Op-Ed: The Wars That America Forgot About

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October 18, 2010, 1:01 pm

Op-Ed: The Wars That America Forgot About

By THE NEW YORK TIMES On The Times’s Op-Ed page, Tom Brokaw, a special correspondent for NBC News, asks why the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are not featuring more prominently in the midterm election campaigns. An excerpt:
The United States is now in its ninth year of fighting in Afghanistan and Iraq, the longest wars in American history. Almost 5,000 men and women have been killed. More than 30,000 have been wounded, some so gravely they’re returning home to become, effectively, wards of their families and communities.
In those nine years, the United States has spent more than $1 trillion on combat operations and other parts of the war effort, including foreign aid, reconstruction projects, embassy costs and veterans’ health care. And the end is not in sight. So why aren’t the wars and their human and economic consequences front and center in this campaign, right up there with jobs and taxes?
It follows a Times/CBS News poll last week, which concluded: For Midterm Voters, War Is Off the Radar.