Republican lawmakers have declared that President Barack Obama’s new health-care law will literally bankrupt the nation, driving small businesses into ruin and millions of Americans into penury. And yet despite its continuing economic woes, the United States remains the richest nation in the world, with an annual GDP (currently in the range of $15 trillion) three times greate (...)
Article
A Reckoning
The Price Tag for America's Wars
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Marvelous article; we might also add that Ike in his farewell address warned us of the "industrial-milatary-political' complex that we are now fatelly embroiled in.
Perhaps beyond the actual monetary cost and human life lost in these two wars is the utter depreciation of our national spirit as well as the spirit of both the Iraqi and Afghani peoples. In wartime, people witness unspeakable cruelties, maimings, torture, painful deaths and senselessness. There is a terrible loss of life, especially of those we may have known. I remember standing in front of the Vietnam War Memorial in Wash. D.C. and simply crying uncontrollably for so many classmates and contemporaries lost needlessly in a far off war which no one understood. I still hear from many returning veterans their stories wrapped up in PTSD for things they saw and did that no young person should ever have to endure. Even now their souls cry for mercy and forgiveness and absolution from just the guilt by association that they continue to bear. They do not feel heroic, just relieved that their term of service is over. And they do not cheer on the current enlisted folk who have been sent to do similar fruitless and thankless work. They simply pray for their safe return.
Thank you so much, Ronald Osborn, this is an extraordinary analysis of the real cost of war. It is very far-reaching piece as most think primarily of the money, which is astronomical. These wars continue to suck out the heart and soul of America and touch every person. It is a mentality that we do not seem to want but is continually forced upon us by the military-industrial-political complex into which the government continues to be sucked.