The hellish costs of war.

• Author: Hightower, Jim
• Position: VOX POPULIST - Major General Harold Greene

War is hell. Major General Harold Greene could certainly tell you all about that--but he's dead. On August 5, Greene became the highest-ranking American soldier to die in our unfathomable, thirteen-year war in Afghanistan, joining 2,339 other service members who've paid the ultimate price for being sent by warmongering politicians into that fight for ... for what exactly?

No President or Congressional leader has offered a coherent or credible answer, much less a compelling one, for why our troops have been made to sacrifice so much for so little for so long. Indeed, how bitterly ironic that the general was not killed by the Taliban or Al Qaeda, whom we're supposedly fighting, but by one of the Afghan government's own soldiers, whom we're supposedly helping.

Another blunt reminder of the hellish absurdity of our political leaders' quick-draw approach to war can be seen in the economic cost. The Congressional Research Service revealed a few years ago that the Afghanistan and Iraq wars had already cost U.S. taxpayers more than $1 trillion--not counting the future health care bill for veterans or the enormous interest payments that'll be made on that debt, which will multiply the amount three- or fourfold.

And the meter is still running. The Pentagon, White House, and Congress intend to keep a contingent of soldiers and trainers in both countries for the foreseeable future, plus providing more billions of our tax dollars to both countries for building their infrastructure and education systems. Meanwhile, $1 trillion and so many American lives later, Iraq is falling apart, and Afghanistan is mired in corruption and facing a Taliban takeover.

Think what $1 trillion could've done for America's poor and middle class, for our infrastructure, and for our educational system, if invested here in the past decade.

And--ready or not--here we go again. Our military has been hurled back into the chaos of Iraq. Apparently, "Mission...