The True Costs Of The Iraq And Afghanistan Wars

[gateley]

Oxford Analytica, 09.01.10, 06:00 AM EDT

The U.S. has lost more than money.

The absence of a conscript army in the United States somewhat isolates the mainstream of society from military life and war experiences; the ongoing military campaigns in Iraq or Afghanistan, and their casualties, do not directly affect most residents. Absent the extraordinarily unlikely return of conscription, this will not change. The human, fiscal and policy costs of extended overseas deployments still have a significant impact on society at large--but remain largely outside mainstream political debate.

Absence of peace. With the exception of the post-1989 decade, the United States has been at war, or in a state of advanced preparation for war, almost continuously since 1941. The hot wars of the Second World War, Korea, Vietnam, and the Iraq and Afghanistan conflicts have taken a toll on U.S. military personnel, while the Cold War civil mobilization gave millions of civilians a profound awareness of the imminent danger of war.

Naturally, wars have a major political impact--they can make or break presidencies, or a party's grip on power. However, they also have subtler, but equally important, social, economic and cultural effects.

Sociological impact. The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan exact a heavy price in terms of casualties. Yet these costs are not evenly distributed. In what scholars Douglas Kriner of Boston University and Francis Shen of Vanderbilt University call the "casualty gap," trend data since the 1940s indicate that casualties suffered from overseas conflicts fall disproportionately on poorer communities.

The income-related casualty gap has increased over time and is notably higher for the Iraq war than for Vietnam. Communities with low levels of education are 20% more likely to endure casualties in Iraq than high-education communities; in Vietnam, the difference was just 5%. Conversely, racial differences between communities have not played a significant role in the casualty gap since the early years of the Vietnam War.


More at >>>> http://www.forbes.com/2010/08/31/costs-war-military-iraq-afghanistan-business-oxford.html?partner=daily_newsletter


EDIT -- I screwed it up.