Many media mouthpieces have talked on and on about the price of war….the dollars wasted….the lives wasted…..we hear daily about the deaths in Iraq and Afghanistan….all the wile we are still part of the war on Libya and make NO mistake…..it is a war….you may call it whatever you like….but a war by any other name….is still a WAR!
We cannot afford to educate our people or give them health care or…..well pick an issue and we are told that we can NO longer afford it…..with the exception of war….it seems we will always find the cash to fight a war….that in itself is pretty sad, IMO……
We are fighting 3 wars as I write this and more to come I am sure…….but we need to find a way to actually pay for a war and still have money for education or health care or ………. Since the wars in the present actually effect only about 10% of the population we need to tap into all this fake patriotism to find a way to pay……….
With the debt supercommittee looking to slash the deficit, some in Washington are raising an old question, notes Walter Pincus in the Washington Post: What about a tax on the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan? “These wars ought to be paid for and not put on a credit card so that our kids will have to pay for this in the future,” Democratic Rep. Jim McGovern tells him in an interview. “It’s morally wrong for members [of Congress] to call for support of our soldiers and then not ask the rest of us to pay for it.” The idea of a war tax isn’t a new one: Iraq and Afghanistan are “the first wars undertaken by US presidents since the War of 1812 that have not been financed in part by a special tax,” writes Pincus. A 10% tax surcharge next year would almost cover the year’s $116 billion in projected war costs, says an economist, who adds that such a surcharge wouldn’t affect those who pay no taxes and “would add just 1.1 percent to rates of those who do pay taxes,” Pincus writes. A “war tax surcharge won’t solve the problem, but it is a step in a historically and morally right direction.”
I say BRAVO! A Hell of a good idea……..if this becomes reality…watch how fast those so-called patriots start yelling for an end to these wars and to bring the soldiers home. Hell this might be a better anti-war proposal than re-instating the draft.