(Tribune Editorial)
Updated: January 3, 2011 12:00AM
How many of the past generation’s wars would have been launched if we had known that each conflict would last for half a century or more?
Just about all of them, apparently, even though that is rarely the way the choice is presented to us.
In just about every armed conflict since World War II, and not a few before that, the decision to launch a war was predicated on the idea that it would be quick and decisive. Or, as in the case of Vietnam, the war sort of crept up on us without a formal beginning or end.
Either way, the idea of a cheap war was a lie. The costs go on and on, in the lives of those who lost loved ones, in the pain of those who returned less whole than when they left, and in the depleted treasuries of the nations that are honor-bound to care for, in Mr. Lincoln’s words, those who have borne the burden.
Two factors are now conspiring to weigh Americans down with horrendous costs left over from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. One is the skyrocketing expenses of providing treatment for the physical and emotional wounds suffered by those who fight. Thanks to advanced battlefield care and improved armor, many soldiers survive injuries that would have been fatal in conflicts past, but that now leave our valiant countrymen with missing limbs, severe head trauma or other injuries that may leave them with life-long disabilities.
The other is the fact that, under both this administration and the previous one, under Congresses controlled by both parties, the financial cost of our wars has been kicked down the road by a leadership and a citizenry that have been willing to go to war as long as the cost is hidden from most of us.
With the war in Afghanistan already under way and the war in Iraq about to begin, Congress approved President Bush’s giant tax cuts. A more honest accounting would have required us to either raise taxes to pay for the wars, or admit that we are not willing to pay the cost and so don’t start them.
The cost is a lot more than the price tag for raising, equipping and transporting our armed forces to the theater of battle. It’s the long-term medical, psychological and disability care, the rehabilitation, the lost wages and missed economic opportunities. Independent experts now put the cost of the war in Iraq at anywhere from $4 trillion to $6 trillion. That’s not counting the cost of the Afghan war, and the trillions more in interest on the additional national debt.
In this supposed democracy, the responsibility for going to war, and paying for it, is held in common. We should consider the total cost of any war before we allow ourselves to be led into one.
