The Iraq invasion is an investment, but I'm not talking about oil. Our troops spent six relatively easy weeks in combat there fifteen years ago and from this we saw the Oklahoma City bombing and the D.C. sniper case.
What sort of effects are we going to see when a quarter million men and women who've spent a very long time engaged in house to house fighting return home?
We've lost about 2,500 troops in Iraq. Our soldiers have much better body armor than they did in Vietnam and medevac is fairly easily accomplished given our (relative) control of the country, so I'm told that we've got a 7:1 wounded to killed ratio. So we're really talking maybe 20,000 killed and wounded.
But those are just the physical wounds. There is always a potential for serious psychological harm for soldiers in combat. I think the duration matters, the nature of the fighting, and the attitudes faced upon returning home.
Combat troop efficiency rises for about the first two weeks, then plateaus, and ninety days is the outer limit. We're putting people over there into high alert and frequent combat for a year or more straight. Not good.
Most of what is happening in Iraq ... isn't. Sure, there is some fighting, but mostly those guys are waiting for the next nasty thing to fall on them. Constant vigilance, little opportunity to take initiate against the enemy, and most of it is in urban areas. Not good.
Attitudes on returning home? This is the one bright spot in the equation. Whatever happens to our soldiers over there I don't believe they're going to be blamed for bad decisions made by a few U.S. politicians.
There were four murders of wives at Fort Bragg by soldiers returning from Afghanistan. We're going to see more of that. There are going to be many divorces as men and women return with strange burdens they'll never completely shed. Given the ongoing sneak attacks with explosives I look for occasional events like that here as returning soldiers have trouble seperating Chattanooga from Karbala.
Our current administration is, of course, adding insult on top of the injuries. There is a woman in my Wednesday yoga class who does 'quality assurance' for the Veteran's Hospital here in Omaha. I'm told this is a code for 'cutting every corner they can'.
Maybe psych services for Afghanistan and Iraq vets should be a no bid contract for Halliburton ... we could always hope some of the swag might trickle down into actual services.