Iraq costs too much in blood, money

April 28, 2006 12:50 am

RICHMOND--It's hard to believe that the war in Iraq has been going on for just over three years; to me it feels like an eternity. I say that because three of my sons have been involved in the war. I am sure people who have known me would say that I have aged quite a bit since March 2003.

I'm not alone. To some degree, the Iraq war has touched---and continues to touch---every Virginian. We keep hearing about the costs of the war in terms of "blood and treasury." The phrase seems so cold. It allows many of us to minimize the effects of the war, and even disassociate ourselves from it. Sometimes we need to stop and experience the full effect.

Let's be crass and start with the money. The cost of the Iraq war thus far has been approximately $229 billion. Virginia's share equals roughly $6.7 billion. For all the money spent, we have nothing to be proud of: thousands of Americans and Iraqis dead or injured; continued daily violence in that country in the form of suicide bombings (of note, there had never been one in Iraq before the invasion), assassinations, kidnappings, and the enmity and distrust of much of the world community.

Now let's look at what we could have gotten with the money instead of American soldiers in a hostile land. Remember, this is just Virginia's portion of the bill. To be fair, since the money is all borrowed from our children (and their children), let's imagine we had spent it on them. According to the National Priorities Project, we could have done much for ensuring a future for our children: we could have insured more than 4 million children for health care for one year, enrolled 883,000 children in Head Start, hired 115,500 additional teachers, offered 323,050 students full four-year scholarships at a public college, or built 60,000 housing units.

Any of those alternatives sound better for our children than sending their fathers, mothers, brothers, sisters, uncles, and aunts off to a war zone. There has to be a better return on our investment than what we are getting in Iraq. The only experiences our children are getting are the dread and grief that accompanies having a loved one in a distant, angry land.

This leads us to the "blood" cost of the war. Even with the enormous "treasury" cost, we can hope to pay off the debt eventually. We can't say the same for "blood" costs. They are permanent.

Over 2,200 American soldiers have died in Iraq. I really hate having to word it that way because I wish it were a finite number. But this number continues to grow at the rate of two or three soldiers a day. Every day, two or three American families get that dreaded knock on the door, with news that their loved one is gone.

In Virginia, 71 families have heard that knock, and the toll continues. Each month two more Virginia families face the terrible news and must have the sudden hopeless thought that if they don't open the door, then their son or daughter won't really be dead.

For 15 months I lived with the dread of that knock. It was maddening and all consuming. In April 2004, my wife and I had dinner with two other Richmond couples with sons in Iraq. All three mothers were having difficulty coping. My wife, Judy, had been hospitalized because of stress and had her anti-depressant dosage increased. She also began taking a sleeping aid and seeing a counselor. One of the other mothers took medication to control panic attacks brought on each time she heard the doorbell. The third didn't leave her bed for two weeks during the April 2004 insurgency.

Anxiety over Iraq doesn't just affect the mothers. One of the men, an ex-Marine, postponed his retirement plans. Continuing to work enabled him to keep his mind off Iraq. The other lost his longtime love of hunting. There was something unsettling about the sport at a time when his son was being hunted in Iraq.

It is time to bring the troops home. True, no one knows what Iraq will be like if we leave, but we do know what will happen if we stay: continued violence, with two or three more families hearing that knock on their door everyday.

LARRY SYVERSON is an environmental engineer with the Virginia Department of Environmental Quality and the father of three sons deployed in Iraq.