I saw him again over the weekend. He was picking up litter at Chevy Chase Center, several plastic shopping bags full of debris tied to his belt, one hand holding still another bag, the other hand picking up more trash from the sidewalk.
I hadn’t seen him in years, though when we moved into our house in Chevy Chase in 1972, I’d observe him walking up the street at the side of our house, picking up refuse.
When I asked who he was, someone said he was a veteran from the war in Vietnam who hadn’t recovered: harmless, even useful you could say. A very handsome guy — his skin leathered from the sun — slightly older than I. No evidence of physical trauma, just psychological. He lived somewhere in the neighborhood with his parents.
Today, he’s got to be at least 70, which I’m pushing myself, but I’m at the top of my career. I didn’t go to Vietnam because when I got my draft notice in 1962, I refused to fight and joined the Peace Corps. But the vet who still picks up litter in Chevy Chase probably didn’t have that option. The Peace Corps was started in 1961; a year later, we were escalating the troops in Vietnam.
Still, I’ve thought about him down through the years — more frequently in the past until last weekend. He’s my double, my unlucky shadow. His parents must be long dead (as are mine), or they’d be in their late 90s, unable to take care of him. My guess is when they died, he had to find another place to live, while I’m the lucky one sitting in a house worth a small fortune.
Increasingly, we’re beginning to see shell-shocked vets from the war in Iraq, even though the administration has tried to keep their images out of the media. But, still, every once in a while during one of the evening newscasts, there’s a story about a soldier who’s returned: terribly maimed, often with more than one prosthetic device, learning to cope with the horrors of the war. These men and women have frequently had their bodies repaired in ways that would have been impossible in earlier wars. Little is said of their psychological state, though a recent news story said that vets from earlier wars are increasingly reporting post-traumatic stress disorde — triggered by images of the current war. Déjà vu. It’s taken some of them years to recover from their disorder; now they’re thrown back into it again.
More than 2,500 American soldiers have died in the war in Iraq; more than l8,000 have been wounded. How many of these so badly that they will have to be hospitalized for the rest of their lives? What will be the costs of taking care of the vets of the Iraq war for the next 80 years? Yes, some of them will live for another eight decades. I’m not just talking about those physically wounded, those 10,000-plus soldiers, but the much larger group who will suffer psychologically for the rest of their lives. (And their families who have to deal with this every day.)
Will some of the Iraq vets be picking up trash until almost the end of this century? What will the economic costs of the Iraq war be until the last vet dies sometime around the year 2085? Why have Americans failed to demand answers to these questions?
Before we invaded Iraq, I sent letters to the editor to a number of newspapers, arguing that one reason not to invade the country was that we couldn’t afford the war. It would break the bank. In my letter, I naively estimated the costs at $200 billion. No newspaper would publish my concerns. They must have assumed I was a crackpot. Recently, calculations about the long-term economic costs of the war are beginning to be estimated by a few brave economists. The figures mentioned run between $1 trillion and $2 trillion. My assumption is that it’s the higher figure, once those shell-shocked vets who will live for another eight decades are included in these estimates.
The human costs are incalculable. The economic costs are likely to bankrupt us, which is exactly what Osama bin Laden wanted.
Even if we capture or kill Osama, isn’t it accurate to say he has already won the war?
Why will no one ask the president for an accounting of the long-term economic costs of our blind rush into Iraq?
As we enter the era of post-traumatic economics, do we still have to act as lemmings?
Charles R. Larson is chair of the Department of Literature at American University.
