The Cost

Airstrike on Baghdad, March 21st, 2003. _{(Credit: Goran Tomasevic/Reuters)}

Originally written March 19th, 2023

What is the cost of lies?

Two F-117 Nighthawks: $42.6 million a piece
Dropping four GBU-27 Paveway III bombs at $55,600 a piece
Coupled with forty Tomahawk cruise missiles at $1.7 million a piece
Totaled up, that’s 
$85,200,000 plus $222,400 plus $68,000,000 which equals
$153,422,400.
Plus, one dead Iraqi.
Not mentioning the fourteen injured, including four men, nine women and one child.
And that’s just the first strike.
On a small compound in Dora, to the south of Baghdad.
That Saddam hadn’t even visited since 1995.
We were just eight years too late. 
Oh, we also didn’t factor in all the ships used to launch the cruise missiles.
That drives the cost up more.

How much for the Iraqi families torn apart,
By errant bombs, miscalculated missiles, and stray gunfire?
How high should their bill to us be
For shooting their livelihoods and scorching their villages?
Can we cut them a check or are we forcing them to use our contractors?

What’s the number on Americans who lost limbs, 
Forever unable to live the way most of us take for granted?
How do you compensate families for their sons and daughters, 
Coming home in caskets draped with flags?
Are we charging them for the bullets of the gunfire salutes?
Can’t the American taxpayer foot the bill for family gathering afterwards?

What’s the ballpark estimate on mental anguish for those who chose to fight
Under the mistaken belief they were protecting their country,
Only to find themselves in a bloodbath with no exit in sight?

What’s the value on the 315,190 Iraqi civilians killed?
The 7,057 Americans killed in action?
The 30,177 service members lost to suicide after the fact?
Can you put a value on that many lives,
their price paid in blood
for a war which nobody can even say why we were fighting?