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.
Hey Boo- you weren’t distracted. There is simply Too much out there and as soon as the focus shifts to money, the eyes cloud up and the yawns appear. The only time “finance” gets play is when it is an attack on the persons feel it in their own pocket books.
The goopers have successfully blinded the lemmings to the impact the war costs are having by shifting the focus away from that aspectof this insanity.And they are being assisted by the dems. and the media. It is that simple. Every point that you are making hits the bullseye.
When the shit hits the fan, the goopers will have set up the cause as a Democratic failure. There is no precedent for this.
And the dems are assisting this horror. The only shot left is Media. Once again, if the media were to begin a serious coverage of the Facts of this war, there would be a ground swell of sceaming protesters. This is where the battle resides.
The methodology neede was shown to us by the durability of the Move-On ad! Just look at the legs this story has had! The question needed to be asked is- Why? And the tactic has to be repeated until the media responds. Your closing graph is correctexcept that the folks are getting only one set of facts and that set of facts is a set of totally distorted facts. Thats where the focus has to be.
I think the GOP is being set up for a greater fall than even the stock market, or the value of the dollar. The stars are aligning against them in every way.
Great post. Same thoughts crossed my mind when I read Pelosi’s response to Obey. We will pay for this war out of reduced Social Security benefits or raging inflation or both. Americans may think they live on an island, but the rest of the world knows better. My guess is that they are waiting for a Democratic administration to put the fiscal ship back in order; if if doesn’t, the recent dollar drop will seem like a blip. And forget about interest rates. The first thing that will happen is an inflation premium tacked on to the current rate that lift real rates into the stratosphere. The last time we had a great inflation markets were slow to react, so the high real rates (actual interest minus the rate of inflation) occurred as we were coming off the inflation in the mid to late ’80s. This time round the rates will rise before inflation takes hold.
This fiscal madness cannot continue without a crash. Greenspan sees it coming, Bloomberg sees it coming, and international finance sees it coming. The only people who don’t see it coming are the American public. God help us. Nobody else is going to.
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.
If this war actually mattered:
The fact that these things weren’t done was more than enough proof to me that the war was a sideshow – an event for the cameras to make GWB a “war president” and to throw money at war profiteers like Haliburton and Blackwater.
And these things would have happened regardless of the leadership in charge. If we really thought we were in an “existential war” (the only wars that actually “matter”), people would have lined up to volunteer for the war without the exhortations of the President or Congress. If the top 10% earners really thought their country was going to collapse (and take their money with it) they’d be begging Congress to take some extra money to spend on defending their interests.
But we all know that Iraq is no direct threat to us, so this war is a war of choice. And wars of choice never matter enough to volunteer to fight them or to spend your own money on them. Even the pro-warbloggers know this is true in their hearts – if they really thought this war was so important they’d be lining up for training.
The fact that we’re letting these criminals raid our children’s future for their petty dickswinging should really piss off more people than it seems to, though.
Dow Jones is at an all-time high…
401(k)’s are the most insidious inventions every known to political man. You, too, can be a player. Not.
The disconnect that people have right now to the precariousness of the economy is absolutely mind blowing. There really is an optimism by a lot of people because of what they see in their 401K statements. Hey, I like making money in my 401K too, but if I wasn’t still a number of years from retirement age I would be absolutely scared shitless. Hell, I’m scared shitless anyway. When I read headlines like “Stock Market Soars To Records As Worries Ease Over Credit Crunch” it makes me really wonder what kind of financial bizarro world we are all living in.
Worries easing over the credit crunch??? Where in god’s name did they get that??? WTF!!!!
Unfortunately, our governing elites are wealthy ($165,200/year is a pretty schweet deal) and not only don’t want to increase taxes on themselves to pay for the war, most see themselves as pretty well set up for the future. When you’re rich like that there are places to hide your money.
So wtf do they care about ordinary americans. I’d bet that most of them couldn’t even tell you the price of a gallon of milk.
I dunno, with DC metro real estate prices, a lot of them are eating tuna fish. Or taking bribes.
Ken Burn’s “The War” has some shortcomings, but what it does illustrate is the contrast between the all-out national commitment in WWII and the lack of it today. Days and weeks can pass at my job and social circle where no one mentions Iraq in conversation (unless I bring it up), it’s as far away as people want it to be.
I was watching The War (sponsorship of The War was brought to you by General Motors) when I wrote this piece.
Greed and selfishness finally took a backseat in Michigan. This is like a flat tax that will affect the poor, but it is a beginning to the end of having your cake and eating it too, i.e., via Republican deficits.
Michigan raises income tax and tax on some services
| 9-30-07 | Detroit Free Press
SHUTDOWN ENDS: Senate approves tax on services
LANSING – The shutdown of state government was halted early this morning when the Senate voted to expand the 6% sales tax to various services, the final major piece of a plan to erase a $1.75-billion deficit and balance a 2007-08 budget.
Democrat Lt. Gov. John Cherry cast the deciding vote for a 20-19 tally, the minimum needed for passage of an historic budget agreement that stopped what would have been a chaotic and embarrassing interruption of state services.
Three of 21 Republicans voted for the sales tax change, and only one of 17 Democrats opposed it.
“This budget agreement is the right solution for Michigan,” Gov. Jennifer Granholm said in a news release after the vote. “We prevented massive cuts to public education, health care and public safety while also making extensive government reforms and passing new revenue. With the state back on solid financial footing, we can turn our focus to the critical task of jumpstarting our economy and creating new jobs.”
if incompetent idiots like the Bush gang had been in office on Pearl Harbor Day.