes. Hundreds of Palestinian towns and villages were destroyed or depopulated. Thousands of Palestinians were killed.
For Palestinians, this was not simply a war between competing armies. It was the destruction of communities, the loss of homes and land, and the beginning of generations of displacement and statelessness.
Since then, Palestinians have experienced military occupation, settlement expansion, land confiscation, restrictions on movement, unequal legal systems and repeated military assaults.
The distinction between Jewish people and the policies of the Israeli state is essential. Jewish communities, like all communities, are entitled to security, dignity and freedom from persecution. But that does not give Israeli government the right to deny Palestinian population the same rights as its happening right now in the fascist Israeli apartheid regime.
The occupation and discriminatory treatment of Palestinians have been extensively documented by international organisations. In 2024, the International Court of Justice concluded in its advisory opinion that Israel’s continued presence in the occupied Palestinian territory was unlawful and that its policies and practices breached Palestinian rights.
The destruction in Gaza following 7 October 2023 has taken this tragedy to another level.
The United Nations Independent International Commission of Inquiry has concluded that Israeli authorities and forces committed genocide against Palestinians in Gaza. Its October 2026 report also documented more than 75,000 Palestinian deaths across the occupied Palestinian territory since October 2023, including at least 21,500 children. The genocide case brought by South Africa against Israel remains before the International Court of Justice, and its final judgment is a separate matter.
How can military power be celebrated without examining what it is used to accomplish?
How can governments invoke democracy, human rights and international law while continuing to provide military, political and economic support to states accused of committing grave violations of those same principles?
The Palestinian experience demonstrates the dangers of allowing strategic alliances and geopolitical interests to take precedence over the rights and lives of ordinary people.
Vietnam: A war fought in the name of ideology
The Vietnam War is another example of the enormous human cost of political ambition presented as national security.
The United States intervened on a massive scale to prevent the spread of communism, invoking the domino theory and the need to defend the so-called free world.
Yet the conflict became a prolonged and devastating war involving bombing campaigns, chemical warfare, napalm, destruction of villages and enormous civilian suffering.
Estimates vary, but approximately two million Vietnamese civilians died. Around 1.1 million communist fighters and as many as 250,000 South Vietnamese military personnel were killed. More than 58,000 American service members also lost their lives.
Cambodia and Laos were also devastated by the wider conflict and the American bombing campaigns.
Agent Orange left a legacy of environmental contamination and serious health consequences that continued across generations.
In the end, the political objective of preventing communist unification failed. Vietnam was unified under communist rule in 1975.
What had been achieved at such an extraordinary human cost?
Were the Vietnamese children killed by bombs, the families displaced from their homes and the generations affected by chemical warfare any less valuable than the soldiers whose names were engraved on memorials?
Iraq: A war built on a false justification
The 2003 invasion of Iraq was justified publicly through claims that Saddam Hussein possessed weapons of mass destruction and represented an imminent threat.
Those weapons stockpiles were never found.
The invasion overthrew the Iraqi government, destroyed state institutions, destabilised the country and contributed to years of sectarian violence, insurgency and insecurity.
The human cost was catastrophic. Estimates vary considerably depending on whether researchers count documented violent deaths or include indirect deaths caused by the destruction of healthcare, sanitation, infrastructure and essential services.
A 2007 survey conducted by the British polling organisation Opinion Research Business estimated that approximately 1.03 million Iraqis had died as a result of the conflict since the invasion. Its reported uncertainty range was approximately 946,000 to 1.12 million.
Other major research produced lower estimates. A 2006 Johns Hopkins and Lancet study estimated approximately 655,000 excess deaths by July 2006. A subsequent national survey published in 2013 estimated approximately 461,000 excess deaths between 2003 and 2011.
Although the precise number remains disputed, the scale of the human catastrophe is undeniable.
The invasion was not authorised by a new, explicit United Nations Security Council resolution. Its legality was widely challenged.
British and American soldiers were sent to fight. Many returned with permanent physical injuries and psychological trauma. Others never returned. But the Iraqi population endured the destruction of its country, the loss of family members, displacement and years of insecurity.
The weapons of mass destruction that formed the central public justification for the invasion were never found.
How many people must die before governments are held accountable for the consequences of decisions made in their name?
Afghanistan: Twenty years of war and a return to the beginning
The invasion of Afghanistan in 2001 followed the terrorist attacks of 11 September.
The initial military objective was to destroy al-Qaeda’s operational base and remove the Taliban government that had provided it sanctuary. The subsequent occupation expanded into an ambitious project of nation-building, military intervention and political transformation.
Twenty years later, foreign forces withdrew and the Taliban returned to power.
The human cost was enormous. Brown University’s Costs of War project estimated that approximately 241,000 people died directly as a result of the Afghanistan war by 2021. Most were Afghans. This figure does not include the full indirect mortality associated with disease, hunger, displacement and the destruction of infrastructure.
Thousands of foreign service personnel also died, including 457 British military personnel.
What had two decades of fighting achieved for ordinary Afghans?
The country was left with immense human suffering, displacement, destroyed communities and an uncertain future. Women and girls faced renewed restrictions on their freedoms.
The courage of individual soldiers cannot answer the question of whether the political objectives were achieved or whether the enormous sacrifice was justified.
Other wars and interventions that deserve scrutiny
The examples do not end with the British Empire, Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan.
The Korean War, between 1950 and 1953, killed millions of people. Estimates vary, but civilian deaths alone are commonly placed in the millions. The peninsula remains divided, and the political conflict that helped drive the war has never been resolved.
The Algerian War of Independence against French colonial rule, between 1954 and 1962, killed hundreds of thousands and, according to some historical estimates, approached one million people. Torture, massacres and widespread repression accompanied the French campaign to retain colonial control.
The American bombing of Cambodia during the Vietnam era contributed to enormous civilian suffering and political destabilisation. Estimates of the number killed by the bombing vary considerably, and the wider Cambodian catastrophe subsequently included the mass killings committed by the Khmer Rouge.
The Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in 1979 brought another decade of devastation. Hundreds of thousands of Afghans were killed, millions displaced and the country left deeply destabilised.
The Suez Crisis of 1956 saw Britain, France and Israel invade Egypt following President Nasser’s nationalisation of the Suez Canal. The operation was driven by strategic and political interests, and was condemned internationally. Egyptian civilians and military personnel suffered the consequences.
The 1990–1991 Gulf War, the subsequent sanctions regime against Iraq and later military interventions all had profound consequences for Iraqi society. The human cost cannot be understood by counting only those killed directly by weapons.
In Libya, the 2011 NATO-led intervention was justified partly through the protection of civilians. Muammar Gaddafi’s government fell, but the country subsequently experienced prolonged instability, rival governments, armed militias and continuing violence.
In Yemen, the Saudi-led military intervention, supported by several Western governments through arms sales and military assistance, contributed to one of the world’s most severe humanitarian crises. The conflict has caused extensive civilian deaths, displacement, hunger and the destruction of essential services.
These examples differ in their origins, legal circumstances and responsibility for particular atrocities. They should not be treated as identical. But they all raise an important question about the relationship between military power, political ambition and human suffering.
Who benefits from war?
Wars are rarely presented to the public as exercises in economic or geopolitical competition. They are presented as struggles for freedom, security, democracy, national survival or the defence of civilisation.
Yet behind many conflicts lie strategic resources, control of territory, access to trade routes, regional influence, arms markets and the political survival of governments.
The military-industrial complex has a direct economic interest in continued military expenditure. Arms manufacturers, defence contractors and companies providing military services can make enormous profits from prolonged insecurity and military expansion.
This does not mean that every war is initiated by arms manufacturers or that every military intervention is motivated by profit. It does mean that the financial interests surrounding militarism deserve scrutiny.
The ordinary soldier rarely shares in these profits. Neither does the civilian whose home is destroyed, the child who loses a parent or the family forced to flee across borders.
Those who make the decisions about war are often far removed from the consequences. Political leaders do not normally send their own children to the front line. Their decisions are implemented by ordinary people, many of whom come from working-class backgrounds and have limited influence over foreign policy.
Patriotism and nationalism help bridge that gap. They turn complicated political and economic interests into simple emotional messages about defending the flag, protecting national honour and standing against an enemy.
Questioning the war can then become confused with betraying the country.
But loving one’s country should never mean surrendering the right to question its government.
Indeed, genuine patriotism should include the responsibility to challenge unjust policies, oppose unnecessary wars and protect the lives of people whose interests are being sacrificed for political ambition.
The forgotten heroes of everyday life
While soldiers receive national ceremonies, medals and elaborate public recognition, consider the people whose work quietly sustains society.
The teacher who educates generations of children.
The nurse who cares for patients through the night.
The doctor who saves lives.
The care worker who supports elderly people who can no longer look after themselves.
The bus driver who gets thousands of people to work.
The sanitation worker whose absence would quickly make entire communities uninhabitable.
The journalist who exposes corruption and holds governments accountable.
The social worker who protects vulnerable children and families.
These people rarely receive the same cultural glorification. Yet society could not function without them.
Their contribution is not measured by how many enemies they defeat or how much destruction they can inflict. It is measured by what they build, maintain, protect and give to others.
A healthy society should celebrate those who preserve life as much as, if not more than, those trained to take it.
It should value prevention over destruction, education over indoctrination, diplomacy over confrontation and human welfare over military prestige.
There is no reason why respecting soldiers should require placing them above teachers, doctors, cleaners, carers or other essential workers. Nor should the suffering of soldiers be used to shield political leaders from scrutiny of the decisions that put them in danger.
The real question is not whether soldiers can be brave. Of course they can.
It is whether the causes they are asked to fight for deserve the sacrifices demanded of them.
Perhaps the measure of a nation’s greatness should not be how proudly it displays its military power, how many weapons it possesses or how many wars it can win.
Perhaps it should be measured by how well it educates its children, cares for its vulnerable, protects its workers, respects other nations and resolves its conflicts without sending another generation to die.
A society that glorifies war while undervaluing those who sustain human life has its priorities seriously confused.
