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Cost of War: Lives, Money and Spirit
by Fr. John S. Rausch
January 2006
What is the cost of the War with Iraq? The U.S. has lost over 2,200 soldiers and sustained more than 16,000 wounded. The Iraqi people have suffered a low-end number of 30,000 deaths and untold numbers of injured. Sometimes wars are considered by casualties.
The web site of the National Priorities Project, a nonpartisan, nonprofit that provides citizens with facts for informed policy decisions, displays a numerical counter that records military spending on Iraq. Roughly speaking, since March 2003, the U.S. has spent $233.6 billion, and still counting, on this Iraq War. Calculated differently, this sum would fully fund the world anti-hunger efforts for 9 years, or ensure every child in the world basic immunizations for 77 years, or construct more than 2.1 million additional public housing units, or pay for nearly 31 million children to attend Head Start, or provided 11.3 million students with four year scholarships at public universities. Sometimes wars are measured by their opportunity costs, i.e. what must be given up.
Recently, Joseph Stiglitz, winner of the 2001 Nobel Prize in economics, with Linda Bilmes, a Harvard lecturer, issued a report estimating the cost of the Iraq War. They based their projections on U.S. troops remaining in Iraq till 2010 with steadily decreasing numbers each year. Their numbers also included the long term health care of wounded soldiers, 20 percent of whom suffered serious brain and spinal injuries and 30 percent are experiencing mental problems three to four months after returning. Their estimate: $2 trillion. Sometimes wars are calculated in aggregate dollar figures.
For people of faith there remains yet another more critical measure of war-the spiritual cost. In 1967, one year before his assassination, Martin Luther King spoke against the Vietnam War in his speech, "A Time to Break Silence." Approximately 10,000 U.S. soldiers had already been killed in Vietnam, and although few fully grasped the whole picture of the war, he said, "We must speak with all the humility that is appropriate to our limited vision, but we must speak." The moral calculus of the Vietnam War differs little from the Iraq War, and the prophetic words of MLK remain equally valid today:
I. "The Western arrogance of feeling that it has everything to teach others and nothing to learn from them is not just."
II. "We can no longer afford to worship the god of hate or bow before the altar of retaliation."
III. "A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual death."
After this speech, the Vietnam War dragged on for eight more years and cost an additional 48,000 American lives.
The U.S. Catholic bishops recently issued a moral statement urging the U.S. to follow a policy of responsible transition out of Iraq, "leaving sooner rather than later." The statement reiterated the bishops' Conference "grave moral concerns about the military intervention in Iraq" and remained "highly skeptical of the concept of 'preventive war.'" Unequivocally, the statement said, "The abuse and torture of detainees violate human rights." The bishops see a responsible U.S. role as helping Iraqis "assume full control of their governance and not to occupy the nation for an indeterminate period."
Responsible policy experts recognize that most Iraqis want the U.S. occupation to end, and many believe the U.S. presence actually recruits volunteers for the insurgents and continues the violence. Following the direction of the U.S. Catholic bishops by leaving sooner rather than later could save America the most expensive part of the Iraq War-the spiritual cost.
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