The invasion of Iraq resulted in the deaths of 4,486 American soldiers, and the invasion of Afghanistan has cost the lives of 2,132 American soldiers (and that death toll is still growing). And that is just the beginning of the suffering these unnecessary wars have inflicted on our soldiers and their families. Hundreds of thousands of American soldiers have been injured -- either physically or psychologically, or both. Here is how the Associated Press puts it:
A staggering 45 percent of the 1.6 million veterans from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are now seeking compensation for injuries they say are service-related. That is more than double the estimate of 21 percent who filed such claims after the Gulf War in the early 1990s, top government officials told The Associated Press. . .
Of those who have sought VA care:
_More than 1,600 of them lost a limb; many others lost fingers or toes.
_At least 156 are blind, and thousands of others have impaired vision.
_More than 177,000 have hearing loss, and more than 350,000 report tinnitus – noise or ringing in the ears.
_Thousands are disfigured, as many as 200 of them so badly that they may need face transplants. One-quarter of battlefield injuries requiring evacuation included wounds to the face or jaw, one study found.
"The numbers are pretty staggering," said Dr. Bohdan Pomahac, a surgeon at Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston who has done four face transplants on non-military patients and expects to start doing them soon on veterans.
Others have invisible wounds. More than 400,000 of these new veterans have been treated by the VA for a mental health problem, most commonly, PTSD.
Tens of thousands of veterans suffered traumatic brain injury, or TBI – mostly mild concussions from bomb blasts – and doctors don't know what's in store for them long-term. Cifu, of the VA, said that roughly 20 percent of active duty troops suffered concussions, but only one-third of them have symptoms lasting beyond a few months.
That's still a big number, and "it's very rare that someone has just a single concussion," said David Hovda, director of the UCLA Brain Injury Research Center. Suffering multiple concussions, or one soon after another, raises the risk of long-term problems. A brain injury also makes the brain more susceptible to PTSD, he said.
On a more mundane level, many new veterans have back, shoulder and knee problems, aggravated by carrying heavy packs and wearing the body armor that helped keep them alive. One recent study found that 19 percent required orthopedic surgery consultations and 4 percent needed surgery after returning from combat.
When he was campaigning for office in 2008, Barack Obama promised to end both of these wars -- and yet the war in Afghanistan drags on. As was the case in Vietnam, it has become readily apparent that our mission in Afghanistan is a failure -- and yet we continue it because our national pride (or at least the pride of our national politicians) won't let us admit it was a mistake and withdraw. A tentative date for withdrawal has been set at the end of 2014 (another two years), but no one will guarantee that date won't be set back again and the war extended.
Haven't our soldiers and their families suffered enough? How many more deaths and physical & psychological injuries must occur before we say enough and end this madness? Are we going to make this a truly endless war?
Obama actually did not promise to end the war in Afghanistan during the 2008 campaign. He never even mentioned an end to that misbegorren conflict. He promised to end the war in Iraq, which Bush had already done, and to move those resources to "the good war" in Afghanistan, and more than once he said that he would make that war bigger. He never said a word about ending it.
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