{"id":58331,"date":"2026-03-23T07:04:25","date_gmt":"2026-03-23T15:04:25","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/?p=58331"},"modified":"2026-03-23T07:04:25","modified_gmt":"2026-03-23T15:04:25","slug":"the-human-costs-of-war","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/2026\/03\/23\/the-human-costs-of-war\/","title":{"rendered":"The Human Costs of War"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><i>Reprinted from <a href=\"https:\/\/bracingviews.substack.com\/\">Bracing Views<\/a> with the author\u2019s permission.<\/i><\/p>\n<p>Command Chief Master Sergeant (ret.) Dennis Fritz went on \u201cJudging Freedom\u201d yesterday and spoke with force and eloquence about the human costs of war.<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"YouTube video player\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/Dmq13EFyS-w?si=PIZ_dmK_bMgvZ0wc\" width=\"560\" height=\"315\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen=\"allowfullscreen\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>Every American should watch and heed this video. Especially the last five minutes or so.<\/p>\n<p>Who wants to console the wounded veteran who\u2019s lost his legs and an arm, or who\u2019s lost his sight, or the family of a veteran who\u2019s lost their daughter, or a 19-year-old wife who must decide to allow her young husband to die because his brain no longer functions? That is the true face of war, the sheer bloody awfulness of it all, and we must not forget it.<\/p>\n<p>Far too often, flag-draped caskets simply become patriotic props, even, unimaginably, for fundraising. This is sociopathy taken to the extreme.<\/p>\n<p>War must always be a last resort because of the enormity of its costs. Yet America has leaders who boast of war and killing as if it\u2019s noble, as if it\u2019s wonderful and wondrous.<\/p>\n<p>There is nothing whatsoever wonderful and wondrous about dead Iranian schoolgirls in Minab, obliterated by a U.S. Tomahawk cruise missile on February 28. Roughly 165 to 175 people died in that strike \u2013 most were schoolgirls between 7 and 12 years old.<\/p>\n<p>There are heartless ghouls among us \u2013 we must not take our lead from them.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Reprinted from Bracing Views with the author\u2019s permission. Command Chief Master Sergeant (ret.) Dennis Fritz went on \u201cJudging Freedom\u201d yesterday and spoke with force and eloquence about the human costs of war. Every American should watch and heed this video. Especially the last five minutes or so. Who wants to console the wounded veteran who\u2019s [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":290,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"none","_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"coauthors":[758],"class_list":["post-58331","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"meta_box":{"disable_donate_message":"0","custom_donate_message":"","subtitle":"CCMS Dennis Fritz Speaks with Passion and Precision"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/58331","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/290"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=58331"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/58331\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":58337,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/58331\/revisions\/58337"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=58331"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=58331"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=58331"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=58331"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}