March 13, 2007 - We have counted the dead coming home in ones and tens. Three thousand one hundred and ninety three have died so far. That is how we have counted the human cost of war. But that is not the whole sum of the price American soldiers have paid to purchase chaos in Iraq. Nearly 24,000 Americans have been wounded in this war. We don’t talk about them. It is the dead to whom we look to symbolize this war. We don’t count hospital beds in the same way that we count coffins. Coffins are buried in the ground; out of sight – out of mind. Occupants of hospital beads must be dealt with. Missing limbs must be replaced by prosthetics. Shattered brains must be retrained to manage shattered bodies. Shattered lives must be rebuilt day by day; month by month; year by year.

Pat Robertson is a man quite fond of sharing his private conversations with us – especially those that he has with God or President Bush. He tells us of a conversation that he had with the President before the invasion of Iraq in March 2003. It was in Nashville the Christian broadcaster said. “And I warned him about this war. I had deep misgivings about this war, deep misgivings. And I was trying to say, ‘Mr. President, you had better prepare the American people for casualties.’ ” According to Robertson the President responded, “Oh, no, we’re not going to have any casualties.”

That may be one reason why the U.S. military establishment was unprepared to meet the needs of shattered men and women coming home from the battlefront. From the top down short sighted planning has characterized the management of this war. No one planned for the casualties coming home but home they came; first in a trickle and then a stream and now a flood. Nobody planned to provide continuing care the traumatic brain injury cases; to the amputees and paraplegics; to the men and women whose wounds don’t show but whose lives are shattered none the less. We owe them better than crumbling quarters in dilapidated wards. We owe them more than medical retirement and a fast shuffle off to the equally dilapidated VA. We owe them the chance to be again all that they can be.

In prior wars many of the soldiers who occupy building 18 at Walter Reed Hospital would not have made it to the battalion aid station, much less home. Military medicine has made it possible for front line soldiers to survive injuries that in time past would have inevitably led to a trip home in a flag draped coffin. We are in debt to these men and women for their courage, for their valor, and for their sacrifice. We owe them the rest of their lives.