by James Glaser
August 16, 2005

The latest CNN/Gallup poll shows that 57% of Americans now say that the War in Iraq has made the US "less safe from terrorism." Many Americans want the war in Iraq over with, and the troops to come home. Most believe that will be the end of it, our troops come home, and the war is over, but that is far from the truth.

For many Americans this war will never end. Those who lost a loved one will grieve for years to come and those thousands wounded will be paying the price of combat until they die.

There is also the sad fact that thousands of returning troops will need help with psychological problems do to the horrors they witnessed.

You can give a person the finest artificial leg in the world, but over the years that leg will have to be changed out. Sores develop on the stump left from amputation, there can be problems with circulation, sometimes more of the limb must be amputated, and there is the constant physical therapy.

Blind vets will need years of adjustment to life in the dark, and those with brain injuries will need constant care. Most Americans do not realize that some veterans from every war, become wards of Veterans Administration Hospitals. They never really do come home, and their war is never really over.

Of course we all realize that there are two sides to every war and for this one to end, it must end for the Iraqi people too. If other wars are an example, we know that thousands and thousands of innocent Iraqis will die in the years to come, even with all American troops gone.

The Vietnam War ended 30 years ago, and there is still an estimated 350,000 tons of unexploded bombs that did not detonate, in the ground there. Clear Path International, a group working on helping those injured by left over weapons, reports that over 40,000 Vietnamese have been killed since that war was declared over in 1975. Tens of thousands more have been maimed by the weapons left over from that conflict.

It isn't just Vietnam that has this problem. It is every nation that has had a war on their soil in the last hundred years. Every year we still hear of some bomb from WW II that is dug up during construction in Europe. In many countries, large sections have become a no-man's land, due to unexploded ordinance or landmines buried in the soil. Farmers and children are those most injured.

John Gershman, writing for the Global Policy Forum, reports, "When the Bush administration totals up the cost of the Iraq War it had best be prepared to tack on billions more to clean up the toxic residue of how this country wages war." Specifically it is the widespread use of cluster weapons and Depleted Uranium.

It is reported that of the 90 million cluster munitions dropped on Laos, (1964 to 73) 30% failed to explode. 5,700 Laotians have been killed since 1973, by unexploded ordinance. Detonation rates are higher today, but still there are tens of thousands of unexploded weapons in Iraq and Afghanistan too. In Afghanistan there are a reported 14,000 unexploded cluster bombs that have started taking their toll already.

Bringing the troops home is just the first step in ending any war, but we have years ahead of us, and billions more to spend, if we want to end this War in Iraq.

When we make plans for starting a war, these "after war" costs are seldom talked about, but they are a fact, and their cost will run into the billions if we follow through, and try and help the country we have attacked. We can walk away, like we have in South East Asia, and not look back. Tens of thousands of innocent people have died there, because we walked away. We have no true idea of what our spraying of millions of gallons of Agent Orange has done to the people of Vietnam, or what that spraying will do to their future generations.

In that same vain, we have no true idea of what our use of Depleted Uranium is going to do the future generations of the people in Afghanistan, Iraq, and the Balkans, where we used this weapon extensively.

Wars never end with the signing of a treaty or the pulling of the troops. All wars continue to take their toll for years and now with new and more powerful weapons like Depleted Uranium, that toll may go on for generations.

Starting a war is always much easier, than ending one.