To the Editor:
In his 1796 Farewell Address, President George Washington counseled Americans to pursue peace and commerce while limiting political entanglements – especially “permanent alliances” with foreign nations. Until 1917, our elected representatives attempted to abide by this advice.
President Woodrow Wilson broke with the long-held restraint Washington urged by committing our nation to World War I, during which 116,516 U.S. military personnel lost their lives. Since 1918, approximately 620,000 to 650,000 American military personnel have died in foreign wars.
In the aftermath of 9/11, over 940,000 people died due to direct war violence in Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria, Yemen, and Pakistan, according to estimates by Brown University’s Costs of War Project. More than 432,000 of those deaths were civilians. When indirect deaths caused by disease, starvation, and infrastructure destruction are included, the figure rises to an estimated 4.5 to 4.7 million.
These wars also carry an enormous financial price tag. The U.S. has spent $8 trillion on post-9/11 wars, including at least $2.2 trillion in obligations to care for veterans over the coming decades.
Dwight D. Eisenhower, another wise president and a five-star general in the U.S. Army, warned that every dollar spent on weapons and war is ultimately taken from “those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed.” A society that sacrifices its people’s labor, innovation, and future to sustain perpetual war is hollowing itself out from within.
The elected representatives who darken the halls of power today have neither read George Washington nor heeded Eisenhower’s wisdom. They follow Wilsonian liberal internationalism, which casts the U.S. as a global policeman obligated to pursue interventionist policies. But history has completely discredited this foreign policy.
The statistics of death and destruction from perpetual war reaffirm my conviction that the American people must learn the lessons of history – and do it better and faster. The 2026 midterms are upon us. We must demand that all candidates tell us where they stand on the humanitarian costs of war, so we can make informed decisions and hold them accountable.
-Stu Lindberg, Cavendish