The Not-So-Small Price of Iraq

[babylonsister]

http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/100807T.shtml

The Not-So-Small Price of Iraq
By Dante Zappala
The Philadelphia Daily News
Monday 08 October 2007

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But the real cost of the Iraq war is yet to be defined. The impact of the first Gulf War, a four-day ground war, is revealing. Of those veterans, more than one out of every four has been granted a service-connected disability.

What does this portend for the almost million and a half vets of this war, many of whom have served multiple deployments in a conflict approaching its five- year anniversary?

Still, Congress will remain partly unable but mostly unwilling to take a stand. They have succumbed to the false pressure that they must "support our troops" by keeping the money flowing.

The question is: What are we funding? Are we really benefiting our military by leaving them under-equipped and stretched thin? What is their mission amidst a civil war fought, in part, with weapons we flooded into the country? Does continuing this morass not somehow benefit al Qaeda?

Politicians will gloss over these questions and the brunt of the unending carnage will be absorbed by people like my nephew. Some pundits, meanwhile, cheer from the sidelines and ask these children to accept their tragedy as historically insignificant. How awful will we, as a nation, become to maintain this war?

For four and a half years, the reported deaths of soldiers, Marines, airmen, sailors, Coast Guardsmen and contractors has been heartbreakingly painful. The magnitude of their sacrifice has been a crucial part of the debate. Politically savvy war supporters want to change that.

They will try to keep the blinders on with their morally defunct contextualization. They want the focus out front, even as their policies and ideologies leaves broken bodies and broken lives in the rear-view mirror.

Dante Zappala is a member of Military Families Speak Out (www.mfso.org).