Here is how President Franklin D. Roosevelt famously decried Japan’s infamous attack on Pearl Harbor:
December 7, 1941 – a date which will live in infamy the United States of America was suddenly and deliberately attacked by naval and air forces of the Empire of Japan …
(President Franklin D. Roosevelt, The Library of Congress, 1941)
But, arguably, September 11, 2001, is a date which will live in even greater infamy. This, primarily because, while the attack on Pearl Harbor triggered a war that lasted four years, the twin attacks in New York City and just outside Washington, D.C., triggered one that is still raging after eighteen.
All the same, World War II remains the deadliest manifestation of man’s inhumanity to man. The estimated 70 million fatalities attest to the sacrifices we would do well to … never forget.
Sadly, no less a person than the current president of the United States, Donald J. Trump, shows no remembrance of or regard for the sacrifices of that or any other war.
Only that explains his willful withdrawal of US troops from an area in Syria, where they were preventing war between Turkish and Kurdish forces, only to redeploy them to another area in Syria … for this:
President Donald Trump declared Wednesday that the U.S. mission in Syria is focused solely on protecting oil fields, which appears to contradict the Pentagon’s contention that fighting ISIS is the priority.
‘We’re keeping the oil, we have the oil, the oil is secure, we left troops behind only for the oil.’
(Politico, November 13, 2019)
Frankly, all those who sacrificed to make the world safe for democracy, to defeat fascism, or to contain communism must be rolling over in their graves. But the only way to honor them is to mandate the shared sacrifices those war efforts entailed. And the only way to do that is to reinstate the Draft.
I am merely proffering the morally imperative and self-evident truth that politicians would be more circumspect about sending Americans to war if their loved ones were obligated to serve.
(“Support the Draft to Prevent Stupid Wars,” The iPINIONS Journal, March 14, 2007)
Unfortunately, Congress is loath to even impose a wealth tax to share peacetime sacrifices. And it has already rejected legislation to impose a war surtax on wealthy Americans. Never mind that, at the very least, this surtax would have shown some regard for the human sacrifices poor Americans make. After all, they compose the vast majority of troops who have fought all wars since WWII.
If we have to pay for the health care bill, we should pay for the war as well … by having a war surtax… The problem in this country with this issue is that the only people that have to sacrifice are military families and they’ve had to go to the well again and again and again and again, and everybody else is blithely unaffected by the war.
(The Hill, November 23, 2009)
That was the common-sense rationale Rep. David Obey (D-Wis.), chairman of the purse string-controlling House Appropriations Committee, proffered in support of legislation to impose a war surtax. But even the support of Sen. Carl Levin (D-MI), chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, proved to no avail. It failed.
Meanwhile, we have a president today whose priorities are so perverse, he thinks taxing the American people to build a vanity border wall is okay; but taxing them to fund healthcare is not.
God help America.
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Obama escalates Afghan war…
Support the draft