The Terrible Cost of War

"The Costs of War", is the focus of the peace activist coalition in which I take part, here in the western Chicago suburbs. It's dedicated members are everyday citizens, just like you and I, who each take the struggles of our national life and routine seriously, and who also struggle together recognizing the tragic consequences of our actions, personally and as a nation, as we all relate, in one degree or another, to the ongoing military dilemma in both Afghanistan and Iraq. And the consequences of which we address  do carry a tremendously heavy burden for us all, individually and as a country.

Too often when we hear of the costs of doing war we, without even fully engaging our minds, focus almost exclusively upon those costs only through the lenses of the financial burdens. However, the real costs extend well beyond this redirection of our country's resources.

In an article in today's New York Times ( The Way We Treat Our Troops - NYTimes.com ), columnist Bob Herbert brings to light an even more foreboding cost of our engagement in these decade-long wars, so far from our own home turf. His reporting, in fact, brings home to our soil the devastating aftermath of trauma that our troops must continually fight against, long after leaving the fields of combat. And "this' fight is one which is raging right here, now, within our very neighborhoods, all across the country.

We as a country cannot survive much longer under this present cost of doing war. The battles and dying may be thousands of miles from the roads we walk each day. But those roads of war are now leading back to our front doors, and we must now squarely face and deal with that which we all have created.

The "Cost of War" is becoming more monumental for us all - personally and collectively - with each passing day, and we must come to grips with what we are allowing, and bring an end to all these collateral costs which are destroying us as a nation, and as a moral society.