“Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and not clothed. This world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children.” – Dwight D. Eisenhower
I grew up in a generation whose culture taught us that being anti-war was weak and unpatriotic. Then my generation went to war. We went to Iraq and Afghanistan, and our brothers began to come home in body bags. There is nothing weak about that. The reality of war is hard. It is painful, and the costs are high. Every American, every Minnesotan, should look at those costs and ask:
Was it worth it?
Many have argued that there have been irreparable costs to our civil liberties. You might argue that the costs to our International standing are increasing with every bomb dropped on a foreign people. But, let’s take a practical look at real costs that each of us has already paid.
You get the bill.
Imagine you are sitting on your couch one night watching the Twins Game and your doorbell rings. Senators Franken and Klobachar have shown up at your door. Amazed you let them in, but your amazement quickly turns when they hand you an invoice for $15,942! That is your share of the financial cost of the Iraq and Afghanistan Wars.
That’s no trick of large numbers, it is the real cost of the Iraq and Afghanistan Wars for the average Minnesota household. How many of us could write that check today?
What did you get for that bill? We now own the largest and most expensive Embassy in the world. We own a massive prison in Iraq’s Diyala Province that sits empty and has never housed a single prisoner. For just those two buildings, less than 1% of the total amount spent, the people of MN could have put 2 additional teachers in every Elementary school in the state for the last 10 years. Was it worth it?
Our brothers.
An estimated 200,000 people have been killed in U.S. wars since 2003. The horror of that number is difficult to grasp for most of us.
It is not abstract for 108 Minnesota families whose fathers, brothers, or sons came home in a coffin. Brave, honorable…but gone. Gone forever.
When our brave men and women do come home, they don’t always return well. A 2008 study from the National Defense Research Institute found that an average of 18.5% of soldiers returning from Iraq and Afghanistan suffered from Post-Traumatic Stress Syndrome. If that average holds true for Minnesota, as many as 37,000 of our neighbors suffer with PTSD.
Was the cost of just one of their lives worth it? What did we win? Would it be worth it to you if it was your brother, your father, your son?
Answers?
Was it worth it? I don’t propose that is an answer. It is a question. It is not weak. It is a hard and difficult question. If we have hope for the future, it is a question that we have to ask.
Jeff Vinson
LPMN Member
Concerned about the expansion of government control and the erosion of individual liberty? Please consider joining and becoming active with the Libertarian Party of Minnesota. Libertarians support liberty on all issues, all the time! Libertarianism is a philosophical and political movement to promote personal freedom, strong civil liberties, a genuinely free marketplace, and peace.