WARS OF THE MILITARY & WARS OF THE MIND

World War II may have been America's "good war," but it was also its costliest. Right now, though, our two Middle East wars are on track to come in a strong second.

Research scholars Joseph Stiglitz and Linda Bilmes project the total cost will range between $ 7-8 trillion, nearly twice this year's federal budget. This in addition to the supreme irony that the US military has become the world's greatest single consumer of oil, as it fights to protect the oil deposits it is spending.

But over the generations, students of the mind have arrived to challenge the costs identified by students of the military. They have found psychological costs spiraling beyond any possible estimation. Clearly there are other wars costing other budgets to which we can not so easily put a number.

Consider for example the research at Baylor University.They have projected the costs of the nation's wars-of-the-mind. The millions who suffer mental illness...the trillions of dollars in medical care and facilities....the inestimable losses from damaged lives and families.

In one recent study there, they questioned 3500 couples to analyze what were "the deeper issues operating under the surface of their arguments." Not surprisingly, they learned how words in arguments are codes for feelings churning beneath the argument. Unexpressed or repressed feelings whose consequences often lead to divorces, broken homes, the shattered lives of children, and the generational continuation of these psychic damages for years to come.

As one reporter put it: "Wars are tragedies with a price tag in dollars and lives, but they eventually have an end. Mental wars are tragedies that just keep repeating the tragedies down through the years from one life to another."

The next time a peace marcher parades by, maybe they'll agree that wars of the mind cost even more than those of the military. Lets ban them both...