- BIG NEWS:
- Russia
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- European Union
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- Israel
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- Afghanistan
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Now that President Obama has decided to send 30,000 more troops to Afghanistan the question of how to pay for this increased level of operations has arisen. In fact the question of how to pay for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan should have been raised shortly after the attacks of 9-11 when the Bush administration decided to overthrow the regimes in both of those countries.
Throughout our history whenever this nation became involved in a significant conflict, its leaders conscripted men to ensure that its forces had enough people to wage the war successfully and raised taxes to insure that the cost of the wars would not be passed on to future generations and that the American people, as well as the men and women in uniform, would have to sacrifice to achieve the objectives of the war.
In fact at the height of the war in Vietnam, President Lyndon Johnson balanced the budget by raising taxes and cutting some government programs. Harry Truman did the same during the Korean War. And, in real dollars in both of those wars, defense spending was not as high as it is today.
But in conducting what the Bush administration labeled the war on terror, which has involved sending some two million men and women into combat in Iraq and Afghanistan, this country has done neither. As a result the men and women in our armed services, especially the ground forces, have had to serve multiple tours in the war zones without sufficient time at home to recover from the strains of combat and some 200,000 volunteers have had their terms of enlistment extended involuntarily.
Moreover, while about 5,000 service personnel have been killed and another 50,000 have suffered physical wounds, another 400,000 have developed mental problems. Moreover, to get enough volunteers to fight these endless wars, the Army has had to lower its standards and increase its baseline pay and benefits substantially. Finally, suicide rates, divorce, and spousal abuse among the veterans returning from multiple combat tours have skyrocketed.
The direct costs of funding these conflicts now totals about $1 trillion while the indirect costs will probably amount to $5 trillion when one adds in veterans benefits, long-term care of the physically and mentally wounded, and interest on the national debt. President Bush, who inherited a budget surplus from President Clinton, not only did not raise taxes, he cut them, and squandered the surplus while accumulating more debt that all of his 42 predecessors combined, almost all of which was borrowed from countries like China.
Not drafting people or raising taxes to pay for these conflicts is both a moral and a security failure. Not only is the current policy of not activating the selective service system unfair to today's volunteers, but running the wars on a credit card saddles future generations with the cost of paying for wars they had no part in deciding. Moreover, by borrowing money from a rising power like China, we have undermined our ability to balance its influence in the Middle East, Africa and East Asia.
Finally, because most Americans did not have to make any sacrifices to undertake these conflicts, they failed to ask the right questions or hold their leaders fully accountable for waging these wars. If, for example, before invading Iraq, President Bush had reinstituted conscription and levied a 10 percent income surtax, would 60 percent of Americans have supported the conflict without UN authorization and would only a handful of senators have read the whole National Intelligence Estimate, which showed that the case for invading Iraq was dubious at best?
When America goes to war it should not just be the military but the American people. Never again should we go to Wal-Mart while the soldiers go to battle. Paying for the increased force level in Afghanistan will be a step in the right direction.
Lawrence Korb, a former assistant secretary of defense in the Reagan administration, is a senior fellow at the Center for American Progress.
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You could of course just stop your bloody wars. War is a fetish for the US.
Why hasn"t anyone proposed war bonds. They were a success during WW2 andwould allow people to put their money where their mouth is.
I could not agree more with Mr. Korbs article. The thing is, how does this become reality? The polititions have weaved such a tight webb around their world, I fear that it is impossible to get them to do what is right for our country.
Maybe term limits is something that" we the people" should take a close look at. With term limits, i believe the temptation to take bribes would be reduced. They would no longer need to worry about re-election, and i'm sure there are a host of other sins tthat will vanish.
Lets face it, there is far too much money and power that many polititions and corporate heads stand to loose. I dont believe the people have been pushed enough to stand and demand that there represenatives do the proper things for this country.
So.... here we sit, waiting for the next batch of worthless paper to be sent to us , as a bribe, to keep us from feeling the pain and suffering for the mess in Washington. And, you want them to draft there kids and put a tax on us to pay for the war? Good luck!
THis is just a symptom...
If you listen to the GOP it is fine to carry out "generational theft" and increase the deficit to kill people in other countries but it is totally immoral to do the same even by a single $$$ to stop people dying at home!
Cut the military budget. Get out of all the countries where we have military installations. Bring our troops home and sell the bases ( if we own them, of course ).
Use the money to pay our debts, secure our borders better and fund Medicare for all ( HR676 ).
Ironically, Americans have been making personal financial sacrifices for war over and over again for the past 50 years yet they seem to block this out. Firstly, as the military has outsourced and privatized many necessary functions of an operating military, we taxpayers pay far more than we would if the military had continued to do them. But in a volunteer army, that takes higher recruitement. We have a overstressed, failing public education system due to lack of tax dollars, we have failed to make quality healthcare available to all citizens through a public option of single payer and adequately funded medicare and medicaid, and we have an antiquated and overstressed system of infrastructure including bridges, energy grids, roads, levees, telecommunications, etc that there is never sufficient government funds to keep current (think New Orleans or even the buffering of internet streaming). That is just the top of the list. We spend trillions on idiotic wars yet don't seem to feel the death by a thousand cuts to our own lives by bought and paid for politcians who are toadies for a corporate america bent on destroying the middle class that made their own bottomlines so profitable. Realizing the need for a draft ifyou wan to fight wars is the least of our worries or moral obligations.
He's right in several ways, as are the people who feel that women should registar for the draft. The involuntary extensions our soldiers face, and the repeated combat tours they are forced to endure is nothing more than a back door draft. Albeit, the thought of my three daughters involuntarily marching off to war doesn't sit well with me, then again, neither does the thought of my son involuntarily marching off to war. As a veteran, and an angry, employed white man, I want to know, when will equality actually occur and when will we have to stop carrying the rest of the country on our backs while others hide behind the veil of "racism" and "sexism". People who benefit from tossing these lables around like dice on a craps table seem to forget that the key word in "equal opportunity" is equal. They want equal pay for "equal" work, then when asked to do their fair share they break out and hide behind the "isms" and repeatedly get away with it. Why? Because we're too afraid we might hurt someone's precious feelings. Well feelings be danged, freedom is free, in fact the only thing that is free is nothing and nothing aint nothing if it aint free. This country has not established equality, they've only re-defined the old "sepparate but equal" mentality to better suite their needs. It wasn't right then and it aint right now.
I can't repeat what my Dad, a retired Korean war vet, had to say after I read him your post. It's just ashamed that you think that only certain Americans are willing to lay their lives on the line for this country. My family is on pins and needles now worrying about whether my brother and his girlfriend will be sent on yet another tour. People of all colors have had to share this burden.
Though there is currently no draft, our young men are still required to register for the draft, in case it is needed.
How can we not also require our young women to register for the draft, in this era of just demands for equality?
Where are the women leaders demanding that, if women are to share in equal opportunity inside and outside the military, they must also share equally in responsibility and sacrifice?
Drafting women is the last stage of moral decay of a nation, because women are the mould of mankind.
Don't tamper with the mould, or you'll be in for flawed production samples!
Drafting women means giving away the last chance even to begin to eradicate war from this planet.
We could always stop invading and occupying soverign nations. Nah! Where there's war there's profit. And where there's profit, there's the American military enforcing the rights of multi-national corporations to steal that profit. I mean, it's our nature,right?
There is a massive logic gap in this article. Even if selective service, aka the draft, were reinstituted, it would still mean most of the country would be deciding whether to send other people to war (since most of us are not draft age). As for the cost, those of us under 40 will most certainly be made to pay for these wars. Then there's the fact that the losing candidate last year promised more war, while the winner has done so anyway. When did I have any choice on this matter? Regardless of their level of political participation, young adults in this country are badly outnumbered on election day. When the draft includes men and women, rich and poor, with regard not to age but only ability to serve, then it will be fair.
Older folks might become less hawkish if their children were subject to a draft. Also, members of congress might be more responsible about authorizing wars if their own children might have to fight in them. The main problem with past drafts is that too many exceptions and deferrments were allowed. People like Dick Cheney, a bona-fide war monger and chickenhawk, was given 5 deferrments from military service during the Vietnam War. He required others to make sacrifices that he, himself, was unwilling to make.
Mr. Korb's analysis is absolutely correct. And those who are opposed to the draft would do well to remember that throughout the course of the past eight years, the policy of requiring enlisted personnel and National Guard troops to endure multiple tours of duty is just another form of conscription. The Bush/Cheney war regime was a moral cesspool and it's about time for people to recognize our national failure to accept responsibility for what has been done in our names.
Something not mentioned here is the fact that we have also had to contract out so many jobs that would have been done by military personnel in the past for a lot less money, including mechanics, drivers, cooks, security, etc.
Americans are so lame. They want everything without having to pay the price. If they want to fight a "War on terror" then they need to pay for it now, both in money and in bodies. These wasteful, stupid wars would not exist if we did this.
So true. If a war is worth fighting, than American military personnel should be fighting it, and not high priced contractors. Corporations like Halliburton and Blackwater should never have risen to such prominence in these wars.
“Not drafting people or raising taxes to pay for these conflicts is both a moral and a security failure.”
I would suggest that engaging in these conflicts, when alternative approaches exist, is both a moral and a security failure.
“Finally, because most Americans did not have to make any sacrifices to undertake these conflicts, they failed to ask the right questions or hold their leaders fully accountable for waging these wars.”
In times past, leaders placed themselves at the head of their forces. In order to imply the legitimacy of a conflict. Would we have wars now, if that were still the norm? Or would we have applied ourselves a tad more strenuously to trying other methods of resolution?
Lawrence Korb is an intellectual heavyweight. Good post.
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