The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have cost most Americans nothing

WHEN SERGEANT LIAM DWYER of Connecticut trod on a booby-trapped bomb in southern Afghanistan the explosion could be heard 13 miles away. It blew off his left leg, much of his right one, left his left arm “hanging by threads” and smashed his right arm. “I’m bleeding out and about to die,” he recalls thinking before he blacked out. His field-medic turned away to work on lesser casualties. But another marine sergeant clapped tourniquets on what remained of Mr Dwyer and hauled him to a helicopter. A week later, after round-the-clock treatment by American and British medics in Afghanistan, Germany and on many aircraft, he awoke at Walter Reed National Military Medical Centre. His parents were by his bed. Thinking he was still on the battlefield, Mr Dwyer lunged forwards to try to protect them.

Eight years later he was back at Walter Reed in Bethesda, Maryland—and life was great, he told your columnist. He had some gripes, to be sure: including incessant operations (he has had “well over 60”), the impossibility of holding down a regular job because of his treatment and a terror of undoing years of painful therapy by slipping in the shower. On the other hand he was a big fan of his new prosthetic leg, which had been embedded in his femur: he would “recommend osseointegration to anyone,” he said. Indeed he was “looking forward to getting his right leg amputated” too, maybe a decade from now.