Olsen is a veteran of the Iraq War. Other veterans have been turning out for the Occupy Wall Street protests, too.

Joseph Carter is one: he’s been going to the ‘Occupy Wall Street’ protests in New York.

Both he and Olsen are also members of the group Iraq Veterans Against the War.

Some in the group have raised the idea that veterans could advise the protesters on tactics to protect themselves from projectiles or tear-gas attacks.

Anchor Lisa Mullins talks with Joseph Carter.

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Lisa Mullins: An Occupy Wall Street protestor who was earlier this week in California is still in the hospital today. Scott Olsen’s skull was fractured as protestors in Oakland clashed with police. Olsen is a veteran of the Iraq war. Other veterans have been turning out for the Occupy Wall Street protests too. Joseph Carter is one of them. He’s been going to the Occupy Wall Street protests in New York. Both he and Olsen are members of the group, Iraq Veterans Against the War, IVAW. A few in the group have raised the idea that veterans could advise the protestors on tactics to protect themselves from projectiles or tear gas attacks. Joseph Carter says that the veterans group doesn’t necessarily endorse that, but he says that there are things that protestors can learn from those with military experience and from people involved in protests in other countries.

Joseph Carter: One of the things I thought was really interesting from Egypt was that because of the rock throwing wars that had sort of broken out during the revolution there, there were folks who were wearing plastic bottles on their heads as sort of helmets, and there was a lot of really interesting images that came out of that. So yeah, if we can provide any sort of advice on that I think that most of us are willing to do so.

Mullins: Like what? I mean what kind of advice would you give?

Carter: One thing that, actually it’s funny that you brought this up. Last night I was at a solidarity rally for Oakland at Occupy Wall Street and I ran into somebody who was a Marine. And he and I were speaking about how some of his friends who are former marines had seen some of the techniques that had come out of Egypt and how to fashion homemade, homemade gas masks. And so they got really interested based on their training in the military to see how well these things work. So they took the models that they’d seen from Egypt and they fashioned their own masks, and they tested them out with tear gas themselves to see if they worked. And they turned out to work, so now they’re trying to share this information with other folks just in case folks get tear gassed.

Mullins: Joseph, you’ve been out at the Occupy Wall Street protests yourself. Do you feel as if veterans are kindred spirits with those people who are out protesting, and I wonder if you know if a lot of your members are out there?

Carter: Absolutely, I feel like veterans are very much kindred spirits with a lot of the protestors. And veterans for the most part are part of the 99%, we’re affected by the fact that our autonomy has been devastated by this recession. And you know, whenever I go onto the internet, when I check Facebook, when I check Twitter, when I check all sorts of different websites I see lots of veterans and people who are still in the military supporting this movement.

Mullins: Well, what resonates let’s say to you personally as you’re out there? What resonates with you and the message that’s widely being disseminated in the protests?

Carter: I would say what most widely resonates with me and what resonates with most veterans that I know is that right now our political system as it’s currently structured disproportionately favors money from corporations and money from people who sit really as the top 1% of this population. We’re asked to vote every four years and every six years for the senate, and it seems like every time we cast a ballot it doesn’t matter if it’s a Democrat or Republican that gets in, our voices really aren’t heard. But corporations’ voices are always heard. And I feel like for me, someone who was raised really in the concepts of freedom, and democracy and liberty, I really feel like the American people’s voices should be heard in our government.

Mullins: How old were you when you first entered the military?

Carter: I entered the military at 18.

Mullins: 18 years old and now you are 27 years old and some things have changed a lot in your life, not just because of your military service, but coming back now with many, many other veterans (certainly more people have been in active duty than when you were 18 years old), is there a perspective that you have that gives you more affinity in these protests than you might have had if you hadn’t served?

Carter: Absolutely. I feel like having served I have a much deeper emotional commitment to making sure that people here in America have the rights that are guaranteed to them under the constitution. Being that I spent five years in the military I feel a very deep commitment to the American people and to their safety. So when it comes to things like Occupy Wall Street and people are standing up and saying hey, I want more of a voice in my government, I want to get corporate money out of our government. I definitely feel like a strong affinity with those folks and I feel like I have a responsibility to stand up with them.

Mullins: Interesting you see that as a safety issue.

Carter: I feel like when it comes to the safety issue we’re talking about the fact that right now you’ve got folks who are standing up all across the country and they’re being met with a really strong police presence. And that’s not to say I am anti-police. I definitely am not. I feel like though that the various mayors of different cities and different politicians are asking that police be sent out to places like Zuccotti Park, they’re being asked to be sent out to places like Oakland, and there protestors are being hurt. And so I feel like the more numbers we have the less likely they are to use that kind of force.

Mullins: Thank you for speaking with us, Joseph Carter, a member of Iraq Veterans Against the War. Joseph served two tours of duty in Iraq. He’s also a supporter of the Occupy Wall Street movement. Thanks a lot.

Carter: Thank you.

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Read tweets about the ‘Occupy’ movement

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LISA MULLINS: The wars in Afghanistan and Iraq have caused the United States between 2.3 and 2.6 trillion dollars. That’s not counting another trillion dollars in obligations to veterans during the next 40 years. These figures come from a new research project by the Watson Institute for International Studies at Brown University. Boston University professor, Neta Crawford, co-director of the study, says it’s not surprising that the price tag of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq is higher than what has been reported.

NETA CRAWFORD: In nearly every conflict, it’s common for public officials as well as the media and the general public to underestimate both the duration, and the budgetary costs of war.

MULLINS: What was the most surprising figure, or set of figures for you?

CRAWFORD: Most surprising for me were the costs over the long run caring for veterans’ medical and disability [expenses]. The US has already spent on veterans who have come through the pipeline to go into the VA system, over 30 billion dollars. If you take that into the future, to the veterans who leave the service now, the cost will be between 600 billion and a trillion more in their medical and disability expenses over the next 30-40 years.

MULLINS: How do you get that figure?

CRAWFORD: Linda Bilmes, an economist at Harvard, did the research on that. She found two interesting things. One is that the soldiers are using medical benefits sooner than in other conflicts, and they’re using more of them. This greater draw on resources sooner, is going to drive up the costs of veteran’s care.

MULLINS: The way this was put together, I mean the numbers that you have right now for Iraq, Afghanistan, and Pakistan. Those wars’ price tag is 3.6 trillion dollars. The value of that number is what? What does that tell us?

CRAWFORD: It tells us a couple of things. First is that we’ve underestimated and not counted important costs of these wars.

MULLINS: What was the cost that we were told? How different is this from what we’re told by the government.

CRAWFORD: The Congressional Research Service has done an analysis of the cost of the war in terms of Pentagon spending. They tell us that it’s about 1.2 trillion for the last 10 years in post-9-11 war making.

MULLINS: What did you uncover in the study that previously, you would not have been able to? Is there something that you were able to access, or figure out, that you wouldn’t have had before?

CRAWFORD: What we did was put two and two together. We added things up. There’s a tendency to look at these costs and consequences in a piecemeal way, and then you don’t get a comprehensive picture of the death and the expenses. That, I think, is a contribution. In addition, I haven’t really thought of the consequences of borrowing to pay for the war. In fact, everywhere the United States has fought in the past, has been paid for at the time by increasing taxes or doing something like selling war bonds, treasury bonds. In this case, the US has borrowed most, if not all, of the money for the war. That has enormous implications down the line.

MULLINS: Until recently, the wars weren’t even put on the federal budget.

CRAWFORD: They weren’t put in the regular budget. They were supplemental and emergency appropriations, which means they don’t get as much scrutiny as they could. But there are many uncounted sort of ripple effect not just here, but also in the war zones. What I found startling was our lack of understanding of the indirect debts caused by these wars. In other words, when infrastructures are destroyed, when people can’t get to hospitals, when they don’t have safe drinking water, people die. Or they’re malnourished and are more vulnerable to disease.

MULLINS: Could you count that as a direct cost of war?

CRAWFORD: You can make a guess, and that’s all it can be because there is not enough research done on this. For example, the Geneva Secretariat did research looking at many conflicts over the world, including the current ones in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Pakistan. They found that anywhere between a ratio of 4 times more people die as an indirect effect of conflict or 15 times more. I could tell you that roughly 125,000 Iraqis were killed as a direct result of violence. But then, if I tell you that between 4 and 15 times more people were killed indirectly, that’s just an enormous range. So we didn’t include indirect death in our discussion in terms of numbers, but we wanted to talk about it in terms of cause.

MULLINS: You mean “cause” not “cost?”

CRAWFORD: Right. In terms of the consequence of using force and destroying infrastructure, that people die indirectly, no-violently, from war.

MULLINS: Same thing with military people too. There are things that happen that are not on the battlefield.

CRAWFORD: Correct. For example, when a soldier comes back and is under great stress, there is stress in their family. Those are non-quantifiable. We know that in 2003 for example, there were more suicides among soldiers than people died on the battlefield. That, you can quantify. But there’s an enormous amount of suffering that continues. In other words, the war is not over when the bullets stop flying. After a ceasefire or a withdrawal, the same thing with these indirect effects in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Pakistan, they will continue for years after the US withdraws.

MULLINS: Neta Crawford is co-author of a new study by Brown University entitled “The Costs of War.” Thank you for coming in.

CRAWFORD: Thank you very much for having me.

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MARCO WERMAN: The goings on in Afghanistan are standard fare for a news broadcast such as this one but increasingly war and other human hardships are finding a home in, of all places, children’s literature. Some argue that young readers get a raw deal from bleak books of trauma and sadness. Others think differently. One is British writer Michael Morpurgo. His new book is called, “Running Wild.” It’s about nine-year-old Will whose soldier father dies in a roadside bomb in Iraq. Will and his mother head to Indonesia to grieve in peace. They arrive just before the Indian Ocean Tsunami of 2004 does. Here Michael Morpurgo reads a passage set just before the wave strikes the coast. Will’s sitting on the back of an elephant named Oona and looking out to sea.

MICHAEL MORPURGO: The sea was so still now. It seemed almost unreal. It seemed to me as if it was breathing in, then holding its breathe for something to happen – something fearful. It made me feel suddenly anxious too which was why I kept turning around now looking for mum. I still couldn’t see her. I began to feel myself being gripped by a rising panic. I didn’t know why but all I wanted to do was to go back. I wanted to be with her. I had to be sure she was safe. That was the moment Oona stopped.

WERMAN: Will’s mother drowns in the Tsunami. Now this has not traditionally been the kind of tone you find in children’s books but the BBC’s Mark Coles reports that it’s happening more and more these days.

MARK COLES: Many children’s writers make their hero an orphan. I mean could Harry Potter have had his adventures if his mom and dad still lived? Probably not. But this kind of graphic realism based on what has actually happened to some families – father’s killed in Iraq, mothers dying in the Tsunami. Isn’t it quite hard for children to read about? Should we perhaps be offering more spiffing adventures of the sort that Enid Blyton used to write?

MORPURGO: The fact is we all know that life is full of tragedies. As I was growing up I was very protected from the world around me. It was the tradition then that you don’t tell them things until they’re ready to cope with the world. The problem is now you can’t protect children. They see every night on their televisions the world of adults and that world is full of problems, wickednesses, grief. And they see it. So how are they supposed to deal with it if they haven’t got the emotional equipment to deal with it?

COLES: Veronique Tadjo is a francophone writer from the Ivory Coast. Her latest book, “Ayanda the Little Girl Who Didn’t Want to Grow Up” also features a character whose father is killed in a war. So why?

VERONIQUE TADJO: I’m sure you’re aware of what happened Ivory Coast and the major conflict we had that almost turned into full-scale civil war. A lot of children have been traumatized by this and are still living the consequences of what happened. Okay this particular loss was due to war but it could be through AIDS for example or it could be through another disease or an accident. So we have to deal with loss all the time and we forget that children also have to deal with loss.

COLES: Both Veronique Tadjo and Michael Morpurgo write fiction based on modern-day fact. Michelle Paver is the author of a popular series of books set in the Stone Age. She thinks the distance from today’s reality helps her readers cope when she writes about violence, death, and loss.

MICHELLE PAVER: I think you can take a lot as a child particularly if it’s in a context where you think well that probably wouldn’t happen to me. The child reader will think, “Oh gosh this is disturbing but it’s 6000 years ago.” So there’s that slight sense, I hope, of safety.

COLES: But what about when the story isn’t hidden in any kind of fiction at all – when the grim reality is almost like a misery memoir? Adeline Yen Mah is a Chinese-born writer who turned her own life story of being abused and bullied by her stepmother into the bestselling children’s book, “Chinese Cinderella.” Here she reads from a passage where she watched her two-year-old sister being beaten.

ADELINE YEN MAH: Thoroughly exasperated she gave a stinging slap across her baby’s face. Little sister only cried louder. Deliberately and viciously Niang now set about beating her daughter in earnest. Her blows landed indiscriminately on little sister’s ears, cheeks, neck, and head. Everyone coward as the punishment went on and on. The grown ups avoided looking at each other while we children shrank into our seats.

COLES: Adeline’s story does have a somewhat happy ending in that although the stepmother went unpunished Adeline escaped to England and became a doctor. Still it’s difficult for an adult to read let alone a child. But Adeline said she felt compelled to write her story for children in the hope that she might reach fellow sufferers of abuse.

YEN MAH: I decided to write my story as a child and to tell them to hang in there. It makes a greater impact to know that something is true and actually happened and is not invented.

COLES: But in today’s world aren’t nice stories nice? Do happy children from happy families actually need to hear about war and death and what do they get out of reading this kind of gritty realism. Michael Morpurgo again.

MORPURGO: One of the things that books can do I think better than anything else is to teach us to empathize with other people. And if it’s a powerful and successful story you are so deeply involved with someone else’s life and if this person is going through great difficulty and great tragedy and you’re sharing it with them it’s going to effect you deeply. I don’t think it’s going to traumatize you. It’s taking you to places emotionally where you haven’t been before. This is what books can do. They can – these ridiculous words on a page – can take you emotionally to places that you’re never going to forget.

WERMAN: Author Michael Morpurgo ends that report from the BBC’s Mark Coles. You can find information on all the books Mark mentioned at The World dot org.

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LISA MULLINS: Tom Ricks is the author of The Gamble: General David Petraeus and the American Military Adventure in Iraq, 2006 to 2008.  He is now in Washington, DC.  Tom, Sahar Issa believes that if the mainly Shiite security forces, working for a mainly Shiite government in Iraq can protect the safety of the average Sunni, than that’s gonna show that Iraq is indeed able to successfully govern after an American withdrawal. For you, what is the sign of Iraq’s stability as of today? What are you looking for?

TOM RICKS: I think that indeed would be a major sign. A second sign related would be the overall behavior of Iraqi security forces, how well they treat the population when there aren’t American soldiers around watching them. And finally, and most broadly, it would be the level of violence against Iraqi civilians, no matter what direction it’s coming from, whether it’s from Belize’s Al Qaeda insurgents, or Iraqi security forces.

LISA MULLINS: And is that going to tell you how able the government of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki is to govern? Or is that telling you something else about the preparedness of the security forces?

TOM RICKS: Preparedness has never been the problem for the security forces, they’ve always been well equipped, they’ve had gradually better training. The problem has always been motivation. What is gonna be motivating these guys? And I worry sometimes when I see all of these Iraqis celebrating. It looks to us like, oh, they’re celebrating in Iraq that is now beyond occupation. I worry that in fact what they’re doing is celebrating, hey, we won, my team won, and my part of Iraq now dominates the rest of the country. If that’s so, then what you may be seeing is simply prelude to another round of Civil War.

LISA MULLINS: How bad, though, do things have to get? I mean, if you’re worried about things devolving into Civil War, how bad do things have to get before American troops are brought back on the scene, since they’re waiting on the sidelines now?

TOM RICKS: I’m not sure they really will be brought back on the scene. I think Americans are really sick of Iraq, they wanna get out. They feel like they’ve given Iraq a chance to move forward, and it’s up to them to take it.

LISA MULLINS: But isn’t that why they’re still there?

TOM RICKS: Yes, right now Americans are still there to try to keep the lid on the violence, and also to try to protect the Iraqi government as it grows. The question though is, if things do fall apart slowly, which is to say over the rest of this year and into next year. By the end of next year it’ll be too late to really have American forces intervene, they’ll be gone.

LISA MULLINS: I don’t know if you would have a different answer for this next year, we’ll try you out and see. But as of now, how would you say the United States has transformed Iraq? And how has Iraq, and the US involvement in it transformed the US?

TOM RICKS: Iraq has changed the US. And actually, you took me back when you asked that question. I remember somebody saying to me years ago, you think the Americans are gonna change Iraq, what the Americans are gonna find out is how much the Iraq war changes them. We have been changed as a country. We are now involved fighting on the ground in the Middle East, and I think we’re stuck on the ground in the Middle East for many, many years to come. This is by no means the end of the American War in Iraq. It is by no means the end of Americans fighting in Iraq. We’re gonna see, I expect a pretty long hot and bloody summer there. And it worries me because I think Afghanistan also is gonna have a long hot summer. That’s why I think Americans are gonna be surprised by how much war news they have to consume over the next three months.

LISA MULLINS: Tom Ricks’ books include Fiasco: The American Military Adventure in Iraq 2003 to 2006. Thank you very much Tom.

TOM RICKS: You’re welcome.

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