However one judges the US waging of the wars in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Pakistan, at the very least, we should know what each of those wars has been like.  We should know who has been killed, what kinds of wounds have been suffered, and what kinds of economic costs and consequences have been incurred. Those costs have been consistently minimized, misunderstood, or hidden from public view.

While there are those who would argue that the role of the citizenry should be simple assent once the nation is at war, a wide variety of goals – from enhanced democracy to enhanced human security – require more specific knowledge about these and any wars. In addition, the US public should know what the decision to go to war in each of these cases has wrought.  Because information facilitates democratic deliberation and effective decision-making, the U.S. should increase transparency by:

• recording all deaths and injuries in the war zones; this includes the deaths of US troops (not just those medically evacuated) and contractors (whether U.S. citizens or not), civilians in the war zones, enemy combatants, and prisoners.  Records should be completed promptly and systematically and made public on a regular basis; 
• continuing to track the war-related deaths (e.g. suicide) and injuries of troops after deployment, whether or not they receive VA treatment; 
• fully disclosing the number and nature of detentions at home and abroad and in a timely way; 
• making Pentagon accounting for wars and base expenditures more transparent by setting up separate appropriations for war funding, as the Congressional Research Service recommends; 
• including in the accounting of war costs the additions to the "base" Pentagon and Veterans Administration expenditures that are clearly war related, such as the New GI bill, death gratuities and insurance; 
• fully describing and auditing the use of private contractors; 
• regularly disclosing the Pentagon's fuel consumption for each war zone and supporting operations, including the transportation of fuel; 
• making public the National Intelligence Program budget that is directly related to war (e.g. the CIA drone surveillance and strike program).

Transparency and accountability for war budgets and costs must include not only what has been spent, but the amounts that the U.S. will be obliged to spend by virtue of the fact of going to war. The U.S. should make comprehensive estimates of the budgetary costs of these wars by 

• including the future obligations to veterans; 
• refraining from funding the wars through special or emergency appropriations; 
• including the estimated costs of paying the interest on war borrowing and the estimated difference in cost between borrowing for war versus raising taxes or selling war bonds; 
• estimating the costs of war that are passed on to state and local governments and to private individuals; 
• estimating the macroeconomic effects of war spending on the U.S. economy.

Finally, the research reported here is only a beginning: an independent non-partisan commission should make a thorough assessment of the human, financial, and social costs of the wars of the last decade for the people of Afghanistan, Iraq, Pakistan, the United States and other countries directly affected by the wars.