The Costs of War

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The Costs of War

May 1st, 2012

FAKE NEWS for the Zionist agenda

Ron Paul
Prisonplanet.com
May 1, 2012

This month Veterans Affairs Secretary Eric K. Shinseki announced the addition of some 1,900 mental health nurses, psychiatrists, psychologists, and social workers to its existing workforce of 20,590 mental health staff in attempt to get a handle on the epidemic of suicides among combat veterans. Unfortunately, when presidents misuse our military on an unprecedented scale – and Congress lets them get away with it – the resulting stress causes military suicides to increase dramatically, both among active duty and retired service members. In fact, military deaths from suicide far outnumber combat deaths. According to an article in the Air Force Times this month, suicides among airmen are up 40 percent over last year.

Considering the multiple deployments service members are forced to endure as the war in Afghanistan stretches into its second decade, these figures are sadly unsurprising.

Ironically, the same VA Secretary Eric Shinseki was forced to retire from the Army by President Bush for daring to suggest that an invasion and occupation of Iraq would not be the cakewalk that neoconservatives promised. Then Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz, who is not a military veteran, claimed that General Shinseki was “wildly off the mark” for suggesting that several hundred thousand soldiers would be required to secure post-invasion Iraq. Now we see who was right on the costs of war.

In addition to the hidden human costs of our seemingly endless wars are the economic costs. In 2008, Nobel Prize winning economist Joseph Stiglitz wrote “The Three Trillion Dollar War: The True Cost of the Iraq Conflict.” Stiglitz illustrates that taking into account the total costs of the war, including replacing military equipment and caring for thousands of wounded veterans for the rest of their lives, the Iraq war will cost us orders of magnitude greater than the 50 billion dollars promised by the White House before the invasion. Add all the costs of Afghanistan into the mix, wrote Stiglitz, and the bill tops $7 trillion.

Is it any wonder why our infrastructure at home crumbles, healthcare is more expensive and harder to come by, and unemployment together with inflation continue their steady rise? Imagine the productive power of that seven trillion dollars in our private sector. What could it have done were it in private hands; what may have been discovered, what diseases might have been cured, what might have been built, how many productive jobs created?

With the bills coming due for our decade of reckless military action, the cuts rarely come from the well-connected military industrial complex with their lobbyists and powerful political allies. In President Obama’s 2013 budget, troop strength is to be cut significantly while enormously expensive and largely superfluous weapons systems emerge essentially unscathed. As defense analyst Winslow Wheeler wrote this month, costs of the “next generation” fighter, the F-35, will increase by another $289 million. This despite the fact that the fighter is badly designed and already outdated, a “virtual flying piano” writes Wheeler.

A d v e r t i s e m e n t

The military contractors building monstrosities like the F-35 are politically connected and thus protected. Unfortunately, returning military veterans are less so. In the same 2013 budget, the White House proposes to increase medical and pharmaceutical costs paid by veterans while reducing their cost of living increases. And how many years of increasingly alarming mental illness and suicide statistics has it taken for the modest increase in resources to be made available?

Those who predicted the real costs of our decade of global military conquest were ridiculed, scoffed at, and fired. History has now shown us that much of what they warned was correct. America is clearly less secure after a decade of unnecessary wars. It is more vulnerable and closer to economic collapse. Its military is nearly broken from years of abuse. Will we come back to our senses?

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6 Responses to “The Costs of War”

I wonder if a big part of the suicides have little to do with the military but rather with the education these people received in high school, where ‘death education’ is taught, and which includes glorifying suicide.
It looks like a lot has changed since the Persian Gulf War. I graduated from Infantry school right 3 weeks after Desert Shield turned into Desert Storm. At the time that I went through the training, soldiers were taught that we were the most valuable asset of the military. The government had invested a lot of money in our training, so soldiers were considered a valuable asset. We were told that we may be given the order to “stand and die in place” to slow down an enemy advance and give a larger element of our force time to pull back to safety, but that was ALWAYS a last resort. After reading this news story, I’m left wondering what has changed?
There is only one way to fix this serious Problem.Turn to the LORD GOD and PRAY.
The military WANTS its troops to kill themselves. The less damaged people they have to pay for the better for them. I was involved in the 1st Persian Gulf War. I have been sick ever since and am still fighting to get compensation. The government likes to fake like they care while pushing you to harm yourself.

Vic Reply:
May 1st, 2012 at 12:17 pm

maybe some day the good naive soldiers will walk away from this murdering mafia????

warzonepartizan1502 Reply:
May 1st, 2012 at 12:26 pm

I do EVERYTHING in my power to prevent kids from falling for their lies. Look up Project YANO. It is like an anti recruiter. When the military shows up at schools to try and snow people we are right there telling the truth. The recruiters HATE it.