To Soldiers, the Cost of War is the Highest

In his monumental treatise, Human Action, Ludwig von Mises wrote that soldiers always bear a disproportionate cost of any war. They suffer through the war itself and, if they survive, they come home and pay higher taxes for the rest of their lives to pay off their share of the national debt that was run up to finance the war. But an April 28 article (“The Lasting Wounds of War” by Karl Vick) shockingly highlights another cost inposed on surviving soldiers. It describes young American soldiers in the neocon war with “their bandaged heads grossly swollen by trauma.” A “worst-looking case” was of “an Army gunner with coarse stitches holding his scalp together and a bolt protruding from the top of his head.”

Army doctors are “reeling from a stream of young soldiers with wounds so devastating that they probably would have been fatal in any previous war.” “The neurosurgeons at the 31st Combat Support Hospital measure the damage in the number of skulls they remove to get to the injured brain inside, a procedure known as a craniotomy.”

Lt. Colonel Robert Carroll is quoted as saying that about 50 percent of he wounded solders who are sent home after treatment will have “no prospect of regaining consciousness.”

In the name of equality and fairness, neocons and like-minded “liberals” like Charles Rangel are now calling for conscription so that “sacrifices” such as these can be more evenly distributed. And then there’s William Kristol on TV constantly calling for more troops, more troops, in Iraq.

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