The war, what's the real cost.

Money vs. Soldiers

This war has caused costs to the united states in more than one way. The two articles I have found discuss two different costs of the war. The first article is titled “War at Any Cost? The Total Economic Costs of the War
Beyond the Federal Budget” and the second: "Battle Company Is Out There". As you can tell the two articles cover two very different aspects of the current war. The two authors have two different views and concerns: one being that the war has costs of only capital and nothing else. While the other goes through the actual perspective of the solider who is fighting in the war and what happens to them after.

In this first article discussing the economics of the war. The writer brings up numbers including the amount of debt that the country is going through and how much we have already paid for the war. Throwing in numbers and descriptions such as: "The national debt has increased by some $2.5 trillion since the beginning of the war, and of this, almost $1 trillion is due directly to the war itself. But the meter is still ticking. By 2017, we estimate that the national debt will have increased, just because of the war, by some $2 trillion." and When, of course, we add together all of these costs of the war, we are talking about budgetary impacts that are not just $12 billion a month (or $16 billion if we include Afghanistan), but greater than that by at least 40%. Our full cost of the war—our $3 trillion dollar tally—is twice the direct operational budget. We should remember that every month we stay in Iraq and Afghanistan is really costing us some $22 billion; every year, more than $250 billion. In another two years, the tally will exceed another half trillion."

He continues to describe the micro- economic and macro-economic affects that the war has had on the United States since the beginning such as the money that we spend on soldiers and what has happened to the market with oil. He calculates how much each troop is worth and how much we spend on a solider throughout the war. The focus of the article is concerned more towards numbers and the very big picture.

The second article titled as: Battle company is out there, describes from the start what the soldiers are going through. And the occurrences in the war today. Discussing the civilian causalities that are occurring and the difficulties that have occurred since the war had begun. The author continues to describe different events that have occurred during the war and what soldiers go through each day. The article continues following up with soldiers lives after the war. A section of the article was titled: "Serious P.T.S.D" telling a story about an occurrence that happened one night with a soldier who had Post Traumatic Stress Disorder from the last tour he returned from. Kearney, the captain of the regiment said: “Last tour, if you didn’t give him information, he’d burn down your house. He killed so many people. He’s checked out.”

The two articles show two very different perspectives of the war, with two different goals.