The Human Cost

Faces Behind the Numbers

Every statistic on this page represents a real person. Here are a few of them.

Veteran Suicide: The War After the War

Since 2001, more veterans have died by suicide than in all post-9/11 combat operations combined. Every day, approximately 17 American veterans take their own lives — 6,261 per year. Among post-9/11 veterans, the suicide rate is 1.5× higher than for non-veterans of the same age. For those aged 18-34, it's 2.5× the non-veteran rate.

The epidemic has multiple causes: PTSD from combat trauma, traumatic brain injury from IED blasts, moral injury from participating in operations that violated their conscience, the difficulty of transitioning to civilian life, chronic pain, substance abuse, and — critically — an overwhelmed VA system with wait times that can stretch months for mental health appointments.

The VA mental health budget is a fraction of what the Pentagon spends on a single aircraft carrier ($13 billion). We fund the weapons that create trauma but not the treatment for the trauma they create.

→ Veteran Suicide — full data and analysis

PTSD and Traumatic Brain Injury

The Recruiting Pipeline: Targeting the Vulnerable

The human cost of war begins before the first shot is fired — in the recruiting offices that disproportionately target poor, rural, and minority communities:

The Family Crisis: When War Comes Home

The human cost extends beyond the service member to their families:

Over 1 million children had a parent deploy to Iraq or Afghanistan. These children experienced higher rates of anxiety, depression, behavioral problems, and academic difficulties. Many grew up with a parent who came home different — withdrawn, explosive, emotionally absent, or addicted. Some grew up with a parent who didn't come home at all. The war didn't just cost 7,000 American lives — it damaged millions of American families.

Veteran Homelessness

On any given night, over 37,000 veterans are homeless in America. They served their country and now sleep under bridges, in shelters, or in their cars. The VA estimates 1.4 million veterans are “at risk” of homelessness.

Contributing factors form a devastating chain: PTSD and TBI make civilian employment difficult. Substance abuse develops as self-medication. Relationships collapse. Financial stability disappears. The VA system is overwhelmed. And the society that sent them to war looks away.

The Civilian Death Ratio: War's Dirty Secret

The most disturbing trend in modern warfare: civilians make up an ever-larger share of casualties. In World War I, roughly 40% of deaths were civilian. By the time of the drone wars, that number approaches 90%.

This trend reflects the shift from battlefield warfare to urban warfare, aerial bombing, counterinsurgency operations, and drone strikes. Modern war isn't fought between armies on fields — it's fought in cities, neighborhoods, and markets where civilians live and work. The people who pay the highest price are the people who had no say in starting the war.

Depleted Uranium: The Gift That Keeps Giving

The US military has used depleted uranium (DU) munitions extensively in Iraq (1991 and 2003) and the Balkans. DU is 1.7× denser than lead, making it devastatingly effective at penetrating armor. It also leaves behind radioactive dust that contaminates soil and water for billions of years.

The consequences in Fallujah, Iraq, are staggering. Studies by researchers at the University of Michigan and peer-reviewed medical journals have found:

Parents in Fallujah stopped asking “is it a boy or a girl?” and started asking “is it normal?” Doctors reported babies born with two heads, missing eyes, missing limbs, and organs outside their bodies. The Pentagon denies a connection between DU use and these health effects, despite peer-reviewed studies establishing a link.

DU contamination doesn't just affect Iraq. US veterans who handled DU munitions report higher rates of cancer and birth defects in their children. A 2001 study of Gulf War veterans found uranium in their urine 10 years after exposure. The VA has been slow to recognize DU-related conditions.

The Invisible Wounded: Injuries That Don't Make Headlines

Modern military medicine saves lives that would have been lost in every previous war. The survival rate for combat wounds in Iraq and Afghanistan exceeded 90% — compared to 76% in Vietnam. But survival comes at a cost: the number of severely wounded is dramatically higher.

The nature of IED warfare means injuries are often catastrophic: multiple limb loss, severe burns, genital injuries, traumatic brain injury, and blast-related lung damage. Many veterans require lifetime care — prosthetics, surgeries, rehabilitation, mental health treatment — that will continue for decades.

The Walter Reed Army Medical Center scandal of 2007 revealed the conditions wounded warriors faced: moldy walls, cockroaches, rats, bureaucratic nightmares, and months of waiting for treatment. The scandal led to the firing of the hospital commander and the Secretary of the Army — but the underlying problem of underfunded, overwhelmed veteran care persists.

Children: The Most Innocent Victims

Children bear a disproportionate burden in every war. They are killed by airstrikes. They step on unexploded ordnance. They are orphaned, displaced, and recruited as child soldiers. They suffer from malnutrition when food supply chains are destroyed. And they carry psychological scars that shape the rest of their lives.

The Opioid Connection: From Combat Injury to Addiction

The veteran opioid crisis is one of the least-discussed consequences of the War on Terror. Veterans with chronic pain from combat injuries were prescribed opioids at alarming rates:

The military sent them to war. The war gave them chronic pain. The VA gave them opioids. The opioids gave them addiction. And the system that created each step washes its hands of the next.

The Cost of Caring (or Not Caring)

The Costs of War Project at Brown University estimates that long-term veteran healthcare and disability costs from the War on Terror will exceed $2.2 trillion. And the peak hasn't arrived yet — Vietnam-era VA costs peaked 40 years after that war ended. The true cost of Iraq and Afghanistan won't be known until the 2060s.

This is the cost America doesn't budget for. When Congress votes for war, it votes for the missiles and the deployment. It doesn't vote for the 50 years of VA care, prosthetics, mental health treatment, disability payments, and suicide prevention that follow. The human cost is an IOU written in blood, payable for generations.

37 Million Displaced: The Invisible Victims

The War on Terror has displaced an estimated 37 million people — more than any conflict since World War II. These are people who lost everything: homes, livelihoods, communities, schools, hospitals. They fled with what they could carry and many will never return.

These displaced people don't appear in casualty counts. Because they survived, they're not counted in the official toll. But they've lost everything — and many live in refugee camps with no prospect of returning home, no legal status, no path forward. They are the invisible victims of wars fought in their name.

Camp Lejeune: 30 Years of Poisoned Water

From the 1950s through the 1980s, up to 1 million Marines, their families, and civilian employees at Camp Lejeune, North Carolina were exposed to drinking water contaminated with industrial solvents, benzene, trichloroethylene (TCE), and other toxic chemicals — at levels240 to 3,400 times above safe limits.

The contamination came from leaking underground storage tanks, industrial spills, and an off-base dry cleaning company. The Marine Corps knew about the contamination as early as 1982 — and continued using the water supply until 1987. Internal documents show that Marine Corps officials were aware of the contamination and failed to act for years.

Health effects include: adult leukemia, aplastic anemia, bladder cancer, kidney cancer, liver cancer, multiple myeloma, non-Hodgkin lymphoma, Parkinson's disease, and birth defects in children conceived or born during the contamination period. Babies born at Camp Lejeune had elevated rates of spina bifida, cardiac defects, and childhood cancers.

The Camp Lejeune Justice Act of 2022 finally allowed victims to file lawsuits against the government — four decades after the contamination was discovered. As of 2025, over200,000 claims have been filed. Many of the original victims have already died.

Gulf War Syndrome: 35 Years of Denial

Of the 700,000 US troops deployed to the 1991 Gulf War, an estimated 250,000 — more than one in three — developed a cluster of chronic, unexplained symptoms collectively known as “Gulf War Illness”: chronic fatigue, joint pain, cognitive problems, gastrointestinal issues, skin rashes, and neurological symptoms.

For decades, the VA dismissed Gulf War Illness as psychosomatic — “stress” or “unexplained illness.” A landmark 2008 federal report by the Research Advisory Committee on Gulf War Veterans' Illnesses finally concluded that the illness wasreal and likely caused by exposure to pyridostigmine bromide (anti-nerve-agent pills troops were ordered to take) and pesticides used extensively during the war. The report stated that “the extensive body of scientific research now available consistently indicates that Gulf War illness is a real condition.”

Other suspected causes include exposure to depleted uranium, oil well fire smoke, multiple vaccinations given simultaneously, and low-level exposure to sarin nerve gas from the destruction of Iraqi munitions at Khamisiyah. Thirty-five years later, the exact mechanism remains debated — but the suffering of 250,000 veterans is undeniable.

Military Sexual Trauma

Military Sexual Trauma (MST) — sexual assault or repeated sexual harassment during military service — is a widespread crisis the military has failed to address for decades:

For decades, sexual assault cases in the military were handled within the chain of command — meaning victims had to report assaults to the same commanders who controlled their careers, their evaluations, and their daily lives. Retaliation was rampant: a 2019 DOD survey found that 64% of women who reported sexual assault experienced retaliation.

Senator Kirsten Gillibrand fought for years to remove sexual assault prosecution from the chain of command. The reform finally passed in 2021 as part of the NDAA, establishing independent military prosecutors for sexual assault cases. But the cultural problem remains: the military's hierarchical structure, its emphasis on unit cohesion over individual rights, and the power imbalance inherent in the command structure create conditions where sexual violence thrives and accountability fails.

MST is a leading cause of PTSD among women veterans and a significant factor in veteran suicide. Women veterans die by suicide at 2.2 times the rate of civilian women. For many, the trauma they carry has nothing to do with combat — and everything to do with what their own comrades and commanders did to them.

American War Dead by Conflict

Every war produces a bill in human lives.

Note: War on Terror combat deaths appear low compared to earlier wars because modern military medicine saves lives that would have been lost in earlier eras. However, the number of wounded is proportionally much higher (over 52,000), and veteran suicides (~130,000 since 2001) dwarf combat deaths. The nature of casualties has changed — fewer die on the battlefield, more die slowly at home.

Sources & Further Reading