Trends in American warfare: more treasure, less blood

NYT chart by way of WPR Media Roundup.

Charts speak for themselves.  Warfare is less burdensome to the US population and economy, even as the per soldier price tag grows, along with overall cost relative to the size of theater (WWII was BIG!).

But that trend is about as surprising as the one concerning higher insurance totals for natural disasters. Simply put, we live more technologized lives and value life more completely now than in the past--and we're willing to pay for those biases.

But I will stick to an old premise of mine:  if we had outsourced the complete rebuild of Iraq to the Chinese, it would have been far cheap and worked far better.

But we don't own that level of realism yet--at least not regarding the postwar.

Comments

[Ted O'Connor]

We had one great war that was fought almost exclusively by non-professionals. The American civil war. Until Vietnam, we relied on Selective Service, the "Draft", to provide our fighting men. The Draft was part of every young man's life. You could not get a job if you were classified as 1A, you couldn't get a girl if you were classified as 4F. We put off getting married, some of us put off college, some of us dodged. I got my draft notice in boot camp. My dad mailed it to me. The whole 3rd platoon got a good laugh over that.

We learned important things in military service. We saw stupidity, waste, arrogance, and learned that there is one place in America where a cast system still thrives.

We were better citizens for it. Better voters.

We have a professional army now. I don't like it. We give up our treasure without a fight. We don't give up our sons without asking "why?" Too few Americans have been fighting since 2001. Some men have seen six tours of combat. I remember how common a sight it was to see a taxi pull up in front of a house and a young man in his uniform would get out. Home at last. These men told us what was going on. What it was like at Iwo Jima, Normandy, Inchon, Chu Chi.

We let a few men do our fighting now. That is not good.

[Gerry Mauer]

Very telling charts. And we wonder why the wars aren't gaining more attention within the populace or the general press and apathy and misunderstanding of the sacrifices are common. SecDef is still saying the rest of the country is not at war nine years after 9/11. The economic pain is a blip on the GDP radar and a very small proportion of our population is carrying the vast majority of the load.