"the lives of the young soldiers of our enemies"

But in most modern wars the soldiers are only a tiny proportion of the people who get killed. The exception at the time was the Second Gulf War (the way we forget the first Gulf War, the terrible Iran-Iraq war is a but shocking - just because "the West" wasn't directly in vollved - apart of course from the US Vincennes shooting down the Iranian civilian airbus with its 300 passengers).

But of course the civilian dead since then, through sanctions, has made up then balance by now, vastly outnumbering the 200,000 Iraqui soldiers killed at the time.

And note, I haven't said anything about the rights and wrongs of the war or the sanctions - the point I'm making is that in modern war it's civilians that mostly get killed.