As with unemployment, the true cost of war is far higher than the official statistics would lead you to believe.

The problem with statistics is that the headlines rarely tell us what is actually being counted. In modern wars like those in Iraq and Afghanistan the official death toll for American troops is just a tiny fraction of the numbers that died in wars earlier in the 20th century.

To a large degree this can be attributed to advances in trauma medicine that bring soldiers that previously would have died on the battlefield home with substantial long-term after-effects that are both physical and mental. Even those that manage to escape physical injuries more often than not suffer from post-traumatic stress.

Many of those veterans that do make it home nonetheless eventually become casualties of war but these are never counted in the official death toll because they didn't succumb to an IED or enemy bullet. Officially only 1,854 Americans have died in the Afghan war over the past decade http://icasualties.org/oef/ and less than 4,500 have died in Iraq http://icasualties.org/Iraq/. However, an estimated 6,500 veterans commit suicide back here in the US every year.

How many Americans would continue to support these wars if the death toll were reported as 65,000-70,000 instead of one tenth of that many?

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A Veteran’s Death, the Nation’s Shame
For returning soldiers, home has been deadlier than the battlefield. Some say the V.A. isn’t doing enough to help.

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