Earlier this month, President Trump sounded war alarms against North Korea. Two days ago he announced he wouldn’t pull U.S. troops from Afghanistan and even hinted a surge of troops to continue America's longest war.
Before Donald Trump and Congress take the nation on a path to another decade of war, they should think on the costs while reflecting upon the debt still owed to our veterans that our government has (very obviously) not been tending to.
Funding for a new and existing war would cost billions to the taxpayer. Thousands more Soldiers, Marines, Sailors, Airmen and Airwomen would be deployed consequently creating a new generation of veterans who would need treatment for a myriad of physical and mental injuries.
After undergoing a procedure to remove a cancerous tumor in his ribs, a friend in Nevada who served in Iraq recently told me that it was worse dealing with the Veteran Affairs (VA) than being in the battle field.
While this was just one anecdote, extended wait times at VA hospitals have been broadly felt by service members, rightly provoking public outrage. An inspector general’s report last year found that veterans around the country waited 100 days on average for an initial doctor’s appointment. The report also found that 1,700 veterans were intentionally kept off of patient rolls, and hundreds more died waiting for treatment.
Moreover, the problem of homeless veterans is still an enduring problem across the nation. Thousands of veterans are living on the streets in our cities. Four to five service members, including those returning from troop drawdowns, land on streets each day.
Then there is the tragedy that the United States is deporting it’s own veterans. Like all veterans, these foreign born service members have sacrificed much for this country, and they deserve the nation’s full support.
Finally, the burden of service and war weighs heavily on the mental health of veterans, as many suffered with problems related to their service. According to the Center for Military Health Policy Research, 20 percent of the vets who served in either Iraq or Afghanistan suffer from either major depression or post-traumatic stress disorder.
War is often the product of impulsive politics and it has its cost. Estimates put total deaths in a new Korean War at about a million dead – and that’s if the war does not go nuclear.
Sun Tzu — author of the Art of War — held “the supreme art of war is to subdue the enemy without fighting,” a principle our political leaders should adopt more often.
Ultimately, it’s our veterans, our children, mothers, fathers, brothers and sisters that bear the brunt of an unnecessary war. Let's make sure that our elected officials and commander-in-chief know that a fundamental responsibility is to care for our veterans.