The Cost of Wartime

On Meet the Press this morning a multitude of senators and representatives were talking about the expected decision of deploying more troops in Afghanistan.

In class we talked about the loss of human rights for civilians during wartime. What struck me about the talk of the war had nothing to do with the rights of civilians, but the rights of the soldiers. We assume that soldiers are human tools who have signed their life away for a country that they love.

In fact, there is a disproportionate number of minorities and impoverished Americans serving in the military. This is because those without a choice in their lives see recruiting tables, hear of a group that offers steady jobs and college tuitions, they see a great way to escape their life. It seems ironic that these people who have been disenfranchised by this country are the ones fighting for it.

The soldiers, of course, was not the topic of discussion. The one subject that continued to come up was the cost of each new soldier. The figure that was thrown around was that each soldier came with a price tag of about one million dollar, including the needed tanks guns and of course the salaries.

The pundits argued back and forth about how raising taxes on the upper class to fund the deployment would cost these recession-wrought families so much. Now there is the epitome of irony!