I’ve probably been distracted all these many years by the fact that the war in Iraq was launched on the back of a series of transparent lies. Worse than that, it never made strategic sense for us. Forget about the fact that Iraq had nothing to do with 9/11 and about the lost opportunity we had to rebuild Afghanistan into something people might actually admire. Occupying Iraq was bound to bankrupt this country…and it has. And more than just financially. But I want to talk about finance. And I want to talk about our national character.
Nothing offends me more about this war than the disconnect between the stakes, as the Republicans define them, and their absolute refusal to rally the country around the task by asking all elements of society to contribute.
We have all-volunteer armed forces. If the stakes in Iraq are really so great and we don’t have enough troops…then bloody well draft the troops we need. And if we don’t have the money in the budget to pay for the war? Don’t goddamn borrow the money form China, Japan, and Saudi Arabia. Make us pay for it and make us pay for it right now. That’s exactly what House Appropriations Chairman David Obey (D-WI) suggested today.
But how do the Republicans respond to such talk?
Republicans fell over themselves to mock the proposal, with White House Press Secretary Dana Perino leading the charge.
“We’ve always known that Democrats seem to revert to type and they are willing to raise taxes on just about anything,” Perino said. “There’s no need to increase taxes.”
That’s a jawdropper. The war in Iraq is not ‘just about anything’. According to the president and his echo chamber, we are in a fight for our very way of life and for our survival. The war is being lost. And there is ‘no need to increase taxes’?
Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) said that Democrats want to look for yet another opportunity to raise taxes.
“I think there’ll be significant resistance to those kinds of ideas here in the United States Senate,” McConnell added.
Republicans said that paying for the war should happen through the supplemental since the current continuing resolution (CR) expires in Nov. 16. “We’ve covered troop funding for Afghanistan and Iraq through the CR until Nov. 16, but beyond that there is a great need,” McConnell said.
McConnell says that ‘paying for the war should happen through the supplemental.’ That means that we should borrow all the money to pay for the war. In a subscription only Wall Street Journal piece on the crumbling of fiscal conservatism in the GOP, we read:
New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg, the billionaire former Democrat who left the Republican Party three months ago, complained Sunday at Britain’s Conservative Party conference that conservative politicians in the U.S. were guilty of “lunacy” for running up deficits for future taxpayers to pay.
Here’s Greenspan:
In an interview with The Wall Street Journal, he said: “The Republican Party, which ruled the House, the Senate and the presidency, I no longer recognize.”
The United States has lost a war. But we lost it without drafting a single soldier or raising a single dollar to pay for the war. Not one dime for this war was budgeted and every dime was borrowed with interest. We will be paying for this war for generations. Think of the staggering Veteran’s benefits and medical costs.
And, yet, the moment the Republicans squawk about the Dems raising taxes…we fold.
The House Democratic leadership quickly started pouring cold water on [Rep. Obey’s] idea [to pay for the war with taxes], with House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-Md.) stressing that “this is not a Democratic proposal.”
About two hours later, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) plunged in the knife, issuing a release stating, “Just as I have opposed the war from the outset, I am opposed to a draft and I am opposed to a war surtax.”…
…Reid would not say whether the Senate would act on the war tax plan, saying it was a House plan that did not appear to have Pelosi’s support.
There is no quicker way to end this war than to make its supporters pay for it. Obey gets that. He also gets this:
Obey’s announcement on the Iraq wartime supplemental spending bill may have a more lasting impact on the Iraq debate. He announced there isn’t going to be a supplemental unless Bush changes course. As chairman of the Appropriations Committee, he controls when and whether to try to send a supplemental to the floor.
“I have absolutely no intention of reporting out of committee anytime in this session of Congress any such request that simply serves to continue the status quo,” Obey told reporters. “We desperately need to force the White House into new thinking.”
Obey wants a war spending bill to end U.S. involvement in combat operations by January 2009, allow more rest time for troops between deployments and start a diplomatic surge.
Message to Reid and Pelosi: follow this man and watch his back.
And, as for our national character, what if this war really did matter? What if our way of life really did rely on the outcome? Is this the best we could do? We’re in a massive decline as a nation. We have no self-confidence, we have no cohesion, and we definitely have no leadership.
