Who Pays the Price of War?

Just finished a new book about Civil War Medicine  titled Bleeding Blue and Gray: Civil War Surgery and the Evolution of American Medicine by Dr. Ira M. Rutkow. You can read my  review of the book here.
The Civil War provides an interesting backdrop to our current engagement in Iraq. Not that there are similarities in the geopolitics of Iraq and the War Between the States aka American Civil War aka The War of Succession aka The Lost Cause. Whatever you call it an incomprehensible number of soldiers were killed or hurt—in round numbers 600,000 dead and 600,000 wounded. During the period 1861-65 the medical establishment was not prepared to offer much help besides bleeding, purging and sloppily performed surgery. They didn’t understand disease or sanitation. There were no medical breakthroughs. The big achievement of the Civil War was the development of big hospitals. Very little was done to alleviate suffering. Horror stories predominated.
Iraq casualties get better treatment and rapid evacuation. And, yet, the horror stories accumulate like a pile of amputated limbs as soldiers return to broken lives. In this age the quality of after care seems to be the problem with veterans having difficulty with follow on care. The outrage is saved for offensive movies like The Wedding Crashers (quite a funny film, by the way) wherein the comic heroes carry Purple Hearts to wedding receptions to flash in hopes that sympathetic barkeeps at cash bars won’t charge them for drinks. An outraged congressman is authoring legislation to make  this behavior illegal. Indignation is a wonderful thing, but the congressman might be better off getting indignant about finding some more bucks for the Veteran’s Administration. It’s the dead and wounded and their families who pay the price.