Eight Years Later, Still No Appetite to Share the Burdens of War

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Wednesday, November 25, 2009 at 12:24 pm

Here’s an interesting response from Sen. Charles Grassley (Iowa), senior Republican on the Finance Committee, when asked by a reporter this morning whether Congress intends to pay for the wars it’s launched, or continue to borrow the money and pile onto federal deficits.

Defending America is a number one responsibility and money’s not the first consideration. The first consideration is winning….

But we have always, one way or the other, raised the money to defend America, and in this case to defend America from a different kind of war, the war on terrorism. And it will be done.

He’s right on one account. You fight a war because you must, and the budget concerns should be immaterial. But the original question was, effectively, “Why aren’t lawmakers willing to ask Americans to pay for the costs of protecting the homeland, either through tax hikes or spending cuts elsewhere in the government?”

Grassley ducked it, and his argument that Congress has “always … raised the money to defend America” ignores the truth that, since 2001, the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have been funded primarily by borrowing from abroad — a particularly curious whitewash in the context of Republican criticisms that health care reform will break the federal budget.

The costs of that failure to ask for shared sacrifice have been tangible. When George W. Bush was elected to the White House in 2000, the nation’s debt was $5.7 trillion. Eight years later — after several rounds of tax cuts and two unfunded wars — the number had jumped to $10.0 trillion.

It’s worth noting that most of the Republicans now criticizing the costs of health care reform, Grassley included, also supported those mid-war tax cuts.

Comments

11 Comments

The Right wants to charge the cost of the war « Later On
Pingback posted November 25, 2009 @ 3:07 pm

[...] Republicans—where are they? Where were they for the 8 years of George W. Bush? Still missing. Mike Lillis in the Washington Independent: Here’s an interesting response from Sen. Charles Grassley (Iowa), senior Republican on the [...]


monkey99
Comment posted November 25, 2009 @ 3:30 pm

So, the American people are asked to die abroad, AND at home.

Nevermind the monetary cost……Those dumbass working class and middle class fools will keep on paying.

I hope Iowa gets it's act together and sends this clown back into obscurity.


Chris
Comment posted November 25, 2009 @ 6:58 pm

Defending America is a number one responsibility and money’s not the first consideration. The first consideration is winning….

And after saying that an aide has to bend down and wipe the drool off Grassley's shoes…….what a Repug loser that fool is !


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Comment posted November 26, 2009 @ 12:22 am

Chinese and Russians are so happy to see Americans still fight useless wars around the world, stop the meaningless battles, save energy and money and lives for the coming competitions


arjayt
Comment posted November 28, 2009 @ 8:13 pm

Mike Lillis, Washington Independent: “He’s right on one account. You fight a war because you must, and the budget concerns should be immaterial. But the original question was, effectively, “Why aren’t lawmakers willing to ask Americans to pay for the costs of protecting the homeland, either through tax hikes or spending cuts elsewhere in the government?”

America needs to work out its own interests in such a process and this hasn’t always been easy in the absence of a direct physical threat to its people, such as during the World War. It might even be an American mistake to describe the AfPak actions as a singular war rather than a series of ‘world security actions’. These very legitimate security actions have been several wars with the first one in 2002 against Al-Queda reasonably successful, the second one of establishing the idea of UN and NATO human rights working better than anything in the last 4000 years, with a third security action being the establishment of local infrastructures with 400,000 people that can create a region, note entire region, in which crimes against humanity can’t become the dominant mechanism. It is a serious perceptional mistake to define a region (Afghanistan, Kashmir, Baluchistan, East Iran, and Waziristan) with no ‘territorial integrity’ whatever (the requirement of national peaceful sovereignty over a region) and with a large percentage of its people determined to carry out crimes against humanity (Criaghum) for their own economic and ideological compulsions as a zone of “war”. Traditional war means the annihilation of the opposition force, including its supporting population. The process of bringing a region from the mentality of 2500 years ago to one free of Criaghum isn’t a “war”, even if the military is the principle agent of change.

The American doubt, in and out of the government, seems to be that of confusing Criaghum counter measures with war, along with not being able to see any obvious benefit to an impoverished American society from the counter measures. Of course, there is no obvious benefit to a remote sewage treatment plant, either, but watch what happens if it fails. Americans need to understand that people engaged in Criaghum or other predatory attacks on human beings (addiction, slavery, usury) must have a counterforce of Justice and Rights that sends the attackers back to their caves, preferably with bars. As for those who think Criaghum will simply go away if NATO force goes away, they need to read the definition of treason as written in the Constitution; ignoring a 6000 year old enemy, genocidal crimes against humanity, IS giving aid and comfort to any enemy of the United States and its democratic friends.

From a practical standpoint, world security actions have to be paid for and it is unfortunate that North America is the only society that has had the ability in the last 60 years to prevent Criaghum WITHOUT a territorial imperative. Those ‘justice chores’ come under general welfare and common defense in the American constitution and perhaps they should be paid for by other societies as well. The traditional idea of ‘war bonds’ goes back to the Spanish-American ‘war’ and there is no particular reason that a international bond system could not be created for prevention of Criaghum regardless of where the military agent of change is deployed. Could the world, along with North Americans, contribute 60 billion a year to prevent crimes against humanity even if the immediate return was not too visible? Suppose there was a five year bond in which the interest rate was keyed to the decrease in the number of genocide incidents from the date of issue?


makaainana
Comment posted November 29, 2009 @ 1:18 pm

The cost of the war is just ONE of the many real collateral damages that come from this illegal stupid murderous war.


makaainana
Comment posted November 29, 2009 @ 6:18 pm

The cost of the war is just ONE of the many real collateral damages that come from this illegal stupid murderous war.


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