The cost of war

If you have been able to stomach listening to the politicians running for nominations, you have surely heard all kinds of proposals for fighting ISIS/ISIL. This column includes information to weigh with those proposals.

In any war, there will be a loss of some equipment, vehicles and munitions. According to the website militaryeducation.org, here are some replacement costs. The cost of equipping one soldier for combat is $17,500. The replacement cost of one cruise missile is $830,000. An Abrams Main Battle Tank will cost $6,210,000 to replace. The loss of one F-22 Raptor is $150,000,000.

War costs continue after the fighting. The Congressional Budget Office forecast the long-term cost of medical treatment for our troops will be $64 billion by 2020. A Harvard study put that cost at $109.98 billion to $126.70 billion. There is also the non-estimated human cost for the families in terms of troops lost. Of course, these estimated costs do not include the figures if an enemy turns out to be harder to kill than expected. Remember the administration's prewar cost estimates of the invasion of Iraq? So, keeping in mind our current national debt, who or how will any proposed conflict be paid for? Should taxes be raised to pay war's financial costs?

If we decide it is necessary to fight to defend our nation, the costs will become secondary to the fight. Any potential attacker should be aware that we will unleash all of our military power to defeat them. Still, after the war, those costs will still be there. Any politician who tells you how easy the fight will be or how short the war knows very little history. When listening to politicians' proposals about military action, ask yourself what are all the possible consequences of those actions? Remember, also, that it is not the politicians who will fight our wars.

Jack Dragoni attended Boston College and served in the U.S. Army in Berlin and Vietnam. He lives in Chaffee, Missouri.